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has anyone done a disco elysium hack of everyone is john btw?
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May 2, 2022 05:11
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mellonbread posted:The best premise I ever saw for a Trek game was that post about the Third Man style adventure on occupied Cardassia. Occupation rules require every troubleshooter team to have at least one Romulan, one Klingon, one Cardassian and one Federation officer, and together you go around putting out fires in the wreckage of the Dominion War. Leftover Jemadar, Vorta carving out their own fiefdoms, Ferengi weapons merchants buying up all the war surplus they can get their hands on to resell on backwater planets. The race to secure loose WMDs left behind by the major powers. Klingons emptying whole occupied cities as slave labor. Romulans scooping up Cardassian experts in biogenic warfare. Renegade Federation officers who never want to stop killing Breen. Plutonis posted:has anyone done a disco elysium hack of everyone is john btw? These are great ideas. So some news from the 3D printing/miniature industry. MyMiniFactory is a storefront for 3D sculptors to sell their STL files for miniatures to individuals who have a 3D printer so they can print miniatures from the STL files. Problem is, not everyone has a 3D printer, or the techniques and materials to make a good printed miniature. Enter only-games.co, a company that provides 3D printing services for STL files and can distribute the products worldwide. MyMiniFactory recently aquired the parent company of only-games.co and now plans to offer 3D printing and delivery of any of the STL files they offer, on demand. The press release is here Also, previous to this acquisition, Modiphius partnered with only-games.co to provide print on demand miniatures for two of their STL files and I believe they are revving up to release more of their STLs as print on demand miniatures. Right now you can get the Fallout Vault Tec Poster Girl or Achtung Cthulhu Nachtwolfe Sturmtroopers if your heart desires, here. Specifically I expect more Skyrim and Fallout miniatures from Modiphius' miniature wargames line. I also found, floating around the internet, a great blog piece describing the economics of 3D printing miniatures and where the trajectory of the field is headed. It was quite interesting. https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/payments-and-plastic-in-the-fantasy-supply-chain/ Poking around the subscription portion of only-games.co (I was looking for more dudes with guns for the scifi solo wargame 5 Parsecs from Home) I found a subscription for $10 or $20 a month that gets you 4 or 10 physical miniatures a month, at least this month. https://only-games.co/pages/zbs-miniatures-subscription ZBS miniatures' current offerings this month are demon dudes with guns and swords that look like they could fill in as Dark Eldar if you squinted at them. 
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May 2, 2022 21:20
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Cold City might be a good system for a DS9 Third Man campaign. Short adversarial campaigns where trust is an invaluable and dangerous commodity. Every character has the job they share with their colleagues, a secret mission for their government, and lastly a personal secret obsession. Maybe your Federation envoy is ostensibly here to prevent weapons trafficking, but has secret orders to bury evidence of human sympathizers that sold weapons to the Dominion. And more than that, he needs to get his hands on the cardie that killed his sister.
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May 2, 2022 22:19
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Is there a blades in the dark thread? Sprung for the paper version, I didn't realise how different it was from a standard *world game.
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May 3, 2022 00:17
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Plutonis posted:DS9 troupe system TRPG
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May 3, 2022 00:32
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sebmojo posted:Is there a blades in the dark thread? Sprung for the paper version, I didn't realise how different it was from a standard *world game. There is! You can find it here.
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May 3, 2022 00:36
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sebmojo posted:Is there a blades in the dark thread? Sprung for the paper version, I didn't realise how different it was from a standard *world game. I would hesitate to call it a PbtA game at all.
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May 3, 2022 00:45
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I would hesitate to call it a PbtA game at all. If we were doing some kind of taxonomy of RPG systems it’d deffo be in the order PbtAdae, but yeah in terms of an elevator pitch it’d seem outright misleading to just call it a *World game. It’s a PbtA game in the same way a wolverine is a mustelid : technically true, but you don’t look at the giant stout hate-badger and think “yeah that’s basically just a ferret.”
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May 3, 2022 02:17
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh, no, you don't come across as hostile, I just don't understand your perspective at all. In particular I found Tenar to be incredibly passive, especially in the later stories where she's a central character(it feels like every chance she has to go and do something, she sits at home instead until at the very end things are fixed without her intervention). Ged is kind of the exception in that he's the one character who goes out and does things and where his poking around doesn't feel framed as bad(...mostly, at least). There's another female protag whose name eludes me who feels almost like she's about to be important and pro-active but then at the eleventh hour a deus ex machina just kind of yanks the carpet out from underneath it all. Fascinating. Again I've only read 1-4, but I'd not describe Tenar as somebody who just waits around. I'd say the things that you described are her cover while she goes through a very profound journey, where she continuously manipulates and misleads and undermines authority figures until they fully fail. I'd be surprised if later books were simple deus ex machina stories because, well, I think Le Guin's philosophy has a much much weirder understanding of what power is and what it means to wield it. Absurd Alhazred posted:I would hesitate to call it a PbtA game at all. I know I am raging against the dying light here but I'd say PBTA is very firmly a PbtA and very firmly not an AW-hack, cuz those are very different terms. Firebrands is a canonical PbtA game and it's less AW-like than BitD. The man himself I think can describe it better than I could: https://lumpley.games/2019/12/30/powered-by-the-apocalypse-part-1/
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May 3, 2022 04:33
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Blades in the Dark is a PbtA game in the sense that D Vincent and Meguey Baker use the term, i.e. "you were influenced by Apocalypse World somehow in making this game" but in terms of pure mechanical difference from something like Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts it's split off into its own family, Forged in the Dark. See also games under the 'Belonging outside Belonging / No Dice No Masters' family which are a similar offshoot, starting with Dream Askew inspired by Apocalypse World but starting their own families with games like Henshin and Good Society.
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May 3, 2022 04:35
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The way the position and effect get negotiated from scratch for every move reminds me more of Fate than AW, honestly. PbtA games seem to define their core moves much more strictly than Blades does.
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May 3, 2022 09:21
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Siivola posted:The way the position and effect get negotiated from scratch for every move reminds me more of Fate than AW, honestly. PbtA games seem to define their core moves much more strictly than Blades does. Blades in the Dark only has one core move, 'do something that shouldn't auto-succeed', which the GM interprets the result of using one single 'fail, partial success, success, crit' table. It's just that that one move has varying bonuses depending on the action rating used.
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May 3, 2022 11:21
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bewilderment posted:Blades in the Dark only has one core move, 'do something that shouldn't auto-succeed', which the GM interprets the result of using one single 'fail, partial success, success, crit' table. Realizing this felt quite odd, but it's led me to enjoying busted old games from the seventies a lot more.
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May 3, 2022 12:18
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Siivola posted:In a weird incident of parallel evolution, Call of Cthulhu also has that move. A shitload of modern game design is basically re-examining the basics and realising how much unnecessary complexity was piled on to make the system look fancy.
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May 3, 2022 13:17
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A shitload of modern game design is basically re-examining the basics and realising how much unnecessary complexity was piled on to make the system look fancy. This actually made me think of a reddit thread I read last night where someone was looking for a “crunchy game that felt more modern” than most traditional equivalents. I’m starting to wonder how possible it is to thread the needle between meaningful crunch and crunch for crunch’s sake. I used to be able to look at something like Pathfinder 1e’s core rulebooks and get excited, but now anything above 400 pages makes me tired and frustrated just thinking about reading them.
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May 3, 2022 13:55
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Gray Ghost posted:This actually made me think of a reddit thread I read last night where someone was looking for a “crunchy game that felt more modern” than most traditional equivalents. I’m starting to wonder how possible it is to thread the needle between meaningful crunch and crunch for crunch’s sake.
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May 3, 2022 14:11
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A shitload of modern game design is basically re-examining the basics and realising how much unnecessary complexity was piled on to make the system look fancy. A story I like to tell a lot is that, when I worked in recruiting, if you wrote a job posting honestly, there would usually be only 1-2 requirements. You'd add a bunch more requirements because that made it "look like" a real job posting. Job postings are a genre of writing and have mandatory conventions to fit into the genre that frequently do not serve the goal of finding qualified candidates. Older game design I think frequently also fell into this. (and tbh I think many modern games, BITD included, fall into this). Gray Ghost posted:I used to be able to look at something like Pathfinder 1e’s core rulebooks and get excited, but now anything above 400 pages makes me tired and frustrated just thinking about reading them. God if that ain't a mood. Though for me its probably closer to like 100 or so pages. I think it was Promethean that broke me - I was so excited reading the rules and I've loved the campaign I've run of it, but it was so frustrating to finish such a huge loving tome of a book and then get to the table and realize that the rules were contradictory often enough that not only did we have rules disputes at the table over those rules, but nearly every other rule felt impossible to be confident about, and now the idea of reading an RPG book that has rules more complex than Fiasco gives me the same sensation as being told to play a JRPG that's over 100 hours long: I can tell it would have excited me when I was a teenager, but as a middle aged man it just makes me go "ugggggggggggggh." And I want to get into Changeling, because I want to know what the Changeling fans are getting out of it, but every time I try and read it I just kind of go "uggggggh" Tulip fucked around with this message at 14:21 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 14:17
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bewilderment posted:Blades in the Dark only has one core move, 'do something that shouldn't auto-succeed', which the GM interprets the result of using one single 'fail, partial success, success, crit' table. It has "playbooks" which is a fairly PbtA-distinctive term, and while it refers to "actions" and "special abilities" instead of "moves" the text structure is similar with an action for each skill and special ones for the playbook.
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May 3, 2022 14:25
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Tulip posted:God if that ain't a mood. Though for me its probably closer to like 100 or so pages.
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May 3, 2022 14:59
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Cinematic Unisystem may be one of the best crunch to ease of play systems. Not a ridiculous amount of skills, stats are easy to understand, enough dice rolling but not ridiculous amounts, Drama Point system is wonderful. The Interlok system (Mekton/Cyberpunk) is pretty drat good as a base to build off of too.
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May 3, 2022 15:13
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bewilderment posted:Blades in the Dark only has one core move, 'do something that shouldn't auto-succeed', which the GM interprets the result of using one single 'fail, partial success, success, crit' table.
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May 3, 2022 15:24
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Halloween Jack posted:Stop me if I'm wrong here, but are you equating a "move" in PBTA to a core die mechanic? Most games only have one core mechanic. It's just an argument about abstraction levels. AW also only has one core move by this standard (and if anything more unambiguously, since the rules say that if you aren't sure what the move is, just improvise with "act under fire," while BitD has at least three forms of rolls that work differently than basic rolls: long-term projects, resistance, and vice). Siivola posted:Yeah same. I've been reading a lot of quick starts and beginner box games, and it's pretty fascinating how "light" some huge tomes become when you cut it down to only the load-bearing bits. Sometimes it really works, sometimes the omissions turn out to be important, and sometimes it turns out the core game kinda honks and it's difficult to imagine any add-on rules could fix it. yeah this is a good experiment, esp if you're going to run a long game in a campaign to ask yourself "ok how well do i really understand these rules"
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May 3, 2022 15:35
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Dear god, Pathfinder 2e is so demoralising in that regard. Hundreds of pages of crunch and only a few optimal options that lead to the same play out every time.
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May 3, 2022 16:49
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hyphz posted:Dear god, Pathfinder 2e is so demoralising in that regard. Hundreds of pages of crunch and only a few optimal options that lead to the same play out every time.
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May 3, 2022 17:01
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Siivola posted:If the optimal options are within like, two or three pips on a d20 of the second-best options, you can't actually tell the difference unless you keep meticulous track of your attack rolls throughout several characters' careers. In PF2e? Yea, you absolutely can. PF2e has a degree-of-success mechanic where you crit if you roll 10 above the DC on a skill check or attack roll. That means that a +2 bonus can make a massive difference - it's critting 10% as often. Default crit behaviour is double damage, so that's 10% more damage. This would be good as a method to make to-hit bonuses more meaningful, but that's only default crit behaviour, and some weapons have enhanced options on crit, some of which can give further bonuses. So that +2 can be huge, especially when combined with bonuses from other sources. Basically, they went all-in on trying to avoid caster supremacy, which is a good idea, but ends up meaning that simply wailing on the enemy for large damage numbers tends to be the optimal strategy for everything.
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May 3, 2022 17:12
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Also, anyone know about the Blade Runner RPG that Free League are soliciting? Seems to fall in the category of "good idea but I can't see how it works"..
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May 3, 2022 17:20
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Siivola posted:In a weird incident of parallel evolution, Call of Cthulhu also has that move. Push all your non-combat rolls (a 7E addition, I think) and it will feel even more like that.
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May 3, 2022 17:33
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Tulip posted:It's just an argument about abstraction levels. AW also only has one core move by this standard (and if anything more unambiguously, since the rules say that if you aren't sure what the move is, just improvise with "act under fire," while BitD has at least three forms of rolls that work differently than basic rolls: long-term projects, resistance, and vice).
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May 3, 2022 17:37
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Siivola posted:If the optimal options are within like, two or three pips on a d20 of the second-best options, you can't actually tell the difference unless you keep meticulous track of your attack rolls throughout several characters' careers. If the AC of creatures is roughly pegged to an expected chance-to-hit on the part of player characters, a small difference in your attack bonus can make a big difference in overall play experience.
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May 3, 2022 17:41
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Halloween Jack posted:Oh, okay, I get that. If everything is just a skill roll that works the same way, the whole experience feels kinda flat. Common problem in games that introduce "social combat" that's just a simpler combat system rolling different skills. Yeah, I mean if you're talking about the nitty-gritty of game design it's an excessive level of abstraction. Like when you're designing a bridge there's a level of abstraction where you're just going "where and why should we try to cross this gap" and there's a level of abstraction where you're going "how many rivets do we need for the predicted traffic" and they'll have different vocabularies and so on. AW can be basically reduced to "act under fire" and BitD can be described as just "action rolls and resistance rolls," but that's not going to get you very far at the table if you don't talk about what "actions" are covered by "action rolls." If you're looking to design or even critique a game and you've got the theme I think it's fair to work at that level of abstraction imo an the question of like, games taxonomy is pretty friggin abstract.
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May 3, 2022 18:01
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Gray Ghost posted:This actually made me think of a reddit thread I read last night where someone was looking for a “crunchy game that felt more modern” than most traditional equivalents. I’m starting to wonder how possible it is to thread the needle between meaningful crunch and crunch for crunch’s sake. in the context of a game that has, at least, "local" win conditions (e.g. combat encounters), complexity is like a budget. you're trying to achieve maximum depth for as little complexity and bookkeeping as possible. there's no easy way to summarize what to do to achieve this since this is basically what "game design" means, but a good and nearly-universal start is moving away from systems that emphasize making the correct decisions at character creation (a one-time decision that really only checks knowledge; you could just look up a guide and be all set) instead of in play (target prioritization, resource management, risk / reward, all that good poo poo) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 18:03
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Siivola posted:The way the position and effect get negotiated from scratch for every move reminds me more of Fate than AW, honestly. PbtA games seem to define their core moves much more strictly than Blades does. I'm not sure if I'd go as far as Fate, but yeah. Maybe it's a result of finally reading through AW, I'd expect a PbtA game to be pretty clear on which one move is triggered by the fiction. I also expect consequences to be much tighter and clearer than in Blades.
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May 3, 2022 18:04
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hyphz posted:Also, anyone know about the Blade Runner RPG that Free League are soliciting? Seems to fall in the category of "good idea but I can't see how it works".. The Year Zero system was adapted very successfully (imo) to Alien, so I'm watching it based on that. I want some details on the investigation mechanics and how they're going to handle unaware replicants before I'll pull the trigger. I'll only be getting PDFs if I do, so no rush for the early bird thing.
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May 3, 2022 18:05
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Siivola posted:If the optimal options are within like, two or three pips on a d20 of the second-best options, you can't actually tell the difference unless you keep meticulous track of your attack rolls throughout several characters' careers.
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May 3, 2022 18:08
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mellonbread posted:My experience is all with 1e, but a difference of two pips is definitely noticeable over the course of even a single adventure, let alone the lifetime of a character. I'm thinking of the first or second game I ever played, as the pregen barb, when I actually read the character sheet in detail and realized the ultra-greatsword she started with was giving a -2 chance to hit to the final attack calculation. I swapped it out for a weapon dropped by a monster, and suddenly I was able to hit things reliably instead of whiffing repeatedly. Second edition fixed that first example at least, you get a penalty to Dex-related stuff like AC with giant weapon barbarians but no impact on your attacks anyway. Pretty sure there's no reduce attack chance for more power mechanics at all in 2E, Power Attack plays with the action economy for damage instead.
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May 3, 2022 18:13
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I am increasingly leaning on "adapted systems" for my crunch. In the same way that getting PbtA or FitD games to the table is easy once you've played one, I'm enjoying Year Zero and 2d20 more and more because they get crunchy in the the thing their game cares about and not in other ways, which makes parsing them so much simpler.Tuxedo Catfish posted:there's no easy way to summarize what to do to achieve this since this is basically what "game design" means, but a good and nearly-universal start is moving away from systems that emphasize making the correct decisions at character creation (a one-time decision that really only checks knowledge; you could just look up a guide and be all set) instead of in play (target prioritization, resource management, risk / reward, all that good poo poo)  That's a fantastic way of phrasing something I've been noodling on, thank you.
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May 3, 2022 19:00
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Splicer posted:Even in a raw 1d20 rollover system having 3 less to-hit will be missing an extra 1 in 7. That's something you'll notice over a session. Hell, it's something you'll notice over a combat. But yeah 3 is an extreme example, I admit it. Maybe don't take -3 to hit in character generation! Unless you get like +4 to damage, maybe that'll be a fair trade. Or you might need +5 hp, who knows? In a balanced system the choice doesn't actually affect your odds of success, just the gamefeel, and in an unbalanced system the juice isn't worth the squeeze of figuring how the game balances and where the monsters' break points are. Edit: No, I take that back. Lots of games require this baseline level that if you pick the Fighter character you should also buy a sword or whatever, and while I think that's kind of redundant, those games are still okay. But I am done fretting about whether I should have a dice pool of 10 or if I can afford a 9, and I feel like choosing not to care about that stuff has made me happier. Now I'm using all that energy into brewing Magic decks instead, heyoo. 
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May 3, 2022 19:27
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Welp, the biggest tabletop online marketplace on my country is shutting down.
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May 3, 2022 20:01
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There's a kickstarter for an Old Gods of Appalachia rpg. Anyone know anything about it or find themselves in a position to speculate on its quality? A creepy magical Appalachia is something I've really wanted. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/old-gods-of-appalachia-roleplaying-game
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May 3, 2022 20:42
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i feel the same way about Old Gods of Appalachia that I do about Dawn of the Mexica: goddamn that's a beautiful premise wasted on a terrible mechanical system e: they have a demo/preview PDF that includes a look at the mechanics, which is a brave move and one i always salute creators for taking... given that demos almost always reduce sales rather than promote them Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 20:49 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 20:47
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