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hyphz posted:Monte Cook's "BitD but flashbacks are literal and in-character" came out into preview. It's practically a box of wasted potential. I don't doubt that Cook will reliably fumble the ball and still sell 10,000 tickets, but what game is this? What does "literal and in-character" mean in this context?
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Aug 19, 2022 04:52
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That Old Tree posted:I don't doubt that Cook will reliably fumble the ball and still sell 10,000 tickets, but what game is this? What does "literal and in-character" mean in this context? Basically the PCs are using their powers to change what happened - it's not "I was prepared for this and have a gun stashed nearby", it's "I change reality so that there's a gun nearby."
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Aug 19, 2022 05:14
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CitizenKeen posted:What’s it called, even? “Stealing stories for the Devil.” Spoiler: there’s a god NPC who helps the PCs out from time to time. His name is Nicholas. He might be the devil. Or he might not. That is the entire summary of everything to do with the devil in the game.
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Aug 19, 2022 05:40
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hyphz posted:“Stealing stories for the Devil.”
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Aug 19, 2022 05:50
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hyphz posted:“Stealing stories for the Devil.” Coward. Should've at least gone with "Louis Cypher" or something classic.
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Aug 19, 2022 05:55
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hyphz posted:“Stealing stories for the Devil.” lol at that being watered down kill puppies for satan
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Aug 19, 2022 06:42
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Xiahou Dun posted:Coward. On further reflection, I would like to add another acceptable name for the devil in an RPG : "Tom Waits"
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Aug 19, 2022 06:51
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Xiahou Dun posted:On further reflection, I would like to add another acceptable name for the devil in an RPG : "Tom, the one who Waits"
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Aug 19, 2022 14:50
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dwarf74 posted:"Tom, the one who Waits" I want you to know you're responsible for inflicting this on whoever is in my next game regardless of system and setting.
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Aug 19, 2022 14:59
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Nuns with Guns posted:Are there some reviews out for it? Monte Cook trying to do a Blades type game sounds fascinating. When you try to hit an adjacent enemy with the weapon you are carrying, roll +to hit. On a 10+, deal twice your weapon's damage die plus your strength. On a 7-9, deal your weapon's damage die plus your strength. On a 6-, you miss them and your turn ends.
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Aug 19, 2022 16:17
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Whybird posted:When you try to hit an adjacent enemy with the weapon you are carrying, roll +to hit. On a 10+, deal twice your weapon's damage die plus your strength. On a 7-9, deal your weapon's damage die plus your strength. On a 6-, you miss them and your turn ends. It's not a blades-like system, just a heist game with in-character flashbacks. The system is a very simple dice-type based one, and although there is a partial success result there aren't any moves quantifying the effect it has.
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Aug 19, 2022 16:42
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Ah yes, the Trinity Continuum solution which is fine by me.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:38
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That Old Tree posted:I don't doubt that Cook will reliably fumble the ball and still sell 10,000 tickets, but what game is this? What does "literal and in-character" mean in this context? It's basically an exact checklist of things you would imagine if someone told you Monte Cook had read "Blades in the Dark". 1) An overly literal interpretation of every one of Blades's purely narrative conceits? Yes, in this game the players are "Liars", agents from the future who have reality-altering powers that let them create "zones of Improbability" which can alter the world around them so that things never happened, or happened differently. 2) An needlessly specific and bloated skill list over which the player characters get too few choices? Boy-howdy, you betcha. Pick 4 choices from 40+ skills, including such thief-centric necessities as "Wood-working", "Animal-Handling", and "Botany". 3) One "class" which is clearly better than the others? There's three quasi-classes: Planners, whose reality-altering lies only affect objects, Schemers, whose reality-altering lies only affect people, and Plotters, whose reality-altering lies only affect the Past. But since Plotters can affect both people and objects in the past.... you do the math on that one.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:40
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:It's basically an exact checklist of things you would imagine if someone told you Monte Cook had read "Blades in the Dark". What spell level is demonic reality editing? Is Satan Lord?
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Aug 19, 2022 17:44
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:2) An needlessly specific and bloated skill list over which the player characters get too few choices? Boy-howdy, you betcha. Pick 4 choices from 40+ skills, including such thief-centric necessities as "Wood-working", "Animal-Handling", and "Botany". At least once more.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:45
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mellonbread posted:How many times can he remake Numenera? Can't wait to see Cook's take on Genesys.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:48
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He can always read better games, understanding a little more of them each time, and release a new version of Numenera. The 17th edition of Numenera will just be Fate Core.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:48
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Nessus posted:So like is Monte Cook's thing here that his trained audience can accept some kind of demonic reality editor power but can't accept "this story works kinda like an interactive heist movie so sometimes there's a flashback to your cool setup to what you just did, like in a movie." Some people really seem to hate any fundamental game dynamic than The DM being the sole arbiter of absolutely everything about a game world other than the thoughts and actions of the PCs, who's job is to explore and interact with that work that the DM made. A lot of DMs don't want to "share" creative control.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:53
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Jack B Nimble posted:Some people really seem to hate any fundamental game dynamic than The DM being the sole arbiter of absolutely everything about a game world other than the thoughts and actions of the PCs, who's job is to explore and interact with that work that the DM made. A lot of DMs don't want to "share" creative control. I’m one of them. Just doesn’t fit my style.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:54
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Cook's games are the grognard equivalent of, like, the lovely ripoffs of Magic the Gathering and Harry Potter that they sell in Family Christian Bookstores.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:55
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Halloween Jack posted:Cook's games are the grognard equivalent of, like, the lovely ripoffs of Magic the Gathering and Harry Potter that they sell in Family Christian Bookstores.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:56
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IME a lot of players don't like being put on the spot to improvise something in the moment ("Hey, where did this thief come from?") But can be a lot more comfortable providing back ground details between or before games ("Hey, tell me about where you're from and the party can visit your homeland later in the campaign").
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Aug 19, 2022 17:57
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My desire to share creative control as a GM is proportional to how close to the scene we are? The change is in the scene? gently caress yeah, do it. Obviously there's be a [thing] in that [place]. Yes, it would be way cooler if one of the guards was [characteristic player can riff off of]. The change is in the scene, but has ramifications beyond the scene? Let me take a sip of water to reflect on whether you're loving up the campaign, but sure, I'm all for it. Probably awesome. The change alters the entire trajectory of the adventure? What's my week look like? Do I have time to accommodate this change? I'm probably for, but how much prep am I throwing away to accommodate this? (I used to be lower prep, but VTTs are hard.) The change alters base premises of the campaign? Uh... I like my worldbuilding. I'm hesitant to share. But it's probably cool. But let's talk as a table when we're not in the middle of a scene. Jack B Nimble posted:IME a lot of players don't like being put on the spot to improvise something in the moment ("Hey, where did this thief come from?") But can be a lot more comfortable providing back ground details between or before games ("Hey, tell me about where you're from and the party can visit your homeland later in the campaign"). Yeah, exactly. When I email my players a question, I get the best answers a day later. Always astound me. I hit them with a "13th Age montage" scene after they had acquired a flying ship (where each player is expected to come up with a peril on the spot, and the next player solves the peril, no dice, just cool montage), and the scariest thing they could think about was minor pettiness over who had the bigger cabin.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:02
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Arivia posted:I’m one of them. Just doesn’t fit my style. Okay but surely there's a sliding scale, right? I don't think I've ever met a player who isn't comfortable doing things like inventing some NPCs in their backstory. Or I guess I have, but that's more a laziness/indifference thing than anything else I assume.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:03
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Colonel Cool posted:Okay but surely there's a sliding scale, right? I don't think I've ever met a player who isn't comfortable doing things like inventing some NPCs in their backstory. Or I guess I have, but that's more a laziness/indifference thing than anything else I assume. I’m picky about that stuff, too. I work with players on stuff like background NPCs to make sure they fit my ideas, but if a player comes in with pages of backstory and expects me to just intake it all exactly, not likely to happen. However, I’m fine with players adding small details during play. Flashback scenes, I grab a bottle you didn’t mention and smash it on their heads, all good.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:06
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I had very good results when I ran a 40k guard set in one small sub sector and I told every player to make their home world, and that the worlds they made would comprise the entire setting, with the exception of the prologue world which I emailed out as both a template and a table setting. I still got to engage in world building because there was a secret running through the sub sector, but they made the Battle of Britain style world stuck in an endless war against Orks, the Forge World on Fumes that has been producing ever worse products for centuries, the world of abhumans intentionally mislabeled as Ogryns in a long running conspiracy by the adeptus mechanicus against the inquisition, etc etc.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:11
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In my experience it is way harder to get players to contribute to world building mid-game than it is to get a GM to let my add details when I want. It has seriously been like pulling teeth to get people to fill in scenes when playing PbtA games for the first time, let alone be excited to have the opportunity.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:17
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Countblanc posted:In my experience it is way harder to get players to contribute to world building mid-game than it is to get a GM to let my add details when I want. It has seriously been like pulling teeth to get people to fill in scenes when playing PbtA games for the first time, let alone be excited to have the opportunity. Yea, I've seen that too. It's usually the players pushing against this stuff, not the GM, because either they don't want the responsibility or it takes them out of the character's headspace. Incidentally, the players aren't bad guys. They are pretty plainly superhero-equivalents. The "Zones of Improbability" are the things the PCs are trying to get rid of. This was the only reason I was interested in the game - the idea of reframing Blades as being about good guys and getting rid of some of the discongruences of flashbacks. But sadly, almost all those discongruences are still there and some of them are now written explicitly into the bloody text. Oh, and if we're talking about copying other games it also pinches Turns out of Fiasco because why not.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:43
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I think I'd be a terrible Blades in the Dark GM because, while I understand TTRPGS have room both for collaborative storytelling and adversarial conflict, and I use both, when it comes down to it, in the final moment, I'm just a bit too much of the later than the former, and I need the climax of the game to be constrained by the rules of your average crunchy, battle centric games. I could probably steal the system wholesale as a vignette for heists tho' , and still have regular old war gaming battles. 
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Aug 19, 2022 19:35
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Nessus posted:So like is Monte Cook's thing here that his trained audience can accept some kind of demonic reality editor power but can't accept "this story works kinda like an interactive heist movie so sometimes there's a flashback to your cool setup to what you just did, like in a movie." CitizenKeen posted:I hit them with a "13th Age montage" scene after they had acquired a flying ship (where each player is expected to come up with a peril on the spot, and the next player solves the peril, no dice, just cool montage), and the scariest thing they could think about was minor pettiness over who had the bigger cabin.
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Aug 19, 2022 20:38
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In my experience, player-side world building works best when it's things their character would know. If players are reluctant, I'll ask if they want to add something that could be a chance for their character to shine when I bring it back later. All of a sudden, the thief knows a rumour about a crypt with a series of the most cunning traps ever devised. Also helps bridge the weird gap between player knowledge and character knowledge where the player is brand new to all of this but the character has lived in the world for 20+ years That said, Stonetop, the most recent pbta game I've read, has a sidebar about establishing a level of collaborative world building that players are comfortable with that you could lift for any game of this type 
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Aug 19, 2022 21:12
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Tarnop posted:That said, Stonetop, the most recent pbta game I've read, has a sidebar about establishing a level of collaborative world building that players are comfortable with that you could lift for any game of this type If someone who played soccer all their life starts playing rugby, their skills at kicking the ball will help them, but they will also have to learn new skills. You don't tell them "don't worry, you can play with just your feet if you like. You don't have to use your hands." And you know, they're going to fumble the ball a lot at first because they're not used to it. That's okay, they learn and improve. There's this pervasive idea in this hobby that roleplaying is just one thing and that system doesn't really matter because the GM will just adapt any game to the group's preferences. It's a lie. You use different skills in different games. This passage feels like the game is apologizing for that. No! Have the confidence to say that your rules are worth using!
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Aug 19, 2022 22:17
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I mean, you can't knock the ball on with your feet 
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Aug 19, 2022 22:29
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Jimbozig posted:Honestly, I really don't like this page. It's okay for a game to be different from D&D. And it's okay for players coming from D&D to be initially uncomfortable with the new parts. The solution is just to give them encouragement. Ask them the questions the game wants you to ask them and let them learn to contribute that kind of thing. People can learn new things, and that includes new games. It's still pre-release so I'd be happy to pass that feedback along if you'd like me to. Anonymously or however you'd like. I'm in two minds about it. I really like the provocative questions part of PBTA games, and I've played with people who've both loved and hated it. But if people don't seem into it then I think a conversation at the end of the session is more appropriate than just casting about for different modes of questioning and hoping one sticks, which seems to be what's being suggested in Stonetop. If players feel uncomfortable about part of the game though, I don't think you can just power through and hope they'll adapt.
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Aug 19, 2022 22:32
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It's funny, I like it when players contribute to the games I'm running and hate it when I'm a player - and it's for exactly the reason mentioned in the blurb - I don't want to realize you're just making all this up as you go along! There's degrees of making it up - sometimes you're being given little hints that touch at the mystery at the heart of the GMs setting and they don't expect these to start adding up for real life months, other times the GM is doing their best poker face while listening to and stealing the best party speculation. But as a player I don't want to know which is which until after the campaign is over.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:04
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Jack B Nimble posted:...sometimes you're being given little hints that touch at the mystery at the heart of the GMs setting and they don't expect these to start adding up for real life months, other times the GM is doing their best poker face while listening to and stealing the best party speculation. Again, not every game is the same. That is true of some games, but for example, in Apocalypse World, it's not. The GM is explicitly forbidden from planning like that. They cannot be dropping hints towards their eventual planned finale because they don't have one. Players are expected to contribute and everyone is absolutely making it up as they go, explicitly. And if you don't enjoy that, that's cool. There are lots of games that support other ways of playing. I don't expect games to apologize for their design and I don't expect players to apologize for their tastes. I do expect that if they're playing a new game, they give it a good try. No problem if they bounce off it.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:27
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Tarnop posted:In my experience, player-side world building works best when it's things their character would know. If players are reluctant, I'll ask if they want to add something that could be a chance for their character to shine when I bring it back later. All of a sudden, the thief knows a rumour about a crypt with a series of the most cunning traps ever devised. I really like Beyond The Wall's player-side worldbuilding. They're the residents of this village so naturally they would know what's there and what's generally around it.
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Aug 20, 2022 00:24
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Jimbozig posted:There's this pervasive idea in this hobby that roleplaying is just one thing and that system doesn't really matter because the GM will just adapt any game to the group's preferences. It's a lie. You use different skills in different games. This passage feels like the game is apologizing for that. No! Have the confidence to say that your rules are worth using! 
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Aug 20, 2022 00:34
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I feel like PbtA is likely to fall flat for a player who doesn't like that sort of improv, in the same way that crunchy tactical games are going to fall flat for players who don't like interacting with combat mechanics. I guess there are people out there who just enjoy depicting their characters with no worldbuilding, and I think "tailor your questions to what your players actually like to improv about" is fair enough, but "let people sit there and not engage in the conversation" is just a setup for bad times.
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Aug 20, 2022 00:45
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When I'm playing rather than GMing I like to do a minimum of that building and focus on just inhabiting my one PC as a break from what I do when GMing, for instance.
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Aug 20, 2022 01:20
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