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It was a good game, yeah. EDIT: almost nine years on SA and finally my first atrocious page snipe
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Jul 16, 2022 09:19
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That means you need to post more.
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Jul 16, 2022 11:17
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I read through Apocalypse World 2e and have a question about combat moves. It seems like any one move summarizes a lot of combat. Like, Seize by Force, given that there's an opportunity to provide harm from both parties involved, could summarize a grappling action where both parties are beating on each other while they wrestle for control of a weapon or something. So in most fights you'll have very few roles to resolve conflict. Am I interpreting that correctly? I'm coming off games where combat isn't really much of a thing (Gumshoe) or is a lot more tactical (Cyberpunk RED), so I'm trying to categorize where AW and its ilk live in terms of narrative vs. tactical action. The way AW is written it sounds a lot like an irradiated soap opera, which while very cool isn't really my thing, but I found the systems baseline really intriguing.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:03
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Combat goes very quickly in AW. But it’s positively sluggish compared to urban shadows, where an epic fight between two people can be resolved in one move. Longer would be Masks and Dungeon World, which is one of the few systems that has hit points and randomized damage. Masks as a satisfying length, where superhero fights can last 30 min-an hour, but could stop at any time. (There’s no rule against retreating or negotiating and your party has superpowers.)
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Aug 8, 2022 17:17
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AW combat really depends on how thinly you slice it. Seize By Force could be your gang taking control of an entire outpost. It could also be you struggling to grab a knife as one moment in the brawl, or anything in between. If you slice it too thin everything stops making sense, but making fights that are long enough and tough enough for any given situation is much more of an art than a science.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:35
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Cool, that's helpful. I've also got Blades in the Dark on my reading list - looking forward to seeing something with some additional systems wrapped around the core.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:47
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Lurks With Wolves posted:AW combat really depends on how thinly you slice it. Seize By Force could be your gang taking control of an entire outpost. It could also be you struggling to grab a knife as one moment in the brawl, or anything in between. If you slice it too thin everything stops making sense, but making fights that are long enough and tough enough for any given situation is much more of an art than a science. This is truth. Be alive to how your players phrase things and what they seem to be paying attention to. If you lay out a situation where the bad guy is barricaded with hostages, and the player goes with, "I tell my gang to lay down suppression fire while I charge in and rescue the hostage," then that sounds like they're saying they want to wrap this up in a roll or two. If the player says, "I want to see if there's a way I could move from cover to cover as I flank them, that's reading a situation, right?" then that tells you they want to treat this as a protracted fight scene. It's fine to give them some pushback either way, if you want, but be alive to how they're taking it. I personally have no problem with the GM saying, "Your gang is small, their gang is large and heavily armed, if you just charge in there you're looking a base 5 harm, are you sure this is how you want to play it? or "Hey, just between us, you're the Gunlugger and this is six guys with 9mms, are you sure you don't want to just bum rush them?"
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Aug 8, 2022 20:23
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Yeah, that's what I'm waiting on to click for me. In most other systems I've played, even the "light" ones like CoD 1e, combat has generally been a more literal affair rather than something than can scale up or down. I like it, but there's definitely a mind shift that has to occur to really grok a system like this.
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Aug 8, 2022 21:00
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Well Played Mauer posted:Yeah, that's what I'm waiting on to click for me. In most other systems I've played, even the "light" ones like CoD 1e, combat has generally been a more literal affair rather than something than can scale up or down. I like it, but there's definitely a mind shift that has to occur to really grok a system like this. The thing to always keep in mind with AW is that the rules don't govern the game's physics, they govern the game's story. Huge difference.
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Aug 11, 2022 19:30
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The thing many players struggle with is the very concept of boiling down a huge battle for a settlement (or similar macro event) to a single roll instead of realizing it's about moving the narrative forward and not the results.
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Aug 11, 2022 20:15
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It's kind of surprising to me that it trips people up in AW but it's a thing in every RPG I've played - "OK so while you were away x thing happened, we'll flip a coin and heads its good tails its bad."
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Aug 11, 2022 20:30
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Just a symptom of the modern style where everything is hyper focused on your PC being the main character of the world and not an actor in a living world. Once players grasp the concept though they usually find it very freeing and that's when PBTA starts to sing.
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Aug 11, 2022 20:32
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Ilor posted:I often tell people that AW is paradigmatically different to most trad RPGs, and this is one of the reasons why. Being able to zoom in or out on any given conflict is hugely useful for a GM, and lets you really pitch things to a level that is most engaging to your players. If you're carving your way through minions and henchmen, maybe that's just a couple of rolls (and often just one). But when it comes to the gripping denouement of the story and the players are fighting the "final boss" (especially if the final boss is one of the other PCs), then you can zoom way in and really heighten the dramatic tension. Yeah, I'm reading through Spirit of 77 now and it's clicking more for me in that book than it did in the original AW book. I think it's a combination of a few factors. First is the setting is more interesting to me, but it's also more straightforward in its presentation and it reads more traditionally in terms of the PCs' role in the world. It could also be that I'm kinda reading the same rules twice so it's sinking in better. AW read almost like theory as opposed to a game you'd actually play, but that may be because apocalypse settings just aren't my thing. There's definitely a game in there, but it read like a very extreme interpretation of the rule set, for obvious reasons.
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Aug 12, 2022 16:15
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Well Played Mauer posted:AW read almost like theory as opposed to a game you'd actually play, but that may be because apocalypse settings just aren't my thing. There's definitely a game in there, but it read like a very extreme interpretation of the rule set, for obvious reasons. That said, the MC chapter in the original AW book should be required reading for anyone running pretty much any RPG. There's a ton of fantastic material in there that transcends AW specifically, and it is presented in a way that is more explicit and concise than pretty much any other "this is how you run this game" section of an RPG rulebook I've ever seen. Sadly, a lot of people just completely gloss over it, thinking "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've run a million different RPGs, I've got this."
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Aug 22, 2022 21:55
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Ilor posted:I think part of the reason it might seem that way is because there's almost no "setting" information in AW. The nature of the apocalypse is up to the players and the MC collectively. As such, the rules themselves aren't as "grounded in the setting" as other games (or even as other hacks which hew more closely to a specific theme). From that perspective alone I can see how it might come off as somewhat theoretical. I agree - just reading through it confirmed some things I do and gave me a lot of others to play with. Even beyond some of the axioms in there, Threats and the Threat Map translate unbelievably well to any other game.
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Aug 22, 2022 22:14
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On the flip side, I've been in a couple PBtA games where the GM was running the game like it was D&D. Trying that crushes a lot of the fruitful voids in the game and leaves things tedious rather than fun.
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Aug 23, 2022 00:17
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If you liked my game Friendship, Effort, Victory, the shonen battle manga inspired Powered By The Apocalypse Tabletop RPG I have been mucking around with the idea of a campaign using an old setting I never got to used inspired by Bleach. It is based on Christian mythology. I tried to run a Valor game in it once, but it never got off the ground. Even if you don't care about the setting, I used this as a chance to put some alternate rules for Battle as a way of maybe testing out some ideas for a 2nd edition or supplement down the line. The link is down below if you want to check it out yourself. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1knPvyEqwq6cg_KAXHoPcokfaTvS9Cy17iz47rxg8Mhg/edit?usp=sharing
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Sep 8, 2022 03:40
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Ran a session 0 and an introductory bit of Spirit of 77 last week. The crew is a dude that runs a karate dojo whose fists have to be registered as weapons, a probation officer with a hardon for justice that sends at risk kids to the dojo to get some discipline, and a woman who’s starting a new age cult and renting out space in the dojo to hold group therapy sessions. We struggled a bit with Hooks (So77’s Hx) but eventually got there. We did an abbreviated Microscope method to build out New Fokkin York, and then kicked things off with the famous blackout. It was a bit weird for me to get going as GM, since I’m much more of a Gumshoe-style narrative GM, but it was also really refreshing to throw a lot of the world building on the players. The poo poo they came up with was better than I could have imagined. They took a bus up to Morningside Heights to go to a rooftop Bronx is Burnin’ party where the wealthy get together and watch tenement apartment buildings burn down, and the cult leader gave a woman on the bus a pamphlet for her group sessions. I’ve decided to turn her into a threat that’ll become infatuated with the cult leader and clock her way into attempting to kidnap and murder the leader. I’m not saying this is my favorite system after one session but it may be my favorite system.
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Sep 14, 2022 15:12
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Starting a cult and running a dojo are very common things to do in 77.
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Sep 14, 2022 16:43
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Gonna run my first session of Thirsty Sword Lesbians this weekend, excited but nervous. We have a Seeker, a Scoundrel and a Bloody, in a sci-fi western setting. Anyone here have experience with this or the game its largely based off of, Monsterhearts?
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Sep 14, 2022 21:14
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Well Played Mauer posted:We did an abbreviated Microscope method to build out New Fokkin York, and then kicked things off with the famous blackout.
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Sep 19, 2022 06:47
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Basic Chunnel posted:Curious as to yr microscope method! Nothing too revolutionary. I started doing it with a Carbon 2185 game and everyone liked it, so I’ve been keeping it going at all my session zeros since. What we do is open up a Miro board (any sticky notes will do but we’re all distributed) and I prompt everyone with a question. For 2185 it was “fill in how we got from 2020 to 2185.” For Cyberpunk, it was “let’s build the neighborhood.” For Spirit of 77 it was “let’s talk about what’s interesting in New Fokkin York in 1977.” From there we go in a circle. A person can place a primary sticky, which is an initial idea for something. The next person can either add onto that idea with another sticky below it, or create a new primary idea. We keep going around in that circle until two people in a row skip, and it’s done. For So77, we had stuff like “the rich throw rooftop Bronx is Burnin’ parties to watch the tenements burn down,” “the blackouts happen constantly,” and “there’s a cult building around the Son of Sam.” I like it because it gets me out of a lot of world building and gives the players ownership in the world, plus it tells me what type of game they wanna play. Well Played Mauer fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Sep 20, 2022 |
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Sep 20, 2022 01:16
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rHSefhKJFZsjy8t-Xfj45AXaMBwnyyVObISDiRbfFOY/edit#heading=h.wrcrswr95do9 Just found out about some really cool fixes for masks, almost entirely to play books. Please read & enjoy.
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Sep 20, 2022 05:57
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https://bundleofholding.com/presents/ApocEngine5
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Sep 20, 2022 10:16
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I’ve never heard of the between, is there a space adventure?
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Sep 20, 2022 17:58
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quote:The Between is a tabletop roleplaying game about a group of mysterious monster hunters in Victorian-era London. These hunters learn about various monstrous threats in the city and conduct investigations, or “hunts,” in order to neutralize them. They gradually become aware of the machinations of a criminal mastermind who is sometimes connected to the threats, but always scheming to bring the Crown to its knees. The hunters will ultimately be forced to reckon with this criminal mastermind in order to save the country. It's more Brindlewood than AW. There are really only about 5 moves, and the investigation and mask mechanics from Brindlewood drive the game a lot more.
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Sep 20, 2022 18:07
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Golden Bee posted:I’ve never heard of the between, is there a space adventure? It's Brindlewood Bay, but Victorian Buffy, AFAIR.
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Sep 20, 2022 18:38
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Golden Bee posted:Starting a cult and running a dojo are very common things to do in 77.
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Sep 26, 2022 22:21
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Ilor posted:Starting a cult and running a dojo are often the same thing. If you'd been able to fulfill my spiritual needs, I might be training with you today!
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Sep 26, 2022 22:33
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Is there a Star Trek (or Star Trek-like) PbtA or hack? Edit: sorry, hurried (functionally) shitpost. Instead, does anyone have one to recommend? There is Star World, Strange New Worlds, Uncharted Worlds, Impulse Drive, Boldly Go and this hack: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yHJhAJ31l10zkofTY5tqn9Gojnd184YZjnvKtbg67-A/edit Probably much more Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Oct 1, 2022 |
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Oct 1, 2022 19:14
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I've heard good things about Galactic 2e
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Oct 1, 2022 21:35
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I tried Impulse Drive with some friends and it was pretty clunky -- too many movies in each playset, it felt like. I'd recommend against it for Star Trek purposes.
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Oct 2, 2022 02:26
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Scum and Villainy is probably the best all around sci-fi BitD but it has the baked in tone and setting which are very much not Trek, but maybe you could curate it down to what you're looking for? One of the best parts of the PbtA and FitD systems is that the free playbooks and GM sheets give you a great preview of the game, and just looking over playbooks alone might give you an idea if Impulse Drive or S&V work.
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Oct 2, 2022 03:01
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DoctorWhat posted:I've heard good things about Galactic 2e Galactic is pretty explicitly a Star Wars game, I thought.
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Oct 2, 2022 03:35
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I know it's not a PbtA system, but I really like Star Trek Adventures. It's a great system for playing Trek, I think. There's a thread on the Modiphius 2D20 system, which it uses: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3925914&perpage=40&pagenumber=1&noseen=1 Rulebooks go on sale pretty often too.
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Oct 2, 2022 06:17
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I imagine you could easily skin Fellowship into a Trek game... if you're really into the Abrams movies (lol). I think it could work really well for the serialized bits of DS9 as well.
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Oct 2, 2022 06:39
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malkav11 posted:Galactic is pretty explicitly a Star Wars game, I thought. I thought they said wars! I don't know why.
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Oct 2, 2022 08:03
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I realized that FitD was actually a solid fit for anything where there's a discrete 'mission' phase to the story; you can rearrange things (and redo the skills) to be less about criminals and crimes, but that "on a mission" and "not on a mission" phases are separate is a key part. I'm still working on the various special moves for most of the 'officers'; the idea being that you're playing the senior officers of the starship - think the bridge crew of TNG, or TOS if that's more your speed. Oddly enough, if I were going to do some DS9/Babylon 5 style shenanigans, I'd actually consider working with PBTA instead; hell, I ran a game that was basically the unholy love child of DS9 and SS13 as reskinned Apocalypse World, more or less RAW.
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Oct 2, 2022 10:56
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Apocalypse world is based around scarcity, Star Trek is explicitly post scarcity. If you’re going to use a bleach system, you’re probably going to want to be a dinky disrespected starship in your fleet, with the autonomy to go on your own missions and disadvantage of having to spend your own money on maintenance.
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Oct 2, 2022 14:12
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Torchship, the ridiculous Star Trek game I'm working on, started life as a PtbA, but getting Star Trek out of it moved it farther and farther away from that and now it doesn't even bear the passing resemblance Flying Circus does. At it's core, you need a strong episodic structure for the essential tone of a TOS/TNG, and PtbA just isn't made for that and can resent being made to do it without a lot of groundwork. It's made for compounding, spiralling stories, and you have to be really careful about how you add breakpoints to not arrest the momentum snowballing creates unnaturally.
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Oct 2, 2022 14:22
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