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I got turned on to Twisty Little Passages by Caraval Games, the developers behind the DROD video games and it's pretty fun. It reminds me a lot of Robert Abbott's Mad Mazes, except you're following the same rules for every maze and thus feels more like a book of logic puzzles rather than a traditional gamebook. There is however a lot of fluff about the adventure, the creatures you encounter and the items you find, so I feel like it skirts the edge of what might be considered "roleplaying" in terms of this thread. There's a sort of metapuzzle presented at the beginning of the book that I haven't really even begun to touch on yet so there is some connectedness that isn't just the story fluff. Another, more traditional gamebook I've picked up is one from 2017 in Japanese called Black Onyx Rebuild on Kindle for about $4, based kinda on the old video game that I've been translating and making a Twine game out of for personal use as both a means of study practice and because I had heard it was particularly well done. So far it seems fairly straightforward, but I'm not too far into it yet. The combat system is interesting in that you can gather a party and they each contribute in turn, but I haven't quite gotten that far yet, mostly just wandering around town. So far the only gamebooks I've read not in english were english-written ones that had been translated, so I'm excited to see all the details that are different and which ones feel the same. It's the same kind of excitement I've gotten from looking at various TRPGs from France (Cadwallon), Brazil (Brigada Ligeira Estelar) and of course Japan. (Many many examples)
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Aug 17, 2022 07:36
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| # ? May 20, 2024 22:51 |
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New game out: https://twitter.com/yuigaron/status/1561669870177210370
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Aug 22, 2022 14:41
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As way of introduction to this post, I haven’t played many roleplay games, and I’ve never played a solo roleplay game. I have read this thread though and I’m impressed by the play posts / journal entries posted. I looked at a few games from the OP with a view to trying them but haven’t yet, like Ironsworn sounds great but is absolutely overwhelming as a newbie, the pdf was so large I didn’t even finish skimming it let alone reading it all. I came across the game Of moon and leaf. This is really appealing for me (and only 20 pages) as I’ve always liked botanical drawings and while I’m not an artist I am excited to draw new plants I discover. I guess with all of these games you can make drawing as much or as little a part of your journaling as you want, but this idea is really grabbing me. Of moon and leaf posted:You are a solitary forest dweller. Each day you set out into the Forest with your journal, your satchel, and your walking staff. You collect magical plants, encounter creatures and magical spirits, and explore the wonders of Nature.  I started playing this evening with a brand new notebook. My hand is pretty cramped because it’s the most handwriting I’ve done since university, and while I didn’t discover a plant just yet I have written a decent length intro about my house, myself, fragments of a dream, and a “Tiny Murky Clearing” I discovered in the forest on my first day. I probably might’ve could’ve waited to post this as I didn’t really finish the first day so much as I’m just tired and wrote so much, but I will finish it tomorrow. I was just excited to share because this has got me so excited and I thought other might enjoy it.
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Aug 23, 2022 13:12
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showcase of the delux Ironsworn: Starforged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7q3KlwlNc4
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Aug 24, 2022 02:36
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DRINK ME posted:As way of introduction to this post, I haven’t played many roleplay games, and I’ve never played a solo roleplay game. I have read this thread though and I’m impressed by the play posts / journal entries posted. I looked at a few games from the OP with a view to trying them but haven’t yet, like Ironsworn sounds great but is absolutely overwhelming as a newbie, the pdf was so large I didn’t even finish skimming it let alone reading it all. Awww this looks really nice, thanks for the heads-up. Given it a download.
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Aug 24, 2022 03:46
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Helical Nightmares posted:Ivan Sorensen, the writer behind Five Parsecs From Home, Five Leagues From the Borderlands and a number of other wargames, and fellow goon is hosting a Q and A session. Doctor Zero posted:Sure, I’ll bite- The question and answer session with solo wargame designer Ivan Sorensen has finally been released, clocking in at an hour and 48 minutes with interviewer Ax Anax. Subjects discussed include Ivan's earliest years making wargames, modern advice on how to construct wargames, sneak peeks on current and future projects from Nordic Weasel, and inspirations Ivan has had from the field. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqmgYOln6kI
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Sep 4, 2022 00:01
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That's very cool, thanks!
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Sep 4, 2022 11:04
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Interesting discussion of academic story generation engines. A lot of this seems like it could be adapted for solo-rpging without too much effort. https://twitter.com/chrisamaphone/status/1572606760065679362
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Sep 21, 2022 18:14
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Because I am easily distracted by shiny objects, I've been playing around with AI art, and thought it would be a great tool for solo RPGs. To test this hypothesis, I'm playing a game of The Wretched and instead of writing or narrating the game, I figured it would be cool to do a graphic novel with the AI Art (midjourney) as the artist. If this works out (and it seems like it does), I'll go back to my Starforged game using midjourney. Since I'm doing something visually, I'm not playing completely by the book. One, I'm not using a tower because it would be kind of lovely for the ship to blow up at a random time halfway through. Also, I've pre-picked all the cards so I can do art for it. I already know what's coming. I likely won't actually play every single card for narrative reasons. Several pages of minutia aren't exciting unless I can squeeze some cool back story out of it. Here's what I have as a first draft so far... let me know what you think because my life is only validated by others.      
Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Sep 24, 2022 |
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Sep 24, 2022 00:20
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Those are extremely cool, but as a budding artist I must inform you that you are on the List. ...that looks nifty, I do like it.
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Sep 24, 2022 01:11
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That's really drat evocative art Doctor Zero. Reminds me of a comic style 70's take on 2001 or Alien. Didn't think of midjourney for Space Horror stuff, but it works real well.
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Sep 24, 2022 01:24
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Found this thread and read all of it- Oh snap, the 5 Parsecs guy is a goon? Nice.
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Sep 26, 2022 22:49
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I played 4 Against Darkness this weekend and loved it. I'm curious if there's anything similar but goes heavier into story telling aspect of RPGs. It captured the old school feeling of hacking through a dungeon, perhaps something with a little more narrative meat. I know as a solo player it's up to us to piece together a story from tables and prompts, so perhaps something to use with 4AD if there's no alternative.
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Sep 26, 2022 23:09
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Ubersandwich posted:I played 4 Against Darkness this weekend and loved it. I'm curious if there's anything similar but goes heavier into story telling aspect of RPGs. It captured the old school feeling of hacking through a dungeon, perhaps something with a little more narrative meat. There's a similar game about being an Arthurian knight that has a story and my brain is absolutely blanking on its name. Also a horror-based one. e: Knight of Destiny? I might be thinking of Knight of Destiny
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Sep 26, 2022 23:13
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HopperUK posted:There's a similar game about being an Arthurian knight that has a story and my brain is absolutely blanking on its name. Also a horror-based one. Knight of Destiny is the Arthurian 4AD yeah. Four Against the Abyss I think is the horror one and the space alien invader one is Four Against Mars, all of which add some neat mechanics to the 4AD base.
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Sep 27, 2022 03:44
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I thought the thread might be interested in The Radiance Adventure Engine “Play any Tabletop RPG as a solo game. You are both the Player AND the Gamemaster!” I don’t have any association with it but strongly considering getting a digital copy.
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Sep 29, 2022 03:39
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If your system uses cards it should be for something more complex than duplicating the function of rolling on a random table. You've already got dice for that! I just wish one of these story card systems had you play a round of dominion or solitare or do a tarot spread or something with the cards. Rather than just pulling a random card and reading it.
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Sep 29, 2022 03:50
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Rolling and searching through the results on an extensive list of tables is substantially less pleasant than drawing and reading the information directly off of a card, which isn't a trivial difference even if the information is technically the same.
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Sep 29, 2022 03:51
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Rutibex posted:If your system uses cards it should be for something more complex than duplicating the function of rolling on a random table. You've already got dice for that! Could just do plain ol' cartomancy then.
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Sep 29, 2022 04:17
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Rutibex posted:If your system uses cards it should be for something more complex than duplicating the function of rolling on a random table. You've already got dice for that! Cards differ from dice in that you can't draw the same card more than once (unless you reshuffle), which leads to more variety. You don't get a lot of streaks of similar results since the cards you already drew are no longer available. There can also be an extra level of strategy in trying to keep track of which cards have been used and how that affects the probability of getting other types of cards; just look at the popularity of blackjack. SimonChris fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Sep 29, 2022 |
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Sep 29, 2022 07:24
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Kenning posted:Rolling and searching through the results on an extensive list of tables is substantially less pleasant than drawing and reading the information directly off of a card, which isn't a trivial difference even if the information is technically the same. Yeah I suppose that's true in general. I personally have a ton of binders full of random tables, and I'll often have more than one open at a time in front of me. I guess random table cards do have a purpose if your not a weirdo with dozens of hand made binders of tables 
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Sep 29, 2022 10:38
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Yeah I get what you mean. It’s new to me, as someone new to solo rpging and I don’t yet have the collection of binders of tables. I went in for the digital copy, printing and postage to Australia is dumb. Kind of related: when printing digital games / pnp games do you go for quality printing? I don’t know if it’s my printer or paper - which is an old, cheap, workhorse canon inkjet printer/scanner combo and the cheapest box of paper in a big store - but the results are fine, they’re just not that nice. Like trying to flick through a sheaf of papers for a game and the pages are difficult to separate, and either the paper is too thin or the ink too heavy because the obverse is pretty much legible when reading. It doesn’t need to be book quality but just something a bit nicer if I’m going to spend hours upon hours reading and referencing it. Maybe I just need to buy a ream of nicer, heavier paper and see if that fixes things - before I start looking at $$$ printers.
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Oct 1, 2022 04:19
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DRINK ME posted:Kind of related: when printing digital games / pnp games do you go for quality printing? Speaking for myself, I don't pay for pnp games that I can't print on a B+W laser printer and have them look decent. A Brother laser printer will do black and white text perfectly. Also, I edit all non-essential graphics out of PDFs to save on toner. Also I don't feel that card games don't satisfy unless they're professionally printed. This may also be an unpopular view, but I won't pay more than 10-15 bucks for a PDF. This may cut out a bunch of very nice games, which I am a-ok with.
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Oct 1, 2022 04:30
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DRINK ME posted:Yeah I get what you mean. It’s new to me, as someone new to solo rpging and I don’t yet have the collection of binders of tables. I went in for the digital copy, printing and postage to Australia is dumb. I would be homeless if I tried to print as much as I do using an inkjet. The biggest pro tip I can give is buying a black and white laser printer. The toner is cheap as dirt, and there is no bleed through I never have problems seeing the back of a page. I always print double sided, so my booklets end up 100 pages instead of 200. To bind everything I use three hole punch and duotangs. Binders if it's a big book.
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Oct 1, 2022 04:32
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When I print, which I rarely do, I use the laser printer at work. I don't own a printer.
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Oct 1, 2022 04:34
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Thanks. I’ll have a look at laser printers next week, do a bit of research.HopperUK posted:When I print, which I rarely do, I use the laser printer at work. I don't own a printer. I remember watching one of my colleagues compile a huge amount of booklets for some junior coaching thing he was doing, maybe 70 pages in each. Spent about 3 hours just putting them together after all the printing and no one batted an eyelid. DRINK ME fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Oct 1, 2022 |
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Oct 1, 2022 13:38
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Best part of laser printers is toner doesn't run when it gets wet.
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Oct 1, 2022 16:04
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Remember, when printing at work always give your file a boring work related filename. And swipe card printers are great, because you don't have to dash to the printer to get your stuff before someone notices it's not a work thing.
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Oct 1, 2022 21:50
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Make friends with the people who do girl guides and they'll cover for you if you cover for them. Their organisation mostly functions on volunteers printing things at work.
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Oct 1, 2022 22:01
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DRINK ME posted:Thanks. I’ll have a look at laser printers next week, do a bit of research. Get the cheapest Brother you can. It'll still be printing when the sun burns out. I did maintenance on laser printers for years (industrial wide format mostly, but also smaller units) and Brother is the only consumer brand I even consider. The dream is to own a KIP for hardcore printing.
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Oct 2, 2022 17:01
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I have read through the whole thread over the past few days and am now about a hundred and fifty bucks poorer, but a lot of great games (and a laminator) richer. Also I have 55 chrome tabs open on my phone, and my printer is getting the workout of its life. There's a new spooky-themed Apothecaria expansion as of yesterday. I'm still trying to work through a complete vanilla season of Apothecaria before I let myself become buried in expansion books, but I keep getting distracted. I ran a game of Pencilvillage, and started an inn in The Broken Cask, and I just ordered Colostle...there's just too much good poo poo here. I backed Starforged but I feel like I want to play that with somebody because it's so big - problem being, of course, that I am playing solo games because I don't have anyone to play ttrpgs with (yet). The mechanics don't scare me, but I feel like something so sweeping will really shine with two human brains being creative and interpreting things.
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Oct 5, 2022 07:33
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I tried out the current version of Dead Belt - https://acoupleofdrakes.itch.io/dead-belt - to decide if I wanted to back the kickstarter for the expanded version. Below is short, sad tale of Mizzy Random, wanna be ship salvager. Mizzy Random, down on her luck scoundrel needed both money and to stay away from people for a while. How hard could salvaging be? The airlock of her temporary ship, the 'Any Port' connected up to the side of the civilian transport she'd located. A small ship, but hopefully one with something worth pulling from it. The airlock had attached to the galley - not glamourous, but someone would want to buy it. (5 of diamonds, load 5); heartened by the this early success, Mizzy moved on. The next module however had been stripped so clean that she wasn't even sure what it had been; she wasn't the first person here, and it looked like the earlier crew had really known what they were doing. Mizzy swore, headed back to the galley and started loading her ship. This was the 10 of spades - Picked over. I could have spent a point of grit to turn that into a mixed success which would have made all salvage worth half, but decided to just call it off and pull the galley stuff out. Stowing the gear was going to take some time - this wasn't money for nothing after all; these chips wouldn't be free. (Rolled 4-5 on the airlock move, and chose to check my gas). The second trip to get the remainder of the galley fittings went well enough until it was time to try and shove everything into the Any Port. Realising that the items could be a danger if allowed to slide around the ship, Mizzy had to use up time and gear to secure it in her hold. (1-3 on the airlock move this time, chosing to test gas again, and spend a point of gear) Returning to the salvage yards, it was time to cash in and chat to the creditors. The 'bank' were not amused and made it clear that the amount she owed was only going up unless she had a better run soon. (Rolled a 1, and debt went up to 5), nor was she able to avoid paying upkeep on the ship. After drowning her sorrows, Mizzy went to the breakers and spend 3 of the remaining 4 cred on a supply bank for the ship. It increased the upkeep by 1, but would hopefully be worth it in the future. Ship two. Another day, another small civillian transport. It wasn't an auspicious start. The module that she'd chosen to attach to wasn't the most stable, and the impact of the airlock had made it nothing more than a gap with a bit of superstructure attached. (10 clubs - spacewalk, and then the module is removed and is just a gap). Something goes horrifically wrong, a push off at the wrong moment sends Mizzy tumbling through the emptyness of space and away from both the wreck and her own ship. A few hours later, as her visor starts to frost up and her vision dims, her last thought is, "Well, gently caress." Rolled badly on the spacewalk subtable, and foolishly didn't spend grit to turn it into a mixed result. Then drew two black cards. The second spacewalk roll was a mixed success, in which I drew my third black card, which means death. RIP Mizzy Random, lost in the vastness of space. I'll try another game in a bit and hopefully they'll last longer. I made some bad decisions with whether to spend resources or not; Mizzy could probably have survived the spacewalk if I'd spent a grit to turn that first failure into a mixed result.
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Oct 5, 2022 10:16
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There is a bundle with a few of these: https://bundleofholding.com/presents/NovelTools
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Oct 5, 2022 10:36
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Angrymog posted:I tried out the current version of Dead Belt - https://acoupleofdrakes.itch.io/dead-belt - to decide if I wanted to back the kickstarter for the expanded version. Below is short, sad tale of Mizzy Random, wanna be ship salvager. RIP Mizzy. It looks like Dead Belt is taken down - it's an unavailable page for me, at least.
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Oct 6, 2022 00:37
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SkyeAuroline posted:RIP Mizzy. It looks like Dead Belt is taken down - it's an unavailable page for me, at least. Same for me. It could be because the campaign finished yesterday. I picked up a digital copy.
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Oct 6, 2022 01:25
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Wierd, still works for me.
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Oct 6, 2022 05:47
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Did something happen with Dead Belt, then? The DriveThruRPG page for it says it doesn't exist (google still links to it) and that itch.io page also says it's been taken down/made unavailable? Recently I was turned on to Micro Chapbook RPG (Micro RPG I guess is the name of the category that DTRPG gives it?) and I'm having a lot of fun with it despite it looking like a very barebones system at first glance. At first it looks like a sort of OSR-esque venture with the number of stats lowered to 4 and with tiny numbers that you're only rolling under on a d6 to succeed, but what that very simple explanation misses is that there is a wealth of variety in how this system is used. You get two derived stats, Health and Willpower, that come from two of the stats each and those are sort of both HP values, though you can spend from the Willpower pool (which gets damaged less often on average) to reroll anything that isn't an automatic failure. (6 on the dice) I started with one of the early chapbooks and right from the beginning I noticed things I liked about how it was constructed. You hole up in an inn and get information from the woman tending the place and there's a list of questions you might want to ask. Each question you ask has you make a check which can improve your standing with the character. The info you get is the same either way, but I like the idea that you're building up a rapport with them and in the end, you can ask them for help where you make a check not against a stat, but against this relationship. This went a long way with me in demonstrating that the author understood how stories must move forward and still have interesting dice rolls that influence what happens. The other thing that drew me in was flipping through the main book and looking at the tables of enemy encounters. Instead of just listing the damage that enemies do to your Willpower, Health, and the number of Life Points they have, many opponents have special features that change how combat works with them. Normally enemies don't do damage in the ranged phase of combat, for example, but if they have a ranged weapon then instead they do damage in that phase and in the melee phase their damage is reduced to 1/2 of normal. Finally, the first book ends with a big setpiece fight against a big dragon, which is represented mechanically by a bunch of different statblocks for the different bodyparts, each with their own stats. To defeat the beast you have to reduce ALL the parts' life points to 0 and they can have different abilities too. Compared to things like d100 Dungeon or 4AD, where the combat also feels like it's aping an OSR experience, they have a very basic/uninteresting system where you're mostly at the mercy of dice and especially in combat you don't feel like you're really doing anything or making choices or interacting much in any way except rolling the dice over and over. On the flip side Ironsworn/Starforged is mechanically interesting and feels well put together, but the rolling system feels almost too harsh and a lot of the time I feel like I'm just building up successes to make the final roll and it just feels-- actually, i guess it also doesn't feel very interesting. I think in general I have a more positive view of Starforged with regards to helping to write an interesting story, but as a game to play I've been left feeling unsatisfied unlike with, say, Five Parsecs from Home. Anyway, due to the positive experience so far I've bought a fair few more books using the Micro RPG system and I'm looking forward to seeing what more there is in this design space.
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Oct 31, 2022 11:24
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Didn't know about Dead Belt, now I'm glad I downloaded it already. That sounds interesting, Potsticker! I'd avoided it for the same reason - I tend to kickflip away from anything that looks OSR-ish because it's not often to my taste, but now I'll take another look.
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Oct 31, 2022 12:05
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Yeah, I'm the same way-- I've been picking up more and more of these products though as I go through and like-- they're not all fantastic for sure. At the price point though it's not too bad when I hit one that feels kind of like a dud (The newer stuff is unsurprisingly in general better than the older stuff) There's also a lot of content available so it's not been hard to pick out the things that seem like I'd like the most. And remixing and writing stuff for myself seems quite easy too. I also have no qualms about refluffing or adjusting things to better suit the experience I'm looking for, but that being said I find value in having a place to start and/or ideas to draw upon.
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Oct 31, 2022 12:34
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| # ? May 20, 2024 22:51 |
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I am overwhelmed and confused by the amount of Micro RPG items on DTRPG - any chance you might drop a link to the basic play necessities and/or some of your favorite adventures thus far?
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Oct 31, 2022 17:28
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