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You gotta make those stats a dumb acronym, come on.
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Jan 18, 2023 04:11
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I wanna play a bard with the life philosophy of Dobie Gray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIuyDWzctgY
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Jan 18, 2023 08:35
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What are some wargames with simple or simplified rules that are still fun for someone new to wargaming? I've got plenty of models from various games and a 3D printer, so the type of model doesn't matter much. This is for someone who just started getting into nerd stuff like board games and MtG. Preferably a skirmish or low model count game initially.
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Jan 18, 2023 09:30
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sebmojo posted:Apocalypse world is very blunt about following the gm rules as written, it's not at all loosey goosey do what makes you happy, ironically This really can't be emphasized enough. The text is explicit that if you are not playing by the rules - and every single word in the book is part of the rules, even the sections that we normally think of us "advice" or "best practices" - then you are not playing Apocalypse World, and the authors are not responsible for what happens when your game goes off the rails.
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Jan 18, 2023 11:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/mattcolville/status/1615091245520678912 E: oh wait my prophecy was in a completely different thread.
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Jan 18, 2023 11:20
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Jimbozig posted:I told him to switch Intellect to Reason and then call it the ARMPIT system. "But why is one of them con?" - nobody seems to have asked this except one hero suggesting might/agility/perception but failing to actually say why con is bullshit
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Jan 18, 2023 11:33
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a7m2 posted:What are some wargames with simple or simplified rules that are still fun for someone new to wargaming? I've got plenty of models from various games and a 3D printer, so the type of model doesn't matter much. This is for someone who just started getting into nerd stuff like board games and MtG. Preferably a skirmish or low model count game initially. I've had fun with Skirmish the few times I've played it: https://biscuitfund.itch.io/skirmish It's designed to use dice instead of minis but obviously, you can use minis just fine.
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Jan 18, 2023 11:38
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If you want to try real world historical wargaming, but simple, the rulesets in One Hour Wargames are like two pages each. Personally, I've enjoyed Rangers of Shadow Deep which is a simple D&D-ish solo skirmish game.
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Jan 18, 2023 11:42
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Lurks With Wolves posted:One more assumption worth mentioning: the PCs in one Apocalypse World game aren't necessarily allies. They're effectively the main characters of a post-apocalyptic action/drama miniseries. They're probably going to work together at points because that's how players work, but they might hate each other, and they might have a tenuous alliance, and they might sell each other out to the raiders in the third act. The point is, players aren't really going "I want to play the party face", they're going "I want to play the scheming bar owner". And sometimes, you want to play a silver-tongued rear end in a top hat who folds like wet paper when you shove a gun in his face, because that's the archetype you want to see in the HBO miniseries you're playing out with your friends. This sounds annoying as hell from a couple of perspectives. Getting backstabbed by other players usually doesn't go well in most groups unless it's comedy stuff like Paranoia where you just roll out Jones 4 after Jones 1 through 3 had unfortunate mishaps involving lasers and their spine, and start plotting revenge. Then there's how having "split" groups is a pain in the rear end, and if the party's only working together "at points" and the GM is encouraged to "separate them" then most of the time they're probably in wildly different locations. And lastly, unless everyone is super good at compartmentalizing OOC and IC knowledge, having secrets of any kind from other players around a physical gaming table is also going to be involve a clunky mess of passed notes. Kestral posted:This really can't be emphasized enough. The text is explicit that if you are not playing by the rules - and every single word in the book is part of the rules, even the sections that we normally think of us "advice" or "best practices" - then you are not playing Apocalypse World, and the authors are not responsible for what happens when your game goes off the rails. Having a note that goes "our game is perfect when not involving any human elements" doesn't detract from my point that I expect it to come apart rapidly at the seams when humans play it. Plus I can't think of any game that isn't improved by removing at least one line, idea, check, roll or mechanic that the authors thought was a brilliant idea but were grievously wrong(either in general or for the particular group). Either explicitly or by just never bothering to call for it. Every game has one of those.
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Jan 18, 2023 12:17
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PurpleXVI posted:This sounds annoying as hell from a couple of perspectives. Yeah, Apocalypse World isn't for you because exactly this sort of thing is loving amazing when played out in AW. I could add 'with the right group' but that's redundant since any RPG and RPG playstyles can be fun with the right group.
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Jan 18, 2023 12:25
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I like narrative games overall such as PbtAs because they allow me generally to create situations in which I can weave stories for my characters that don't necessarily lead to good endings for those characters, or I can play antagonistic characters without impacting the rest of the party/spoiling their fun.
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Jan 18, 2023 12:38
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah, I know. But what good is a trademark, if it doesn't identify a product or service or something that you're doing differently? Great, I can tell when I'm buying an Orruk instead of an Ork. So? They've correctly understood the process, they've made trademarkeable names for some of their factions. I don't believe doing this in any way improved their products' recognizability in the marketplace. For the record they didn't just rename (or more accurately start officially using the name on the boxes when previously no one had cared) the Space Marines the Adeptus Astartes, but they then started replacing them with the Primaris Marines. And I'd have called the Orks and the Imperial Guard both more iconic than the Sisters of Battle. For that matter I'd rank the SoBs and for that matter the Tau behind not just the Orks and Imperial Guard but the Eldar and in the fiction the Inquisition in terms of how iconic they are. You can give your fetish battle-nuns their own name - but it doesn't make them more iconic or more interesting than your gleeful biological weapons that believe that Red Wunz Go Faster and have the psychic ability to make it so. The thing is that the uniqueness pretty much can't be protected in the ways you're talking about. You mention Tyranids up there, and I'd agree that they are one of GW's stars. But there's the entire history with Blizzard; Warcraft is, of course, a ripoff of the Warhammer world (which is one of the things that's lead to GW fantasy orcs feeling much more generic than they were when created) - and from Starcraft the Zerg are a Tyranid ripoff (for that matter the Protoss are ... heavily inspired by ... the Eldar and do I really need to comment on the centrality of Marines in the human faction). But in reply GW took some of the Zerg aesthetics when they resculpted Tyranids in the early 00s. quote:It's not a perfect comparison, you're right. But the chapterhouse fiasco, and GW's behavior both before and after, all suggests to me that they just completely whiffed on the actual value of IP protection: reserving your creative works for your yourself. The stuff you didn't just borrow from the commons because your fantasy setting obviously gotta have elves and dwarves and your space setting obviously gotta have... orks. Sp... space orks, yes. That's it. And If even the Tyranids can't be protected through the law, and they clearly weren't or there would be no Tyranids, what can? To be blunt Blizzard put in a lot of work of their own with the Zerg, in part by going back to GW's sources. (And on a tangent the Space Dwarfs are back as the Votann). Rules can't - which is strongly legally established and is one reason Legal Eagle was saying the OGL doesn't in reality give anything to the community (he's wrong in practice; it gives clarity). Naming the product can't; it is no more possible to prevent someone legally saying that a rulebook is compatible with D&D or GW that minis are compatible with 40k than it is for Ferrari to prevent people saying that these after-market car add-ons are compatible with a Ferrari (which is a big part of why the GW/Chapterhouse lawsuit attracted as much pro bono attention as it did; it would have ended that entire industry). The value of IP protection, in this case, Trademarks, is honestly that no one else can get the full value of your spadework although they can put in their own. Anyone can (as of Chapterhouse lawsuit) sell Wood Elves or Space Marines. No one can explicitly sell Sylvaneth, Adeptus Astartes, or Primaris Marines - and if they mention them at all they need to make it explicitly clear that what they are selling isn't the real thing but compatible with the real ones while redirecting attention towards you. And yes WotC have utterly whiffed on this.
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Jan 18, 2023 12:45
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Tekopo posted:I like narrative games overall such as PbtAs because they allow me generally to create situations in which I can weave stories for my characters that don't necessarily lead to good endings for those characters, or I can play antagonistic characters without impacting the rest of the party/spoiling their fun. As an example of this, some of the games which I have played the most and I have had the most fun playing is World Wide Wrestling, a wrestling PbtA where you play both a wrestler and their in-ring persona, which are meant to be distinct from each other. The first character I ever played in a game of WWW was very deliberately an antagonistic rear end in a top hat, who made enemies everywhere. This in most RPGs would not lead to a very successful game because a lot of RPGs that require party dynamics require almost full cooperation between PCs to make the game work smoothly. With WWW you can outright play assholes like this and it only helps to add to the story, both in-ring and out of the ring. In the end, the character got both mechanically and narratively fired from the company, and I made another character to replace him (and getting new characters within PbtAs is also something that is part of the rules and not a failure state either). It was some of the most fun roleplaying I've ever had, and the system I used allowed me the freedom to create antagonistic/rear end in a top hat characters in a way that was enjoyable both for myself and the rest of the group. I do think that the bad experiences that people have had with evil/antagonistic PCs is mostly because systems like D&D do not cater to them, and traditional RPGs as a whole do inter-party conflict extremely badly, especially because being defeated is a loss condition, which is not true in narrative games. "Evil" games in D&D et al are a trashfire, but this does not immediately mean that there are systems that can't handle rear end in a top hat PCs/Inter-PC conflict/antagonism between the PCs.
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Jan 18, 2023 12:47
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a7m2 posted:What are some wargames with simple or simplified rules that are still fun for someone new to wargaming? I've got plenty of models from various games and a 3D printer, so the type of model doesn't matter much. This is for someone who just started getting into nerd stuff like board games and MtG. Preferably a skirmish or low model count game initially. You could try the beginner box rules of Classic BattleTech. 4v4, option to step up to the full game if you like it.
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Jan 18, 2023 13:06
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BT might be low model count but it makes up for it in rule complexity, it's not exactly a breezy game for a newbie to pick up.PurpleXVI posted:Plus I can't think of any game that isn't improved by removing at least one line, idea, check, roll or mechanic that the authors thought was a brilliant idea but were grievously wrong(either in general or for the particular group). Either explicitly or by just never bothering to call for it. Every game has one of those. Despite the fact that this started with you making an observation that actually is true of a number of early PbtA games (especially Dungeon World, but can also see it in like, Monster of the Week), the conversation moved on to a point where I think clarifications are necessary. My primary experience is with Fellowship but PbtA games generally operate on the same ideas, so it's from this perspective that I'm telling you that you're misunderstanding what people are saying. I am being completely serious when I say there are surprisingly strict constraints on what a GM can do in most PbtAs, mechanically. People aren't talking out of their asses when they say this. By design, the GM reacts procedurally to player action when said action triggers something in the mechanics. The "my GM would instead do this in this situation" is a case of one's GM actually breaking the rules-as-written, because the rules give strict, mechanical actions as options that a GM must choose from when the rules prompt it. It's not a matter of just house ruling something away to suit the table's tastes, it's actually about changing a piece of procedural game logic into something else entirely, something the rest of the rules may not be able to support. It's less "let's ignore spell components" and more, "let's change the win condition in chess."
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Jan 18, 2023 13:15
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Oh yes, if GMs were allowed to ignore the moves rules whenever they wanted in PBTA games it would be chaos. The games are structured around certain expectations, this isn't like houseruling that a fighter gets extra feats, this is reaching in and changing the fundamental rules of the game. It's like if your GM said "Okay, from now on all resolution will be resolved by playing Pop Up Pirate instead of rolling the dice." So first off you'd be like how does that even work, and then you'd be spending more time setting up a children's boardgame than you would be playing.
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Jan 18, 2023 13:27
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Runa posted:BT might be low model count but it makes up for it in rule complexity, it's not exactly a breezy game for a newbie to pick up. Well that's why I suggested the beginner rules.
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Jan 18, 2023 13:50
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I'd say the limitation on GMs in pbta isn't so much WHAT they can do as WHEN they can do it - the consequence for a failing roll is usually along the lines of "the GM gets to make a move as hard as they want". Like in a game of Monsterhearts, one PC was relying a lot on the vampire hypnosis move, and I was going along with it right until he failed the roll, at which point I told the target "you know exactly what he just tried to do to you" and she immediately turned the entire group against him. Pbta GMs can really gently caress over their players - when it's situationally appropriate, which is why there are strict rules on that side of it.
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Jan 18, 2023 14:09
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PurpleXVI posted:To me it just sounds like a skill tax for being functional at all. PurpleXVI posted:This sounds annoying as hell from a couple of perspectives. Have you actually played (or even just read) AW? Because these assertions make it sound as though you haven't. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Jan 18, 2023 |
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Jan 18, 2023 14:14
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a7m2 posted:What are some wargames with simple or simplified rules that are still fun for someone new to wargaming? I've got plenty of models from various games and a 3D printer, so the type of model doesn't matter much. This is for someone who just started getting into nerd stuff like board games and MtG. Preferably a skirmish or low model count game initially. What do you want the game to cover? Historical stuff, Fantasy, Sci fi, etc?
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Jan 18, 2023 16:52
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+1 for the PBTA rules really needing you to follow them. I got too tight on a nascent fellowship game and it just went poof.
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Jan 18, 2023 17:13
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I love it when a game tells me it's perfect the way it is and I'm not allowed to houserule it. You and what army, buddy?
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Jan 18, 2023 17:13
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it's less that AW says "no houserules" the book actually covers in pretty good detail how to write your own custom moves and stuff it's more just that there are core expectations and mechanics it tells you not to tinker with because the game is built upon specific assumptions.
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Jan 18, 2023 17:15
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Yeah. Apocalypse World isn't against hacking it to fit what you want, that's a big part of why it exploded into what PBTA is today. But all of the GM-facing mechanics are either GM aids to help you keep track of things or the best practices for running a game in the intended genre/style, and you need to be really careful when you're changing that. (Which is why one of the more common ways for PBTA games to turn out mediocre is when the GM moves are just... not very good at explaining the intended tone and GMing style. It's an easy place to skimp, since it can feel like you're going "just run the game well, forehead", but it's a shame when people do.) VVV EDIT: And it can be cool to make that kind of fundamental change, but you need to do it with a lot of intent or the whole thing's going to fall apart. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 18, 2023 |
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Jan 18, 2023 17:28
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mellonbread posted:I love it when a game tells me it's perfect the way it is and I'm not allowed to houserule it. Runa posted:It's not a matter of just house ruling something away to suit the table's tastes, it's actually about changing a piece of procedural game logic into something else entirely, something the rest of the rules may not be able to support. It's less "let's ignore spell components" and more, "let's change the win condition in chess."
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Jan 18, 2023 17:29
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Thanks for the tips so far.Cessna posted:What do you want the game to cover? Historical stuff, Fantasy, Sci fi, etc? Probably fantasy or sci fi, but I'm open to anything that's accessible for a complete beginner to war games. How's Gaslands for beginners?
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Jan 18, 2023 17:31
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You can absolutely change the some of the logic operating in a given PbtA game, hell that's what people are doing when they're writing their own games in that format. But you'll want to actually know what you're doing. And to do that you have to at least read the rules and try to understand them first.
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Jan 18, 2023 17:35
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Changing the rules in D&D never causes sessions to break down. On an unrelated note: https://twitter.com/chaibypost/status/1615379341000716290?t=g0uqzvekPqAMbGbPUv-SUg&s=19
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Jan 18, 2023 17:37
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mellonbread posted:I love it when a game tells me it's perfect the way it is and I'm not allowed to houserule it. It's not a question of "permission," that's obviously incoherent nonsense; as you say, you can always just do what you want. But "if you're not following the rules, you're not actually playing the game" is both a 100% fair defense against criticism based on misapprehension of the rules, and also a sign of confidence in your game as designed -- both good things. e: A player culture of homebrew or modding isn't a problem; I do it all the time. A developer culture of "just use homebrew" is selling a defective product and trying to pass it off as a feature. And in fact, it's for exactly the same reason as the permission thing -- if I wanted to design, playtest, and iterate on my own system, I could just do that. I'm using yours because ostensibly, you already did! Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 18, 2023 |
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Jan 18, 2023 18:34
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a7m2 posted:Thanks for the tips so far. From a hobbyist perspective, Gaslands is cheap as you want it to be, since you can use inexpensive diecast cars and cereal box to make templates, or crank it up any wild amount you want to spend From a gaming perspective, Gaslands is relatively simple and intuitive. Things usually work the way you think they would, even if some things like collisions and reversing have a few edge cases. It is marginally more complex than you might imagine and might dissuade a complete beginner. Based on what you said, I think you'd be fine, since you're learning MtG which is loads more complicated. The game is not perfect and might not live up to any real competitive crunch. The push-you-luck aspect does occasionally create feelbads by losing actions, and if you play with audience votes, respawns can make the game take forever. There's a thousand nitpicks, but it's the adult-ified Matchbox cars smashing into each other in the playground sand except with guns, guns, and more guns. I really like it and think it's a great choice for anyone who wants an inexpensive miniature hobbies project and occasional game. I think it's worth a try, since at most you'd be out $50 with enough to try it out, so long as you don't mind driving around the pepper pot. If you get it, find Gaslands Refuelled, which is a revised edition with several balance changes and content from several free PDFs, and some other stuff like ramps.
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Jan 18, 2023 18:54
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neonchameleon posted:And yes WotC have utterly whiffed on this. It sounds like we're mostly agreeing. I'll just add that the tyranid faction was introduced along with Space Hulk, and at that time, genestealers were obviously "inspired by" Alien and its artist, Geiger. You're right that GW's creatives have put lots of effort into fleshing out their factions with lore and flavor, making them unique creations. But this was already true before they changed the names to trademarkable names. And while e.g. warcraft obviously rips off warhammer, warhammer's inspirations are easy to find, too. Very little of what they've created was invented wholecloth, and that's actually normal for creative endeavors across the board. What you add that makes your stuff unique is the part that's protectable via copyright, and that's what GW actually won in Chapterhouse - confirmation that big pauldrons are theirs, for example. Wizards clearly owns beholders and illithids. That's not going away no matter what they do to the OGL or other licenses, unless they explicitly give that stuff away some day. Meanwhile, things like the six ability scores are (I argue) unprotectable, regardless of naming, and if Wizards tomorrow turned around and created a trademark specifically for them, that trademark still wouldn't prevent anyone from using the six ability scores in their own games. Making trademarks doesn't change the situation. I guess the parallel I'm drawing comes down to this: you can make a big show of staking out your claims, with new names for things, trademarks, a new license, whatever: none of that actually affects any of the stuff that you took from the commons originally, because you cannot own that. Nobody in the wide world of RPG creating was ever actually restricted from using the stuff that D&D was inspired by and borrowed in the first place, including the stats applied to wargaming units and models for tabletop battles that Gygax adapted to constrain Arneson's roleplaying rules into something more gamified.
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Jan 18, 2023 18:58
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a7m2 posted:What are some wargames with simple or simplified rules that are still fun for someone new to wargaming? I've got plenty of models from various games and a 3D printer, so the type of model doesn't matter much. This is for someone who just started getting into nerd stuff like board games and MtG. Preferably a skirmish or low model count game initially. OGRE
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Jan 18, 2023 19:10
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MonsieurChoc posted:You gotta make those stats a dumb acronym, come on. Do you know how difficult it is to come up with stats that start with Y?? 
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Jan 18, 2023 19:12
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Leperflesh posted:Wizards clearly owns beholders and illithids. That's not going away no matter what they do to the OGL or other licenses, unless they explicitly give that stuff away some day. I'm pretty sure there's been an off-brand Illithid in every Final Fantasy game since the first one even if they're usually renamed, I know Dominions outright calls the leading species of MA and LA R'lyeh Illithids... Beholders have seen their share of knockoffs, too, though the only one that immediately springs to mind are the Gazers from Ultima. Like, unless someone reposts the entirety of Dawn of the Overmind and I, Tyrant in their original content, it doesn't seem like Wizards is going to do poo poo about these, either that or they can't.
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Jan 18, 2023 19:13
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a7m2 posted:Thanks for the tips so far. is tabletop skirmish cool? Would you like Frostgrave, for example? It's not what I'd call "a wargame" but it's a minis fighting battle game played with a combo of wizards, supporting fighting people, and some terrain. Kitchen table is big enough. Rules are a book, use any minis you have at hand that can approximate "wazzards" and "fightey folks" and you're set.
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Jan 18, 2023 19:14
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Jimbozig posted:Changing the rules in D&D never causes sessions to break down. Obviously this is a subset of the story, but this Martin Hamilton fellow sounds like the kind of tablewrecker we used to post about in grogs.txt.
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Jan 18, 2023 19:20
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm pretty sure there's been an off-brand Illithid in every Final Fantasy game since the first one even if they're usually renamed, I know Dominions outright calls the leading species of MA and LA R'lyeh Illithids... Beholders have seen their share of knockoffs, too, though the only one that immediately springs to mind are the Gazers from Ultima. That's right. Eye tyrants and brain squids are ideas, you can't own them, just a specific implementation of your original idea. Intellectual property rights are imperfectly implemented, but at their core, the law recognizes that restrictions are a takings from the commons. The default is that everyone gets to use everything, and then the law carves away specific exceptions to that notion - for a limited time, in limited ways, you can restrict others from using what you invented or created, in order to be sure that artists and inventors are able to sustain their work, or else nobody could afford to make artwork and inventions would always be kept secret. So wizards can't own the idea of a floating eye monster because that's too generic or broad. Courts frown on overreaching claims like that, they want to see copyrighted/trademarked ideas narrowly defined. Wizards can own spell-casting eye monsters with one big central eye and several more on stalks who lurk in dungeons called Beholders: that was a specific, narrow implementation of the idea, a collection of several attributes with a unique, new name, invented by Terry Kuntz. TSR and then Wizards carefully protected that IP, pushing other game-makers to make changes to their Eye Tyrants to make them visually distinct from Beholders. The name isn't the really important bit. It's the unique bits that can be protected, and giving them a trademarkable name is secondary and mostly useful for marketing. If Kuntz had called them Eyeball Monsters from the very beginning, that wouldn't really change what was and wasn't protected about them.
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Jan 18, 2023 19:34
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Obviously this is a subset of the story, but this Martin Hamilton fellow sounds like the kind of tablewrecker we used to post about in grogs.txt. Yeah, that result certainly wasn't all on Pratchett. The player didn't like when the GM was just casually breaking the structure of the game to do whatever he wanted, which is where the "changing/ignoring the rules ruins a session" comes in... but obviously, the dude's response was absolute dogshit and made things far worse.
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Jan 18, 2023 20:08
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Why is anyone messing around with new stat layouts when FASERIP exists?
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Jan 18, 2023 20:23
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This stat spread... Tell me, what does CHEUGY mean?
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Jan 18, 2023 20:26
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