|
Watching the Mario movie and angrily decrying every action that Mario does that doesn't fit the gameplay mechanics.
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 03:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 00:14 |
|
|
While exactly simulating any piece of media isn’t really possible (or even desirable) I do think there is something to be said about people being used to fantasy stories where heroes are bold and reckless and do wild poo poo and D&D not really supporting that (except maybe that one time but we’re trying to talk about that less.) Like it’s been a problem ever since the Red Box’s cover was a warrior facing down a red dragon sword in hand and yeah you’ll maybe get to do that after three years of regular campaign play. TBF the movie does look like it’s getting some of the game’s style right in that it‘s about goofball thieves fumbling around to try and fix a bad thing they did earlier. Looking forward to it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 04:07
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:Watching the Mario movie and angrily decrying every action that Mario does that doesn't fit the gameplay mechanics. Backwards. Watching the D&D movie and angrily wishing D&D could ever be this cool. People are trying to make this some grease-face grog magic xylophone poo poo when it's really just lamenting that D&D is stuck in a neverending sacred cow cage of trying to make sure martials can't do anything and wizards are Vancian, which sorta blows. Good thing there's other games.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 04:09
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:You can do heists in D&D the same way I can dig a housing foundation with a pocket knife. And just because WotC sells the Ultimate Digging Pocketknife (We Swear It Can) doesn't mean it actually can. Thing is that there are three very different styles of what constitute heist games:
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 04:22
|
|
|
The DnD movie is secretly a 4e movie.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 04:23
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:Thing is that there are three very different styles of what constitute heist games: Thank you for saying it better than I was. I agree that D&D doesn’t facilitate the first (and yes, I’d rec Blades in the Dark for someone looking for it), but the latter two are plenty fine.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 04:48
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:Thing is that there are three very different styles of what constitute heist games: Did you just say one of the reasons why D&D can do heists is because it doesn’t? I don’t understand how you can give D&D credit for an absence.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 05:03
|
|
|
“Yeah my pocket knife is great at digging housing foundations! All you have to do is use a totally different set of tools suited for the task. Or ignore the pocket knife entirely and just, y’know, figure it out. But having the knife and ignoring it is really helpful. For some reason. Or like, what really is a housing foundation? Isn’t this carving I made with my pocket knife kind of like a housing foundation for ants, if you think about it?” No one’s making you say these things. You can stop.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 05:19
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:“Yeah my pocket knife is great at digging housing foundations! All you have to do is use a totally different set of tools suited for the task. Or ignore the pocket knife entirely and just, y’know, figure it out. But having the knife and ignoring it is really helpful. For some reason. Are you okay? You're acting like D&D being able to do heists is personally damaging to you.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 05:45
|
|
|
Arivia posted:Are you okay? You're acting like D&D being able to do heists is personally damaging to you. I think D&D has done a heist on his very persona. And he doesn't know it happened. The very acme of a heist.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 05:46
|
|
|
Arivia posted:Are you okay? You're acting like D&D being able to do heists is personally damaging to you. That would be weird since you tacitly admitted it can’t.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 05:48
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:That would be weird since you tacitly admitted it can’t. Are you stuck on "heist" meaning something different and more general than the modern heist movie framework with flashbacks?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 05:59
|
|
|
I’m stuck on the fact that you haven’t even tried listing a D&D mechanic that supports heist play outside of just pretending a dungeon is a kind of heist. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:01
|
|
|
Technically, D&D combat is also systemless if you punch the dm in the face for sleeping with your boyfriend
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:09
|
|
|
I could run a heist (as in literally running a heist, not emulating a heist film) in most D&D-adjacent games just fine. You describe where you go and what you do and there are usually rules to help you turn something into a check, figure out how an item you brought helps you, etc. It’s not that hard! I still wouldn’t run it in 5e though cause that game is booty.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:10
|
|
|
I think it's weird to say you can't run a heist in something like 5e. It has stuff you can use to do heist-like things. Fast talking a guard, creating a distraction, picking the lock to the vault. Those are all things you can do with existing mechanics. It might even be fun if the group was good and entertaining enough to cover for the bare bones mechanics. That doesn't mean there aren't better more interesting systems to do it in.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:21
|
|
|
Look, I gotta get to sleep. This thread temperature is borderline right now. Please try to chill it down a notch, or at least not get hotter, because I'm gonna be pissed if I wake up to an overnight poo poo-show. It's okay to let bad elfgame opinions go, sometimes - or at least not to declare blood-feuds over them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:22
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:Look, I gotta get to sleep. just pointlessly remarking on "bad elfgame opinions" isn't helping because now both sides can read into that that THEY'RE right and the other side is wrong. i'm fine letting it go, i was just flabbergasted. this post is just pointing out the phrasing adding fuel to the fire.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:25
|
|
|
Arivia posted:just pointlessly remarking on "bad elfgame opinions" isn't helping because now both sides can read into that that THEY'RE right and the other side is wrong. If the only way to take down the temperature is 6ers, though, so be it. Edit - yeah just the one. Thanks for letting it go. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Mar 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:36
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:Watching the Mario movie and angrily decrying every action that Mario does that doesn't fit the gameplay mechanics. Funny thing is Detective Pikachu apparently actually had The Pokemon Company demanding changes to action scenes to reflect the gameplay mechanics, like each Pokemon only having four moves in their arsenal at a time. (The writers originally had wanted to do some references to Pikachu's Smash Bros moveset apparently)
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:39
|
|
|
5E isn't very good but I don't see how you can't run a heist in it. It has social mechanics so you can bribe and socially-engineer your way past guards and get information from people on the inside or have them smuggle things in, it has a lot of magic and mundane tools you can use to bypass traps and security and create distractions, you can use stealth and illusion to sneak around or hide or disguise, and obviously it has combat so you can go loud. Like it's not a great system for the job but the idea that it can't is something I disagree with. I can think of a ton of things it would actually be extra crap for like emulating zombie media, courtly intrigue, realm building, and so on. But a heist involves stuff that is pretty close to the sorts of thing D&D was originally made for. (Note that I have played 5E more than anything else, including a campaign that is over two years old, and it is what I will be playing for the foreseeable future, because that's what's available in my area. I think I'm allowed to call it crap, but at least it's fun enough with a good group - which is a low bar, but at least playing it isn't torture for me.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:42
|
|
|
Honestly a heist is the sort of thing you can do in almost any system that has mechanics for interacting with people and the environment around you. I feel like the things that would make a system better at heists would be rewarding planning in some sense which... D&D is actually okay at. Wizards and priests have to plan out which spells they want to use for the heist, and you have an inventory that can contain things you planned to bring in with you to make the heist easier. Though depending on how serious and meticulous you want your heist, I could also see wanting a system where the characters are somewhat more fragile, to make the perfect planning more required if you don't want to be carted out in a wheelbarrow.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 09:16
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Honestly a heist is the sort of thing you can do in almost any system that has mechanics for interacting with people and the environment around you. Heist dungeons are an excellent place for high level magical save-or-die traps, so you’ve already got that fragility.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 09:43
|
|
|
Arivia posted:Heist dungeons are an excellent place for high level magical save-or-die traps, so you’ve already got that fragility. Well yes, but the problem is that I'm not an rear end in a top hat GM, so I won't be using those.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 10:40
|
|
|
Mythras (aka the game that used to be Runequest 6) doesn't see a lot of discussion on SA (I did one post of a fatal and friends and never got around to continuing it) and it's slightly crunchy, but if you mesh with it I think it's a great replacement for D&D. The magic systems and melee combat are both very good, but the power scale maxes out much lower than D&D and combat can be very lethal, so that's something to keep in mind as far as whether it will fit your group or not. Nowadays there are quite a few supplements fleshing out premade settings, mostly mythical versions of historical Earth. The Mythic Britain campaign is one I've really always wanted to run but have never gotten around to. There's also a Classic Fantasy book that is basically a hybrid of Mythras and AD&D which was very well received and I've thought about running sometime. edit: this wasn't particularly in regards to heists although I think you could probably make one work pretty easily in Mythras! Tosk fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Mar 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 12:00
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Well yes, but the problem is that I'm not an rear end in a top hat GM, so I won't be using those. I think it's the one place where you're definitely NOT an rear end in a top hat GM for using them. Everyone's expecting disintegrate laser traps in a heist, and the emphasis on planning means the PCs can research the security structures (is it a disintegrate ray? a plane shift? a petrification?) and bring along preparations in case they gently caress up.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 12:08
|
|
|
Arivia posted:I think it's the one place where you're definitely NOT an rear end in a top hat GM for using them. Everyone's expecting disintegrate laser traps in a heist, and the emphasis on planning means the PCs can research the security structures (is it a disintegrate ray? a plane shift? a petrification?) and bring along preparations in case they gently caress up. I think that for those sorts of things, though, D&D is absolutely a bad system for it. There's no safety net in the form of Fate Points, Edge or whatever local metacurrency exists to counteract a "lol you die"-result. Bringing along "preparations" means either A) giving the players a modifier to getting around it(you might still nat 1 and get disintegrated on the first trap) or B) letting the preparations just completely ignore the trap, at which point your reaction to the system is to avoid it entirely, which I take as a tacit acknowledgement that it's bad/unwanted. For a heist, what you want are a number of small mistakes that build up and give a chance of blowing the party's cover at the climax, so there's a dramatic escape with the loot from the guards/while the dungeon crumbles/while the countdown on the giant bomb starts. You don't want Bob Bobbob, Elite Trapsman, getting disintegrated by the first major obstacle.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 12:28
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I think that for those sorts of things, though, D&D is absolutely a bad system for it. There's no safety net in the form of Fate Points, Edge or whatever local metacurrency exists to counteract a "lol you die"-result. Bringing along "preparations" means either A) giving the players a modifier to getting around it(you might still nat 1 and get disintegrated on the first trap) or B) letting the preparations just completely ignore the trap, at which point your reaction to the system is to avoid it entirely, which I take as a tacit acknowledgement that it's bad/unwanted. D&D's had metacurrency for this for years now - action points and now inspiration in 5e. And the point remains, if you've got to blow your spell slots/resources now, you've not got them later. But you and I seem to be thinking of it differently, and that's fine.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 12:36
|
|
|
Arivia posted:D&D's had metacurrency for this for years now - action points and now inspiration in 5e. And the point remains, if you've got to blow your spell slots/resources now, you've not got them later. But you and I seem to be thinking of it differently, and that's fine. Inspiration doesn't really solve the issue in that it just gives you advantage, which improves the odds but still does not remove the chance of a nat 1 deleting John Trapman. If you wanted it to work, in my opinion, you'd need... I actually think that something like Fabula Ultima with its "Clocks" system and IP would work better for it, allowing you to "use resources" to guaranteed get around a problem, but also having those resources be a, well, limited resource(as well as a general resource rather than a bunch of very specific tools), or instead to make a roll and potentially flub it and advance the Explosion Clock.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 12:45
|
|
|
Speaking of bad games, some random thoughts I've been ruminating. I am running games for two and third¹ tables currently, my two primary groups decided to take the nostalgia train this year, which ended up with me doing Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade and WH40K: Deathwatch. Both are systems that were bad when they came out, time hasn't been kind to them and my experience as a GM is much greater than when I first tried each, but I came out with very different impressions from each. Deathwatch sucks. It is an awful awful awful lovely game that's barely playable. Making a character sucks (good luck looking at four different places spread across multiple books to spend XP, also NPC profiles are unreadable with an absurd amount of clutter), it is meant to be a combat game, but coming from Lancer, Gubat Banwa and Strike! it is woefully unsuitable for tactical play. Balance? gently caress that, the Psyker and Devastator are going to kill everything and the rest of the squad better keep their heads down. The game's math itself is terrible for representing Space Marines, since this is a system that at its core is meant to represent rat catchers in space. I wish I could personally apologise to everyone I argued with on the internet who was disapppointed with the BI/FFG 40K games back in the day, they are extremely bad and I just didn't know better at the time. We did session 0, then as a group decided it would be less of a pain in the rear end to convert it to our own homebrew 4e heartbreaker and then just use the books as a wishlist for traits and items to be adapted, plus the lore. We are now happily crashing Ork bloodbowl matches with our space super soldiers in a better system. Sorcerer's Crusade is also very bad, Mage: The Awakening has improved a lot on the core being a mage mechanics and the skill list kind of sucks, plus a lot of the merits & flaws are just weird, but other than a few house rules we decided to stick with it. It helps that this is a much more narrative game and despite the long bureaucratic format for its sheets, the WoD system actually works well at expressing what characters are like and what they are capable of. We are enjoying it a lot and despite the occasional clunkyness, I don't think the system is actively detracting from the experience as it happened with Deathwatch, which might just be down to play format, as we only really roll a handful of times per session at properly dramatic moments and even then the dice are in the service of drama. We are setting this in Italy during the black plague and every time the players try to combat the plague with magic it becomes nastier, it is great. I dunno what the point I am trying to get at is. I guess it is just a case of Deathwatch being a much more in your face system and the emphasis on combat makes its warts extremely painful; while the Storytelling system, despite its shortcomings (and boy, are there are a lot of them compared to contemporary design), mostly enables the kind of game we are doing now.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 13:48
|
|
|
What are some of the better sci-fi games? I'm familiar with Shadowrun and I've played a bit of FFG Star Wars way back, but otherwise not much. Is Traveller a good game and if so what edition? What about any of the other Star Wars games? I have a few players who have expressed interest in something more space opera in the future and I would kind of like to myself, but I've never known what system would be good for it. I used to love Eclipse Phase for its setting but it seems impractically crunchy for 90% of people.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 13:52
|
|
|
Tosk posted:What are some of the better sci-fi games? I'm familiar with Shadowrun and I've played a bit of FFG Star Wars way back, but otherwise not much. Is Traveller a good game and if so what edition? What about any of the other Star Wars games? Coriolis is pretty good and probably the most beautiful RPG book I've ever seen. Its systems are somewhat tied to its setting, which is meant to be "1001 Nights in Spaaaace", which I guess ends up being Dune again. A lot of people like Infinity 2d20, I kinda bounced off from it for reasons I can't quite pin down, but it is probably worth checking out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 14:00
|
|
|
Tosk posted:What are some of the better sci-fi games? I'm familiar with Shadowrun and I've played a bit of FFG Star Wars way back, but otherwise not much. Is Traveller a good game and if so what edition? What about any of the other Star Wars games? as always the question is "to do what" like what kind of gameplay do you want, what do you want to happen in a typical session personally i like LANCER and Fragged Empire (though the latter not without some provisos about swingy combat and having to recalculate bonuses frequently)
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 14:09
|
|
|
I've had a fair bit of fun in Stars Without Number.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 14:13
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:as always the question is "to do what" To avoid a more longwinded answer (edit: that became a little longwinded anyway) to that question I would say I'd like a system strong enough to stand on its own without focusing on combat. In D&D I don't mind the occasional random encounter that leads into a fight but my players don't always go murderhobo and they like to interact with the setting and chew the scenery a bit with the NPCs, so in another system the combat might happen less often. In D&D I like to base my prep a lot around coming up with factions and NPCs and connections between them. As far as vibes, if I run a sci-fi campaign then some of my favorite media are Babylon 5, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, KotOR and the original trilogy of SW, Dune and Foundation, etc, so probably something that could support a political narrative but also give the players cool powers to play with. As far as other considerations that occur to me off the top of my head, I've never played anything more rules lite than D&D and that could be fun but I do like games with structure to them that won't require me to ad lib every mechanic. Something popular enough that it might have a splatbook out to get inspiration from the setting, or that I can Google and find the journal of somebody else's campaign would be nice, that sort of stuff has been really useful to me when I DM something new. Tosk fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Mar 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 15:01
|
|
|
Tosk posted:In D&D I like to base my prep a lot around coming up with factions and NPCs and connections between them. As far as vibes, if I run a sci-fi campaign then some of my favorite media are Babylon 5, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, KotOR and the original trilogy of SW, Dune and Foundation, etc, so probably something that could support a political narrative but also give the players cool powers to play with. Almost all of those are about characters managing armies, conspiracies, or organizations; you might consider something like REIGN for that. It's not specifically oriented towards science fiction at the system level, but there are published science fiction settings + variant rules for REIGN 2E (in the "Realities" book), and it's also just generally a toolkit for creating any kind of campaign where your PCs are leaders and managers of a large group of people.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 15:08
|
|
|
One of the problems with D&D emulating movies is completely fundamental to how the game has always worked since its first publication: it wants to make rolls reflect how likely or unlikely an action is to actually succeed. So if you're tied up and outnumbered? You're going to be less likely to succeed than you would otherwise. Being an underdog is worse mechanically than being the overdog. That's not how action movies work! When the protagonist is at their lowest is when they are most likely to succeed. Underdogs eventually win and nobody can eventually win without being made an underdog. Even Superman needs to be made into an underdog before he can win. A system to emulate action movies would have your characters start off lovely and likely to fail, and every injury and disadvantage they accrue would increase their power. Oh, I don't have shoes? That's already an extra d6, but I'm going to walk across this broken glass to make it a d12.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 15:27
|
|
|
I don't know if I'd say action heroes "start off lovely", many are incredibly competent for the first half or longer, and it's only when the Big Bad shows up and has them under their boot that the hero is truly at their lowest.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 15:55
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:One of the problems with D&D emulating movies is completely fundamental to how the game has always worked since its first publication: it wants to make rolls reflect how likely or unlikely an action is to actually succeed. This is good for genre emulation to an extent, but it may lead to players trying to game the system like that Discworld book where the guy tries to shoot the dragon, and to improve his odds of hitting its weak point he does it with a blindfold and standing on one leg and poo poo because one in a million chances happen nine times out of ten
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 16:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 00:14 |
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:as always the question is "to do what" I love LANCER but I do think it's far too narrow in scope of Sci-Fi in which it only supports Mech-based combat and settings.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 16:10
|
|