Trad Games Chat: squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded

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Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

As we know, in action movies the hero tends to win around the two hour mark-

# ? Mar 25, 2023 16:29

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# ? May 24, 2024 23:47

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

What are some suggestions for games that have a 5e mechanical compatibility or feel that are good for Xianxia or "Cultivation" style of rpg? If you're not sure what Xianxia is, basically think about the entire plot and progression of Dragonball Z from Dragonball until Dragonball Super and the introduction of things like King Kai and the other Kai's and the Supreme Kai and then Beerus, and you get the general idea of what some Xianxia's are like. Piccolo is basically a Xianxia character in the slightly wrong genre because his specific means of powering up/training by Meditation is generally a more Xianxia specific thing than "I'mma do pushups in 100 times Earth's gravity!" that's more the norm for the other main characters.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 16:35

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

I thought it would be fun to play Dragonball Z in World Wide Wrestling, but that doesn't help you I guess.

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?

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.

I was thinking I'd like to try Stars Without Number or Hard Wired Island, but I haven't yet had the opportunity.

PerniciousKnid fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Mar 25, 2023

# ? Mar 25, 2023 16:43

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

Diaspora is a Traveller heartbreaker written in FATE. Never had a chance to actually run it because my group doesn't like FATE, but if you can get past that, I think it's pretty cool.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 16:47

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

neonchameleon posted:

Thing is that there are three very different styles of what constitute heist games:

Heist movies and shows with flashbacks and things working seemingly on the fly in a fast and improvised style. The only games I know of to do this well are Leverage and its successor Blades in the Dark (which owes as much to Leverage as it does AW)

Getting the map and some partially complete information in advance and spending as much time working out what the PCs are going to do as you do actually working out the consequences, working like a real heist crew. D&D isn't bad at this and much of it is systemless.

A gang of armed people breaking into a place and making it up as they go along, trying to get out with the treasure. A dungeon crawl is just a poorly planned heist. oD&D, 1e and the RC (and variants) with XP for GP and fasert combat are better for this than newer D&Ds but they all do well.

Xiahou Dun posted:

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.

Part of why these conversations get heated is because "Can system Y do X" and "Is X supported by system Y" are not synonyms, and both questions rarely have binary yes/no answers. There's a bunch of not even mutually exclusive options for each which I will now present in an overly long and yet still incomplete list because I like treating the TGD as my personal blog lol deal with it.

Absolute Facilitation: The game strongly facilitates X, with the basic mechanics and conceits making X the path of least resistance and you have to actively fight the system to not be doing that. "Can BitD do Heist Movie Heists?"
Active Facilitation: The game strongly facilitates X, providing mechanics and conceits that make X easy and natural to do alongside other, equally valid approaches. "Can Modiphius Star Trek do science-focused characters?"
Opt-In Facilitation: The game facilitates X in a standard campaign, but requires conscious buy-in such as specific builds or niche set-piece scenes. "Can D&D do improvised weapon combat?"
Passive Facilitation: There's no active support, but if it comes up the other parts of the system (including the core resolution mechanics) will provide basic support or at least won't actively fight you. "Can EotE do Iron Chef?"
IKEA Facilitation: "Can GURPS do X?"

Neutral Zone:
Curated Facilitation: Facilitated by some mechanics, but you also need to either tailor the whole scenario around the system or excise parts of the system to fit the scenario. "Can 3E/4E/5E D&D do a murder investigation?"
Philosophical Can: Freeform RP is always an option, but the system will actively fight you on it if you try to engage. "Can any version of D&D do the specific improvised combat scene from the trailer?"
Can't: Even using freeform RP feels weird because you're working so hard against the central themes of the system and setting. "Can Chuubo's do Saw?"

Spicy Zone:
Tortured Facilitation: The Good GM option, where you're technically using nothing but in-system resources but it's far too much effort to fall under the Cool Zone. Like hell I'm putting examples in this section lol
Outsourced Facilitation: Load Bearing Rule 0. Stripping out or heavily editing basic mechanics, adding large chunks of homebrew, basically writing a whole new system but without the advantages. I am not going to start a fight, stop looking
Incompetent Facilitation: Anything from the Cool Zone according to the blurb, but it's just not true. Your favourite system goes here.
Illegal: I will call the RPG police to take your books away. "Can Chuubo's do Saw?"

Special Zone:
Decades Long Content Hogs: 3.X, Rifts, the various WoDs etc. are their own subcategory. The base games' actively supported playstyles are very limited in scope and often very much not what their designers intended, but the sheer amounts of in some cases contradictory content mean you can build very weird, very different games with judicious use of the delete key.

So "Can D&D do Heist Category A" is a "philosophical can" at best, maaaaybe qualified facilitation depending heavily on party composition. Which is fine! Better than fine. It's very much not what D&D 5E is for, so expecting it to run it well is silly.
B I'd put firmly in Curated Facilitation. Baseline fine but drop the wrong spell or magic item in there and it all goes to heck.
C is what every version D&D has at least theoretically been designed for.

Thanks you for reading my dumb masturbatory post. Now to scroll up and see what everyone else has posted in the past five (???) hours (where'd my day go?)

Splicer fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Mar 25, 2023

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:02

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

I actually really like this as a discussion of 'does x do y' and may steal it.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:08

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

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.

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.

You're describing the core mechanics of Danger Patrol.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:12

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

I don't particularly like DND but "the game is less cinematic than the movie" just seems like a meaningless statement.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:14

Megazver: Jan 13, 2006

Raenir Salazar posted:

What are some suggestions for games that have a 5e mechanical compatibility or feel that are good for Xianxia or "Cultivation" style of rpg? If you're not sure what Xianxia is, basically think about the entire plot and progression of Dragonball Z from Dragonball until Dragonball Super and the introduction of things like King Kai and the other Kai's and the Supreme Kai and then Beerus, and you get the general idea of what some Xianxia's are like. Piccolo is basically a Xianxia character in the slightly wrong genre because his specific means of powering up/training by Meditation is generally a more Xianxia specific thing than "I'mma do pushups in 100 times Earth's gravity!" that's more the norm for the other main characters.

There are wuxia games that are vaguely xianxia-ish, but xianxia hasn't had a dedicated system come out published yet.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:15

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

Megazver posted:

There are wuxia games that are vaguely xianxia-ish, but xianxia hasn't had a dedicated system come out published yet.

D&D is already kinda xianxia, I mean the lit RPG genre is basically just xianxia with explicit d&d mechanics. What you're really missing is just a setting book to reflavor the abilities.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:24

Asterite34: May 19, 2009

I suppose Ars Magica sorta fills a similar "gain cosmic power through scholarly contemplation" niche, though more through western Europe-flavored hermetic research than meditation.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:28

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

Actually 4e is maybe more xianxia due to having a more uniform system between martial and magic skills.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:31

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Splicer posted:

Thanks you for reading my dumb masturbatory post. Now to scroll up and see what everyone else has posted in the past five (???) hours (where my day go?)

That's actually a Very Good Post. Thank you.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:31

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

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.

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.

With Great Power tries to this for superhero stories, but it's a little ham-fisted about it. It's hard to get player buy in for a high crunch system that makes high demands on them but also says they're going to get their asses kicked for the first two arcs.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:43

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

PerniciousKnid posted:

D&D is already kinda xianxia, I mean the lit RPG genre is basically just xianxia with explicit d&d mechanics. What you're really missing is just a setting book to reflavor the abilities.

I think a lot of the base game would need to be recontextualized a LOT; for example depending if you're going more pure cultivation route or DBZ, leveling up would make more sense to occur as a result of downtime due to completed training arcs than plot milestones outside of very specific events (Krillin getting his potential unlocked due to meeting Kami Guru). And also a means of representing (if DBZ) "You lost this fight and now are stronger" without breaking 5e's core design philosophy.

There's also the matter that the power curves don't feel at all the same, at least depending on your source material. The difference between level 2 and level 3 is a relatively small linear boost outside of specific class milestones; while Xianxia has a lot more of "And then I became Super-Saiyan and got 50 times stronger and your attacks can't even reach me anymore."

My main reference point is My Disciple Has Died Again and I don't think just reflavouring is enough to really bridge the gap to get a game that feels like that particular novel and how cultivation worked therein.

To go back to DBZ for a moment, while D&D does have aspects of where a class especially casters might feel like they're more powerful than another class of the same level at a particular milestone, I don't think you quite have that same thing within the same class for situations where like Gohan reaches Super Saiyan 2 and is like 20 times stronger than either Goku or Vegeta but one training arc later they're both way ahead of Gohan again. You'd need to have asymmetrical leveling at a minimum.

Then also other ways where I think the system fights you, like tightly bounded AC/To Hit numbers and so on, I think it's hard to make it compatible with Xianxia where completing your training and gaining a level feels like a significant boost in power because the curve would probably need to be more exponential.

Just taking 5e and running a Xianxia campaign I think requires a lot of homebrew.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:44

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

I guess if I really wanted to use 5e, of all games, to represent a xianxia story, I'd take it as-written but multiply all proficiency bonuses by something between three and ten.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 17:58

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

Maybe don't let the characters gain levels until they go home and meditate, but then they get like 5 levels at once.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:07

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

PerniciousKnid posted:

Maybe don't let the characters gain levels until they go home and meditate, but then they get like 5 levels at once.

i've run 4E like this (for completely unrelated reasons) and was actually really happy with the results

progression went level 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, 30, with the general idea being that every level-up should involve major build milestones, and let people actually play with high-level tools without the campaign taking up IRL years

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:10

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Ferrinus posted:

I guess if I really wanted to use 5e, of all games, to represent a xianxia story, I'd take it as-written but multiply all proficiency bonuses by something between three and ten.

Yeah. Or, gently caress, square them or something. Go from +4 to +36 and do some poo poo with AC. You still have a problem that 2/3 of your saves are terrible, which is dramatically exacerbated by this, but if you want 5e, that's on you to work around.

I don't think 5e is really where you want to be, basically. The whole bounded accuracy bit fucks this kind of scaling badly.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:13

Parkreiner: Oct 29, 2011

I feel like almost any RPG ever written would struggle if you�re looking for literal logarithmic character advancement at every single stage of mechanical improvement. The old DC Universe RPG from Mayfair did in fact work on a logarithmic scale (every point in a stat was twice as strong as the one before it) and I think there�s a retroclone of it (Blood of Heroes, I think?), so that�s probably your only reasonable starting point if that is really genuinely what you�re looking for instead of something even slightly more abstracted.

Either that or some points-based supers system like Hero and just give everyone like another couple hundred build points whenever they hit some story-based milestone to unlock the next stage of their potential.

Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Mar 25, 2023

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:14

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

i've run 4E like this (for completely unrelated reasons) and was actually really happy with the results

progression went level 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, 30, with the general idea being that every level-up should involve major build milestones, and let people actually play with high-level tools without the campaign taking up IRL years

This reminds me of my idea how to use 4E to run an Exalted game:

0. Everything is copiously reskinned, you basically take the mechanics as-is and say that your shapeshifting druid is a lunar, your wizard is a twilight caste solar, but:

1. There's no half-level bonus to attacks and defenses for either PCs or monsters
2. Your character level, and therefore your total number of powers and feats, your access to higher-level powers, your ability to select and benefit from a paragon path and epic destiny, etc. is based on a combination of your character type and your Essence score. Each dot of Essence corresponds to a character level (or, if you prefer, 2 character levels, such that what would be an Essence 4 Solar in the story is a level 28 fourth edition character), but according to this progression:

Mortals: Level 1-5
Dragon-Blooded: Level 11-20
Lunars and Sidereals: Level 16-25
Solars and Abyssals: Level 21-30

Your actual magic item panoply is based on what you can steal or craft according to some more narratively-based rationing system.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:17

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

PerniciousKnid posted:

D&D is already kinda xianxia, I mean the lit RPG genre is basically just xianxia with explicit d&d mechanics. What you're really missing is just a setting book to reflavor the abilities.

You could easily make a xianxia game using D&D's classes-and-levels-and-(a heavily reworked version of)-feats framework, but using any explicit version of D&D as a base (and I include 4E in that) would take more work than just starting from scratch.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:17

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

dwarf74 posted:

Yeah. Or, gently caress, square them or something. Go from +4 to +36 and do some poo poo with AC. You still have a problem that 2/3 of your saves are terrible, which is dramatically exacerbated by this, but if you want 5e, that's on you to work around.

I don't think 5e is really where you want to be, basically. The whole bounded accuracy bit fucks this kind of scaling badly.

Right, you'd at minimum have to make sure that AC and bad saves still scale with character tier. So broadly each level of proficiency bonus represents a cultivation stage:

Qi Condensation: +2 -> +16
Foundation Establishment: +3 -> +24
etc.

But you add 7/8th of your proficiency bonus to AC and all your bad saves, which means that within a tier the basic math of "If I'm proficient and you're not I have an advantage over you somewhere between +2 and +6".

Within each stage, like from D&D levels 1-4, you level up normally. If you want to break through from 4 to 5 you need to meditate for a thousand years or consume a shitload of pills or something.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:22

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

i don't know enough about xianxia to weigh in in any depth, but yeah, in most traditional western fantasy the protagonists don't really change that much. Bilbo gets more confident, Gandalf was always an angelic demigod in disguise, Aragorn gets a gear upgrade but it's more important for what it represents to those following him than his personal combat ability. Conan gains followers and riches but frequently loses them just as quickly. Elric has some pretty big power bumps but typically the entire point is the power isn't really his.

you don't really get proper exceptions until you start talking about weird genre-bending poo poo like the Chronicles of Amber, but then you have the opposite problem, with most versions of D&D not really being interested in modeling someone who was already a demigod to begin with

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:22

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

also out of all of those the one i'd most likely to see implemented on a mechanical level is Conan. a game about rising and falling fortune over the course of a life of adventuring, rather than linear progression

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:34

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

Splicer posted:

You could easily make a xianxia game using D&D's classes-and-levels-and-(a heavily reworked version of)-feats framework, but using any explicit version of D&D as a base (and I include 4E in that) would take more work than just starting from scratch.

Yeah maybe but the OP explicitly requested 5e compatibility.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 18:46

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

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?

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.

mllanaza wrote a killer Traveller set of Playbooks for FATE.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 19:28

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

Splicer posted:

Part of why these conversations get heated is because "Can system Y do X" and "Is X supported by system Y" are not synonyms, and both questions rarely have binary yes/no answers. There's a bunch of not even mutually exclusive options for each which I will now present in an overly long and yet still incomplete list because I like treating the TGD as my personal blog lol deal with it.

Cool Zone:

Absolute Facilitation: The game strongly facilitates X, with the basic mechanics and conceits making X the path of least resistance and you have to actively fight the system to not be doing that. "Can BitD do Heist Movie Heists?"

Active Facilitation: The game strongly facilitates X, providing mechanics and conceits that make X easy and natural to do alongside other, equally valid approaches. "Can Modiphius Star Trek do science-focused characters?"

Opt-In Facilitation: The game facilitates X in a standard campaign, but requires conscious buy-in such as specific builds or niche set-piece scenes. "Can D&D do improvised weapon combat?"

Passive Facilitation: There's no active support, but if it comes up the other parts of the system (including the core resolution mechanics) will provide basic support or at least won't actively fight you. "Can EotE do Iron Chef?"

IKEA Facilitation: "Can GURPS do X?"

Neutral Zone:

Curated Facilitation: Facilitated by some mechanics, but you also need to either tailor the whole scenario around the system or excise parts of the system to fit the scenario. "Can 3E/4E/5E D&D do a murder investigation?"

Philosophical Can: Freeform RP is always an option, but the system will actively fight you on it if you try to engage. "Can any version of D&D do the specific improvised combat scene from the trailer?"

Can't: Even using freeform RP feels weird because you're working so hard against the central themes of the system and setting. "Can Chuubo's do Saw?"

Spicy Zone:

Tortured Facilitation: The Good GM option, where you're technically using nothing but in-system resources but it's far too much effort to fall under the Cool Zone. Like hell I'm putting examples in this section lol

Outsourced Facilitation: Load Bearing Rule 0. Stripping out or heavily editing basic mechanics, adding large chunks of homebrew, basically writing a whole new system but without the advantages. I am not going to start a fight, stop looking

Incompetent Facilitation: Anything from the Cool Zone according to the blurb, but it's just not true. Your favourite system goes here.

Illegal: I will call the RPG police to take your books away. "Can Chuubo's do Saw?"

Special Zone:

Decades Long Content Hogs: 3.X, Rifts, the various WoDs etc. are their own subcategory. The base games' actively supported playstyles are very limited in scope and often very much not what their designers intended, but the sheer amounts of in some cases contradictory content mean you can build very weird, very different games with judicious use of the delete key.

So "Can D&D do Heist Category A" is a "philosophical can" at best, maaaaybe qualified facilitation depending heavily on party composition. Which is fine! Better than fine. It's very much not what D&D 5E is for, so expecting it to run it well is silly.
B I'd put firmly in Curated Facilitation. Baseline fine but drop the wrong spell or magic item in there and it all goes to heck.
C is what every version D&D has at least theoretically been designed for.

Thanks you for reading my dumb masturbatory post. Now to scroll up and see what everyone else has posted in the past five (???) hours (where my day go?)

This is a pretty good post

# ? Mar 25, 2023 19:57

PurpleXVI: Oct 30, 2011; Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

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?

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.

While it's not perfect and is a bit kitchen sink-y, my favourite sci-fi game will eternally remain Fading Suns.

Games I would recommend against Star Wars Saga Edition(extremely dull gear selection, essentially one very generic optimal choice for everything and you ignore everything else, all characters end up very similar) and Traveller(there are absolutely zero gear sidegrades or twists, it's always just more numbers to thing, and the lifepath chargen tends to generate EXTREMELY anemic characters that suck rear end at everything in every edition I've fiddled with).

Splicer posted:

[*]Illegal: I will call the RPG police to take your books away. "Can Chuubo's do Saw?"

lmao, I enjoyed this post, please continue posting like this so I can enjoy it more.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 20:54

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

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?

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.

The latest version of traveller by Mongoose is probably the most supported and relatively simple. However, the basic books are made under the assumption that you're making characters for a rip-roarin adventure on a 200-ton freighter trading and doing odd jobs to survive. Campaigns like Pirates of Drinax and others add in more things to do- not that you can't run other things, but out of the box, that's kinda where traveller goes.

The character gen is a heavily randomized life path system, so what you get as far as your character goes might not be what you expect. You can't die in character creation, but you sure can go homeless and be a drifter.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 21:21

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

mllanaza wrote a killer Traveller set of Playbooks for FATE.

PbtA, but I'm really happy how they came out. The playset is in sort of a halfway state between how I'm handling Bonds and PC objectives, but I baked in as much old school Traveller feel as I could and made sure every playbook had something that could give them an "I've got this" moment. I'm focusing on the "A-Team crossed with Indiana Jones, in space!" style of Traveller.

Holy crap, this is ten years old. If I ever push it to 0.3 it's going to get a major overhaul.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B65hQpo4NriKYXMzMnhrYi16blk/view?usp=share_link&resourcekey=0-kz2X6Lzvu1MyvsXtu9zRhA

# ? Mar 25, 2023 21:27

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

PerniciousKnid posted:

Yeah maybe but the OP explicitly requested 5e compatibility.

My bad, lost track of the conversation chain.

dwarf74 posted:

Yeah. Or, gently caress, square them or something. Go from +4 to +36 and do some poo poo with AC. You still have a problem that 2/3 of your saves are terrible, which is dramatically exacerbated by this, but if you want 5e, that's on you to work around.

I don't think 5e is really where you want to be, basically. The whole bounded accuracy bit fucks this kind of scaling badly.

It's not so much the numbers need to go up as it is what the numbers let you do. Higher numbers in basic d20 rollover doesn't really let you do more, it just lets you do the same thing more reliably. "I can semi-reliably hit a goblin." -> "I can always hit a goblin." -> "I can always hit an orc." -> "I can always hit a dragon." -> "I can always hit a god." is a wuxia thing. My understanding of xianxia is entirely from half-watching Mrs Splicer's shows out of the corner of my eye while playing videogames but from what I've picked up it's more:

Level 01: "I will always hit a goblin. Literally always. It doesn't matter where I am or where the nearest goblin is, every time I swing a sword you will find a dead goblin at the end of it. Prepare to meet a swift and goblin-infused end."
Level 05: "The ability to summon goblin corpses at-will is surprisingly useless in love and politics."
Level 10: "I have drowned cities beneath mountains of decaying green flesh. None can stand against me. I am destruction, I am death, and I will not fight you. My soul is heavy with goblin slaughter and I will draw my sword no more."
Level 15: "The ability to summon goblin corpses at-will would be surprisingly useful in this particular instance of love and politics, but I promised my best bro who is definitely straight just like I am not to do that anymore."
Level 19: *swings their sword, once, and an unending tide of living goblins springs forth, cascading across the land and into the poll booths to select "Yes" on proposition 32 (remove big bad from office and send them to jail forever y/n)*
-> "I did it all for you, my best friend ooh I perish."
-> *dies*
Level 20: "lol j/k I'm alive let's not quite kiss."

e: none of this should be taken as a criticism, I enjoyed them.

e2: well, apart from the censorship :can:

Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Mar 26, 2023

# ? Mar 25, 2023 21:38

Kwyndig: Sep 23, 2006; Heeeeeey

So I watched John Wick 4 today and it actually had AC rules in its gunfights, shots either were lethal or bounced off harmlessly. Crazy. Although it was just bullets, there were arrows and knives that worked via normal action movie rules.

So because of that I'm going to say run John Wick in d20 Modern, I'm taking no suggestions.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 21:45

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

Yeah one thing you need to do is learn how to divorce the numbers of the mechanics from the fiction.

That way you can seamlessly scale the fiction to what you want it to be while the numbers stay the same. If you're operating on a higher level of power than say typical d&d then you can just say certain threats or situations are a non-issue and don't warrant rolling. Like if a mortal army just straight up doesn't stand a chance then they're basically just scenery to whatever is really supposed to be important.

Say, if 1 hitpoint of damage was equivalent of, I dunno, lets say one naval artillery shell, and you needed to be capable of dealing at least that much damage to even be treated as a mechanical threat, then the vast majority of mortal foes don't even register. An entire rampaging army can be easily swept aside through the players just describing how they sweep up until a few near-peer immortals enters the fray from among the officer corps and that's when you roll initiative. And everyone is mechanically like just level 5 but area of effect spells are scaled up to be much bigger and against merely-mortal threats, martials pretty much have infinite cleave.

Then take those principles and just scale up everything about the rules to just not register anything of insufficient stakes or threat to not be an issue, and make crossing great distances relatively trivial (not that a lot of groups at the table don't just write off travel time as downtime already). Who gives a poo poo about petty obstacles like locked doors or trapped chests when you're one of the mightiest entities in the world.

Adding more numbers or bigger adds more complexity without necessarily adding more depth or meaning.

Imagine trying to play out a 40k battle as a d&d battle with each model treated as its own discrete entity or monster. The mechanics are always just an abstraction to get to a particular gameplay experience you're going after. Treating the rules as a simulation of reality is one gameplay experience but you also, really don't need to be constrained by that if you're going for a genre experience far removed from reality's limits. Or aren't trying to simulate a real situation so much as you are a fictional dynamic.

That said, if you're creative enough to figure this out you're probably also familiar enough with roleplaying in general to realize there are better ways to play out xianxia, or whatever, than shoehorning it into d&d. Which, technically, is closer to Raenir's original question.

Ironically playing a lot of pbta games get you to figure out what is or isn't worth rolling over pretty fast and also how to scale the mechanics to respect the fiction rather than the other way around.

Runa fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Mar 25, 2023

# ? Mar 25, 2023 21:53

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

Like LANCER just takes d&d 4e and said, what if PCs were mechs and stuff like feats or spells were modular weapons and systems and to get new equipment you needed to level up a "class" (really, a mech and its associated techs) to get it.

There is no strict necessary correlation between the fiction and the mechanics except that which you agree to respect.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 21:57

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Traveller literally makes you take damage to your attributes- your three physical attributes, DEX, STR, and END- END goes first, once it hits 0 you're past superficial damage and will need medical attention, and yes you do decrease in capability as you go.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 22:12

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

Panzeh posted:

Traveller literally makes you take damage to your attributes- your three physical attributes, DEX, STR, and END- END goes first, once it hits 0 you're past superficial damage and will need medical attention, and yes you do decrease in capability as you go.

This is actually a useful example to illustrate my point.

Fundamentally, this is a matter of a combat system defining mechanical capability as a resource to be "spent" (taking damage) and when that is diminished your ability to continue to act in the mechanics is diminished.

That's it in a nutshell.

Say you you change nothing but the scale of the fiction as above. A game of impossibly tough, strong, and skilled demigods who can be slowly ground down over time if you can bring something capable of threatening them. My point still stands.

Say you strip it of it's context entirely and just use the mechanics as an abstraction to tape other situations onto. Say STR, DEX, and END are now actually metaphors representing emotional or mental dispositions and attacks are just a means of getting a leg up in a debate, party, or crowded shouting match in parliament. This has just turned into a social combat system. Even funnier when you map area of effect attacks like grenades and explosives to something more Zoolander-esque like, Aggressively Voguing. Or go full Zoolander and start applying the social combat fiction back to physical combat. Im not saying it won't be silly or ridiculous, but I'm saying it still works.

Or if these attributes were mapped to, say, the capabilities of an organization, like a business or a country, and the combat system were instead an abstraction for economic conflict. This is remapping the mechanics to something that differs both in scale as well as root concept, but that doesn't really matter.

That's because mechanics are an abstraction to achieve a particular gameplay experience.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 22:27

xiw: Sep 25, 2011; i wake up at night
night action madness nightmares
maybe i am scum
Cpig Haiku contest 2020 winner

Ferrinus posted:

This reminds me of my idea how to use 4E to run an Exalted game:

0. Everything is copiously reskinned, you basically take the mechanics as-is and say that your shapeshifting druid is a lunar, your wizard is a twilight caste solar, but:

1. There's no half-level bonus to attacks and defenses for either PCs or monsters
2. Your character level, and therefore your total number of powers and feats, your access to higher-level powers, your ability to select and benefit from a paragon path and epic destiny, etc. is based on a combination of your character type and your Essence score. Each dot of Essence corresponds to a character level (or, if you prefer, 2 character levels, such that what would be an Essence 4 Solar in the story is a level 28 fourth edition character), but according to this progression:

Mortals: Level 1-5
Dragon-Blooded: Level 11-20
Lunars and Sidereals: Level 16-25
Solars and Abyssals: Level 21-30

Your actual magic item panoply is based on what you can steal or craft according to some more narratively-based rationing system.

Honestly you don't even need steps 1/2 - 4e Exalted works completely fine as is if you just reskin everyone and pick sensible starting fictional power levels to match you group. When I did this we started at level 4 and declared that that point was a freshly exalted Solar, a mid-tier Sid, or a DB with a good amount of experience.

The whole point of 4e is that PCs and NPCs don't follow the same rules, so you can just use the existing rules and CR to set up all your fun kung fu fights.

This also lets you play all the fun stuff like local gods and spirits that the Exalted devs refuse to do as PCs.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 22:41

xiw: Sep 25, 2011; i wake up at night
night action madness nightmares
maybe i am scum
Cpig Haiku contest 2020 winner

Panzeh posted:

Traveller literally makes you take damage to your attributes- your three physical attributes, DEX, STR, and END- END goes first, once it hits 0 you're past superficial damage and will need medical attention, and yes you do decrease in capability as you go.

My two fave damage systems in ttrpgs both produce outcomes at the table that get a lot of space in fiction but tend to be ignored in rpgs:

Babylon Project - during combat injuries only care about 'does this slow you down, does this drop you, or did you head just get shot off' but after the fight you go into a more detailed resolution phase to find out who's just hurt and will be okay, who immediately needs to be rushed to the surgery for your dramatic 'will they pull through', and who's just dead outright.

Ars Magica - wound recovery rolls are time-based, and you can botch them and get worse. This means that someone can get shot by an arrow, the wound can fester, and they can die over winter - but the timing is also perfect for 'we need to go on an adventure to get some magical healing resources so we can fix this'

# ? Mar 25, 2023 22:50

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# ? May 24, 2024 23:47

hyphz: Aug 5, 2003; Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.; Unlockable Ben

Runa posted:

Yeah one thing you need to do is learn how to divorce the numbers of the mechanics from the fiction.

That way you can seamlessly scale the fiction to what you want it to be while the numbers stay the same. If you're operating on a higher level of power than say typical d&d then you can just say certain threats or situations are a non-issue and don't warrant rolling. Like if a mortal army just straight up doesn't stand a chance then they're basically just scenery to whatever is really supposed to be important.

Say, if 1 hitpoint of damage was equivalent of, I dunno, lets say one naval artillery shell, and you needed to be capable of dealing at least that much damage to even be treated as a mechanical threat, then the vast majority of mortal foes don't even register.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn't allow for incremental advancement as well as mechanical numbers do. It goes well for advancements that change the entire scope of the situation - that is, from fighting goblins to fighting gods. But it tends to result in:

1. We fight goblins and the fights are kinda hard.
2. We fight gods and the fights are kinda hard.

That works narratively, but it doesn't work so well for game experience. Whereas mechanics ideally can give you the interim points:

1. We fight goblins and the fights are kinda hard.
2. We fight goblins and the fights are even.
3. We fight goblins and the fights are kinda easy, or gods and the fights are knife-edge.
4. We don't bother with goblins anymore but we fight gods and the fights are kinda hard.

And that kind of incremental advancement is key to a good advancement experience in a game.

# ? Mar 25, 2023 23:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Trad Games Chat: squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded

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