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hyphz posted: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: Raenir Salazar actually started with a question about xianxia as a genre and that is basically itself a high-level starting point area of progression fiction. It has different assumptions than baseline d&d does but the conversation moved to be about xianxia in d&d so I started from there. And the initial prompt naming DBZ as an accessible starting point for the thread was kind of spot on, as DBZ operates on a power scale closer to where xianxia does. There is a sense of progression but it's closer to Exalted's scale of progression, where you start out as basically a super in all but name and just go higher from there. Also this is why Exalted was mentioned, too. Basically, this is a concern about the fiction itself and I would consider it a separate topic from my point.
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Mar 25, 2023 23:40
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And yes I'm aware of the irony of the original post asking for a game that wasn't d&d that could do xianxia being mutated back around to being about d&d again but that's just ttrpg discussion for you.
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Mar 25, 2023 23:52
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Runa posted:And yes I'm aware of the irony of the original post asking for a game that wasn't d&d that could do xianxia being mutated back around to being about d&d again but that's just ttrpg discussion for you. The original ask was literally for 5E compatible ways to play xianxia though?
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Mar 26, 2023 00:00
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Mr. Maltose posted:The original ask was literally for 5E compatible ways to play xianxia though? Sure but even before the "compatibility or feel" clause the ask was for games and there's really only one game called D&D 5e, it's D&D 5e, so I operated under the assumption that asking about games was the important bit and the next part was due to being unfamiliar enough with the ttrpg industry to realize what mechanical compatibility actually means and why that would preclude games that weren't d&d 5e.
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Mar 26, 2023 00:06
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Yeah. Which, again, I kinda don't get. 5e is all about small modifiers and bounded accuracy. Which is, frankly, the exact opposite of what dbz-like progression needs. This is not me saying "5e is terrible," it's me saying "5e in particular feels almost uniquely unsuited to this genre."
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Mar 26, 2023 00:06
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Yeah absolutely, I agree. But taking a completely inappropriate concept and shoehorning it into d&d is a hobby staple. Also it was the thread's previous topic du jour. I just provided a "game design 101" perspective on how to do it while avoiding horrific number inflation.
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Mar 26, 2023 00:09
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I read 5E compatible game to mean something like any of the dozens of 5E compatible “campaign settings” that have come out that are basically jamming three new mechanics into D&D and the ask was if there was a fitting one for xianxia much like there’s one for Norse Sagas, Africa, Italian Folktales and all the other ones Libertad covered in the F&F threads, just calling them games because of unfamiliarity with detailed hobby terms.
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Mar 26, 2023 00:32
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Mr. Maltose posted:I read 5E compatible game to mean something like any of the dozens of 5E compatible “campaign settings” that have come out that are basically jamming three new mechanics into D&D and the ask was if there was a fitting one for xianxia much like there’s one for Norse Sagas, Africa, Italian Folktales and all the other ones Libertad covered in the F&F threads, just calling them games because of unfamiliarity with detailed hobby terms. You know, that's reasonable
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Mar 26, 2023 01:06
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah. I don't know, it feels reasonably fitting for a shonen: The protagonist(s) spend twenty volumes fighting progressively slightly tougher enemies over and over, then they get a mid-season upgrade(name level, when the Fighter's feat unwieldy daisy chain of feats finally comes together, when the wizard learns Fireball, etc.) that allow them to step up to a new tier of enemies, which will get progressively slightly tougher and each involve some small lesson, revealed power or upgrade as they're defeated. And then the story stalls out because of scheduling issues and if it comes to a satisfying conclusion it's twenty years later when everyone somehow finds the time to play again. D&D really IS just like shonen manga!
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Mar 26, 2023 01:23
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Most shonen manga give everyone unique power sets, both the protagonists and enemies- you run into a guy and he’s the Scissor Man, he’s made of scissors and he can slice through anything, even reality. There may be some common theming (stands, everyone eating various Devil fruits) but it’s an excuse for everyone to have a weird power that’s theirs. A superhero game might be better suited.
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Mar 26, 2023 02:11
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To name drop some systems I know / have used personally that are relevant to at least one of the discussions of the past few pages: Dragon Ball Z: The Anime Adventure Game Yes, I know the system is literally broken! It completely falls apart down at even slight variations in stats, the authors admitted by book two that basic sections of the rules were written wrong, and combat is capable of an honest-to-god softlock. I’m bringing it up because it did one thing “correctly” as far as this discussion goes, and that’s XP - it assumed that everyone was training to boost their power level, which will increase yours by X per year, multiply X based on the type of wacky training thing you’re doing. If you want faster than that, you have to fight someone, and you power up based on how much stronger than you they are. That’s correct, that’s how DBZ works. Tenra Bansho Zero This is a wild game but I only want to mention that there is a wound track, the “failure spiral” system of many games. It is inverted, and it is player buy-in. I know other systems do one or the other (such as the Dogs in the Vineyard or the new version of Trinity / Storypath) but it’s the best example because it does both. Taking damage, you fill in the boxes in the order of your choice, with escalating in-combat bonuses based on how “big” a box you’re willing to check off. The example of play has a character take a major wound as his first hit, describing a big action-movie “knife goes through the hand but instead of nerve damage our hero gets mad” result. This includes options in both directions, “I’m willing to risk dying to kill this guy” (Death is a box to check off), and “I go down like a sack of potatoes but I’m fine by the next scene, no lasting consequences” (concede immediately / once you run out of free boxes) AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Mar 26, 2023 |
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Mar 26, 2023 02:57
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I love TBZ's damage system, it's great for modeling shonen battles.
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Mar 26, 2023 03:02
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oh good, someone beat me to be the TBZ recommender this time. It's definitely got some clunk in its gears but there are a lot of remarkably good ideas too.
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Mar 26, 2023 03:19
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If you are looking for a xianxia game check out Blades of the Immortals, a Forged in the Dark game that really pushes the framework to its limits. https://jagganoth.itch.io/boti-ea
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Mar 26, 2023 03:53
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Yeah I'll check out those suggestions thanks! But to further expand on the discussion though. Mr. Maltose posted:I read 5E compatible game to mean something like any of the dozens of 5E compatible “campaign settings” that have come out that are basically jamming three new mechanics into D&D and the ask was if there was a fitting one for xianxia much like there’s one for Norse Sagas, Africa, Italian Folktales and all the other ones Libertad covered in the F&F threads, just calling them games because of unfamiliarity with detailed hobby terms. Yeah basically its this, sorry if I wasn't clear as I had maybe a couple of different vague possibilities in my head as to what I "wanted". But if there was a completely different TTRPG like Legend of the Five Rings that was a pretty solid game adaption of the Cultivation/Xianxia genre I'd be open to it. Runa posted:Raenir Salazar actually started with a question about xianxia as a genre and that is basically itself a high-level starting point area of progression fiction. It has different assumptions than baseline d&d does but the conversation moved to be about xianxia in d&d so I started from there. And the initial prompt naming DBZ as an accessible starting point for the thread was kind of spot on, as DBZ operates on a power scale closer to where xianxia does. Kinda, like Goku back in the original Dragonball is powerful but mainly like lower-Wuxia levels of powerful; he can defeat armies of normal humans pretty easily but the trained martial artist who did mostly "typical" martial arts training can still put up a fight. To my mind Base D&D 5e from level 1-10 is basically like Low-Wuxia/Early Dragonball. Not counting Wizards as they complicate things and make things weird and even succeed at making things weird even in Dragonball where Goku has to like, trick a witch into drinking her own potion and escapes like its a Brother's Grimm fairy tail or something. It basically kinda feels like levels 10-20 still feel like something akin to Wuxia, a level 20 fighter/monk maps pretty readily on characters like Shou Fu Kan from Thunderbolt Fantasy, he's a dude with some ki control who uses a wooden stick to break peoples bones because its just ki control; but he isn't shooting ki blasts and he can't fly (but he can Samurai Jack style JUMP GOOD). And Enigmatic Gale actually fits a level 20 Bard pretty drat good as well. And they're also pretty easily mowing through armies just like other Wuxia shows. So, to me, D&D 5e feels like with reflavouring can run a pretty convincing Wuxia campaign; but Level 20 D&D characters don't feel like DBZ fighters even before Namek and probably only ever for the fight with Radditz. The ultimate thing that made Xianxia such an interesting genre albeit I am getting a very slanted view of it via an affectionate parody, is just the way "the map gets bigger"? Is there a game design term for this feeling? Where you THINK you're at the end game and then the shoe drops, you open the door and then you realize you're just scratching the surface? The Map Got Bigger. A LOT Bigger. And you ain't hot stuff anymore! You've been effectively reset back to zero in this new world even if you're the singular most powerful being in the pond you just left. I get the web novel I'm reading is actually making fun of this aspect of the genre and is possibly exaggerating it, but I kept wanting to know figuratively what was over the next hill, I enjoyed it a lot, what's the next escalation? "What's can more powerful than a God? Oh my *pause* me, there is!" I think somewhere with this post I'm honing in on what kind of mechanic I'm looking for that captures the gameplay fantasy I'm interested in. Like you can't just literally reset to level 1 because there's still the possibility or revisiting your old haunts just to show how far you've come; but somehow your level 5 Xianxia character is basically barely untouchable to your past level 20 5e self while feeling like you had a continuous progression from that point to now. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Mar 26, 2023 |
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Mar 26, 2023 04:18
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Raenir Salazar posted:I think somewhere with this post I'm honing in on what kind of mechanic I'm looking for that captures the gameplay fantasy I'm interested in. Like you can't just literally reset to level 1 because there's still the possibility or revisiting your old haunts just to show how far you've come; but somehow your level 5 Xianxia character is basically barely untouchable to your past level 20 5e self while feeling like you had a continuous progression from that point to now. My mind jumps straight past what you’re actually asking towards JTTRPGs, something akin to a Double Cross, where gameplay is a series of one-shots that might carry over characters but the system is largely designed to “reset” after the end of the scenario, maybe your character knows a new move maybe you start next scenario playing “Felf” instead of “Melf”, w/e. I don’t know that would provide the level of scale you want, though, apart from liberally using “minion/boss” templates to model how strong you want certain foes to be. Honestly, 5e might be more fitting than I started this post believing; the xianxia stuff I read had a lot of magic item porn to it, and what is D&D if not a game broken by equipment?
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Mar 26, 2023 05:06
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AmiYumi posted:Dragon Ball Z: The Anime Adventure Game *if I get started I will go off-topic but ugghhh at taking a thing introduced to the narrative to show that ascribing numerical values to strength is pointless as gospel,   kill me
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Mar 26, 2023 05:21
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Yeah, it's wild. I know part of the point of DBZ power levels is that they are actually meaningless - but they're perfectly set up so nerds can assign quantitative values to how strong every character is. So yeah, of course that's exactly how you'd expect a dbz rpg system to work. The show makes it feel like there's real, hidden mechanics to all this poo poo that just need to be written down in a system. And if that system was made in the wild and wooly days of high-sim design, what you got was inevitable. Just a perfect fuckin storm.
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Mar 26, 2023 05:35
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Oh I see, you're looking for a bespoke experience that, far as I can tell, does not yet exist. There does not exactly exist a product that caters to your needs. That's fine. Heck, that's more than fine, that's exciting. This is because you've entered The Homebrew Zone and you may well have found an interesting niche to take, as the closest thing I can think of even conceptually are the Palladium RPGs, notoriously poorly-written, wildly unbalanced, and even internally illogical. But they operate on two different scales: regular human-level combat, and super-level combat where "Mega" damage and effects occur. The latter is core to their brand identity by this point, and their original IP stuff is called the Megaverse. I mention this not as a recommendation but as a curiosity and a cautionary tale. Because Palladium fucks up in one big way (they actually gently caress up constantly in very fun and interestingly jank ways, but this is the important one): the two scales exist simultaneously and sometimes intersect, usually to messy/gory effect when the regular scale brushes up against the Mega scale. This is because the Mega scale is literally just the regular scale with a stat multiplier of x100. 1 Mega Damage = 100 Regular Damage. This is the kind of stat inflation that Palladium bakes into their RPG lines. For your sanity, do not do anything like this. Treat the wuxia -> xianxia graduation as a hard stop where the threats and scale of the wuxia battles can be waved away by fiat and just describing what happens. Keep it grounded in the fiction established in the wuxia phase but when you step from heroic mortal scale to bullshit god scale, that is the new playing field. Anything weaker than that, any obstacle that should be trivial for someone of this level of capability to ignore, is not even worth rolling against. Note that something well outside of a character's established capabilities could still be relevant obstacles even if they exist on a mundane level. Dragonball is also a good example to draw from because, as an action comedy at heart, you still get the opportunity to see the characters up to hijinx, no matter how trivial travel must be to someone capable of Instant Transmission across interstellar distances. All of that don't mean poo poo if you're taking a driver's license test.
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Mar 26, 2023 08:56
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Maxwell Lord posted:Most shonen manga give everyone unique power sets, both the protagonists and enemies- you run into a guy and he’s the Scissor Man, he’s made of scissors and he can slice through anything, even reality. There may be some common theming (stands, everyone eating various Devil fruits) but it’s an excuse for everyone to have a weird power that’s theirs. Ehhh. I'd say that most shonen manga/anime don't really do anything interesting with said unique power sets. The shonen where the unique power sets are used more for "puzzle" battles, like Jojo, are a minority in my experience. Generally people throw punches(or energy bolts, zappy beams, martial art moves, etc.) at each other until the protagonist decides he's no longer contractually obligated to draw things out and uses his ultimate move to end things, generally motivated by some sort of emotional thing like remembering his master's last words or that he has to not lose because he cares about someone.
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Mar 26, 2023 09:48
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Runa posted:For your sanity, do not do anything like this.
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Mar 26, 2023 13:16
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PurpleXVI posted:Ehhh. I'd say that most shonen manga/anime don't really do anything interesting with said unique power sets. The shonen where the unique power sets are used more for "puzzle" battles, like Jojo, are a minority in my experience. Generally people throw punches(or energy bolts, zappy beams, martial art moves, etc.) at each other until the protagonist decides he's no longer contractually obligated to draw things out and uses his ultimate move to end things, generally motivated by some sort of emotional thing like remembering his master's last words or that he has to not lose because he cares about someone. I get what you mean, but... modern crunch-focused superhero games like the Sentinels RPG already work like that. You have Electrical Blast d10 and a few dice tricks to represent the established cool electric trick shots you can do, and your fights can just be you doing a bunch of electrical blasts if you want them to. The systems are fictionally flexible enough to have Your Friend's Emotional Speech d8 as an asset you can pull out if you need it. It even makes your coolest dice tricks only unlock when the tension is highest, for all your super move needs. Would I use a system like Sentinels or Cortex Prime for Jojos puzzle fights? Yes, because they present powers in a way that works for me and have a lot of flexibility built into the system. But they represent power sets in a way that... still fundamentally works with how you just described shonen as working. (They even do the thing where Electrical Blast d10 and Scissor Boomerang d10 are effectively the same except for whatever dice tricks you attach to them, because they just need enough mechanical differences to feel different in play. A superhero game would be better at fitting all of the points you just brought up disagreeing with the post about how superhero games would work better.)
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Mar 26, 2023 17:14
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Would I use a system like Sentinels or Cortex Prime for Jojos puzzle fights? Yes, because they present powers in a way that works for me and have a lot of flexibility built into the system. But they represent power sets in a way that... still fundamentally works with how you just described shonen as working. Jojo is a rough example here because how are you gonna do Jail House Rock or Mandom or any of the other freak powers people have? I'm not being a dickhead I want to run them in game.
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Mar 26, 2023 20:32
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Stat out King Crimson in any system. I dare you.
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Mar 26, 2023 20:37
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PurpleXVI posted:Stat out King Crimson in any system. I dare you. 7/10
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Mar 26, 2023 20:40
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PurpleXVI posted:Stat out King Crimson in any system. I dare you. Level 1-20 bards. Obviously Robert Fripp is the top tier.
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Mar 26, 2023 20:44
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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. An interesting side effect of this is that you can end up with a lot of unconscious people after a fight. We spent an entire session trying to ethically manage an airlock full of wounded space pirates lol
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Mar 26, 2023 21:31
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One other thing I will say is that mongoose traveller 2nd ed has a bunch of slightly crufty combat rules that you should not ignore, because they make it a lot more interesting. Every bullet is a potential death sentence so being clear on all the ways you can stack the deck with cover and aiming and tactics is vital.
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Mar 26, 2023 21:35
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sebmojo posted:An interesting side effect of this is that you can end up with a lot of unconscious people after a fight. We spent an entire session trying to ethically manage an airlock full of wounded space pirates lol
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Mar 26, 2023 21:47
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Ominous Jazz posted:Jojo is a rough example here because how are you gonna do Jail House Rock or Mandom or any of the other freak powers people have? I'm not being a dickhead I want to run them in game. Yeah, stuff like that takes a base system that's able to stat out really abstract things and has PCs with broad enough skill sets that the mechanics still function when you're doing something really far from your normal wheelhouse. So, if you want to do Jailhouse Rock in something like Fate or Cortex, it would probably mean statting out short term memory loss as some kind of abstract but ever-present enemy and have a weird negative mechanical effect they're constantly inflicting on the players. (If it's Fate, let's say something like "when you make a roll, either cover up an aspect you've discovered and forget it IC or roll twice and take the lowest result"). It's probably going to devolve into freeform RP at some point, but if your players are down for a Jojos game they're probably willing to meet you half way. PurpleXVI posted:Stat out King Crimson in any system. I dare you. This is kind of my fault and I'm a huge nerd for trying to explain games I like, so I'm taking up that dare. Which is to say, I'm going to try and explain King Crimson in a really vague version of Cortex Prime's mechanics, because balance is weird and depends a lot on the wider system, and also statting up a final boss is hard and I'm not putting that much effort in. (Also, because Cortex Prime and Sentinels are pretty close as far as games go, so if I keep my rambling vague it applies to both.) First, the basic power dice. The basic powers in these systems are largely effects-based, so what does King Crimson actually do? He hits hard, he dodges everything and he sees the immediate future. So, let's say Superhuman Strength d12, Superhuman Reflexes d12 and Future Sight d8. The actual power's much more complicated than that, but that's just fluff. It's the layer of fiction you put over the mechanical skeleton to make your game feel unique. So, let's rename Superhuman Reflexes to Erased Time d12. In practice it's basically the same as normal dodging, but it feels different and if you have a weird scenario come up where erasing time really matters to a roll you can include it and it will feel right. But that's just the basic mechanics. It's the dice tricks that really make the mechanics feel like the fiction in-game. So again, what does King Crimson do? He makes brutal attacks from hiding, so give him something like "Unknown Emperor: When attacking by surprise, step up your effect die by one". So when he attacks from hiding he pulps people, and the fiction of his ability means he's able to attack by surprise basically whenever. But because you've established that fiction, your players can create an asset to keep track of erased time (say, do that thing with the blood) and negate most of his ability to use this dice trick. He's also constantly seeing the future and dodging based on it, so also give him something like "spend a plot point to reroll your dice pool". It's annoying, but fighting King Crimson is really annoying. If you want to give him a weakness beyond the basic stand stuff you've probably established by this point in the campaign, maybe do something with how he's a self-obsessed rear end in a top hat who's never needed to plan more than five seconds in advance, so step up your effect die if you include an effect you set up earlier in the fight. Again, this is all off the cuff, so consider this a first draft. And after that there's a bunch of other mechanical stuff to make the character as a whole, but the challenge was about representing King Crimson and those other mechanics aren't as directly relevant.
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Mar 26, 2023 22:37
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Lurks With Wolves posted:This is kind of my fault and I'm a huge nerd for trying to explain games I like, so I'm taking up that dare. Which is to say, I'm going to try and explain King Crimson in a really vague version of Cortex Prime's mechanics, because balance is weird and depends a lot on the wider system, and also statting up a final boss is hard and I'm not putting that much effort in. (Also, because Cortex Prime and Sentinels are pretty close as far as games go, so if I keep my rambling vague it applies to both.) Ok but now do GER.
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Mar 26, 2023 22:44
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Nobilis, Lesser Destruction of the Next Few Seconds. Honestly the only thing that makes it hard to stat is the fact that it isn't very consistent about how it works.
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Mar 26, 2023 22:55
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It just works
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Mar 26, 2023 22:59
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Then you probably want a purely declarative dice-free system. Some form of god game with tightly defined domains of control.
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Mar 26, 2023 23:19
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Plutonis posted:Ok but now do GER. it's the sword from wanderhome.
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Mar 26, 2023 23:27
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Plutonis posted:Ok but now do GER. It's been a really long day and it's the last session and the GM was out of ideas so they just made Gold Experience's upgrade give them a bonus to making literally any non-damage effect they try to make instead of just the weird plant tricks it usually applied to. It ended up being really busted so they made him play Fugo in the epilogue session.
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Mar 27, 2023 00:14
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Lurks With Wolves posted:It's been a really long day and it's the last session and the GM was out of ideas so they just made Gold Experience's upgrade give them a bonus to making literally any non-damage effect they try to make instead of just the weird plant tricks it usually applied to. It ended up being really busted so they made him play Fugo in the epilogue session. (Fugo was previously removed from the game for also being too loving busted for any scenarios the GM could come up with.)
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Mar 27, 2023 00:36
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Fugo is actually the guy with the worst Stand power, honestly. I suppose getting a Stand would be a rare case where it actually would make sense to have a huge random power table or Lifepath-style thing.
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Mar 27, 2023 03:56
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Also gotta keep in mind those shonen and superhero fights are written as linear stories and planned out. (To a degree) The improv and game mechanics of role playing don't really lend themselves to that.
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Mar 27, 2023 06:42
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Hey, I just launched a little Kickstarter for Hellrunners, a tabletop RPG about speedrunners glitching and breaking the metaphysical rules of reality the same way they break the rules of videogames. Use a death warp to get into the afterlife, use an item duplication glitch, get arbitrary prayer execution via a data overflow, find the soul of Karl Marx, perform a necromantic ritual, and use a wrong warp to get back out again!  There must be something in the water, with slap me and kiss me doing a speedrunning game and sandy pug doing Hellpiercers. Maybe we were all watching the same videos about speedrunning DOOM a year ago. As with any good speculative work, it also has things to say about the real world. Alongside the obvious inspirations of Dante and John Milton, there's also a big helping of David Graeber in there. Anyway, the game is really fun, and it's cheap, so if you have any interest at all, pick it up and check it out! I'd love to be able to pay for a cool cover for it, but it was fun using public domain art for angels and demons and hell and poo poo.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:43
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