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Has anyone tried building a TV into a table or using a projector to project a map onto a table? Is the effort worth it? Edit: After some research it looks like it might be more sensible to put a TV in a wooden case and put that on the table. Projectors aren't bright enough for a fully-lit room and building TVs into tables means you can't use the table for much else. Gort fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 21:59
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I want to run Wildsea, but I just finished seven years running a D&D setting that was very nearly Wildsea already, and my players would mutiny. One day!
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Feb 12, 2024 22:01
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Lemon-Lime posted:I've been reading Wildsea and the following image sums up my feelings about the game: Woah, when did they make a Bionicle RPG?
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Feb 12, 2024 22:18
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Kestral posted:my players would mutiny
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Feb 12, 2024 22:20
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mllaneza posted:Reading Wildsea is cool and good and more people should try it. It is, but if they don't somehow end up with the Fallen London license to make a Sunless Sea game out of, it'll be the mother of all missed opportunities.
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Feb 12, 2024 22:32
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Kestral posted:I want to run Wildsea, but I just finished seven years running a D&D setting that was very nearly Wildsea already, and my players would mutiny. One day! Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Feb 13, 2024 |
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Feb 13, 2024 00:18
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Gort posted:Has anyone tried building a TV into a table or using a projector to project a map onto a table? Is the effort worth it? I had a millionaire friend who had a high-end home TV/movie projector jankily mounted on some wooden beams over his super fancy gaming table. It worked pretty well! If you mount it in something, table or case, presumably you're going to put something over it to protect it and possibly use real minis on top. Be sure to put the grid on the plexi sheet, or have one with the grid available or whatever, and don't rely on the map on the TV. The gap between the plastic cover and TV is going to make the perspective wonky and hard to deal with, but it's a lot harder with the grid itself being off instead of just the terrain it's on top of.
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Feb 13, 2024 01:07
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That Old Tree posted:I had a millionaire friend who had a high-end home TV/movie projector jankily mounted on some wooden beams over his super fancy gaming table. It worked pretty well! Even millionaires can't afford the official terrain!
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Feb 13, 2024 03:02
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I used to game at an LGS that had a substantial Warhammer/40k tournament scene for being next door to loving Iowa and even they didn't use official terrain, they had an extensive collection of scratch built though.
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Feb 13, 2024 05:05
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My hobby store has a huge collection of both. I'm honestly shocked, there were only 5 or 6 terrain settings last time I was there 6 years ago.
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Feb 13, 2024 05:50
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Gort posted:Has anyone tried building a TV into a table or using a projector to project a map onto a table? Is the effort worth it? A friend of mine has a table with an integrated TV and I'd say it's worth it if you don't have nostalgia for battlemats and you don't mind maps that are kind of narrow.
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Feb 13, 2024 06:54
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I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. Are there other games that (for good or bad) made mental health a major part of the game?
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Feb 13, 2024 15:50
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Sionak posted:I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. I would definitely check out Unknown Armies and Glitch. Unknown Armies has a system where characters gradually become "hardened" to stressors they encounter frequently, which is beneficial in that narrow context but tends to render them less capable in other contexts, and Glitch is basically an extended supernatural metaphor for executive dysfunction and depression. Or not quite "metaphor" but -- well, basically just read Glitch, it's the closest thing I can think of to a genuinely positive portrayal of mental illness through game mechanics. 
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Feb 13, 2024 15:52
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I’d add Trail of Cthulhu, which takes a slightly different approach to mental health rules as a reaction to Call of Cthulhu. It’s also worth comparing Unknown Armies 1st edition and 3rd edition, since the rules evolved. Obscure but still available: Chameleon Eclectic’s Psychosis series, starting with Ship of Fools. Unique early indie game.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:48
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Has ToC been updated? I like the game a lot, but I appreciate the way Night's Black Agents makes the whole thing more elegant and streamlined.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:59
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I haven't read it, but Pendragon's "madness" rules are sometimes discussed in this context as interesting because they're trying to emulate tropes very different from the Cthulhu ones.Gorelab posted:Honestly, I think Pendragon is the only game with 'madness' rules I like. And that isn't trying to be some specific mental illness and more is 'Dramatic Arthurian tantrum for a year or so'. Ghost Leviathan posted:And usually resolved by running naked into the woods and coming back a year later having been taken care of by a kind maiden, a mysterious holy hermit and/or the fairies, possibly having gone on some stranger than usual adventure.
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Feb 13, 2024 17:35
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Thanks all. Those all sound really interesting in their own right. I'd never heard of Glitch. It would be great to have some more positive and unique (like Pendragon) examples, too.
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Feb 13, 2024 18:29
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Sionak posted:I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. Red Markets. The game about scavenging in a zombie apocalypse to make rent and pay for your kids' insulin. The mental health mechanics themselves aren't anything complex. That said, its the only game I've ever had to end a session with "its going to be okay guys, its just a game."
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Feb 13, 2024 19:58
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The base example is always Call of Cthulhu but it’s not really positive as the idea of having “mental HP” is perniciously wrong. At least it doesn’t connect it with suicide in the way some video games or movies do. Unknown Armies 1e and 2e are quite clear on the fact that to be able to use magic you have to be unhealthily obsessed or potentially mentally ill. UA 3e goes further and requires you to be mentally afflicted in order to be good at fighting (which kind of comes up in 2e as well, but less directly) Red Markets has an optional mechanic which directly models the irrational mental effect of long term poverty. Reactions to this I’ve seen online range from “that’s stupid” to sympathetic tears. Glitch is.. odd? It kind of takes a mental affliction but turns it into a supernatural property, but it’s still not a positive one. The only awkward thing is that the class the PCs fit into are the villains of the wider setting, although even that could be vaguely representative (ie, most sad people aren’t bad, but many bad people are sad) I guess? Chuubo’s, The Jennaverse game immediately before Glitch might also do this to some extent, as some of the standard PCs are Glitched and some could potentially represent other issues (Seizhi). That said, I finally got into a game and getting to play basically a manic pixie dream girl for a few hours may have actually made me a bit less depressed  Perfect has villains that deliberately induce mental illness as a punishment for crime, although it’s so obscure there’s little detail. Don’t Rest Your Head has a ton of insanity metaphors as monsters. Underworld had one or two as items.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:15
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I have a general question with a sort of specific application. What in general do you want to see from the second edition of a game you liked the first edition of? (If you want to tell me specific things you'd like to see from a second edition of Strike!, you can do that, too.)
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Feb 13, 2024 20:19
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A revision summary!
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Feb 13, 2024 20:43
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Sionak posted:I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. The Alien RPG has a stress mechanic that is pretty core to play. Stress gives you more dice for checks but bad results on the stress dice cause your character to react in increasingly severe ways
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Feb 13, 2024 21:37
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There's also A Penny For Your Thoughts which seems like a very intense therapy session from the one AP I listened to
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Feb 13, 2024 21:39
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Jimbozig posted:(If you want to tell me specific things you'd like to see from a second edition of Strike!, you can do that, too.) So I ran an absolute ton of Strike for the same three players in settings ranging from Warhammer Fantasy to Shadowrun to the Like a Dragon video games, and it was a blast. Here's what I reckon worked, what I reckon didn't work, what could've worked better with a bit of adjustment, and what I'd like added. Things that are so good they shouldn't be altered: *The skill system. Being able to generate the outcome of any situation with a single D6 to the granularity of success with a bonus/success/success with a cost/twist/twist with a cost is so good I've often ported it to other games that I feel have worse skill systems. (EG: Gubat Banwa) Players love learning skills in play, and like being able to look over their character sheets at the end of a long campaign and remember the time they learned "Getting out of the way of cannonballs" or "Ultimate pullup" or "Big leg". Don't touch the skill system. *The attack system. So many RPGs have rubbish attack systems that use way too many dice and have too many stages to get to the basic good hit/hit/bad hit/miss results. Doing it all with a single D6 is great. Don't touch the attack system. Things that are good but could be better with adjustment: *I really like the concept that player character damage goes up a lot with levels, but their hitpoints stay the same, while NPC hitpoints go up a lot with levels. Everyone likes to generate a big damage number. The problem mostly comes in with the NPC stats - since NPC damage also goes up, you can end up in situations where a critical hit from an NPC can bring a player character from full hitpoints to none, which feels bad. Players gain more "turn a hit into a miss" powers and damage reduction features as they gain levels, which mitigates the problem somewhat, but not every class gets them and for the ones that do they become a sort of second hitpoint pool where even if you're at full HP you're a moment away from being taken out because you're out of auto-miss powers. My suggestion would be to make NPC damage remain pretty much static as levels go up, but not give player classes the extra defensive powers. *Feats. I feel like I was seeing the same ones too often. Toughness was very common, Fast Reactions were very common, every archer had Fast Archer, for example. Maybe four feats per character is too many for the size of the feat list. I thought a way to improve feats would be to have maybe only two - one you start with and one you get mid-way through the character's life - but they improve as you level up. *One of my players said they really liked action points and using them on tricks, but they thought that activating complications to get action points felt too much like "seizing the reins from the GM". Not sure how you fix that exactly, but that's why I'm not a game designer. "Awesome points" felt like a necessity the characters really needed to get by in combat, so in the end I was just giving every player two action points at the start of a session rather than one - an "assumed awesome point" if you like. *Kits. One of my players focused on the lying skill, putting Expert and Master on it and the feedback was that it felt that they couldn't fail any more. When the core skill system is so good, I think it's important to avoid anything that messes with it too much. Things that didn't work for us: *Chase rules. When I ran them they seemed unnecessary. A series of skill checks did the job just fine. *Team Conflict. Same as chase rules. It felt like a lot of rules, but with effectively the same results as a few skill checks. Am I getting across that I like the skill system? *The Wealth system. Felt very complex and kinda unnecessary. I didn't really have a problem with either giving my players an explicit amount of money (helped that the Shadowrun and Like a Dragon settings are close to the real world in this regard so players should know what say, a sports car might cost) or an item like "A lot of money" that could be degraded by Costs on skill rolls to "Some money" and then "Not much money" before being destroyed entirely. What I'd like added: *NPC enemies that are easier to field. I'm a lazy GM, and the gold standard for me in this regard was 4E D&D's monster manuals. Often in those books you'd turn to a monster page and it wouldn't just be "Goblin", you'd get one that shoots arrows at you, one that rides a wolf or something, a sneaky one that tries to backstab you, and one that uses magic. That's an interesting set of enemies for a good encounter right there, and you don't have to do any prep at all. Strike gives you 16 premade templates which is okay, but you still have to work out their hitpoints, modify them based on their level, and modify them again if you want them to be anything other than a standard monster. Beyond that, it's pretty much homebrew time. It'd be good to have a Strike Monster Manual (or whatever) built around interesting encounters - if you have a fight against ninjas, here's three kinds of ninja you might fight. Tough because Strike doesn't have as much specificity in its setting as D&D does, but I still want to be lazy. *Trap rules. Every good RPG should have a section where it tells you how to run a room where the walls are closing in to crush you. I could do the work to think about that stuff on my own, but it's much easier for me if I can just look over a big list of traps and go, "That one looks good, I'll put that in the adventure". *Treasure/Equipment/Loot. I know there's a section called basically this, and it does have some examples, but I want a big list I can just pick from, not to use my own brain. Something that doesn't really fit above: *The "striker" role. I always just kind of wish that every role was a striker but with something extra and then that there was no striker role. So leaders can still do striker level damage (or at least similar to what everyone else can put out), but they also get all their healing and buffing stuff. Defenders still get to defend everyone and be super tough, but they can also do big damage with a decent roll. It just felt like by high level when other roles did damage it was basically nothing compared to what the striker could do.
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Feb 13, 2024 22:08
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Jimbozig posted:I have a general question with a sort of specific application. mellonbread posted:Listened to the RPPR game design discussion from late last year, where they talked about what changes they would make if they did a 2e of their games.
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Feb 13, 2024 22:36
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Eclipse phase has some interesting instability rules, and there's that everyone is John game where you are multiple personalities in a single person trying to accomplish tasks
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Feb 13, 2024 22:47
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Sionak posted:I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. There's the old PDQ game, Dead Inside, in which you lose your soul. I always wanted to run a game with it. It's a weird early 2000's game, the art is super corny, but hits a vibe I really liked and that felt weirdly familiar to a time when I was pretty depressed. I think it threads a needle pretty well given the time and scope. Dead Inside core book posted:In DI, the soul is a mystical essence that is separate from yet dwells within the body. It rarely interacts with gross matter. It’s energy, impulse, willpower, chi, force. It can be grown, wasted, burned, given, traded, stolen. I always liked that you have to die inside to realize how impossibly beautiful and simultaneously terrifying the world is, and most people just don't even notice all that. There are a lot of ways to get your soul back, most involve interacting with the new people/places you can visit and 'cultivating' soul energy in positive ways, but there are shortcuts that some people exploit and vices that degrade.
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Feb 14, 2024 00:15
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Sionak posted:I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. I just got a copy of Deviant the Renegades which I’d hope come up in the WoD spaces. I’d also recommend Double Cross, Mothership, Broken Cities, Mazes, Wizards of the Wastes, Blades in the Dark, the non-d20 One Ring, traveller, Fate, Heart, first edition 7th Sea, -“and Die: the RPG. A lot of games will riff on mental health somewhere between resilience, exhaustion, call of Cthulhu, and like Unknown Armies.
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Feb 14, 2024 00:36
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Sorry to quote-post here, but I do agree with pretty much everything on that list. The rather short list of exceptions being: - Keep the damage mitigation reactions, those are fun! (instead of higher damage, at higher levels they could be accounted for by enemies simply throwing more attacks, or having a few situational re-rolls). - Have more feats to pick from, rather than less picks. Possibly roll this into one thing with boons / blessings / loot / gear / augmentations / secret techniques etc. Optionally acquire all of them narratively, maybe capped to a number of active traits dependent on your character level. Optionally have them grouped by tiers and / or upgradable. - "seizing the reins from the GM" can be great for some groups. Whether it's activating complications or introducing new facts / elements to a scene. It's the kind of thing that can put a straight up multiplier on available creativity at the table and makes many players pay more attention to detail, to look for hooks and opportunities to join in with their own little moments and ideas. But of course it's not for everyone, and if you have a more top-down style of gm-player relationship, maybe action points work better as a "devil's bargain" where the GM prompts players. - I don't personally need traps. Take this as an indication of just how strongly I agree with all the points Gort made that I'm not bringing up.
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Feb 14, 2024 02:50
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Jimbozig posted:What in general do you want to see from the second edition of a game you liked the first edition of? a dedicated section explaining the differences from the first and second editions, for the people who've come from the first edition either as an itemized list of changes, or even just a broad declaration of ethos and intent
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Feb 14, 2024 03:21
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Sionak posted:Thanks all. Those all sound really interesting in their own right. I'd never heard of Glitch. It would be great to have some more positive and unique (like Pendragon) examples, too. Seconding Glitch, it's the most beautiful game I own. A masterclass on handling difficult topics in a way that doesn't feel gross.
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Feb 14, 2024 03:25
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Incidentally, Jenna's been posting some previews of the new game she's going to Kickstart in March, The Far Roofs: Adventures with the Rats.
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Feb 14, 2024 03:57
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Halloween Jack posted:Has ToC been updated? I like the game a lot, but I appreciate the way Night's Black Agents makes the whole thing more elegant and streamlined. Second Edition has been announced and will crowdfund later this year. It’s gonna be on Backerkit. Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan is working on it with Ken Hite, which I suspect will be a good addition. I think Swords of the Serpentine and the various two player games are the current peak of GUMSHOE design, in fairly different ways, so there’s a lot of room to polish. There will also be new campaign frames.
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Feb 14, 2024 05:37
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Rand Brittain posted:Incidentally, Jenna's been posting some previews of the new game she's going to Kickstart in March, The Far Roofs: Adventures with the Rats. What happened to Nobilis 4e?
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Feb 14, 2024 06:03
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ninjoatse.cx posted:What happened to Nobilis 4e? With the track record that game line has, it's probably on hold because some fae have stolen the words out of Jenna's head and she has to unravel the riddle of the wind before she can reclaim them.
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Feb 14, 2024 06:20
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ninjoatse.cx posted:What happened to Nobilis 4e? It's still in playtesting and will come out after The Far Roofs. The Far Roofs has kind of been on the cooker for quite a while.
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Feb 14, 2024 06:34
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Far Roofs doesn't really sound like something that would interest me thematically / tonally... except it's Jenna Moran, she has the benefit of the doubt a dozen times over.
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Feb 14, 2024 14:11
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Sionak posted:I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. Alien has a "stress" mechanic. In VERY tl;dr terms, you have a number for a stat and a number for a skill. That's the number of d6s you roll to see if you can do something. Any "6" means you succeed. If you fail you can re-roll - you up your "stress level" by one, add a "stress die" (a different colored d6) and roll. This adds a chance to succeed - you're desperate - but any "1" on a Stress die means you panic. You also accumulate stress dice from, well, stress. Seeing friends panic, terrifying situations, etc. More stress = higher stress level = more stress dice = higher chance of panicking. If - when - you roll that one on a "stress die" you roll on this table and add your stress level:  You can reduce stress, but that takes time and safety. It's simple and straightforward, and fits the source material; things go well until they really, really don't and everything spirals out of control.
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Feb 15, 2024 23:10
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Sionak posted:I'm thinking of writing an article series on mental health and its depictions in RPGs. I've already hit up the World of Darkness thread and got some good information relating to those games. I know about Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green already. I've heard about the weird disorder table in TMNT and Other Strangeness. The superhero game, Underground, has it as a core mechanic. Due mainly to combat veterans who have been modified with xeno DNA to give them superpowers. The inherently (and no pun intended) alien nature of those powers conflicting with a person's body image as well as the primary management for for the trauma of assimilating those powers is by using a four-color comic-style fantasy world simulation directly beamed into the soldier's brain (called Slumberland) and then using incredibly powerful and dangerous anti-psychotics as the main form of aftercare. The 'heroes' in that game are (justifiably) ten kinds of mentally unstable. We called it the Marshal Law RPG after the comic by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill.
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Feb 16, 2024 00:12
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That sounds scarily like a game in which every PC is Homelander.
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Feb 16, 2024 00:54
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