|
Leperflesh posted:Oh, then I used the DTAS term in the way I intended to mean it, because that's what I meant. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Mar 19, 2024 |
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 11:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 05:00 |
|
|
Does anyone know of any games other than the incomparable danger patrol that directly use a set list of archetypes as their ability scores? So instead of anyone who wants to play a bruiser type character needing to take high Might, there's just an ability score called Bruiser that's used for unarmed and melee attacks, HP, athletics etc.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 12:18
|
|
|
Splicer posted:instead of anyone who wants to play a bruiser type character needing to take high Might, there's just an ability score called Bruiser that's used for unarmed and melee attacks, HP, athletics etc. Isn't that the same thing?
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 12:21
|
|
|
Tarnop posted:That thread would be a quarter as long if the author didn't go: There's pros and cons to a review that reflects the reading experience; a book might have a last chapter twist that makes everything "make sense" so a follow along review will give you a better idea of how it reads than one which is forced to take the ending into account. So a follow along review of an RPG makes sense, because if the RPG is hard to learn based on reading the book that will come across better than a post-read review might. It's also more "honest" in that it's harder to just say "Everyone has superpowers!!! Dumb WoW for babies!" when you're actually quoting chapter by chapter. Less charitably 1) it's a lot less work than a properly formatted and edited review 2) the format avoids you having to say anything substantive or put your neck out 3) the format leaves you a lot of wriggle room to walk things back because it's all just "initial impressions"
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 12:27
|
|
|
YggdrasilTM posted:Isn't that the same thing? It's easy to argue that it's "realistic" to keep str and con split because <bullshit reasons> but "Why do we have separate Powerlifter and a Marathon Runner stats that both suck but a single Nerd stats that gets three times their stuff" is more obvious (assuming you don't have absolutely terminal D&D poisoning). Archetypes are more evocative. Bruiser + intimidate conjures an immediate image, as does Conman + intimidate. It's pretty easy to see when one would work but not another, when either would work, and why rolling a slightly lower Conman might be a better option for intimidating a CEO in his own boardroom over your higher Bruiser score... but also why the right speech and circumstances might merit Bruiser ("Yeah you can call security, but will you be alive when they get here?") Similarly "Bruiser 5 Conman 3" conjures an immediate picture of a character, as does "Bruiser 2 Conman 5". "Might 5 Cha 3" and "Might 3 Cha 5" not so much.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 12:54
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Does anyone know of any games other than the incomparable danger patrol that directly use a set list of archetypes as their ability scores? So instead of anyone who wants to play a bruiser type character needing to take high Might, there's just an ability score called Bruiser that's used for unarmed and melee attacks, HP, athletics etc. The Cortex+ Leverage RPG did this exactly— I think the stats were Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Mastermind, and Thief.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 15:25
|
|
|
Arguably, PDQ does this, in that all of your abilities (Qualities) are keyed off of your descriptive attributes; but they're not taken from a book of templates, you can freeform them. Here is a PDQ character I made a long long time ago (2009), as an example: Yoda Short, green, elderly, looks like an oven mitt, is one with the Force. Yoda is the perfect example of everything that makes Jedi both great, and terrible. Endlessly spouting pseudo-religious platitudes with inexplicably broken grammar, Yoda somehow manages to sound wise despite being consistently wrong in every judgment call he's ever made. Still, he's good-natured, generally friendly, gregarious, crochety, and one must not forget, an immensely powerful and dangerous Force-weilder. Also, possibly immortal, albeit with certain stringent limitations. +6 Jedi If it can be done with the Force, Yoda can do it better than you. Lifting things, foreseeing future events, kicking rear end with a lightsaber, and Bewaring the Dark Side, it's all just a matter of a little concentration (and perhaps a strange indenting of the brow) for Yoda. +2 Little green muppet Unless they know who he is, people tend to dismiss Yoda as being harmless. He's short, elderly, obviously crippled, and his speech impediment doesn't say much for his intelligence either. Yoda uses this to his advantage frequently, particularly when he can then later reveal his obvious superiority as a condescending object-lesson for some young whippersnapper. +2 900 years old Look as good, you will not. Yoda's seen some poo poo, man. 900 years is a hell of a long time. He's probably an expert on dozens of cultures, knows thousands of people, and has the experience of ages. Not that you can tell. +2 Somewhat Immortal If Yoda dies, he becomes more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Or, possibly, an impotent blue ghost, incapable of doing anything but occasionally haunting a protagonist or two. It's hard to say, I've only seen the movies, maybe Jedi ghosts have more powers in the expanded universe? -2 Light Side Yoda is utterly devoted to an obviously irrational ideology that requires he shun the 'dark side' of the force, the part made of genuine emotions. Despite repeated and ongoing evidence that this is an utterly failed philosophy, and the obvious problem with taking children and systematically dehumanizing them while simultaneously teaching them all manner of dangerous martial arts (as well as arming them!), Yoda doggedly sticks to his idea that it's better to be calm and collected, even as the entire galaxy goes to poo poo all around you. Also evidently he has no problem with using clones for cannon-fodder. If you're not force-sensitive, you're just a pawn, I guess. e. in retrospect, +2 Somewhat Immortal is a bad Quality; it probably only matters once, and when it does, it is a thing that happens permanently. Really he should just gain the quality "+2 Force Ghost" or similar when he dies. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Mar 19, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 16:17
|
|
|
Splicer posted:It's a live read reaction review which is a thing. Read -> reactions, no editing. Or a lot of editing but edited in a way to still read like a live read. Oh they still manage to get a dumb wow for babies in there, don't worry about that. So I'm inclined towards the less charitable reading
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 16:30
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Does anyone know of any games other than the incomparable danger patrol that directly use a set list of archetypes as their ability scores? So instead of anyone who wants to play a bruiser type character needing to take high Might, there's just an ability score called Bruiser that's used for unarmed and melee attacks, HP, athletics etc. Off the top of my head: Leverage (depending on what menu of options you choose, Cortex Prime too), On Mighty Thews, Black Star, Unknown Armies 3e, Star Trek Adventures, (and several of the other "lighter" 2d20 system games like Dune and John Carter of Mars), Wushu (technically an open-ended "define your character by whatever you think matters" but still qualifies IMO) Heroquest (same kinda deal), probably others I'm forgetting. Some of those are hyrids (e.g. Leverage does have traditional ability scores in addition to the roles, but since they don't work like D&D where they determine your baseline abilities like to-hit or hp, I'm still counting them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 16:46
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Does anyone know of any games other than the incomparable danger patrol that directly use a set list of archetypes as their ability scores? So instead of anyone who wants to play a bruiser type character needing to take high Might, there's just an ability score called Bruiser that's used for unarmed and melee attacks, HP, athletics etc.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 17:46
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Does anyone know of any games other than the incomparable danger patrol that directly use a set list of archetypes as their ability scores? So instead of anyone who wants to play a bruiser type character needing to take high Might, there's just an ability score called Bruiser that's used for unarmed and melee attacks, HP, athletics etc.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 17:57
|
|
|
Shout out to my favorite stat array in Outgunned: Brawn, Nerves, Smooth, Focus, and Crime.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 18:36
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:This makes me irrationally angry. The whole point about the AW GM rules is that they're not optional. This is exactly the design principle of that type of games. Copy a bunch of mechanics from other good games, claim to have the positive qualities of all of them, and declare everything optional to imply that the GM must paper over all of the inconsistencies.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 19:41
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:Shout out to my favorite stat array in Outgunned: Brawn, Nerves, Smooth, Focus, and Crime. I like honey heist (bear, and crime) and sexy battle wizards (sexy, battle, wizard obv)
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 20:38
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:Shout out to my favorite stat array in Outgunned: Brawn, Nerves, Smooth, Focus, and Crime. Outgunned, Household (Society, Academia,War,Street), and Broken Compass (Action,Guts.Wild,Society,Knowledge,Crime) are all so good.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 21:14
|
|
|
3:16: Carnage Amongst The Stars has FA (Fighting Ability, lets you do all combat) and NFA (Non-Fighting Ability, literally everything else).
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 21:18
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Arguably, PDQ does this, in that all of your abilities (Qualities) are keyed off of your descriptive attributes; but they're not taken from a book of templates, you can freeform them. FMguru posted:Over The Edge and Hero Wars/HeroQuest/QuestWorlds have no ability scores, but instead use player-defined keywords that are assigned a rating. a bunch of people posted:various stuff
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 21:24
|
|
|
Splicer posted:I was thinking of mentioning PDQ and such as explicitly not what I was thinking of. I'm talking Savage Worlds/GURPS/a classless D&D level of definition and crunch but with genre archetypes rather than physical and mental descriptors. Bruiser always gives the following benefits, and there's optional abilities that say "make a Bruiser roll to X" or "requires +3 Bruiser" or whatever. In service of what, though? “Requires +3 bruiser” is a design tactic, not a goal. What experiences and decision-points and narrative tools are you looking for the system to provide with these optional abilities keyed on Bruiser rather than STR?
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 21:27
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:3:16: Carnage Amongst The Stars has FA (Fighting Ability, lets you do all combat) and NFA (Non-Fighting Ability, literally everything else).
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 21:36
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:In service of what, though? “Requires +3 bruiser” is a design tactic, not a goal. What experiences and decision-points and narrative tools are you looking for the system to provide with these optional abilities keyed on Bruiser rather than STR? Splicer posted:It removes a step of abstraction and puts the focus firmly on archetypes over faux-realism. I mean, that works for me. You can make a case that “Bruiser” is mostly just “Strength” by another name, but I’d say collapsing related stats together under an evocative/defamiliarized name is an entirely defensible design goal.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 22:04
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:3:16: Carnage Amongst The Stars has FA (Fighting Ability, lets you do all combat) and NFA (Non-Fighting Ability, literally everything else). 3:16 is also an absolute blast. If you love Helldivers 2, check out 3:16. It would not at all surprise me if some people on the Helldivers dev team had played it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 22:19
|
|
|
Parkreiner posted:I mean, that works for me. You can make a case that “Bruiser” is mostly just “Strength” by another name, but I’d say collapsing related stats together under an evocative/defamiliarized name is an entirely defensible design goal. that also seems like a tactic and not a goal, but I had missed that Splicer post about emphasizing the archetype, thank you
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 22:23
|
|
|
If you have that type of Stats, why do you have Stats or Skills at all? Just use class levels for everything.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 23:18
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:In service of what, though? “Requires +3 bruiser” is a design tactic, not a goal. What experiences and decision-points and narrative tools are you looking for the system to provide with these optional abilities keyed on Bruiser rather than STR?
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 23:19
|
|
|
YggdrasilTM posted:If you have that type of Stats, why do you have Stats or Skills at all? Just use class levels for everything.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 23:23
|
|
|
Splicer posted:*waves vaguely at all my posts from the past couple of days about why classes and ability scores don't mix* so if I'm asking about ability score variants you can safely assume I'm either having a psychotic break or I'm talking about some manner of points based system where classes aren't a thing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2024 23:26
|
|
|
Kestral posted:3:16 is also an absolute blast. If you love Helldivers 2, check out 3:16. It would not at all surprise me if some people on the Helldivers dev team had played it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 00:49
|
|
|
Splicer posted:I enjoy lego brick systems with interlocking components, I could type a lot of words about why but maybe some other time. If you're asking why Bruiser over Str, because *waves vaguely at a whole bunch of posts that combine into basing ability scores around "real world" attributes actually working very well* I would be interested in the LEGO words for sure! I’m not sure that Bruiser is any less “real world” than Strength, and indeed it seems like you would choose that word over “Wet” or “Lurple” specifically because players would start with some sense of its meaning imported from their real world experiences. People might not each bring in the same meaning of the word, but that’s the source of some of the problem with SDCIWC as well. I guess Bruiser carries less external baggage than Strength (of conviction? of odor? like Pillars of Eternity’s Power, so of anything you do?) so that you can set the definition more specifically to your game’s meaning, maybe? I’m not sure that’s actually true for people who aren’t terminally TTRPG-rule brained, though. I think what I want in attributes is distance from the idea that they make characters (people) better in some way than others with a lower such attribute. You shouldn’t always want more of one, like you would with most RPG’s attributes. I don’t actually know what that looks like while still having attributes differentiate characters usefully, other than perhaps them all being expressions of tradeoffs. “Tall” is useful if you’re trying to reach something high or see over a wall, but a detriment if you’re trying to fit into the guard’s uniform or sleep in coach. I want more structure than with FATE’s labels, though, because I also want some lego. I also have 1.15mg/kg of ketamine moving through me now, so I might not be making any sense at all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 01:10
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:I think what I want in attributes is distance from the idea that they make characters (people) better in some way than others with a lower such attribute. You shouldn’t always want more of one, like you would with most RPG’s attributes. I don’t actually know what that looks like while still having attributes differentiate characters usefully, other than perhaps them all being expressions of tradeoffs. “Tall” is useful if you’re trying to reach something high or see over a wall, but a detriment if you’re trying to fit into the guard’s uniform or sleep in coach. I want more structure than with FATE’s labels, though, because I also want some lego. I think the key distinction is that "tall" is merely descriptive (unless you're Lurch-sized) while Bruiser +3 attempts to quantify how strong of a bruiser archetype you are. If I'm playing a game where I have a limited number of points to put toward my "defining characteristics," I'm sure not putting any into "tall" (unless there's a secondary pool of 'flavor characteristics'). How often is "reach the top shelf" going to show up in the game without it becoming a joke? In theory, a character could have as many descriptive characteristics as the player wants so long as they're not contradictory nor encroaching on "defining characteristics." ("I'm 'Brilliant.' That means I should be able to figure out the killer from these clues." "No, it means you can do the Sunday Times crossword puzzle without a lot of outside help. Jane's Gumshoe +3 is a lot more useful here.") Your idea about higher not always being better is an interesting one. Berserker +4 is probably worse than Berserker +1 if the party is definitively outclassed and needs to exit stage left. Doctor +4 might mean you refuse to leave a severely wounded opponent on the battlefield without treating them, lest they bleed out, while Medic +2 might just give the poor bastard a shot of morphine and Corpsman +1 might spit in his eye for trying to kill his buddies in the first place. The idea of a personality being encompassed in the "defining characteristics," whatever we call them -- at least the highest ones -- is an interesting one, and an obvious miss by (e.g.) most Fate implementations (which rely on Aspects to do this job, which might smell the same, but aren't necessarily as essential? There's a difference there I'm not putting my finger on.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 01:09
|
|
|
The problem with aspects is that mechanically they're all equal which raises some questions.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 01:13
|
|
|
EightFlyingCars posted:this game is dumb. making a critical role rpg is dumb. what we actually need is an Oglaf rpg There's an artist on Twitter named Rapscallion who's doing basically that(twice in fact, they first did a 5e based Cyberpunk system and are now doing a more OSR inspired fantasy game), can't really directly link to their stuff because well they really like tits and dongs and not a lot of their posts don't contain at least one or the other
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 01:55
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:The problem with aspects is that mechanically they're all equal which raises some questions. I beat people up using my martial artist class. You beat people up using your scientist class. Totally different.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 02:10
|
|
|
Ooooh baby do I ever love games where investing heavily in your design plan is actually a bad thing, and investing the minimum is worse than just not putting points there at all. Lemme just put five dots in Teacher and whoa what do you mean he's far too famous and busy to ever meet or deal with me? I've got one dot in doctor so I kick sick people I come across because they failed at not being sick. Mmm, delicious.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 03:56
|
|
|
Ah yes, the White Wolf School of game design.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 04:02
|
|
|
i put too many points into Electrochemistry and now i can't stop doing every drug i run across
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 04:38
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:The problem with aspects is that mechanically they're all equal which raises some questions. If you go way back in the history to when 'Aspects in Fudge' were first posted about online, they were rated from 1 to 3. But for the kind of game Fate ended up being, that's just more fiddliness than is needed. Otherwise you end up with people trying to use their best aspects for everything.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 06:54
|
|
|
redleader posted:i put too many points into Electrochemistry and now i can't stop doing every drug i run across This is very Unknown Armies.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 08:24
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:Ah yes, the White Wolf School of game design. A long time ago I learned Jonathan Tweet was a roommate of Mark Rein-Hagen and it was Tweet who mostly wrote the original white wolf engine. It wasn’t a bad little engine but man did it get stretched far too thin.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 09:19
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:The problem with aspects is that mechanically they're all equal which raises some questions. Yeah, that's kind of my issue with aspects- you can't really map them to anything in particular in the physical reality of the game, so they tend to just get mashed whenever vaguely related, which i think eliminates the dramatically interesting aspects of a character /not/ being able to do something. Sure, it's fun for five minutes to talk about how Bruiser might be used for a Muscle Wizard to cast spells or whatever, but i think it's interesting when things have limits.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 12:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 05:00 |
|
|
Yeah, it's the same problem you get with FATE and the like where you're incentivised to game the system at every turn, and even (heck, especially) a kid can figure out that if your character is best at underwater basket weaving it behooves you to try to solve every situation with it. It's actually just kinda hard to develop a system that gives you different meaningful options and strengths and weaknesses for solving problems. The forbidden edition's whole thing is making sure every player character has at least the minimum toolkit to perform their role, which is the entire point of a character class system, and then gives options for further specialisation and additional abilities. Having limited resources also incentivises varying your approach, and strategising and coordinating to make the best use of those resources- pulling off full on combo moves in RPGs is fun and characterful as gently caress. And this can work in narrative systems as well as tactical ones.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 14:39
|
|