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CNN Sports Ticker posted:As someone who's writing a game with an eye toward self-publication I have to ask/am curious; what is it that you don't like about Burning Wheel's writing? Personally I've always thought it was quite a good read, written in the conversational tone that I like, but I know some people don't like that.
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Nov 11, 2010 09:38
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Kestral posted:His partner on the (admittedly brilliant) FreeMarket, Jared Sorensen, does seem that smug, but I can't hold that against the guy who wrote InSpectres and Action Castle. Are there any good podcasts or recordings of people playing Freemarket. The game seems really cool but I'm having a bit of trouble trying to figure out how sessions of the game would work out overall.
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Nov 11, 2010 12:05
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Mugendai posted:Are there any good podcasts or recordings of people playing Freemarket. The game seems really cool but I'm having a bit of trouble trying to figure out how sessions of the game would work out overall. Only one that I know of, but they messed up some fairly important rules throughout and as a result it isn't a very good session. I got to play FreeMarket with a fantastic GM at 10/10/10, and the impression I got from him is that sessions start out powerfully driven by your characters' Memories, then explode into a kind of controlled chaos. Being good at improvisational GMing is pretty much a requirement. As for what PCs do, you determine that at character creation: once you've built your group's MRCZ you'll have a clear idea of what it does, why it does it, exactly what it needs if it wants to do it better. Since all the characters are totally dedicated to making the MRCZ awesome, they need what it needs. The GM weaves Memories into these needs and wants, and the game just hums right along. Edit: Naar, I think I can understand that. Some people just don't like the authorial voice, and the corebooks could be a lot clearer about how the game is actually meant to run. The Adventure Burner that just came out does a lot to address the clarity issue, but nothing for the authorial voice. I'd happily run a Burning Wheel one-shot over Skype for people who found it hard to get through the corebooks. It won't change the text in the books, but it would at least demonstrate the mechanics and what a lot of people find compelling about them. Kestral fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Nov 11, 2010 |
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Nov 11, 2010 17:57
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About Noblis:Doc Hawkins posted:wrestling wars bodily to the ground and making them promise to be just. This is what my character named Kord- the personification of comic book heroism, will do in the Nobilis game I eventually play in.
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Nov 12, 2010 00:45
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My favorite concept was a guy I knew played in a game with a PC who was the Avatar of Thursday. It was Thursday wherever he went, he could know anything that had ever happened or will happen on Thursday, etc.
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Nov 12, 2010 00:57
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Maddman posted:My favorite concept was a guy I knew played in a game with a PC who was the Avatar of Thursday. It was Thursday wherever he went, he could know anything that had ever happened or will happen on Thursday, etc. His mortal enemies, the lackeys of the Cult of Friday, are working for the weekend.
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Nov 12, 2010 01:26
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However he did have Powers over Must-See-Tv and so ensured that he was the only commercially viable day of the week
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Nov 12, 2010 01:27
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Kestral posted:they messed up some fairly important rules throughout and as a result it isn't a very good game. ftfy :iamafag: My friends went through FreeMarket character creation, but I suddenly ground everything to a halt when I said "I have no idea how to GM a MRCZ that contains NPCs as members, which it seems like would be the case in almost any concept we come up with. Let's try to find out where it says how to do that!" We never played again. I liked the concept, and many of the rules, but until I find a way that the players can play "the MRCZ game,". I'd probably rather do it as an Inspectres hack. quote:I'd happily run a Burning Wheel one-shot over Skype for people who found it hard to get through the corebooks. It won't change the text in the books, but it would at least demonstrate the mechanics and what a lot of people find compelling about them. You should do this. I can't deny that people have fun playing the game (or that I might be able to).
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Nov 12, 2010 07:36
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Maddman posted:My favorite concept was a guy I knew played in a game with a PC who was the Avatar of Thursday. It was Thursday wherever he went, he could know anything that had ever happened or will happen on Thursday, etc. "No man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid." is a pretty good summary of how most people play rpgs, at that
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Nov 12, 2010 11:23
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Doc Hawkins posted:ftfy :iamafag: The NPCs were a mistake. Starting MRCZs are frequently tiny little groups of people who are obsessed with / incredibly enthusiastic about something, often something quite esoteric or bizarre. It makes sense that there would only be two or three or four people who'd want to, say, grow crystalline-organic singing plants or run the solar system's weirdest day-care center. The way it was explained to me at 10/10/10 was something like this: say you've got a MRCZ that runs a coffee shop. The people in that MRCZ? They loving love coffee, they want you to love it just as much as they do, and they're willing to work hard for essentially nothing just to make you happy and enjoying the thing they enjoy too. They're all about sharing their enthusiasm for something, and if it catches on then the MRCZ grows. quote:You should do this. I can't deny that people have fun playing the game (or that I might be able to). I will do this if there's sufficient interest. Probably a straight run-through of The Sword, which has four PCs optimally.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:14
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Kestral posted:The NPCs were a mistake. ...On our part?! What, so no player MRCZs should ever have NPCs in them? No followers? No dojos? No underlings? We can never fulfill our dreams of having anything larger than a coffee shop? quote:They're all about sharing their enthusiasm for something, and if it catches on then the MRCZ grows. When and by how much? There's detailed conflict resolution for how to raise your MRCZ through the tiers. If we're just supposed to handwave marshalling the resources necessary for that, the game should have the balls to explain why.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:47
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So who wants to play Fiasco sometime this weekend? And what problems are there with running it online? I'm at GMT+10 and I've got all of Sunday and Monday free, so yeah. I've been checking out http://infrno.net/ and I think it would do the trick, it's voice-chat/die rolling/a tabletop, chat, etc, we can throw down text boxes for relationships and stuff.
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Nov 13, 2010 07:40
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Kestral posted:I will do this if there's sufficient interest. Probably a straight run-through of The Sword, which has four PCs optimally. Well I'm pretty busy with a 6-month old baby, and I didn't have trouble getting through the books at all and know the rules, but I'd play in a BW one-shot of pretty much any description if interest is what's needed (time permitting).
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Nov 13, 2010 23:30
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On the Luke Crane/Burning Wheel/etc. topic - I think many people's problem (mine included) is not that Luke gives you advice on how the game 'should' be run - plenty of RPGs, especially 'Indie' RPGs, do that. It's just that he does it poorly - Montsegur 1244, Fiasco, In a Wicked Age, etc. all give talk about how to play, but they manage to not make you want to punch the author in the face. Who knows! Anyway I am gonna bother people again about Montsegur 1244. I have the PDF, but I have no one to play it with - my irl group has no interest in it, and its not exactly conducive to forums play. Anyone have any experience?
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Nov 14, 2010 06:20
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I'm in the same boat as you. Have it, have heard great things about it, haven't gotten a chance to play it. I know an expansion is coming soon.
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Nov 14, 2010 07:24
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My favourite indie RPG is still 3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars. It's a very simple game to learn, and character creation is a breeze because you have only two main stats: Fighting Ability, and Non-Fighting Ability. The game puts the players on the low rungs of a brigade of space marines (but capable of promotion) who have been sent out by Earth in order to cleanse the entire universe of anything that could possibly threaten the home planet. The twist is that there's just enough information in the book to tell you that Earth has ulterior motives for sending these brave soldiers out into space. It's a great pick-up game, but it also develops very nicely into a campaign. I find it works best starting as a light-hearted comedy that slowly develops into black comedy and gets darker over time. The flashback mechanic helps with this, allowing you to develop more of the backstory as the game goes on. bewilderment fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Nov 16, 2010 |
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Nov 14, 2010 09:03
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What I like about 3:16, aside from the general awesomeness, carnage and such, is that it started out as a 24 Hour RPG and then got polished. I like seeing finished products emerge from things like that. Also, the author Gregor Hutton, is working AD 316 which is a Roman themed version, and Carnage Amongst the Tribes, a fantasy version. Roman carnage!
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Nov 14, 2010 11:13
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Oh man, I'd love to have an experienced GM take me through some indie games sometime. I've got a few of them and I like reading through the rules, but for me there's always this disconnect between reading the rules and actually being able to put them in play. I've tried running Primetime Adventures and Shab-Al Hiri Roach, but I felt lost and I really wasn't able to effectively explain things like setting stakes to my players, so none of us had such a good time with it. Kestral, what are you thinking as far as a schedule for the game? I don't have Skype, but I'd definitely be willing to get it and pick up a microphone. I know there's a podcast for board games called "How It's Played" that basically just goes over the rules for how to play each game. Is there anything similar for RPGs?
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Nov 14, 2010 20:28
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Not that I know of. The Durham 3 and Paul Tevis used to do things like that, but their sites are defunct now.  However, my crew discovered that you can upload almost anything to archive.org, and we aren't the only people who use that fact to record complete sessions and upload them. Just search for audio tagged "actual play" (or maybe RPG?) and you'll find complete recordings of sessions. Unedited, poorly recorded, lots of D&D...but if you've got the patience, and the group tries to remain aware of their "audience," they can be great.
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Nov 14, 2010 21:09
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VirtualBasement posted:Oh man, I'd love to have an experienced GM take me through some indie games sometime. I've got a few of them and I like reading through the rules, but for me there's always this disconnect between reading the rules and actually being able to put them in play. I've tried running Primetime Adventures and Shab-Al Hiri Roach, but I felt lost and I really wasn't able to effectively explain things like setting stakes to my players, so none of us had such a good time with it. I'm not exactly an experienced GM, but I have lots of indie games and no players, and I've been thinking about organising some Skype/inferno games, just to get through playing them all. My only troubles are time zones and my irregular work roster, but we could do it on a 'whenever we can all play' basis.
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Nov 15, 2010 00:49
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:I'm not exactly an experienced GM, but I have lots of indie games and no players, and I've been thinking about organising some Skype/inferno games, just to get through playing them all. My only troubles are time zones and my irregular work roster, but we could do it on a 'whenever we can all play' basis. Sounds good to me. I'm free weekday nights, for the most part. Email me at my forums handle at gmail.com. Thanks for the tip, Doc!
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Nov 15, 2010 03:52
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VirtualBasement posted:Kestral, what are you thinking as far as a schedule for the game? I don't have Skype, but I'd definitely be willing to get it and pick up a microphone. I haven't gotten to the scheduling point. If there's three or four interested players I'll start organizing something. Just to be clear though, this would be a one-shot "convention scenario" rather than a full-blown campaign or short series. I'm already GMing one BW game and may be starting a second in the near future, which is about as far as I can stretch. Echoing the love for 3:16. It's a brilliant game whether you're looking for serious meditations on wars and what they do to the people who fight them or just want to blow the poo poo out of a lot of screaming alien squid-mantises coming out of the goddamn walls. It also has some of the most enjoyable advancement mechanics out there: more guns! Bigger guns! Planet-cleansing nuclear strikes!
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Nov 16, 2010 02:32
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So, I've been grousing over the playtest rules for Apocalypse World for awhile. I'm leaning pretty hard towards this system for my next campaign. Can someone give me a talking to about the strengths and weaknesses of the system/advice on hacking it into whatever setting my players want? As it's deepest ancestor is trollbabe I kind of have the sense that one of its' weaknesses is that it only directly addresses "Man vs Man" conflict.
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Nov 16, 2010 09:31
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bewilderment posted:My favourite indie RPG is still 3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars. just purchased the pdf from this post, any hints on how to run this? I'm kind of in the dark on how to handle the dark twist honestly. I think I get it in concept, I mean, i've seen aliens and starship troopers as well as reading several other military scifi stories and they kind of run the same direction, but some help on getting that into a tabletop setting would rock.
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Nov 16, 2010 19:30
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From everything I've read, the key is to just play it as fun straight out of the book and over the course of a campaign, that element and style will emerge. I've only played a few one-offs so I'm curious myself.
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Nov 16, 2010 20:11
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This seems to be the sort of thread for this question. Does anyone know how duelling is supposed to work in Castle Falkenstein? It's been praised a bit on the internet, but I don't know how it's supposed to be dynamic and exciting, instead of people constantly attacking as much as possible. The rules are as follow:
To resolve the exchange, a defense cancels out one of your opponent's attack and does nothing against rests. Rests do nothing against anything but you need a certain amount per round. If one attack in an exchange gets through, then the opponent is pushed back. If the opponent is against a wall or a ledge and cannot be pushed back, it is upgraded to wounding him. If two attacks get through, then your opponent is wounded immediately. There are more involved rules including physique and maybe taking advantage of the environment between exchanges. Let's say the fight is on a pirate ship or on top of a speeding train. Perhaps these extra rules are key because, for the life of me, I can't see a reason why one would ever choose to defend instead of attack. Consider a person of average fencing ability needs to rest four times in a round. This only leaves two out of six cards free for actual attacking or defending, and you can be sure that the player doesn't want to waste one of those on a defense. It seems like a game of rock-paper-scissors where scissors is useless and you have a quota for the number of papers you have to play.
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Nov 17, 2010 00:22
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AlphaMole posted:I'm kind of in the dark on how to handle the dark twist honestly. I think I get it in concept, I mean, i've seen aliens and starship troopers as well as reading several other military scifi stories and they kind of run the same direction, but some help on getting that into a tabletop setting would rock. If you actually want to keep the twist (by which I assume you mean the final order) secret, then don't let the players read the book, tell them what the orders are if/when they gain the appropriate rank, with appropriate imprecations about not discussing them with the lower ranks. As well, use the orders as ideas for missions, orders, and interactions with higher ranked folks. But keep in mind, the final order isn't the "last boss" of the game, it's just a part of the setting. It's not like there's any reasonable way for the player characters to ever learn it legally. (Although, if you gain "Hatred of Home...") In case you haven't seen it, the game's website is stuffed to the gills with options, advice, examples of play, alternate settings, free supplements, etc. And if you get used to the system, those supplements are truly kick-rear end, and can be easily added after you start play. Doc Hawkins fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Nov 17, 2010 |
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Nov 17, 2010 01:45
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DalaranJ posted:So, I've been grousing over the playtest rules for Apocalypse World for awhile. I'm leaning pretty hard towards this system for my next campaign. To hack AW, you can pretty much just write down everything you want each class to do in simple prose and figure out what the physics of narrative are like, then convert that into moves using AW's toolkit approach. Remember, AW is about color balance, not numeric balance. Each class controls a certain niche of the fiction and deals with hard decisions in their own way. Also, this is what the creator said about making moves: "The basis for all of the moves in Apocalypse World, every single one, is an active conflict of interests between named, human characters. Every move supposes that there is such a conflict in play. Most of them suppose that there is one right now in the immediate environment in which the move takes place. Some of them, like the new angel kit move, in the immediate past; some, like reading a situation, in the immediate future. Every move acts directly on the conflict of interests it supposes, either to reveal it, escalate it, or resolve it. So as you're designing your own moves for your own hacks, this is how you design them and how you judge them." On the other hand, if you want to de-emphasize human conflicts, you can easily do that, the custom moves are really flexible.
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Nov 17, 2010 02:14
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AlphaMole posted:just purchased the pdf from this post, any hints on how to run this? I ran a fairly long-running 3:16 game with a bunch of newbie RPers, and it was fantastic. The generic world creation system is good enough, but telling a coherent story is a big plus. Since all but one of my players had never RP'd before, I started them with a Halo-universe hack where they were marines fighting the covenant. When they got some experience under their belts, I asked them if they wanted to move to a setting I devised. They said sure, and it worked great. But in all reality, the setting was quite basic. I found that the best stories were between PCs, or between PCs and important ship-based NPCs, most of which occured before the action even started. The combat's a blast, so don't stress about that. Figure out a fun starting premise, acknowledge that your players will totally deviate from every expectation you have, and work to facilitate all the interaction that doesn't involve flamethrowers. The one, giant, pitfall this game has is if the PC officers cannot hold the respect of the other players. I'd highly recommend finding a tactful way to assign officer/sergeantship rather than let the game decide it if you have inexperienced players. A lovely sergeant ruins the game.
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Nov 17, 2010 10:49
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Team Black Zion posted:Good advice, thanks. That author quote is what convinced me to leave all the basic moves/stats intact. Although I had to think about the purpose of weird for awhile.
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Nov 17, 2010 23:08
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thanks for the advice! I'll probably go the route of limiting the players knowledge of the book, mainly so I can make up something if the story feels like it's going that way. I was also planning on throwing some curveballs in their way, like where the "planet" is on their own capital ship or the main conflict being in space with fighters before they can lay waste to the civilian population below.
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Nov 17, 2010 23:56
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TotallyGreen posted:The one, giant, pitfall this game has is if the PC officers cannot hold the respect of the other players. I'd highly recommend finding a tactful way to assign officer/sergeantship rather than let the game decide it if you have inexperienced players. A lovely sergeant ruins the game. Don't do this unless your sergeant player is really really bad, though. I once had an interesting game where the sergeant wasn't that great and somehow failed at NFA roles more frequently than expected, and the Trooper with the highest NFA often had the other players looking to him to see what they should do when the sergeant gave an order. It was an interesting group dynamic. Also, remember to have NPCs! The game book doesn't really talk about them much, but my group relished the long running rivalry they had with Sergeant Hogaaan and his squad.
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Nov 18, 2010 14:57
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It's a shame they don't have just a table of NPC names as they do with planets. Stealing characterizations from random war movies is easy, but names is hard But hey, that reminds me: The Story Games Name Project is not a game, but a collection of hundreds and hundreds of names. Given names, family names, modern names, historically-accurate names, fantasy-appropriate names, completely ridiculous names, names names names! They're even conveniently divided into random-rollable groups of 20. It cost 11 bucks, which is only enough to cover the costs of lulu printing, because all the tables were contributed by the indie community and are available for free.
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Nov 18, 2010 17:21
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I've got a 3:16 game I'm running on Tuesday the 23rd at 8pm (GMT+10) if anybody is interested in joining in. More players makes 3:16 better.
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Nov 19, 2010 14:59
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:I've got a 3:16 game I'm running on Tuesday the 23rd at 8pm (GMT+10) if anybody is interested in joining in. More players makes 3:16 better. I would play on Infrno, I just set up an account. Always wanted to check out 3:16, count me in!
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Nov 19, 2010 21:22
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My name's David Pidgeon anyway, so drop me a friend request on there.
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Nov 20, 2010 01:02
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:My name's David Pidgeon anyway, so drop me a friend request on there. Alright, done. I see you're in that archipelago game too with those people from #playnow, looks fun. I was going to play but I had something to do, sadly.
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Nov 20, 2010 04:10
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We only did setup, we haven't started playing yet, but even that was a blast. I'm looking forward to the rest of it. Been wanting to play Archipelago for a while now.
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Nov 20, 2010 05:36
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Can we talk about the Leverage and Smallville RPGs itt? On the one hand, they are licensed products with pretty shiny covers, but on the other hand, they owe waaaaay more to the indie design movement than to dum ol' "trad games". (Actually "Un-Traditional Games" wouldn't be a terrible thread title). I have neither read nor played either of these, but I have two non-overlapping circles of friends that are respectively excited about one of them. Smallville is based on some show about a superhero I guess, I don't really read comics. But you can actually use it with any kind of setting you like. In fact, you spend at least a complete session making the setting: an immense inter-connecting set of story threads, hooks, and character relationships, that you use for the rest of the game to get ideas for episodes and scenes. It's like "Fun TV Show Writer's Committee the RPG". A much more bad-rear end version of Prime Time Adventures. (Warning: the book contains a few chapters that summarize every season of the terrible show, do not read if you are not a superfan and you value consciousness.) Leverage is based on another show I don't watch, and again, replicates the bones of that show rather than the meat; it sounds like it's the ultimate Ensemble-Cast of Idiosyncratic Experts Pulls Off a Caper or Heist RPG. The friend who is most excited by it (who plays both ancient D&D and Traveler stuff AND fancy-pants indie stuff, and does improv theatre) reviewed it on twitter as: "The 'Actually, I MEANT to do that game.' Best flashback mechanic yet." You roll on kick-rear end caper-generation tables, run around acting all cool, the GM spends opposition points of some kind to see through your secret plans, and then you reveal your even-secreter plans (which you just made up).
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Nov 22, 2010 05:14
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Doc Hawkins posted:Can we talk about the Leverage and Smallville RPGs itt? On the one hand, they are licensed products with pretty shiny covers, but on the other hand, they owe waaaaay more to the indie design movement than to dum ol' "trad games".
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Nov 22, 2010 07:58
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