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There are definitely other deals here, but I just got Imperial Histories 1, Book of Air, and Book of Earth for 50% off from Sci-Fi City, which appears to have quite a few good deals otherwise. If shopping there, I'd price-match with Amazon Marketplace, of course (some of their books are less through it) and bear in mind you have to order a lot ($100) to get free shipping.  Shipping was very prompt; I got my package by the end of the week when ordering by Monday for both my orders via media mail, and it was well-packed inside bubble wrap and styro.
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Apr 30, 2013 01:13
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Chess 2 (the sequel, apparently), is currently free at the Sirlin Games Store.
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Jun 1, 2013 19:30
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dwarf74 posted:Also, no joke, those Gamers' Handbooks to the Marvel Universe are about the closest thing to a real encyclopedia of Marvel characters ... circa 1990, mind ... that you'll ever find. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe has been published and revised in various editions since 1983. It has the problem of being out of date basically as soon as it's published, of course, but as slices of Marvel comics history, I love the hell out of them. The newest ones even have a "Power Grid" of stats, though I'd take them with the aforementioned grain of salt.
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Aug 10, 2013 19:38
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Trevellian posted:Lemme guess - something by Postmortem Studios? Yes. why the gently caress did I bother sourcing that quote 
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Aug 23, 2013 22:15
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What if you are a military badass? I once had a Cyberpunk 2020 game run by a Navy SEAL, after all. What then? What then?!
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Oct 16, 2013 14:05
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From the main DriveThruCards.com page you can get an "Outrider Starter Deck", whatever that is, and from the search page of Wargame Vault, you can get DRAGONSHIRE: Gargoyle Bridge, which I presume is a terrain piece.
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Oct 31, 2013 18:12
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I've played a fair deal of HERO in the past, but it is one of the spergiest games. Do you like numbers? Do you like superheroes? Do you like superheroes with numbers? Having speedsters get three turns for every one turn other characters get? Tracking how much Endurance a punch takes to throw? Or powers! Man, calculating power costs. See, I have the Delicious Spud power (10 CP) and let's say I buy the Mashed Potatoes advantage, a +1 advantage. And then I take the Instant Mix limitation, which is like a -1/2 limitation. So like then that'd be like (1 + 2 - 1/2) = 1 1/2 times the cost, right, for 15 CP? Hahaha no. Instead HERO figures it as [(10 x 2) / 1.5] = 13 1/3 CP! Also you have to know that number without the limitation (20 CP) because that's what figures into endurance costs. And that's a simple power by HERO standards. A lot of people have internalized the system and have a blast with it, but to me it's more fascinating as a historical curiosity (just about every point-build game owes it some small debt) but combat is sluggish even for experienced players in my experience, and balance is all kinds of wonky even after all these years. It's a fascinating as a puzzle box of a system and really, really innovative for a game released in 1981, but I don't have a lot of desire to ever play it again. But it's a good deal if you're interested in it, though, and it's worth a look if you're interested in system design.
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Nov 12, 2013 23:50
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malkav11 posted:I played in a Champions game (a Marvel-flavored Minneapolis setting) for several months years ago and enjoyed it a great deal, but six hour combat sessions were not as uncommon as one might wish. It's super flexible and I think makes for really fun superhero building. I can't imagine dealing with it for other genres where IMHO that level of customization simply isn't necessary. Honestly I think, like GURPS, it actually works better as a fantasy system or the like, since a lot of the things that bog it down (high Speed, layered defenses, complicated power sets) are greatly reduced. If you limit the scope it becomes a lot more functional, though it's still more complex than it needs to be for most games.
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Nov 13, 2013 07:58
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I don't think you don't really need it for supers, it's just RPG tradition, set by games like Champions. There are plenty of simple superhero systems that work just fine. Having really detailed superhero stats strikes me as more of an aesthetic choice, for folks who want to know exactly how many tons their character could lift or exactly how many minds you can fry or whatever, and tweaking everything from their psychology to their salary. But it's not like comic superheroes were ever so tightly defined in the comics themselves, even when Mark Gruenwald & co. were trying to nail down the exact bench capacity of Rom the Space-Knight.
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Nov 14, 2013 15:19
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Libertad! posted:Holy poo poo, that's cheap for that book! If you're the least bit interested in a D&D fantasy Africa, buy it now. That thing goes for at least $100 on Amazon nowadays. No it doesn't. You can regularly find it cheaply, which isn't a knock against it, but you can find it for a song at hpbmarketplace, too.
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Nov 25, 2013 14:07
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Rockopolis posted:Uh, I've never heard of half of these, and, the of ones I've heard of before, uh, Maid and Panty Explosion sounded pretty skeezy. Is Golden Sky Stories good enough to carry the bundle, are the other games any good? Golden Sky Stories is   Maid... is interesting, at least. The main point of contention is one of the sample characters included repeatedly throughout the book is an underage-character-that-is-a-creepy-stalker archetype that seems to get a lot of mileage in anime, but as far as I'm concerned can die in a fire. There's some mild fetish smut in the equipment section. It's frustrating because the game was probably the first game with "heartwarming" elements that came over, at one point I ran the Happy Birthday scenario for a party, it was basically the characters trying to one-up each other with ways to make a sick child happy, and was basically the most adorable thing. So there is fun to be had, you just have to be willing to overlook the questionable elements.
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Dec 16, 2013 21:00
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Bear in mind shipping is going to run about $2 per book and there are no alternate options for that, but it's still a fantastic deal for some great books. 
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Dec 1, 2014 14:00
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I ordered everything for Wild Talents + Reign, now time to mash it all up. Crisis on Infinite Stolze.
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Dec 1, 2014 17:37
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I very nearly pulled the trigger on the Runequest bundle before realizing that it's not Glorantha.
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Dec 9, 2014 15:02
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M&M 2e is really solid; 3e is probably marginally better, but backslides to 1e and makes aspects of character generation more confusing, bafflingly.
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Dec 14, 2014 00:10
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TurninTrix posted:For someone new to M&M in general, is 2e a better place to start than 3e? I wouldn't say there's an appreciable difference in difficulty. 2e has a less complicated attribute system, 3e has a clearer power system. I'm a bit surprised by people saying that M&M doesn't handle large-scale stuff; 3e doesn't well, but that's basically because they nerfed area effects (which were logarithmic in 2e, but are closer to linear in 3e) and a few other powers to be a little less broken, but that's easily adjusted if you know the system. It's not quite DC Heroes in terms of crazy scaling, but it's easy to build a mountain-tosser on the default number of points. Lightning Lord posted:What aspects are you specifically talking about? If it's power generation, I think the Power Profiles book helps deal with that. (Sorry if this is making GBS threads on the Deals thread, we can take this to the chat thread if you want) Mostly that in 2e, three attributes were tied to defenses, much like d20 (Reflexes = Dexterity, Fortitude = Constitution, Will = Wisdom), but attack and defense were no longer tied to Strength / Dexterity. But in 3e, they instead tied all defenses and attacks to attributes (Dodge = Agility, Ranged Attack = Dexterity, Parry = Fighting, Melee Attack = Fighting, Fortitude = Stamina, Will = Wisdom), making things more complicated to track and balance. They also cemented the ranged / melee divide for some reason, meaning characters that focus on one or the other get significantly more points to play with... despite the fact it doesn't represent comics that well. After all, Green Arrow is a pretty badass hand to hand combatant, and Hulk doesn't whiff all the time when he's throwing cars or rocks. Power Profiles has a lot of great power ideas but also falls down in terms of mechanics occasionally (like having an entirely different cost for a power from the corebook without explanation, for example). Quite a bit is better in 3e (how they handle non-damaging attacks or autofire are way better, for starters), but it wasn't nearly as progressive as I think it should have been.
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Dec 16, 2014 14:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:The new BoH is books about the history of the hobby. Beating the average gets you all four "Designers & Dragons" books plus a few others on top of that. I'd really recommend the Designers & Dragons books, that's a bargain for the number of companies covered. Learn a thing or two!
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Jan 25, 2015 21:31
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Yeah, V:tM 2e is interesting from a historical or completist perspective, but that's it; there's not much reason to reference it when it's been notably refined twice over. I'm amused by the fact that Kindred Most Wanted and Children of the Inquisition are both in there, for those who want to fill their games with packs of ridiculous elders to slap PCs around with.
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Feb 8, 2015 11:11
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Hillfolk is great but it's also very much a group storytelling thing, it's not a conventional "game" in the way most RPGs are. It's very much built around having dramatic personal confrontations between the players, and the referee is really just there to flesh out the world and prove hooks but not to drive the plot like other games. It's a blast to play, though, I wouldn't knock it without trying it. Running it is pretty eye-opening, just reading the book doesn't give an indication of how it actually tends to play out.
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Feb 25, 2015 02:16
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It's great if you want the players to do all the heavy lifting, most of the time as a GM you're just watching and taking notes to figure out little twists to throw at them. Also it's great at cons to watch total strangers go from being shifty and shy to Lord of the Flies in two hours.
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Feb 27, 2015 06:11
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grassy gnoll posted:Is this version of Traveller any actual fun beyond chargen? Nope! It's still Traveller. Edit: In fact here's all the fun bits. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Mar 27, 2015 |
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Mar 27, 2015 05:00
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Warning: Phase System Inside.
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Apr 18, 2015 02:09
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I think Champions is amazing for its time but ultimately it's just full of a lot of effort that isn't that meaningful at the actual table, and the technology of RPGs has just gotten much more efficient. It's like an iceberg's worth of work but most of what's under the waterline ultimately doesn't matter.
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Apr 18, 2015 08:53
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I'd have to say I find the newer material to be a lot better written and internally consistent, where a lot of the old stuff is... well, dependent on how nostalgic you are for the '90s, IMO. The core World of Darkness book from '04 is a good bellwether for how much you'll like the rest of the line, in any case.Liquid Communism posted:I may be a bit bitter. I really, really liked Werewolf: The Apocalypse's whole cosmology and attitude, and the new Werewolf went from being a whole society that is relentlessly hosed and doomed because they had one job and hosed it up majorly; to being a personal horror story about racial guilt where literally everything else in the universe hates you for something people previously sharing your curse did, and the antagonist equivalent of your characters (The Pure) are treated as the actual protagonists of the piece. Taken on its own terms, I think it's actually one of the stronger new versions they did. It's not necessarily going to appeal to old Werewolf fans because it's a much more horrific, disempowering setting. But it also doesn't have the encouragement of bestiality that was in previous editions, which I find to be a big plus.
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Jul 8, 2015 09:47
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Terrible Opinions posted:Quick copy and paste from reddit for the full list Thanks! For some reason, being on the Better Angels KS didn't get me an RPGnow copy, and also happy to get Pendragon and Lab of the Forsaken .
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Oct 27, 2015 12:02
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Champions is probably one of the most math-intensive games as far as character creation goes, and is more than a bit of a slog in play unless you're a veteran at it. It is remarkably open-ended, but is kind of the epitome of the '80s toolkit universal system zeitgeist where anything could be mathed out into a system concept.
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Jan 28, 2016 19:45
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It's also notable that Osprey books are well-illustrated, so if you're doing historical minis painting, live historical recreations, illustrations, etc., their stuff is pretty useful as a reference for uniforms and equipment. You need a book that shows you what the Wellington Light Cavalry or the Czech Legion or the Mamluk-Askari looked like and what weapons they used, they're your guys.
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Feb 4, 2016 22:38
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It's still easier to reference the SRD for most of it, tho. Thanks, OGL! 
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Feb 24, 2016 21:23
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Easily the best game put out by R. Talsorian or Mike Pondsmith.
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May 6, 2016 01:35
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Tatum Girlparts posted:They try to make the insane comic things feel 'right', is what I'm saying. Like the rumblings of 'registration' began back during the cold war, because of COURSE during the red scare we'd think 'uh hey, you know these guys who wear masks and shoot lasers out of their balls? Can we maybe know who they are?' Then it came to a head when a super hero fight wound up blowing up JFK's car and killing...his wife. I actually kinda genuinely like that alt history poo poo. JFK gets, shockingly, really mad at supers and wants more accountability for them, and boom, registration act starts. I'd say if you really like that kind of thing, look up Progenitor for Wild Talents, it's a big long timeline of alt-history superhero dominoes falling that's immensely well written (because, well, Greg Stolze) without ever feeling cliched or forced.
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May 6, 2016 07:08
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And as if in response to me recommending it elsethread, Hillfolk is on the Bundle of Holding.
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Jul 29, 2016 23:21
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I ran Hillfolk demos for Pelgrane, and honestly it's a blast... but if you're haven't seen it in action, it's hard to describe. Basically players take turns setting scenes in which they engage another player for something they want. If they give up what the initial player wants, they get a token. Tokens can be later used to force the narrative, forcing somebody else to give you what you want, busting in on other people's scenes, etc. Basically one of the issues with running dramatic scenes in RPGs is that most people have no reason to concede anything they don't want to or make decisions that aren't immediately in their best interest. Dramasystem is mainly designed to reward you for letting people push you into questionable decisions, like what happens in drama or in real life. A lot of the game deals with the competitive back-and-forth between players and unlike a conventional RPG, the GM is there to provide crises and dilemmas but doesn't really dictate the game. In many ways, the GM is like a fill-in player for anything the normal players can't just decide between themselves, running bit parts, adjudicating dramatic tasks, providing hooks, but often as a GM you're just watching the interplay and acting as an impartial judge for a good chunk of the session. It may not seem exciting but every game I've run, people get passionate about their roles and it's really something to see. Explaining it doesn't really do justice to how well it works and how quickly people can slip into antagonistic or cooperative relationships. While the actual resolution system isn't much to speak of, the structure of the game works very well at pulling players away from the traditional RPG mindset and into the interpersonal conflict so common in fiction and TV but exceedingly rare in RPGs.
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Jul 30, 2016 05:10
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Dungeon World is also effectively free from a number of sites, so there's that.
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Sep 20, 2016 02:09
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I've played with experienced Champions players who "solved" the combat speed issue by dividing sessions into roleplay sessions and combat sessions.
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Apr 12, 2017 11:39
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Covok posted:Is the Anime Blast worth it? I already own TBZ, OVA, Kageami High, and FIGHT! Are the other games worth it? TFoS is classic but it depends if you want something that's basically kind of a historical piece now. Ruined Empire is a solid setting for TBZ. Spark is very blah. Don't know anything about the rest.
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Jun 24, 2017 03:07
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That Rifts bonus collection is... exceedingly random. I'm trying to figure out the reasoning behind it, and the best I can figure is that it's "mid-selling titles related to the core American setting"? The starter collection makes some sense (if not perfect sense, the GM's Guide is a bit much for starting players) but the bonus collection is just... baffling.
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Jul 19, 2017 12:05
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Yeah, it looks like the first editions of the relevant Palladium Fantasy books, not the second edition versions.
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Aug 2, 2017 03:02
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Emerald City is slid as far as superhero settings go, it was Mutants & Masterminds'/i] attempt to make a more new-hero friendly setting (compared to [i]Freedom City) without as much in the way of an established history or existing heroes. Granted, I think writing superhero settings for RPGs is an uphill battle, but it's a good book if you're looking for that sort of thing.
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Sep 7, 2017 17:32
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Angrymog posted:They're still giving away Pathfinder Online Early Access... Not so early anymore.
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Oct 31, 2017 04:56
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It's anthropomorphics, gosh.
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Jan 30, 2018 13:33
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