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Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine It looks like the old thread has vanished into darkness between the Kickstarter and today, so I'll make another to let everybody know that the ePub version of Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine has arrived! (EDIT EDIT EDIT: And now in print and PDF as well!) For those of you who don't know, Chuubo is a diceless game of pastoral adventure by Jenna Katerin Moran, author of Nobilis. Chuubo has a number of genre modes, but the most prominent ones focus on heart-warming adventure in the mold of Studio Ghibli, Revolutionary Girl Utena, or that other show, the one with the pastel horses. It's also surprisingly good for Homestuck games, it turns out. I worked really hard to make the ePub version of this game available, so I hope it convinces people that ePub can be a useful layout for gaming publications. Meanwhile, layout is going forward on the traditional version of the corebook and the first supplement, Fortitude: By the Docks of Big Lake, and there will hopefully be more news on that shortly. Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Aug 8, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2014 01:24
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Krysmphoenix posted:I got the ePub thinking that was interchangeable for pdf, since that's how I hear it from other people. Didn't realize there was an actual ePub format that wasn't compatible with my pdf readers. Anyway, I downloaded an ePub reader since my pdf readers weren't liking it, but the interface for it is a little clunky. (And it has a nasty habit of cutting pages off in the middle of lists.) Mind sharing if you have any favorite ePub readers? Calibre has a fairly decent epub reader, although the best way to read ePub is on a tablet or dedicated eReader. iBooks does just fine for iOS, and Aldiko or Mantano works fine for Android. quote:On that note, you said that the layout still isn't finalized? Is this the final version of the ePub then? How's it going to be different from the other versions of the book? The ePub is final unless somebody finds a mistake. Print and PDF layouts are still in progress.
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Apr 7, 2014 21:31
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I'm glad that people are reporting satisfaction with the ePub; I spent a lot of time on it and it's really my favored way of reading gaming books (there just aren't many high-quality ePubs being made right now). Hopefully now that the styling is established it won't take me as long to finish the Fortitude ePub. Meanwhile, I tend to emphasise the mortal side of things; the core of the engine is in the XP Actions and you don't need any kind of powers for that. I feel like I'm in the minority of players there, though.
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Apr 29, 2014 14:20
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neaden posted:So I finished the book and had a couple questions. First with genre, is the intention that you will switch this around during play? For instance let's say we are playing an Epic Fantasy game, and after fighting a riding of Excrucians the characters go to Little Island for a well earned vacation for a week. Would we just switch the genre to pastoral for a week? Generally speaking, you'll stay in the same genre for the entire campaign, although I guess if you wanted to switch there's nothing to stop you. The exception is The Road of Trials, which you'll never play a whole campaign in, that you can switch into when things are about to get really rough for a while. It's the only temporary game mode and it's one that you'll use when you're shipwrecked on a desert island, fighting an extended boss fight, or dealing with trauma too severe to be friended away with a few purple actions. quote:The second question is background wise. I only have Nobilis 2nd edition so I'm not sure hwo much has changed but is the intention that Nobilis is canon in Chuubos? Like, is Ananda still the Imperator of the age to come, and was Lord Entropy still cursed that everything he was directly involved with (like the school before his death) would become corrupt? This is an area of deliberate uncertainty. (That said, I wouldn't be too certain that Entropy I's rules still apply—the events that led to the prince of evil judgment exploding and being replaced by a deity whose schtick seems to be "even evil things can be worthy of love" has probably wrought some changes there.)
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May 10, 2014 21:55
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SALT CURES HAM posted:If Nobilis just didn't click for me at all, is this game still worth checking out? They're quite different in practice. A lot of people looked at Nobilis and said "But what do I do with it?" Chuubo technically uses the same mechanics resolution system but the important part of the rules is a giant engine designed to answer the question "so what should happen next?"
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May 10, 2014 23:28
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In other news, it looks like the Chuubo PDF is two chapters of layout drafts away from being sent to Dedicated Friends for test-reading.
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Jun 16, 2014 18:14
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...and, the almost-finished PDF codes are being sent out to backers!
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Jun 27, 2014 21:15
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Covok posted:Were physical copies limited to the KS? Or will they be sold later through digital services? If you happen to know, I mean. It's going to be print-on-demand through DriveThru.
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Jul 4, 2014 17:01
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Covok posted:Any announced release date? I'm afraid it's just "when it's done," although hopefully it won't be very long. We still need to finish the ToC and index, incorporate any corrections pointed out to us by beta readers, and get the final cover drawing from Filippo. As far as I know Jenna plans to activate PoD as soon as the files are ready.
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Jul 4, 2014 18:03
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neaden posted:I recently started reading On Such a Full Sea, a novel set in a future post apocalyptic and Chinese colonized America, and it oddly reminds me of Chuubos. Which in turn makes me realize that Chuubo's is post-apocalyptic even if it doesn't have a lot of the things I would normally associate with a post-apocalyptic setting; especially given how pleasant Fortitude is. I think you could do some interesting things with that. At some point I considered doing more word-of-mouth advertising about "extremely pleasant post-apocalyptic slice of life" but I was convinced that this might lead to misconceptions.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:30
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All right! At heart, the Chuubo engine is all about helping you answer the question "So, what happens next?" (It also has a more standard resolution system underneath, but this is secondary and it's not uncommon to see play groups actively ignore it.) Players start the process by choosing quests that frontload specific dramatic possibilities they want to see happen, and the quests provide them with an overall structure and a series of bullet-points to shoot for (as you can see in the example card about blackmailing your dog). Meanwhile, in between events relating to your personal story, the eight genre modes provide the beats that will fill in the spaces between episodes of plot and determine the pace. If you're doing Immersive Fantasy, the standard things to do when you aren't doing anything else are "Discover something new," "react to the world around you," or "have a sudden emotional reaction to a discovery/sympathize with somebody who is." This tends to mean that, whatever you're up to, the basic tone is going to be one of constantly discovering things and experiencing wonder, and you'll be doing this several times in a day. If you're playing a Pastoral game, on the other hand, the basic beats are "do ordinary things with someone else," "talk about your feelings with someone else," and "react to the world around you." This means that forward motion on the plot is going to be constantly interspersed with scenes where you drink tea, watch the sunset, and say "Ah." Because really, what else is there to say? And in between the times you say "Ah," whole weeks can fly by, and before you know it it's Pancake Week again. It may take a little getting used to, because it's pretty different from the rhythm of other games, but I think it has a lot of potential and people seem to be having fun putting it through its paces.
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Aug 9, 2014 21:54
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OP updated with the final cover image.
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Aug 15, 2014 02:26
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I've updated the OP to reflect this fact! Now to get ready to do a rundown for FATAL & Friends.
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Aug 20, 2014 16:16
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If you should happen to want one, you can now buy the quest cards from DriveThruCards, including the ones from the book and blank ones to make yourself. Issue cards forthcoming!
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Sep 27, 2014 04:19
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Covok posted:Me and my friend backed the kickstarted and received our copies a while ago. We are both interested in the title, but neither of us know how to run it. We've never done a "slice of life" game before. We do understand there is very detailed advice in the book, but we still don't get how to run the game. As in, we don't understand how to really set-up a plot and have it work. What I mean is...how do you keep to a point in a slice of life game? How do you keep things moving? To be more precise, how do you really prepare for a campaign in Chuubos? We're both more used to dungeon crawling and mystery games so this is new to us. The game gives get advice for genres, but we just can't really wrap our heads around it. Generally speaking, setting up your Arcs and quests at the beginning will frontload most of this for you. Once you know what's the big project in your characters life, and you know that you'll be taking at least one slice-of-life-y action every chapter, that should keep you to the "point" of slice-of-life gaming without you having to do much else. So, what you actually have to do on-the-fly will be anything that isn't obviously slice-of-life. If you want to have an adventurous, mysterious, or wicked interlude (as slice-of-life stories sometimes do), that's the part you'll have to deliberately introduce while running the game.
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Oct 25, 2014 01:04
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Also, Issue cards are now available in print-on-demand for those who want them.
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Oct 27, 2014 23:38
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In an incredibly timely fashion, the Chuubo Halloween Special arrives on DTRPG! (It's a one-shot campaign for four players.)
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Nov 6, 2014 00:44
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Chuubo is now available as part of the latest Bundle of Holding if you missed it before.
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Nov 28, 2014 05:11
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Little_wh0re posted:I'm waiting for PoD. PoD should go live as soon as the Kickstarter backers start receiving their copies.
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Nov 28, 2014 17:53
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Jenna's finally got her Patreon up, and is using it to fund some miscellaneous content, including some new Arcs for Chuubo starting with the Called Away arc that's appearing on her Tumblr. It looks like there's going to be some new Nobilis content I've never heard of at $300. I didn't know there was Nobilis content I hadn't heard of! That's disturbing!
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Dec 30, 2014 21:40
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SwimGood posted:Can someone please explain to me what the techno sub-genre is supposed to be? It's Immersive Fantasy with added anime weirdness. It's Utena, Penguindrum, and that sort of thing. It's like urban fantasy, but you're also having confusing visions or weird waking dreams and you don't have to worry about whether they make sense or not.
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Jan 18, 2015 17:54
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SwimGood posted:I'm not very strong on anime. So it's urban fantasy with magical/surrealist metaphysics? In other words, would Norther Exposure or Twin Peaks be typical of Techno? I'm not familiar with Northern Exposure, but that sounds about right.
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Jan 19, 2015 02:35
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SwimGood posted:That's pretty awesome. I've been looking for something that could run Earthbound for ages, so I bought the pdf and realised that it'd be better for 90s weird/magical realist/supernatural shows. Especially the mystery ones. I've only just skimmed it though so it might still do Earthbound (as I was told it would). Are there any APs out there yet? I think it could probably do Earthbound, yes. Pastoral mode sounds about right. For APs, Chuubostuck is one of the longer-running ones.
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Jan 20, 2015 02:52
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Covok posted:While I know General Ironicus hinted at doing one, does anyone know any good actual plays of Chuubo's? Just curious. I wasn't following anything when you asked this, but I was recently pointed to: On the Horizon Mysteries of the Far Roofs Glass Maker's Dragon
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Jun 27, 2015 02:25
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Yeah, it's my understanding that the one and only difference between standard and premium is the thickness and quality of the paper (and the effect of this on the size and weight of the book).
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Aug 1, 2015 15:36
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Okay, the copies of the book being ordered for backers through the courtesy of Christopher Humphrey are beginning to ship, although owing to some of the limitations of the current software this is basically happening one-at-a-time.
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Aug 8, 2015 02:07
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hyphz posted:The word "Arc" seems to be reused to mean a whole bunch of things. So, I get that an Arc is a series of Quests with narrative notes that put them in context. Then there's an "Arc Trait", which governs what level of perk and things you've gotten from playing an Arc. But as I understand it, the Arc Trait only goes up by 1 when you complete an entire Arc of that type, not when you are at that stage of the Arc. So you have to play the Arc several times to raise the Arc Trait (not necessarily in order). But then at the back of the book are the "Miraculous Arcs", which are lists of powers you get at different levels.. and therefore presumably not actually Arcs at all but perks you get from a series of Arcs of the associated type? Plus, Arcs are described as giving context to Quests, but you can also get XP for an Arc from doing other things, and it's mentioned this could be 30% of the Arc XP.. Since an Arc is 5 quests, each one would be 20%, so that means a side quest can completely displace one of the contextualized quests on the Arc? That's correct, your quests form an Arc and while you're on that Arc you get Miraculous Arc powers if you're on one of the miraculous Arcs, and once you complete an Arc your Arc Trait goes up (so your Arc trait is basically the number of completed novels of that type you've already been a main character in). There's an additional use of the word "arc" in the campaign book that I intend to have changed to "saga" before it comes out. The word might be a bit overloaded. An Arc isn't necessarily five quests, though; you have an XP target which the HG will set based on their judgment as to how fast your game is going and what number will result in people closing out their Arcs in a reasonable amount of time. It's perfectly okay to finish that story with the third or fourth quest (much like not every book has a third-act twist). quote:Issues. The early sections imply that Issues are given out as semi-penalties when an XP action is invoked out of context, but the later section says that the HG can give out an Issue whenever an XP action is taken depending the situation. Is it expected/normal that an Issue would be given for any XP action? It seems rather awkward that the player can never know if an action will advance an issue or not. An Issue is basically a subplot counter, so you get one when the HG notices that you seem to be having that kind of subplot. Tying them to specific genres is pretty much just HG advice about when this is likely to happen. quote:"Adventure GET." This XP action triggers when you're in a threatening situation, but it seems problematic because after doing it, you Fade, so... when is the actual resolution of the threatening situation played out? I can see it's supposed to be a cliffhanger (although it seems a bit weird that every occasion would be a cliffhanger). Also, it seems this allows a character like Rinley to trigger Adventure GET and then in a following scene when she's not the focus, Tall Tales straight out of it again. While I accept that this would be totally in character it seems a bit powerful, any time something threatens her she just cashes it in for XP and then leaves while Faded. Is that right? You don't have to fade immediately if that doesn't make sense. Fading is basically a mechanic where you do a thing, and that thing defines your emotional context for the [time interval of the genre you're in]. If you faded on a cliffhanger, that's not really a case of you using your hax meta powers to get out of danger, it's more "so, this is the chapter where Rinley is menaced by a gang of sharks... I guess she must have gotten away, somehow." You also, yeah, don't have to fade after a quest bonus action. The ones that you're allowed to narrate into play kind of split the difference since they're likely to happen simultaneously with a proper XP Action, but you can do whatever makes more sense.
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Aug 9, 2015 16:47
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For reference, genre conventions operate as Afflictions, not Bonds, so they tend to be in the hands of the HG rather than the player.
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Aug 9, 2015 19:02
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The rule in question, "turning into a giant snake never helps," is a Convention, which operates as an Affliction on the entire world, but that particular rule only appears in The Glass-Maker's Dragon, which is where the giant snake rule comes from.
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Aug 9, 2015 20:03
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hyphz posted:"Turning into a giant snake never helps" is definitely in the basic book because I read it there, although it does note that it might not come into play unless you're using a version of Chuubo who has that ability. That is precisely correct!
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Aug 10, 2015 16:05
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hyphz posted:Anyone played Techno? How does that work? I loved TWEWY. There a Techno Player's Guide available in print now if that might help.
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Aug 12, 2015 00:51
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I suppose I'm not busy if people want to do a game of Glass-Maker's Dragon.
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Sep 9, 2015 17:02
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paradoxGentleman posted:Do you have to play as one of the official main characters (Chuubo, Leonardo de Montreal etc.) in GMC or do player-made characters work as well? There are eight pregenerated options and a roll-your-own option, which is definitely the "consciously low-powered option" but gets the coolest story out of all nine sets, the Drowning Arc. Meanwhile, I'm in #thenetbreedsdreams on SorceryNet to talk wishing turkey.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:19
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To keep this thread clean, I made a new thread for my game here.
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Sep 11, 2015 14:41
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Backers at the Dedicated Friend level should now be receiving beta PDF copies of Fortitude.
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Sep 24, 2015 23:05
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Alhireth-Hotep posted:Out of curiosity, any update on the Legendary 76+? I, uh, may have some personal interest in that supplement. It's ready for layout; I think we're just waiting to see what layout resources we have available since it merits better than "Jenna lays it out in her spare time" if we can manage it. In other news, we've sent in the last batch of corrections and a list of page XX references (topical!) to layout, so it shouldn't be too long until Fortitude backer PDFs start going out.
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Oct 2, 2015 15:57
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And the Fortitude backer PDFs (minus the cover) are out! You can buy Fortitude: By the Docks of Big Lake here.
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Oct 24, 2015 01:31
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I think you could do some kinds of Exalted stories in Chuubo. I've definitely given it some consideration myself. The main thing is that Chuubo is structured around your character's emotional life and their growth as a person and all the Epic Fantasy or Adventure Fantasy builds itself around that. It's not really a gamist kung-fu simulator, although there's a more detailed combat system on Jenna's Patreon blog (which is really more of a system for telling stories about cool fights than emulating them). I thought about using Chuubo-style crafting in Exalted myself way back in the day! I think something like that is possible, but it's going to be way slower than the existing system. I think it could wind up being suitable for a major, legendary project, but if you try to do every two-dot artifact that way you're going to get way less made than the standard system allows. Like, way, way less. If you want to make a weapon for a fellow PC to wield though, you could do that as a quest, with Bonus XP conditions like "get into trouble looking for rare materials" and major goals like "after much discussion, finally decide on a really awesome name."
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Oct 26, 2015 21:56
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Being powerful doesn't stop you from needing to take the (be in) Trouble Action, but you're probably right that it's the best choice for Exalted.
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Oct 27, 2015 03:09
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Covok posted:Yeah, more I think about it, Epic Fantasy is more like Nobilis than Exalted. Note that Trouble actions are the only real difference between the two genres, and also that characters on Frantic arcs have access to Trouble whenever they want it, anyway.
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Oct 27, 2015 03:22
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