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The forthcoming PDF has more graphical shininess (page backgrounds, art, fancy boxes), in the style of a print RPG---because it's the version we'll be printing---while the ePub offers resizable text and is easier to use on small-screen devices. I'm *intending* to give a discount on the PDF for people who've bought the ePub-only version, but I can't promise that because I don't know for sure that I have the technology. (I'm pretty sure that's how DriveThru bundling works, and I'm pretty sure that I can send a $10-off-the-PDF coupon to ePub-only purchasers if it's not, but I don't know for sure.) Jenna Moran fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Apr 8, 2014 |
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Apr 8, 2014 05:29
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Rand Brittain posted: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. It's really mostly characterization; the powers and even the Skills aren't really there to let you do stuff but to *define* that you can do stuff, and what stuff's easy, what's hard, what's tiring, what's trivial, and what kinds of things you do to push past your limitations. You could probably do pretty well with nothing but the XP rules, ignoring even the mortal Skills, except that it'd go squishy in that standard narrative-rules-only gaming failure-mode way where the structure of the world drifts away and character abilities fluctuate based on plot and it starts turning into Lost or new Battlestar Galactica instead of Babylon 5. I think. Eventually.
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May 2, 2014 04:46
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Ratoslov posted:Pastoral sounds like it'd be the perfect Touhou sim if you added 'Pointless Danmaku Battle Over Petty Stakes' into that list of beats. The role of pointless danmaku battles in the Pastoral genre is actually just obfuscated rather than missing--- In an earlier version of the rules, the "Slice of Life" Action that Rand describes as "react to the world" had about a zillion things going on with it, and it'd be quite normal to have Slice of Life bits that were like, Flurry of basically meaningless action! Wry comment on it from one PC to another. Grin or sigh or roll eyes or whatever at that comment. Shift to another location! Flurry of basically meaningless action! Pause to admire a tree or something. Flurry of basically meaningless action! The sun begins to rise ... ... but the old rules were too complicated, and eventually it all got boiled down to "experience something flavorful, declare that that mood or image sticks with you." Plus various small things scattered throughout the system as examples or optional rules or suggestions or more general resolution rules to to keep as much of the original concept without forcing players to remember it all as possible. Still, even though I need all those words to make it not ridiculous-sounding, "oh, pointless danmaku battles fall under the 'react to the world' beat" is actually pretty solid. ^_^ Unless they're actually hard-fought and totally leave the victor in question IC; those might need a different genre or at least the occasional indulgence in an out-of-genre action.
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Aug 10, 2014 01:29
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occamsnailfile posted:I bought the ePub version and was quite satisfied with it as a reading copy, bought it around the time the dog martial arts thing was making the rounds. Now the PDF's out, is there any way to get a discount to grab that too? Or PoD, I just want to see the formally laid out version as well and have a nice tablet and/or shelf spot. It looks like the DriveThru mechanism for giving out discounts is to send email with a discount code to people who own the ePub but not the PDF. So I plan to arrange for that discount, but I want to let kickstarter sponsors pick up their copies first so that they're not on that list.
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Aug 21, 2014 01:02
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Mile'ionaha posted:I actually ran a decently long Nobilis campaign, goodness knows when I'll find a solid group to run this in, but no damns given! It is consciously designed to be good for such things---but I don't know livejournal games well enough to make any bold claims on the subject without worrying that I'm making a "hey net punks" move. I'm hoping that some portions of it catch on---Issues, quests, or the Glass-Maker's Dragon being the likely suspects, since XP Actions would need context-specific optimization and emotion XP will rapidly become "a concept created in Chuubo's" rather than "a Chuubo's thing" if it does spread---at which point I'll be able to refine the game for such things. I mean, I *really* think the basic toolkit would be good for such things: it's designed to create the kind of stories you see in a carefully-plotted and edited novel from the random impulses of a bunch of players and some just-in-time rules reactions thereto, and before I started simplifying it for tabletop play it was roughly as good of a storyteller as I am. But I can make no claim whatsoever of knowing the state of the art there, or the common complaints, or anything, so I'm not in a great position to push for its adoption there. (I should have investigated it, really, but first I need to get the already-written books out the door and then like sleep for six years or something and then wake up bright and perky and able to investigate potential avenues of coolness. ^_^)
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Aug 22, 2014 05:37
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inklesspen posted:I'm still reading Chuubo and I'm not sure I understand what's going on yet. But I do have two questions? Storium would be a weird combo with the rules---kind of peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich, y'know? Not to everyone's taste, but not completely out or anything. Using the rules in an existing setting is 100% possible. Possibly even 110% possible or more. See, if you strip away style and approach, the baseline setting is a biome fantasy. Like Torg, y'know? Just, just from the school of magic realism and YA fantasy ("the world is full of amazing stuff, if you just go outside your comfort zone a little bit and open your eyes to wonder") instead of the pulp/camp/extravaganza "meanwhile, in the land of dinosaurs" stuff. ---And that means that, like any biome fantasy game, it's got its own story feel but is adaptable to anything up to the kitchen sink in terms of locations, props, and events.
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Aug 22, 2014 06:17
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Doc Aquatic posted:Now I'm really curious about the sorts of things that were streamlined out. I love CMWGE, and the theory that came before the practical application seems like it'd be a really cool thing to dig into. Hm! So, let's take Adversity. The original rules set was scene-based, and looked sort of like: • there must be something very wrong • you either ...o decide you must hide your suffering. You emote endurance or acceptance, or ...o realize that you can't hide your suffering any longer, and emote that. • whatever you choose, it has to feel at least a little real and at least a little tragic. • then there must be a heart-wrenching moment, wherein either: ...o something worse and more awful happens ...o you collapse, give up, or, more generally, surrender. That was what it looked like from the player side, anyway; the rules were phrased a little differently for the HG/objective perspective and came with a couple thousand words of general discussion and a pointer towards Hero, It Never Stops!, and maybe Sickness Issues. Most of that discussion went away, although it'll reappear to some extent when I do a Regionbook for a Road of Trials-type location; the final action wound up being: Condition: You’re in a really unpleasant place and situation. It’s getting harder and harder to think of anything but how much this really sucks. Action: • Tip over the edge into delirium; or • Just . . . give up. This is one of the actions that didn't wind up changing much between versions, but even so you can see why the former rules-kit has a bit more utility for forum gaming---it gives whole-scene guidance, so it's more useful, and and it's easier to take advantage of whole-scene guidance and filter scenes on the first bullet point if you're playing in a slow, detached format like forum stuff---and the latter is more tabletop focused, in that it doesn't need you to keep track of any context that isn't immediately on hand.
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Aug 22, 2014 19:44
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DalaranJ posted:I'm having a little trouble understanding one of the issues. It seems to me that they are about becoming a stronger person by learning a lesson, some of which culminate in painful consequences immediately before the issue resolves. But (being a) Hero seems to resolve immediately before you get murdered instead? What am I misunderstanding here? Most Issues are like that, but the mechanic is a bit more generic---they're just short stories about your character. Most of them feature a lesson and some character growth because most stories do, and Chuubo's focuses on that kind of stuff, but there's also Leverage-style capers and superheroic deeds and stuff, where character progression is important but not obligatory, and stuff like boxing up Warehouse 13 artifacts, where usually there's some metaphor or character relevance but sometimes it's just fun... y'know. Anyway, Hero. Hero resolves when all is lost, pretty much, and there's no hope, and you can pretty much just leave the story weeping because nothing will ever be right again. Like, when Frodo decides not to throw the ring into the volcano, or Luke Skywalker gives up on killing the Emperor, or when the priest declares Buttercup married to the Prince, or Kal-El kneels before Zod in utter defeat, or whatever---basically, the point where you can sneak out of the movie and throw away your popcorn remnants and use the bathroom before everyone else is done, because from there the German existentialist influences on modern cinema pretty much guarantee it's just going to slide downwards, ever downwards, to the abysmal, painful end. I wanted to capture that hopelessness in an Issue, that way that ultimately heroes are doomed to fail and even the brightest light of hope is ultimately going to flicker, fade, and go out against the sheer ... uncaringness of the universe. You know. That part of the story when it's all over, and the heroes die.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:00
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ActingPower posted:...Huh. So that brings up an interesting question. The mechanics of the game allow you to resolve the Issue at rank 4 instead of rank 5. But, in your mind, are you "supposed" to always go to rank 5, and stopping at rank 4 is "incomplete" somehow? I was reading it that 4 was the "end" and 5 was just an extra wrinkle to the resolution. Nah, you'll probably finish at level 4 most of the time. It just muddies up the explanation of Hero to talk about that, and the cinematic references aren't as clear-cut.
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Aug 26, 2014 15:27
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Tiger posted:I'm starting an irl game of Chuubo's on tuesday! Since I couldn't wait for the printalbe issue cards pdfs (those are coming, right?) I made some of my own. Feel free to use them as you wish (except, you know, they contain text from the game, so I guess use them as Jenna Moran wishes). As long as someone in the gaming group in question bought the book, I figure this probably qualifies as them excerpting small sections for personal use (which is OK) even if you're actually the one excerpting small sections for them. ^_^
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Aug 29, 2014 19:16
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Zurui posted:Is there any word on when this might be out for POD? I want to buy it, but I'm 90% certain that I will want a book and don't want to buy it twice. I couldn't upload the PoD body file to DriveThru's page. I've sent them email hoping for a fix to this, but it is the Labor Day weekend. Once it's uploaded, it may be correct or it may need a few more passes in order to pass their standards. Then I'll have to order proofs and review them. I'm estimating this process to take two months. I want to get the print run going before the PoD, because sponsors. The files for the print run should be ready this month. It's been a while since I've checked whether Eos is ready to go there. There's probably no issue, so I'm going to assume that happens with reasonable alacrity. With luck I'll be getting copies shipped off to sponsors shortly before the PoD is ready. Otherwise the PoD might have to wait until the printing is happening (because sponsors.) Things could also go swimmingly, in which case, like, October 1? Is probably the fastest imaginable.
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Aug 30, 2014 05:39
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inklesspen posted:I've been reading through the book on my commute and I'm currently about halfway through the Setting chapter. Still not completely sure how to run a game, but I'm hoping it'll become clear. Noted. Normally, my to-do list would be too long for new projects, but I've had some thoughts moving in this direction anyway, and it does sound like a sensible and quick project, so maybe it'll happen!
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Nov 9, 2014 07:05
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After Accursed 2 things mostly get slightly easier, really---yes, Falling From the World gets stronger, but it's also pretty hard to interrupt in the first place. Unless you or someone that can stop it has a suitable Bond, in which case it probably keeps pace with Arc increases. Conversely, as the Arc rises, you have more MP at story start, and at Arc 5, potentially more MP when leaving the sanctuary, and WBH gets cheaper and more effective. It helps. The theoretically correct way to completely recover from Accursed is to start a new PC and say "they are my old PC, no longer Accursed." The theoretically correct way to mostly recover from Accursed is to switch to a Frantic Arc and throw yourself into trouble, an Immortal Arc and never take wounds, and either way WBH anything you think is likely to give you a Sickness. A less correct method includes taking a Power Up Perk to power up Damaged, replacing "MP" in its text with "password," so that you no longer have to recover one password at the beginning of each chapter like ordinary people do, but you forget one password every time you take a wound. ... possibly combined with one of those Affliction-rewriting quest rewards to change Falling From the World. ^_^
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Mar 30, 2017 02:29
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