TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day

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Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

No gaming for me at least for the time being. I have a big deadline coming in April and thus I need to spend most of my free time chipping away at my Master's thesis. Thankfully it's already more than half-way done, so getting it finished is more of a matter of applying myself to it with the best of my ability.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 10:48

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 14:39

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Daphnaie posted:

My group rotates our GM (and thus our game) monthly, so I'm out of the GM chair and a player again.

Last month I was running Changeling in the 1920s using A Dirty World (because why not right?), this month the GM is starting up a game of Adeptus Evangelion. I know absolutely nothing about Eva beyond it has giant robots fighting aliens (and that the ending was weird), so this should hopefully be an interesting experience at the very least.

Evangelion is basically about dysfunctional teenagers (and adults!) and Judeo-Christian mysticism through the lens of anime, so basically Jesus is a giant alien robot.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 15:15

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

I do agree that DW is vastly improved by throwing out the base playbooks and using third party content, mainly because it lends itself to more interesting types of fantasy than just D&D fantasy, but I think criticising DW for being too D&D is a bit uncharitable. The game always advertised it as D&D but with the PbtA system, and as D&D clones go it's perfectly serviceable and hell of fun even with just the base playbooks.

That's not to say it's perfect, and I do agree with the sentiment that in places the game is actually worse off for cleaving too close to the tropes of D&D (like the separation of ability scores and modifiers). Incidentally, I like the fact that upcoming DW offshoots like Fellowship and Broken World are dealing with this in their own ways.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 10:01

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Since we had some discussion on World of Dungeons last month I'd like to throw this in here: I've been looking at World of Dungeons through the lens of trying to figure out its implied setting in broad brushstrokes:

First of all, there's no race in the fantasy sense in World of Dungeons, so you can easily assume that the setting is a human-only setting. Secondly, the presence of pistols and muskets in the equipment list implies a setting with an early modern level of technology.

The meat of the implied setting is, however, in the name lists. Most of the names given map out to historical cultures pretty clearly, although there is obviously some mixing and matching going on as well as subtly changing real names to make them seem more fantastic.

The Northlands are obviously not-Scandinavia. Set against a backdrop of black metal album covers brave warriors of the North fight frost giants, trolls and other creatures from Norse myth.

The Imperium has a mix of Semitic names running the gamut from Hebrew, Arabic and some which to me sound like trying to evoke garbled Babylonian names. The implication, to me, is that the biggest Empire in the setting is more ancient Babylon and less Roman Empire in style. A mix of Arabian nights and the imagery of Biblical epics.

The Regency has the most Englishy sounding names, with a mix of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norman influences. I'm imagining an island nation of warring duchies currently under a regency council because the current ruler is unfit to rule, or maybe said ruler is missing and in their absence a regency council has taken the reins. Imagery wise this place is the Middle Earth of Peter Jackson's films as well as a bit of Willow.

Xanathar & Islands seems like a mix of North African and Ancient Egyptian names. I'm imagining Xanathar as once having been a huge Empire, having recently lost their glory due to wars with the upstart Imperium. Definitely death cults dedicated to dead pharaohs. Maybe the pharaohs are actually undead?

Uru & the Great Desert I'm unsure of, as I can't figure out what the names are drawn from. At least one of the names, Harud, is Hindi for Autumn. Perhaps a large Indo-Aryan influenced nation, sort of like a clash of influences from Persian and Indian imagery?

Finally, there's Ankhyra & Cythonis, a mix of Latin, French and Greek influences. I like to imagine that in the game's implied setting the Roman Empire equivalent never rose to become an Empire, only expanding as far as not-Greece at the height of their power. I like to imagine them as being constantly at war with the Imperium. Imagery drawn from the Byzantine Empire, but with a distinctly Hellenic Pagan influence. Colosseums, parthenons, warrior-cults and philosophers side by side.

If anyone would like to flesh these out with me it'd be great. The point is not to write a definitive setting bible for the World of Dungeons, but to brainstorm a cool barebones setting with some fantastic influences.

Edit: Obviously, after typing this, I realized that some of the name lists could be seen as referring to names within a single region with multiple nations. Under this light, Ankhyra and Cythonis are actually warring city states and not a single nation. I'm thinking Ankhyra for the more Athens/Greek Antiquity inspired city state, with Cythonis as a Roman/Spartan influenced state. These two city states are constantly at war with each other, only allying with each other when the threat of the Imperium becomes too great.

Xanathar is thus obviously not-Egypt, but what are the Isles? Similarly, Uru is obviously close to the Great Desert, but what differentiates these two places culturally?

Ratpick fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Mar 4, 2015

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 10:44

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

ProfessorCirno posted:

Sorta. It was more that the idea of people having a single DM who ran strict adventures once a week with everyone playing the same consistent characters wasn't actually planned.

OD&D - pre-AD&D D&D - operated strongly under the idea that people are going to have a whole stable of characters running in different games with different GMs. That's why the whole "Monty Haul" or "roll your stats in front of me" exists - a DM that lets someone cheat on attributes or gives off tons and tons of magic items was potentially unbalancing other games because the whole idea is that your character just wanders to different adventures. It's why healing times were so long; you weren't supposed to just shrug and fast forward a few months, that player would go "Ok, then while Bigby and Rigby are resting to heal off their wounds, I'm going to play my fighter Digby..."

This also ran concurrent with gold as XP. If you had to bring in a level 1 character to a level 5 group, they could actually just pool up a bunch of cash, dump it on you, and power level you!

This is actually a playstyle I'd like to try: everyone starts with a bunch of 1st-level characters and just picks one for their first adventure. If your character gets damaged to the point where normally you'd spend a couple of weeks in town recuperating, you just bring a backup character to play in the meantime. Between forays into the dungeon the DM checks whether rooms the PCs have already cleared out become repopulated.

It'd actually be perfect for a game with irregular attendance: Gary can't make it this week, but that's okay 'cause Dave's schedule cleared and he can now make it to the game with his 2nd-level Cleric in tow.

The last bit though I'm pretty sure is not how it's supposed to work in old-school D&D: XP for gold recovered is pretty clearly supposed to be divided equally between the group regardless of how they actually divvy up the treasure. The benefit of being a 1st-level character in a high-level group is that the rest of the group can handle tougher encounters than a first-level group, meaning that the monster XP rewards are greater but also there's bound to be more treasure on those monsters.

Also, another feature of old-school D&D I've never experienced personally is the idea of hiring retainers who level up with you (at a slower rate though because they only get a half share of all experience gained) who could later mature into a character of their own. The idea of each 1st-level character getting a free 0-level human, elf, dwarf or halfling follower at first level (and getting to roll their stats as they would for their own character) who would then "graduate" into a fully-fledged 1st-level character upon gaining a certain amount of XP is kinda fun.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2015 16:10

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

GrizzlyCow posted:

That sounds like something that Dungeon Crawl Classic Role-Playing Game was meant to handle. You should give that a look. It's been mentioned in the Retroclone thread, though mocked because some of its eccentricities.

It also sounds kind of like Ars Magica's Troupe System if I remember that correctly.

I haven't gotten to play either game, but hey, you can probably salvage their little systems and whathaveyou for D&D or D&D-esque game.

Yeah, I know DCC and it looks fun, but a bit too on the heavy side for my tastes. I mean, I like the fact that it's basically an adaptation of my favorite edition of D&D (B/X) with a very clear focus on emulating the Appendix N vibe, but on the other hand it looks very cumbersome in play what with the critical hit and miss charts and specific roll-dependent effects for every spell. However, I still reserve judgement on the game on account of the fact that I haven't actually seen how it works in play.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2015 21:15

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Covok posted:

From experience, don't try making or playing in games with randos on roll20. I did that when the site started off and it never turned out well. From creepers, to unreliable people, to just generally unpleasant experiences. Overall, I'd avoid it.

Yeah, Roll20 is a great platform, but as with all things it's often best to play with people you're already comfortable with. Running games on Roll20 openly so that anyone can join carries all the risks of running a game at a convention (and just think of all the horror stories you've heard about convention games) plus the anonymity of the internet.

I personally use Roll20 to run games for people I already know but can't be with physically in the same room due to living in a different town or a different country even, or to people I know through the internet but know to be cool. I've been flirting with the idea of running a game with an open door policy, but the risk of attracting creeps is still keeping me from doing it.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 09:26

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Waffleman_ posted:

I'd play a game in the Double Cross setting. Make it kinda like Prototype maybe.

Prototype gameplay with Persona's visual novel bits for interacting with Loises would be the best.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 16:22

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Yeah, I'm not personally a fan of Exalted, but it's still clear to me that a lot of people in its target audience actually want a crunchy game with clearly defined powers straight out of the box. Just looking at the Exalted 3e thread here reveals that most of the reactions from people are to the effect of "Hey, this is cool" and not "This is not rules-light Storygame enough!"

I understand where Brian Clevinger is coming from: he's a fan of the aesthetic of Exalted but not of its system, so he's made a pretty neat hack of his own favorite system for running Exalted. That's great an all, but looking at things from outside the Exalted fan circles it seems that most Exalted fans actually want something more meaty and crunchy than that.

Having said that, if what you like about Exalted is its aesthetic of anime swordsmen and sorcerers doing epic battles in a mythical setting inspired by many different world mythologies, I'd actually recommend Anima Prime, which is basically an anime/JRPG emulator. I've been personally thinking of using it for a heavily BlazBlue influenced game.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 10:03

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

I was playing Card Hunter again last night and started thinking why we don't have a card-based RPG with character creation as deckbuilding yet.

Like, character creation could be as simple as pick a class and gain the appropriate deck, pick a race and add those cards to your deck. Because you've already got the cards acting as a randomizer you don't even need dice: when you draw no attack cards it doesn't mean that your character isn't fighting, just that their attacks failed this round.

Hell, you can even get an AEDU thing of sorts with the rarity of cards; to be legal your deck must have a certain ratio of Common, Uncommon and Rare cards.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 15:28

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Concerning initiative chat, here's an alternate initiative system I've been thinking of: alternating initiative.

Player side acts first. The players elect one of them to act, their action is resolved. Then the monster side acts, one of them taking action. This goes on until everyone has had a chance to act.

The problem on the GM side is that the GM needs to keep track of each separate NPC to see if they've already acted. I'd recommend using some kind of visual aid, like tokens that can be turned upside down when a character has already acted. Alternately if you've got a fight with multiple groups of monsters, you might want to have each monster group act all at the same time, but that sort of messes up with the back-and-forth nature of this system.

Also, I really like Old School Hack's initiative system: actions take place at certain point in the initative order, with higher priority actions going first (like Shooting happening before Fighting), and Initiative is a simple opposed d10 roll when it's important to know, say, who attacks first in the Fight segment.

It also has a neat mechanic for concentration: most big spells and abilities are focused actions which start in the second segment but only go off at the end of the turn. If you take any damage in a segment before the ability goes off, you lose concentration and the spell or ability does not take effect. To make up for this there's a Protect action that anyone can use to divert attacks from their ally to themselves, and if any attack connects they get a free counterattack.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 10:03

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

NGDBSS posted:

They're a gonzo element in a setting that was attempting to be deep (or pretentious, take your pick), and thus rather a jarring shift on tone.

To be fair, modrons existed in 1e already (Fiend Folio, I think?) but Planescape gave them an art update and made them its signature creatures.

I personally never found modrons particularly jarring in Planescape, because to me Planescape has always been a gonzo setting. I mean, it's urban fantasy set in the center of the cosmos where reality is determined through consensus and everyone has a mockney accent. Also, because it was written in the nineties, lots of metaplot and also a monkeycheese faction the players could join.

That said, D&D has never been a particularly good system for the setting. D&D is a game of killing dudes and stealing their money, which is not a particularly good fit for a setting that's all about metaphysical politics.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 10:04

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Were I to run interplanar politics I'd probably use some variation of FATE as well: like, Planescape's metaphysics fit perfectly with FATE as a system (you live according to your beliefs, you get narrative currency, which you can then use to add details into the environment that match with your beliefs).

You can give planes aspects which characters can use to their advantage while on said planes, and once your characters become actual movers and shakers in the multiverse you can even do stories like "slowly alter the beliefs of the townspeople to get their town to drift from one plane to another" and the game's actually go rules straight out of the box to support that kind of play.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 16:18

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

So, the big convention here in Finland is only like four months away and I'm already thinking about what games I want to run. Old School Hack is definitely on the list of games I want to run, because it's just such a fun little hack and slasher. Since there's no other thread I can think of where to ask this, I'm going to put this here. In case you don't know what Old School Hack is, check it out, it's free: http://www.oldschoolhack.net

What I'm specifically looking for is advice on monsters, creatures and setting up neat combat encounters. I want to stay as far away from the standard D&D standbys like orcs, goblins and kobolds, because you can fight those guys in just about any D&D clone. I'm looking for a set of monsters with a clear theme and some unique identity I can build powers around.

Some ideas I've already had:
Frogmen - These guys can hop huge distances and still attack. I'd give them something like the Fighter's Charge talent, except activating it costs a couple of awesome points.
Spidermen - They have special access to a Roof or Ceiling arena, and can always move there without an attribute check. Might also have web-based attacks, like a spidermage being able to Corner all characters in an arena with a Focused Attack.

Regardless of theme, I need a bunch of mooks and vermin (minions in 4e terms), a couple of guards and monsters, a few elite-type creatures and one really huge monster. Probably a nice mix of melee and ranged monsters and at least one caster type. Also, some inspiration for abilities I can give these critters, with the idea being that these abilities cost Awesome Points to activate (I really want to give the players lots of Awesome Points to play with so they can get a hang of the mechanic).

Some abilities I've already thought of:
Swarming (for mooks) - When a bunch of mooks with this ability gangs up to attack a character, on a hit they can Corner that character with 1 Awesome Point.
Ferocious Combatant (for big monsters) - The monster can attack all characters in their own Arena by paying 3 Awesome Points. Initiative should be rolled for each of their attacks separately.
Pull (special combat action) - Appropriate for giant mutant frogmen and undoubtedly some other monsters, this ability simply gives the monster the ability to Pull a target in an adjacent arena to their arena, resolved like the Throw action.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 10:32

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Siivola posted:

Ropecon's in May this year. So, uh, more like two months.

Edit: Oh poo poo, Jason Morningstar's going to be the guest of honor!

...Uh, who's Jason Morningstar, again? I only recognize the name.

gently caress, I've been so wrapped up in my Master's Thesis that I completely forgot that Ropecon's earlier than before this year. I wonder if they've already started the GM signup?

Also, Jason Morningstar owns. I need to bring my Fiasco books with me so I can bug him for a signature.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 10:46

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Siivola posted:

Yep, the signups are open. I think I'll have to check out your game, we can have a tiny goonmeet. Do GM's get invited to the afterparty?

Oh hey, looks like the official release date for Night Witches is next month. I think I should look into finding a copy for Morningstar to sign.

Oh cool, I've still got a week left to sign up! With the theme for this con being "Journey" I might want to run something more travel and exploration-based.

I don't think GMs get officially invited to the afterparty, but that didn't stop me from attending last year, although I do have a history of having worked in Ropecon as staff and even did a one-year stint in the committee, so I'm in a somewhat grey area.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 11:06

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Davin Valkri posted:

*choke* That's an interesting idea to have this early! So does ropecon stand for an acronym, or is it the name of the founder of the convention, or...?

Rope is how people traditionally abbreviate role-playing game in Finnish (the word is roolipeli).

And yeah, a couple of years ago when I was in charge of tabletop RPGs at the con I joked with my friends about how posting "Ropecon looking for Dungeon Masters" online made it look like I was hosting a fetish event.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 15:42

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

dwarf74 posted:

To whichever goon or goons recommended Rat Queens.... Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You're welcome!

Getting back to running games at the convention, since the theme for this year's Ropecon is "Journey" I kind of want to go with that theme for my games: even though it's not required that games run at the convention follow the theme, I like the idea of having a clear theme in mind because it helps me plan out more focused games. I'm 100% decided on wanting to run Old School Hack, because it owns, but I just need some help with coming with a good dungeon-brawler adventure around that theme.

In contrast to last year, when I ran three Dungeon World games, this year I want to run at least a couple of different systems. Going from the Journey theme, here's a few ideas I've had thus far:

A psychotronic arthouse road trip through a post-apocalyptic Route 666. The PCs travel from one end of the Route to the other, and because this is a road trip the journey itself is more important than the destination. On the way the PCs must confront their demons, literal and personal. I could see myself running this with either Apocalypse World or octaNe.[* ]Inverse World adventure structured as a journey from one place to another. Beyond that it's hazy, but I've wanted to run Inverse World at the con for ages to bring it to a wider audience, because it's pretty much my favorite Dungeon World supplement.
If On a Wintry Plane a Freebooter from the Calvino Cycle supplement for Dungeon World/World of Dungeons. I'd probably run this thing in World of Dungeons, and it's a pretty solid adventure starter with travel involved. Also, I've wanted to do something with the Planarch Codex for ages.

Anyway, I'm open to suggestions beyond those. I could see myself running three, maybe four, different games, the only one that's set in stone at the moment is that I really want to run Old School Hack during the weekend.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 17:10

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

UnCO3 posted:

Other games that could be used to play the psychotronic post-apocalyptic road trip:
Ribbon Drive, which is a rules-light game built exactly to emulate soul-searching journey's-more-important road trip movies. The rules are based around soundtracks - everyone makes their own and brings it to the table and it's played throughout the game. The first song you play serves as the inspiration for the characters and journey, every time you make a detour you switch soundtrack and through the whole thing you thematically base your narration on the current song.
The Drifter's Escape, which is about a singular Drifter (though you could maybe make it about more people) that goes from place to place, getting involved with ordinary people's lives and trying to keep the Man and the Devil from taking hold of their soul. The mechanics are poker-based (both hands and chips).
The main problem I can see is that, by the looks of it, you/r players are looking for crunchier games, while these two are very light. Something else for Ribbon Drive is that each player needs to make a playlist, ideally with a rough theme tying it together, so you'd need to either do that at the table, come up with a bunch of soundtracks yourself in advance or make people aware of it beforehand and hope they do it.

As for games based around the 'Journey' theme in general... Ribbon Drive and The Drifter's Escape work well, as do Carolina Death Crawl (Southern Gothic game about North Carolina Union troops painfully making their way back through South Carolina to their own lines while confronting what terrible people they are and turning into swamp ghosts one by one), HVE Water (lonely survivor in the post-apocalypse makes a journey to find clean water while being haunted by memories of the past) and Psi*Run (escaped amnesiac psychics on the run from government agents and trying to uncover who they really are). These all involve both physical and mental journeys and discoveries. Carolina Death Crawl has an advantage for your con in particular in that it was written by Jason Morningstar.

Ribbon Drive does sound interesting, but it doesn't sound particularly suited to convention gaming, on account of needing each player to make playlists beforehand. The Drifter's Escape sounds interesting though, so I'll have to check it out!

I went and googled Carolina Death Crawl as well and it seems really interesting, mainly because I'm a huge sucker for Southern Gothic. If only it were more readily available in Finland: I don't really want to pay the printing costs + shipping and handling to Finland.

Actually, the Jason Morningstar connection made me think: how about a Fiasco game centered on a road trip? I'm sure there has to be a playset that fits the bill for a game like that.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 20:00

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

In case you didn't know, ~~Satan~~ Santa Claus is from Finland.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 16:39

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Covok posted:

Depends on how you view things. It's arguable that the concept has changed so much that different countries can take credit for the particular version they have. Of course, an entire country taking credit for an idea is a little silly, I suppose.

You're absolutely right! However, old Finnish Santa is obviously the best Santa and Santa Claus obviously lives in Lapland and anyone who says otherwise doesn't know poo poo. I don't see no Santa Park on the North Pole. :colbert:

(Finns are extremely touchy about Santa Claus being Finnish.)

Also, since we're talking cool North European Christmas critters, the Icelandic Christmas Cat is definitely my favorite.

quote:

Finally, my favorite Icelandic christmas creature has to be the Christmas Cat. Like the others, the cat eats children. But only children who don�t get new clothes for christmas, weirdly enough. This makes him the icelandic god of fashion, which explains why Icelanders tend to be so loving trendy.

In the myths, the Christmas Cat is pretty huge, but not as huge as I draw him. I made him Godzilla-size for a recent graphic novel I did, Thule (hopefully available in english in 2012).

*eighth is a funny word.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 18:10

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 14:39

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

It somehow looks even worse than the previous videos.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 20:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day