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Galaga Galaxian posted:Yeah maybe. At least BitD probably avoids the problems of Hackers in Shadowrun where everything grinds to a halt while the hacker plays his minigame. In BitD the hacker just takes a normal overcome action (if he's just hacking poo poo via wifi while sitting in a bathroom or something) or a group action (say if he has the rest of the group interacting manually with something so he can mess with it). That was the worst part about Shadowrun (besides the clunker rules). Hacking in Shadowrun really doesn't work like that in 5E; it's more like sitting there hacking over wifi. But that's neither here nor there. I started reading the quickstart rules for this last night and I think I love this system. The effect roll seems neat, but if they can just roll it into the action roll and preserve the clock mechanism I'll still be happy. I think "effect as dodge" should still stick around, though. Are there any hacks that have been posted yet? I know the Kickstarter mentioned a few, but I really want to see one. I want to write a Shadowrun hack as soon as possible, but I only have a vague idea of what other crews / books need to look like. EDIT: I totally backed the kickstarter if I can find some of this stuff that way. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 4, 2015 |
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May 4, 2015 20:07
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Jimbozig posted:There you go peeling off the fresh coat of paint. Taking old things and making them feel new again is part of the job of the designer. This is pretty much my sentiment; stating that you've 5/6ths won a fight is a lot better than "these two guys are still up with 6 HP left, and the rest are dead". Moreover, quantifying non-combat tasks in this way is invaluable. I've been running a lot of Shadowrun lately, and a concrete mechanism for "subverted the security system" is a lot better than "well, roll Sneaking. Okay, that beats this guard's perception, but there are two others in the hallway. Deal with that...", rinse and repeat for every player trying to sneak in. Sure, at some point it's just taking HP off of the monster called "Sneaking In", but the veneer over it that controls the narrative as it gets filled in seems the worthier part of the track.
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May 5, 2015 01:42
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I did math for this game, looking at expected outcomes: Here is the expected results for your dice pool size: pre:1 - 3 4 - 5 6 CRIT 1 50.00 33.34 16.67 -- 2 25.00 44.44 30.56 02.78 3 12.50 45.37 42.13 07.41 4 6.26 41.97 51.77 13.19 5 3.12 37.06 59.81 19.62 6 1.57 31.93 66.51 26.32 pre:1 2 3 4 5 6 2 30.55 25.00 19.44 13.88 8.33 2.77 3 7.40 18.51 24.07 24.07 18.51 7.40 4 1.62 9.49 20.13 28.00 27.54 13.19 5 0.33 4.19 14.22 27.34 34.28 19.62 6 0.06 1.71 9.15 24.17 38.56 26.32 pre:1 2 3 4 5 6 2 100 69.44 44.44 25.00 11.11 2.77 3 100 92.59 74.07 49.99 25.92 7.40 4 100 98.37 88.88 68.74 40.74 13.19 5 100 99.66 95.47 81.25 53.90 19.62 6 100 99.93 98.21 89.06 64.88 26.32 Kai Tave posted:Oh it's handy to be sure but I don't feel like it's anything amazing, and it certainly doesn't make me wistful that he's thinking about cutting out the specific roll that's all about seeing how many ticks you put on the clock because unlike, say, 4E's "bloodied" condition there's not even anything basic and binary that hinges off of a clock being 5/6ths ticked as opposed to 1/6th, it's all pretty much in that nebulous "up to the GM" realm to determine what that 5/6th clock means in game terms. And just like with hitpoints something that's 5/6ths full on the clock is more or less just as unresolved/as much of a threat/etc. as it was when it was at "full health" so to speak. This is a good point, and it reveals the crux of the problem: basically, you've told the players that they must completely resolve the guard situation before they can move forward. They may do it by subterfuge or attack or evasion, but they must deal with it. And that means the entire problem, not "knock out five of the six guards and let the other wander around because who cares". That's problematic, and the only recourse the system offers is "you can deal with the sixth guard any way you can sell your GM, though!" That could easily lead to situations that feel unsatisfying if the narrative does not correctly handle it. Moreover, I'll agree that the "resilient danger" is problematic in the abstract; the system almost completely fails to address how brutally wounding someone in a swordfight makes them less of a threat until they're completely subdued. To be fair, however, Dungeon World did basically the same thing with monster health and damage (and with damage dice as "effect dice" for the player side), and it never felt "bad" to me. Based on the gameplay I've seen of Blades and my experience with Dungeon World, I'm not certain this is actually going to be a problem "at runtime". If you really wanted to patch it, I think an easy way to resolve this is to reduce potential stress for resistance rolls based on the "amount" of the threat left, giving PCs what basically amounts to armor as they fill in the clock. I'm not sure if this would "feel good" as a mechanic, however. Alternatively, you could use it to reduce the severity of the situation (Desperate -> Risky -> Controlled) first; messing up moves them the other way, so that seems really fair. Jimbozig posted:I completely agree with this. The clocks NEED to have an effect at 5/6 (and 3/6, etc.) and the players need to know what that effect is (preferably in advance), or else what you say here is absolutely true and is a problem. I would legitimately love for you to give me an example of a six-circle guard watch demonstrating what happens at each slice. I have a few ideas, but I'm super-curious to see what you have in mind. The clock has the potential to majorly impact how your players will approach the situation, tied to the effect result. It determines if they'll need backup, or take the devil's bargain, or anything of the sort. The math works out that way. The more of the clock you need to fill, the more likely you are to do something crazy or daring or absurd or bad to get it done. A Risky Situation on a 0/6 clock will likely induce a Devil's Bargain or some Backup, whereas a Risky Situation on a 5/6 clock necessitates neither if you're halfway-competent at your task. At each point, the status of the clock dictates the size of the risk necessary to completely solve the problem. Kai Tave pointed out that it is, unfortunately, not particularly tied mechanically to the danger you might endure from a resistance roll, but it does help guide what sort of dice you want to roll to deal with it.
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May 5, 2015 11:36
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Jimbozig posted:Ugh. 8 for locks? That sounds like classic bad d&d. "Oh, good job, you unlocked the door! Now roll again for the next door! Oh, too bad. Try again! Hey, great lockpicking! Only a couple more doors left! Keep on rolling..." As Curdistan pointed out (and I agree with, even if it didn't come across in my previous post), quantifying the clock as "8 locks" is not accurate. The important thing is that the clock tracks progress for an entire scene; the entire break-in process is going to have a few locks to contend with, and the 8 ticks there represent them all together. The clocks aren't isn't something so fine-grained as to need discrete meaning at each spot, because players will resolve large pieces of the clock with single actions. "3 segments" in the lock case might represent one lock in the above diagram because it was an amazing lock and it fit the narrative well. Lemon Curdistan posted:I do agree it would be nice to have mechanics for what happens when the clock is half full/75% full, even if it's just in the form of getting a slight bonus to your next roll. The problem isn't narrative at all, it's purely mechanical (having to try again because you aced the Action roll but had a poo poo Effect, whether it's a roll or a second die). My point above was that you already get a "slight bonus", implicitly, through the mechanics. The segments of the clock left indicate how much more you need to risk to accomplish your task. You might accept a Devil's Bargain at 0/6, but it would be foolish to accept it at 5/6. The same applies to the other moves: Assist, Lead a Group Action, and Flashbacks all give you extra bonuses specifically for stress, and these are bonuses you probably wouldn't take if you're trying to deal with 1-2 clock segments instead of 5-6. The bonus is that you have to risk less or spend less to overcome the difficulty you've already made progress on. The other thing that would be easy to hack in is to say you take +1d forward if you have the clock over 50% filled in, but I don't think it's a necessary addition to the system. Seriously though, I agree that the effect roll should probably go. Watching the gameplay samples, the players do this weird thing where they roll, roll well, and go "Okay, so this is what happ--" only to be interrupted by the GM to say, "No, you have to roll your effect to see how well your amazing roll actually worked." It feels artificial in the worst way, and I think second-highest die approach is a good alternative both mathematically and mechanically.
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May 7, 2015 20:58
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Fenarisk posted:After seeing Last Knights, I'm actually somewhat interested in the "good guys" hack that was one of the kickstarter goals. It's actually a pretty good movie and rife with some ideas for a long term/larger scale plan with a couple different clocks leading up to a main goal. You saw Last Knights instead of Mad Max?
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May 17, 2015 06:27
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I've been playing this for a few weeks IRL now, and it's pretty fun. Unfortunately, the quick start guide has woefully incomplete rules for the weirder parts of the setting (ghosts / magic / whispers). Does anyone know where I can find an actual description of, say, Magnitude?
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May 31, 2015 01:40
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I like the skill regrouping and resistance computations. Characters are going to end up feeling more 'real' instead of hyper-specialized, wich is good all around. Stalk looks to have been wrapped up into Discern, which is not particularly unexpected. In general, the rules look a lot cleaner. I am not sure how I feel about the removal of background bonuses, but I would also like to see Vice / Heritage bonuses, so maybe I'm just wrong about the whole thing. I don't like the 'Extra Time' option for a partial outcome; it seems far safer than the other more-concrete outcome options. It also argues for timing windows for more jobs, which I expect will become more frequent as a result. The modifications for the crew are pretty much good all-around. The crew attributes were the worst thing to manage, and they felt like a weird thing to consider when trying to advance a crew in play. The development roll still seems like it needs work to me; if you use the previous character creation rules where everyone gives +1/-2, you are, by default, throwing 4 dice if you mess with a single crew the first session with 3 players. Maybe getting  all the time isn't bad, though.This new playtest would be better if it had the Effects page in it. EDIT: Removed statistical analysis of new effects system speculation; he said the page will be out soon. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 16:22
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The current playtest (v3) is inconsistent with the v3 Effect page we saw. They're still very much in flux. He said this on G+:John Harper posted:Yes, the action results will be tweaked slightly to accommodate this version of effects. For now, treat all successful results as simply "you do it". Critical results might add potency, or something else. Still pondering that part. The game has now been divided into two resolution mechanics: the "Simple Obstacle" and the "Complex Obstacle". Here how he has defined Simple Obstacles in QS v3: Quick-Start Guide, v3 posted:Simple Obstacles (Note that the prose is now internally inconsistent; the same page suggests that a Simple Obstacle is 4 segments.) To explain how these should be used, Harper suggested you jettison the clock mechanism unless the obstacle is a Huge Problem: John Harper posted:Complex obstacles can't be dealt with in one action. That's why they're complex. This explanation was in response to someone pointing out that v3 has a reduction in expected effect numbers over v2, and that a crit can no longer clear a 6-segment clock. (Resolving a 6-segment clock has gone from 1-3 actions to 3-4.) For personal commentary, this was not a Good Improvement. Dropping effect dice was a Good Improvement. But Harper slowed down the clock resolution system so much that he was forced to add a fast resolution mechanic alongside it. I'm sad to see the system go that way, because I did 5-6 sessions of the v2 quick-start guide and 6-segment clocks felt good: on a lucky roll, you'd blow through it, and on a gently caress-up you were in the poo poo trying to deal. To contrast, in v3 the GM must narratively decide now if either "things happen now" or "things happen over 3-4 PC actions." It felt better when the players had a potential to breeze though something, but the dice controlled if it took them 1-2 more actions (or got them in serious trouble). A place's Locks maybe shouldn't be resolved immediately, but they also probably also shouldn't take us around the entire table to get them open. I also expect that a 10-segment combat clock will feel twice as long and grueling as it did before. All that said, I haven't seen a completed copy of the game. I'm still hopeful that it's a blast to play, because the v2 quick-start guide was amazingly fun. Maybe this all gets sorted out closer to the final release, but I am surprised that he's expressed so much uncertainty about the mechanics.
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Jun 22, 2015 20:06
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Did that playtest use explicit clocks?
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Jun 23, 2015 19:14
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I assume your kidding, but the v2 QS guide pretty explicitly suggested making and revealing clocks to your players for things, in a "write it on an index card and put it in the middle" sort of way. E: Blades QS v2, p. 22 posted:Make a progress clock or tick one down. Keep a stack of index cards handy. Make clocks like crazy! Keep them out where everyone can see. That's literally one of the GM Moves the game. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 19:31
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I don't think that properly describes the disparity. The game is pretty clearly built around making and using these clocks everywhere, so disregarding the mechanism forgoes a pretty serious chunk of how the system is fundamentally supposed to work. The "multiple smaller checks" and "2-3 checks" correspond directly to "fill up this clock with your actions", and revealing the amount of the clock left to the players helps them gauge difficulty and manage resources during play. That information allows players to make decisions like "should I really push this roll / take stress to aid this person if there's only the one segment left?" Moreover, the "single action if you crit" is exactly what I described as feeling good in v2 and being missing from the current write-up of the game thanks to the way the math works now, so it's pretty clear that this is something that needs to be addressed in the rules. Immediately adding that house-rule during your first session seems like a good indicator that something is missing.
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Jun 23, 2015 22:23
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Every time I see this game, I get a little more convinced that John Harper doesn't know what game he wants to make. The system doesn't seem to be strictly improving, just getting increasingly dissimilar from where he started. (I typed out a long list of what I meant, but posting them here where John can't see them probably isn't very effective other than just complaining. So I posted several of them on the G+ group instead.) E: SilverMike posted:Makes sense to me, you allow the players to define how they're fighting and talking by their actions instead of having three different skills for each. But it's totally important to indicate if they're attuning with a spirit or invoking it 
QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Aug 5, 2015 |
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Aug 5, 2015 19:52
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SilverMike posted:Check the descriptions for those; Attune seems spirit-oriented, Invoke is more general purpose occult-oriented. Given that spirits are prevalent in the setting, I'm alright with the split. But I wouldn't cry over them being consolidated if room's needed for another skill. That doesn't seem like a good validation, because the other attributes don't seem to be laid out in the same way. Being a criminal empire is prevalent in the setting, but locks, alarms, misdirection, and sleight of hand all got lumped into Finesse. Getting into fights and doing murders are prevalent in the setting, but murder, brawling, and generally wrecking poo poo are all lumped into Battle. Being sneaky and stealthy got lumped with following someone in Prowl, but for some reason Observe got its own attribute as well. I'm not saying I want more attributes back! Like everyone else here, I'm happy to see them go. But now the attribute list is pretty wonky. There's one attribute that managed how well you fight (Battle), two that handle your thieving (Prowl and Finesse), two for spellcasting (Attune and Invoke), and two for social interactions (Sway and Command). That's 7 'core' attributes, and then the other five attributes read like skills you'd take: Cipher for codes, Tinker for mechanisms and chemistry (and for some reason safecracking, instead of Finesse), Stitch for first aid, Observe for observation, and Handle for driving. The first seven attributes are way more important for making a character good at a thing. Oh, and for some reason, if you want to be a good brawler, you need Battle and some mix of Attune/Command/Invoke/Stitch in order to have good Resolve. It seems like Harper is angling for a few core attributes and a small skill system, but avoid the actual separation to avoid introducing perceived complexity. It would be really easy to replace the core attributes with 4-5 core stats and then add in a few skills that give you +Xd when you roll the relevant thing, and it would get rid of this general goofiness. As it stands, it mechanically makes no sense to, say, fill out Stitch instead of one of the core attributes unless I'm really trying to play up my character's being a doctor. The other issue here is that he's using this number of attributes to compute your resistance dice, and paring it down to a smaller set will mean changing the source of that derivation. But he's already changed how effect dice are computed once, so I don't see why he wouldn't a second time. Cyphoderus posted:I kind of agree with you. Would you mind posting a link to the G+ thread? I'm interested in seeing where it goes. https://plus.google.com/communities/112767357581554417629
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Aug 6, 2015 21:21
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This set of actions and organization is quite good IMO.
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Aug 29, 2015 20:26
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Galaga Galaxian posted:New version of the Quickstart, v4. Also, the game is definitely "behind schedule" and not going to make the original November 2015 estimate. No big deal, IMO, its progressing very well. I'd rather have the game November 2016 and it be amazing. Everyone's already said it: this game seems to be due for tons of annealing yet, and while each subsequent edition is playable, it's getting better at a crawl. I hope Harper takes six more months and makes it great instead of rushing it and delivering it closer to the current state.
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Nov 4, 2015 04:21
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Just read / skimmed v5. Several systems have improved:
That said, I'm sad about this being the "final draft". I'm not really happy with the end product. It feels bloated and spartan at the same time; it's a game that knew what it wanted to be, then tried to be something else, and landed somewhere in the middle. Previous quick-start releases, for all their other flaws, often seemed far more focused. I could go into specific points, but all of them boil down to: "why did you complicate X this way?" In the system as it is, aimed at narrative action, why all these little bits, bobs, ups, and downs? I guess I keep thinking back to Vincent Baker's comment: Apocalypse World, p. 268 posted:Here’s a custom threat move. People new to the game occasionally ask me for this one. It’s general, it modifies nearly very other move: As I've been reading v5, I keep asking myself the following: could I dump dominant/risky/desperate and play this with 2d8+attribute?
Like I said, I'm mostly just sad. This game looked so awesome at the outset, and reading through, it seems like it landed somewhere else. (That said, if I can, I'll try playtesting v5 this weekend and report back.) QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 06:35
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Harrow posted:I just picked up the early access version on DriveThruRPG and I really like what I'm seeing, though I don't have much to base it on. I'm actually interested in your critiques, QuantumNinja, because I'm considering hacking this for use in a very different setting/time period and I'm wondering what you'd have done differently, or what previous versions did better. I think my post summed it up: there is a ton of complexity where there could be none, and a lack of complexity where some could help. I feel like the entire core mechanic could be replaced with a pair of d8s, for example. Other examples include four tracks for health, 30 factions to keep track of as a GM (even just 1/3 would be annoying to do clocks for), a two-axis system for GMs specifying how rolls might go (fixed in previous versions!), 12 attributes (more than Shadowrun), an under-specified GM clock economy ("add some ticks, or don't, or whatever, when some rolls <5"), and flat itemization. More importantly, all of these congeal into 5-7 complicated subsystems. Maybe these are excusable, individually, since none is unlivable. But together, I can only ask: "Why?" While the first release was a half-complete game with a narrative-first promise and some middling problems, the latest is full of bloated subsystems that decries that promise. I mean, think about this: we have four tracks for health, but each of the three dozen items gets a single-sentence description, all crammed on a single page. Like I said, it's bloated in some ways and spartan in others. At the end of all of that, I gotta ask: "Why? Why all of this complexity where I shouldn't care, and none of it I might?" As such, it's left a bad taste in my mouth.
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Jan 14, 2016 01:17
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Yo I didn't say it was a bad system. There's a ton of cool poo poo, like I said in my first post about the fifth revision. But you wanted my complaints, so I trotted them out. Basically, I think it could be a lot better, and I'm sad about it. Fenarisk posted:I feel like the factions are there as a complete list, and groups can pick what they want out of it, using as many or as few as they want. This is basically the setting book as well so it makes sense. There is a health track, a stress track, a trauma track, and a healing long-term goal track. I wasn't even counting vice. But my question is: what does having 4-5 tracks add to the game that having 1-3 wouldn't? You could fold the health penalties into the stress track with just a little effort, and the healing clock is just... well, okay I guess. E: Okay, if we treat trauma as long-term (healing track certainly isn't, because it's resolved every session or two), then there are 3 health tracks and two long-term health tracks (trauma and vice). Again, is this really an important addition? QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jan 14, 2016 |
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Jan 14, 2016 02:33
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Harrow posted:I love this system's bones, at least on a reading, but I can see how it's sort of... lopsided. I agree with this statement so hard I don't really know how to express it.  E: Woo, page 6!
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Jan 14, 2016 03:00
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Jimmeeee posted:Now Effect is determined after the action roll by comparing the "quality, scale, and potency" of the player character compared to their obstacle. The PC gets 1-3 Effect based on that comparison. Critical action rolls and fine gear both add 1 to that outcome (maybe still to a cap of 3, not sure), while partial successes and failures may subtract from that outcome. Actually, effect is now mostly GM discretion, and determined before the roll (just like the riskiness of the situation). It does suggest using those things as a guideline however. Here's the play example on page 5: Blades QuickStart v5, page 5 posted:Player: "I rush across the courtyard and vault over the hedge, hiding in the shadows there." Even the section on it doesn't suggest using precise math. Instead, it basically tells the GM to just do whatever they think is fair: Blades QuickStart v5, page 10 posted:The GM judges the effect level using the profiles at right. Which one best matches the action at hand—Limited, Standard, or Great? Each effect level indicates the questions that should be answered for that effect, as well as how many segments to tick if you're using a progress clock for this obstacle. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 14, 2016 23:55
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I ran this game Sunday. I'll write up a summary of what happened; it was fun, but we didn't interact with the rolling mechanisms a whole lot. I'll probably do it for a few more weeks, and post more about how it goes, too.Harrow posted:How do people generally handle progress clocks during play? Do you draw them in some place where the players can see them all, or do you keep them hidden but give the players feedback about their overall progress? Unless you have a great reason (and I didn't in the 6+ sessions of playing this game), make them public. Here's the 'GM Action' about making a clock: Blades QuickStart v5, p. 25 posted:Make a progress clock or tick one down. Keep a stack of index cards handy. Make clocks like crazy! Keep them out where everyone can see. (Emphasis mine.)
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Jan 20, 2016 18:00
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This game's health system is a mess:
Congratulations, you just took harm in Blades in the Dark! How do you get rid of it?
 Harrow posted:I've got a couple more rule questions, now that I've run this a couple of times. It's pretty likely that I've missed things in the book or that some of this is supposed to be up to player/GM interpretation, but! 1. Attune should be broadly interpreted. Have fun with it! 2. That's up to your table! My current group is selling powder to drugs that makes them solidify for ~6 hours, and I've ruled that ghosts get to decide their visibility. 3. See the previous question: that's up to you, since the book currently doesn't specify. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Feb 2, 2016 |
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Feb 2, 2016 06:53
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Boing posted:I don't get what's complicated about it? Unless you're using an old version of the quickstart rules. It's pretty much 3 segments on a 6, 2 on a 4-5, and 1 on a 1-3. Plus or minus some if there's a good reason the player has an advantage or disadvantage. It's pretty drat complicated. You have to consider the situation to determine their position, and then you have to consider if they could do it well with respect to their own abilities, the quality of any items they have, the scale of the target, and their relative potency. Then you ask if people are helping, and if they wan't a devil's bargain. Even without the second die roll, that's a lot of fiddly bits to resolve the question: "am I the competent thief that my playbook suggests I am?" The v3 version of the game, which I consider to be a better system, only had you determine your position; the effect came as a result of that fiction and your gear and that was it. The rest of those 'factors' got tied into determining the position,, and that was just fine. All of the random, tacked-on bloat of the current quickstart just feels... cloudier for no benefit. Again, I'd like to reiterate that I think the game is still a lot of fun, and it's certainly easy to be creative with. I ran four sessions of it with a group of drug dealers, and it was excellent. But that felt more in spite of all of these extra rules, not because of them. The core game is sound, but the rest of the random cruft is just that: cruft.
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Apr 8, 2016 18:27
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Boing posted:I don't get what's complicated about it? Unless you're using an old version of the quickstart rules. It's pretty much 3 segments on a 6, 2 on a 4-5, and 1 on a 1-3. Plus or minus some if there's a good reason the player has an advantage or disadvantage. It's pretty drat complicated. You have to consider the situation to determine their position, and then you have to consider if they could do it well with respect to their own abilities, the quality of any items they have, the scale of the target, and their relative potency. Then you ask if people are helping, and if they wan't a devil's bargain. Even without the second die roll, that's a lot of fiddly bits to resolve the question: "am I the competent thief that my playbook suggests I am?" The v3 version of the game, which I consider to be a better system, only had you determine your position; the effect came as a result of that fiction and your gear and that was it. The rest of those 'factors' got tied into determining the position, and that was just fine. Comparatively, the v6 quickstart just feels... cloudier for no benefit. Again, I'd like to reiterate that I think the game is still a lot of fun, and it's certainly easy to be creative with. I ran four sessions of it with a group of drug dealers, and it was excellent. But that felt more in spite of all of these extra rules, not because of them. The core game is sound, but the rest of the random cruft is just that: cruft.
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Apr 8, 2016 18:26
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Harrow posted:Well, it's also useful. The healing rules are set up as they are because you're supposed to really want to avoid taking harm. Anything above level 1 harm is pretty nasty--it's either -1d on all applicable rolls (level 2 harm) or you're so badly hurt that you need someone's help to do drat near anything (level 3 harm). You take stress to resist harm because it's easier to get rid of stress than it is to get rid of harm, but at the same time, you're supposed to feel some amount of tension there because maxing out your stress gives you a trauma that you can (almost) never get rid of. The objection to this argument is: the narrative didn't demand these things, the system did. A system applying external narrative pressure can be nice, but at the fine-grained level of wounds it comes off as kludgy instead of interesting.
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Apr 9, 2016 01:32
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Fenarisk posted:On an unrelated note I really hope all the stretch goals are being worked on, as I really really want to see how some of them play out, namely the cyberpunk one and the dungeon crawler one (in the hopes of it being all Darkest Dungeon). I fully anticipate there being a hundred and one Cyberpunk hacks for this game. Hell, I started one when I was drunk one night. That said, it seems like a less bad idea than a PbtA hack (of which there are six, and, The Sprawl aside, all seem about as successful as a land war in Asia), but look forward to a mess of bad ones. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Apr 12, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 02:37
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Kai Tave posted:Said everyone about every RPG ever. Yes, but PbtA (and now, BitD) seem particularly susceptible to terrible (and, for BitD, overwrought) game design. When you consider that BitD is all about "I DO CRIME," it almost makes me cringe to think of every Shadowrun GM who is going to try to pick the system and hack it into "Shadowrun, but with less rules, y'all." QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Apr 12, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 02:45
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The complexity was never the problem with the hacks. In fact, there was a lengthy discussion in the PbtA thread was about how exactly the complexity appeal of Shadowrun is mismanaged in these hacks. It isn't a matter of system quality (if it was, Shadowrun would have lost in 2005 ), but a matter of replicating the player experience in a way that is faithful to both the source and target systems (Shadowrun and PbtA, respectively). Remaking Shadowrun in PbtA but including all the fiddly bits as rules is horrible and feels disingenuous to PbtA (see Sixth World), and leaving too many out doesn't quite grab the magic of the original system (see Shadowrun Apocalyse). All in all, those six or so systems still haven't managed to fill the niche experience that Shadowrun does. (As honorable mention, The Sprawl nails cyberpunk, but it leaves out the elves and magic.) Blades in the Dark, on the other hand, probably has enough crunch to do it right; it's got just about the right number of fiddly bits. Moreover, the system exudes creativity. Focusing that creativity on Shadowrun will probably yield a system that has all of the look/feel of Shadowrun without any of the painful rules, if it's done right. And I really hope that happens, because I'd love to play more Shadowrun but I can't bring myself to actually run the Shadowrun system any more. It's just too much. The problem, though, and why I've been so negative about the impending BitD Hacks, is I've already seen four different people talk about trying to make Shadowrun Blades and Blades isn't even out yet. This suggests that, like with PbtA (which had six Shadowrun/Cyberpunk hacks as of last August and wasn't a game about committing crimes), we'll see a lot of half-brained, half-done hacks of Shadowrun-lite which miss the parts of Shadowrun that ever made it worth playing. That's pretty unfortunate! All that said, the sheer number of PbtA SR/Cyberpunk hacks we've seen demonstrate that there's a big spot in the market right now for people who want to have the cool style, risk, minutia, etc., of Shadowrun, but don't want the crunch that comes with it. A good Blades hack could fill that gap. Unfortunately, I think it will take us three, four, five bad ones before we get there. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Apr 12, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 04:54
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I've flipped through v7, and it seems basically like what I'd expect from the end product (having played maybe 12 sessions at this point). It's cleaner, it seems fun, the health system is still a mess, and the magic looks roughly in-theme. That said, the magic rules are a bit troubling: first, there are a lot, and second, they seem powerful relative to other characters' abilities. I'm not sure how it manifests in play, but the risks for magnitude and alchemical prep seem negligible when compared to the potential effects. I also wish Finesse covered lockpicking because, as written, the Lurk's bad at their job. (Oh, and the district art looks like it was made in MS paint.) In related news, I finally picked up a copy of Lies of Locke Lamora, and I'm sort of flabbergasted at how much of it John Harper stole whole-sale for BitD's setting. He obviously added most of the magic-y stuff (eg vampires, ghosts, leviathans), but everything from bustling canals to the city map to naming conventions seem like cribs of a book written ten years ago. I wish he had just gotten the license, because the game would be cooler without the serial numbers filed off. Fenarisk posted:I'm also excited because there's a blank playbook in here, and I might start working on a cyberpunk hack soon if I can run this and see how everything plays out. If you do this, please change the health system. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 01:03
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I want a system that doesn't require 7 steps any time you might take physical harm. e: The v2-v3 quickstart rules just used stress for harm, so you took harm (with armor option), made the resistance roll, and marked stress, the end. Which, incidentally, is exactly how every other action in the game works. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 01:10
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admanb posted:I guess nothing about that actually seems complicated to me. My beef is two-fold: one, it's jarringly complicated in comparison to the other rules, and two, it's a brutal, secondary quasi-economy that seems out to get the players without much real benefit to the narrative or the mechanics of the game. There is already a stress and trauma system in place, with a nice economy of usage, penalty, and recovery. But we also need apparently a second quasi-economy of penalty and recovery that explicitly applies to physical harm for some reason. Which could be cool, except that it's a sub-par mechanic with a lousy economy. First, on the topic of the mechanic: what does Harm really do? It decouple PCs' physical and mental well-being, and it accounts for the former separately. This has some advantages1:
Now, onto the lousy economy: a player is allowed to Resist any Consequence, and they do that by rolling the relevant dice below the line in their sheet. They take the highest of these dice and subtract it from 6, taking the difference as stress. Now, if you roll two dice to soak this, you've got a 75% chance of taking 3 or less stress and a 55.56% chance of taking 2 or less. (For one dice, that's 50% and 33.33%.) Since it costs two stress to gain a die (via Push Yourself), and 2-harm can cost you a die (and 3-harm costs you 2 stress for EVERY action), the penalties in the Harm economy basically demand that you try to Resist2. And even if you do, it's still a brutal punishment for flubbing the action roll (because, let's be real, reduced effect or extra time is a lot better than reduced effect every time you try to do something with your left hand). Oh, and did I mention that all of this sticks around until you perform 3-4 downtime actions! So, for some reason, unlike the other Consequences and sub-systems, Harm is this double-double bad Consequence that you really want to blow Stress on and that screws you over even when you do (well, maybe, since, again, the GM gets total fiat). It complicates the game, it brutalizes the players, and it puts a lot of weird power in the GM's hands. At best, it's sloppy design. At worst, it's a hatch into poo poo-GM power tripping. And, while many people here have said it isn't that complicated during play, none of them have indicate that it feels like a necessary or good mechanic. Footnotes: 1. If I'm missing some other awesome thing it adds, mechanically or narratively, please point it out. If I'm missing something about what the Health track adds, I want to know---I want to be wrong about how unnecessary this overcomplicated mechanic is. 2. At 3 dice, you have a 42% chance of taking no stress and reducing the harm. At four dice, that's 51%. Fenarisk posted:roll to resist, which the roll resulst gives you how much stress you take instead That's wrong. The Quickstart guide explicitly reads (p11) "Usually, a resistance roll will reduce the severity of a consequence. If you're going to suffer fatal harm, for example, a resistance roll would reduce the harm to severe, instead. The GM also has the option to rule that a given resistance roll allows a character to completely avoid a consequence." You're supposed to drop the Harm a level and then make 'em eat the Stress. (Well, it depends---how benevolent of a GM are you?) Fenarisk posted:The nice thing for cyberpunk/shadowrun hacking is that the only thing that needs to be done is renaming some of the skills and some of the items, and some flavor text changes for the crews. Everything else is perfectly baked into the system as is. How are you planning to roll the cyberware? QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 04:26
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Cyberware should just be part of playbook moves IMO. Though I guess that comes with the narrative problem of how they were obtained. I dunno. Maybe you could do it like Heritage, but call it Ware? So it gives you the bonus. Then a move might be Chromed. Pick two more 'wares from the list. Fenarisk posted:Ok so for harm, would you scrap it entirely and just add more stress points? Would you still let players roll to resist and instead just taking that much less stress? v2 BitD did it as individual clocks on your sheet: Winded would be a 2-tick clock, Knife Wound would be 4-tick. You had to heal those during downtime with healing actions. I could see doing something like that, but using smaller clocks and treating them as invoke trackers to avoid the 'infinitely-invokable FATE Aspects': if it comes up that your knife wound is causing you trouble, that clears a tick off, too. That doesn't make as much narrative sense, but it relieves a lot of mechanical pressure for burning downtime on healing. So you might be winded, but it'll pass, and you might have a wound that sucks now, but by the next job you're good to go. Another decent system might be to have three tiers like FATE, a la "Scene, Job, Downtime" or something, where Scene wounds go at the end of a scene, Job at the end of a job, and Downtime as an explicit Downtime action. Then the GM can take them however, and the player can make a conscious decision to risk his floating his Broken Leg instead of spending Downtime on it. It becomes a gamble, and that feels pretty Blades-y to me. I guess my main goal here is to get the PCs back up to task faster. I mean, PCs already have a hard game-over clock of 4 Trauma, so why introduce a second game over condition here? Also, it isn't much fun as a player to show up to a session with four Harm boxes filled in and a half-done Healing clock, trying to figure out how you're going to survive the job. Your edit also seems like a good system. You may want to bump the Stress track a little if you do that, though.
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Aug 16, 2016 05:04
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Scum & Villany seems a bit uninspired. I wish it was more, or less, or maybe just vaguer. Blades in the Dark does a good job of establishing a setting, but I hope the other hacks don't follow that suit.
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Nov 18, 2016 18:06
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Based on the discussion here and my brief skimming of the current digital release, it seems like this game landed right in the middle of mediocrity, which I consider a real shame. For a game that promises good, clean heist adventures, it's got a health system more complicated than FATE, editing like Shadowrun (see: "health penalties are explained in the 2nd paragraph on page 31"), and a bunch of character moves that feel like they started out as PC custom moves and moved into the playbooks. The heist clock and crew mechanisms are neat, though, and the setting is fun enough. Overall, though, the game overall definitely feels lacking in polish and grace compared to other work in this style (high-profile indy storygaming, I mean). I'm excited to see the 10 bad Shadowrun hacks, though!
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Feb 16, 2017 01:21
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Harrow posted:Wait, how does it mean a book has bad editing if health penalties are explained in a paragraph on a page? My criticism about editing was based on the confusion I saw in this thread about rules (see Demon_Corsair's posts). The way Harm is presented on the character sheets makes it seem pretty serious (e.g., -1D to all actions at 2 harm). it is only clarified in prose, in a paragraph, partway through the "Consequences & Harm" section, halfway down a page wedged between paragraphs explaining harm levels' prose correspondence and harm stacking. It would be pretty easy to skim over an otherwise clear system and completely miss a serious and important clarification/nerf about the harm mechanics. And it isn't mentioned elsewhere in the book that I can find (not even the extended playtest). This doesn't seem like an isolated incident, either (e.g., harm clock progress clearing on damage is a throwaway line on pg. 155). That strikes me as sloppy editing, leading to those situations where your GM may stop and say 'Hold on, I know it's explained somewhere in the book...' That said, that sort of thing isn't enough to turn me off the game (I do play Shadowrun, after all), and my playtests of Blades have all been great fun. I'll certainly be playing it a few more times, and I'd recommend everyone give it a go. I just wish it was more refined and polished, that's all. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 21:12
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Harrow posted:All it says on the character sheet is "-1D." To be fair, that's pretty unclear if nobody at the table has actually read the rules, but I really don't think we can judge a game's editing and clarity based on whether its character sheet lets people play the game correctly in that scenario or drat near every game is going to fail that test. Like, the character sheet also doesn't tell you what your load does, or how armor works, or what a project clock is, or when you need to circle one of those traumas or what trauma even means. I agree that a goodly number of games fail that test, and that's fine. But when your game preaches fiction-first and is clearly AW-inspired, it would be nice if i didn't have to read large chunks of the rulebook to correctly understand how basic systems work. (As a counter-example, AW2E was playable after the character sheet release and the book mostly aided with side ambiguities.) That's the basis of my criticism. And given the number of people who have shown up in this thread mentioning they misunderstood how health was supposed to work who both skimmed the book and played the game, I think it's a legitimate criticism. And it leads me to speculate that there are likely other, similar ambiguities floating around for that same reason. To reiterate, however, I agree the game is fun and worth playing. I've run upwards of 20 sessions of it over the playtest versions. My complaint, as I I wrote in my last post, is that I was hoping for more polish and refinement (and less greebly complexity sprinkled in random places) in the final product. We're talking about a game that missed its Kickstarter delivery date by well over a year; I think asking for some polish at that point is reasonable. If you disagree, that's fine, too. We're allowed to have different opinions! 
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Feb 17, 2017 02:23
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Nuns with Guns posted:lol if you go into a kickstarter expecting the delivery date to be accurate I don't care that it was late. What I said was: QuantumNinja posted:We're talking about a game that missed its Kickstarter delivery date by well over a year; I think asking for some polish at that point is reasonable. This reflects the same opinion I posted in this thread in November 2015: QuantumNinja posted:I'd rather have the game November 2016 and it be amazing. Everyone's already said it: this game seems to be due for tons of annealing yet, and while each subsequent edition is playable, it's getting better at a crawl. I hope Harper takes six more months and makes it great instead of rushing it and delivering it closer to the current state. I still stand by that. I'd love to wait another six months and get something that addresses my complaints above (because they certainly are immanently addressable).
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Feb 17, 2017 04:55
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:Has anyone played Scum & Villainy and/or have thoughts on how it compared to vanilla Blades? I'm running it with a group right now, and we've run into some annoying issues (even ignoring the Blades learning curve), but it's overall been a good experience. The Gambit and Ship-Debt systems both feel good for the narrative situation, and the initial story setup stuff has lead to some really interesting situations. (The muscle taking a blaster pistol as her rival. It keeps showing up in different people's hands to blast her away, and the last session culminated in her getting hold of it!) That said, the system is still very beta, and it has some serious ground to make up before finalization. Examples include: the skills are a mess and over-specific; the crew advancement is tiered without actual crew growth, which the game merely apologizes for instead of dealing with; the playbooks don't address all the fictional concepts, such as assassins, leaving some strange gaps in possible characters; the sector has felt small in play; the rebel playbook is a mess in terms of fictional starting position relative to character ability and job scale; and in a strange thematic twist, BetterWeirdthanDead posted:My Blades group may switch to it soon, but may scrap the "your crew is determined by your ship type" rules. The ships are pretty seriously customized during crew creation, so I don't know if that's even particularly problematic. It would be pretty easy to ask them to pick "smugglers / bounty hunters / rebel alliance" and then let them piecemeal a ship together. But, as with those genres, the ship is its own character, so it might be worth investing some time in making it feel like on.
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Aug 11, 2017 16:17
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Ship repairs have eaten a little, but that's because they got in a space battle and it needed work after that. The upkeep is just a cred-sink (to replace the 'crew stash'), not downtime.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:15
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