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potatocubed
Jul 26, 2012

*rathian noises*

Ratpick posted:

Hey, so, what's the goonsensus on Night Witches? I saw a copy of it at my FLGS and thought about getting it but I'm on a very tight budget at the moment and decided to pick up the latest volume of Rat Queens instead. I'm thinking that I might get it once I have more money again.

Night Witches looks pretty good, and I'd love to give it a full-on go at some point, but it's another in an ever-increasing list of PBTA games for people who already know how to play PBTA games. (A pet peeve of mine, which I think is a side effect of most of them starting life as hacks rather than complete games.)

A quick review based on my read-through:

Pros:
  • PBTA system, yes.
  • Really good subject material, rich with drama opportunities and strong themes.
  • I like the campaign structure. It's got a clearly defined beginning and end, forms a narrative arc, and allows for rotating GMs if that's your bag.

Cons:
  • You need to use the bits and mortar option because there's a load of content not included in the book, which is still... not vital, technically, but really bloody handy. Like character sheets.
  • Reading the moves leads me to feel it's kind of PvP-heavy, which may or may not be a con depending on your point of view.

But yeah, I haven't played it so take that with a grain of salt.

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Flavivirus
Dec 14, 2011

The next stage of evolution.

potatocubed posted:

Night Witches looks pretty good, and I'd love to give it a full-on go at some point, but it's another in an ever-increasing list of PBTA games for people who already know how to play PBTA games. (A pet peeve of mine, which I think is a side effect of most of them starting life as hacks rather than complete games.)

As I found out when fleshing Legacy out as a full product, writing GM advice and explaining the subconcious procedures you use in play can be a lot harder than writing rules material. I'm pretty sure that's the biggest part of what made AW so great - it formalised and communicated clearly how you actually run a game of it. Sitting down and working out exactly how the game should be run, and how it's different from a 'standard' RP experience, is something I'd say even most published games don't do, but it can be really helpful.

Fenarisk
Oct 27, 2005

I'd love some feedback on these which I slapped together for a game coming up online. I'm basically running a True Detective style game set in the late 1960's, probably going for a few weeks.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/w5v8v59kqvzw7qg,yz0c3nqygf7lj8o,7fb7wca6l6ffe0m,7dc2udldd65sbrz,lun7bcfpwfr334q,3o666jsvbwqfw1o/shared

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Flavivirus posted:

As I found out when fleshing Legacy out as a full product, writing GM advice and explaining the subconcious procedures you use in play can be a lot harder than writing rules material. I'm pretty sure that's the biggest part of what made AW so great - it formalised and communicated clearly how you actually run a game of it. Sitting down and working out exactly how the game should be run, and how it's different from a 'standard' RP experience, is something I'd say even most published games don't do, but it can be really helpful.

Night Witches uses (with permission) Monsterhearts's pretty good "Teaching the Game" section. I'd be curious to hear what people with no PbtA experience think of Night Witches, but I do think Jason Morningstar offers some good guidance, although I do agree that the "no actual character sheets/playbooks in the book" thing is a problem. I know page space is at a premium and it's not going to be a problem for most of the market to download PDFs, but it's inconvenient.

Has anyone here actually played NW? I'm considering pitching it to my usual group (experienced roleplayers, some with backgrounds with AW and Monsterhearts, some without) and am trying to figure out how to spin the "rotating GM" thing, in particular.

Man Dancer
Apr 22, 2008
I've been in a couple sessions. They've been pretty good for me, but I'm not sure everyone had the same experience. The MC is doing a really good job of selling the setting and the context, how lovely and scary the PCs situation is, bringing up lots of pressures, etc. He's got a lot of experience running PbtA games, to be fair, but the game is doing good work on making the bombing runs feel brutally (and appropriately) hard if you don't build up your mission pool or other advantages during the day.

I decided to be the person to take the highest rank, which meant I was the one deciding who was in what plane, who did attack runs, etc. This meant I had a lot of control over who would get to shine and who would not, so I was experiencing the game on a different level than some of the other players who didn't get as much spotlight (despite my efforts). We are definitely playing with just about too many players at 5 PCs, so I think some folks aren't getting as many scenes as they'd like, and you kinda need those scenes to survive the night missions.

Overall, super-good, but 4 PCs is the max I would go.

Also, Red Army Choir on Pandora/Youtube Playlists is a must.

thefakenews
Oct 20, 2012
I don't know if I should post this here, or in the old Dungeon World thread, but anyways.

Leaving aside anything from Awful Good Games (because I don't want to give that guy my money), what third party playbooks for Dungeon World are worth getting?

thefakenews fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Jul 3, 2015

Cyphoderus
Apr 21, 2010

I'll have you know, foxes have the finest call in nature

Golden Bee posted:

I played four or five sessions.
It was interesting, with the caveat that the stats aren't really balanced. You can go a long way without +Smash (by applying conditions like Tied Up, Frustrated, Out of Breath, or Repentant) but agility will get you through.

I really, really enjoyed the playbook moves unlocking on situation rather than level up. I was playing a kind of nebbish coward*, and unlocking moves with things like -You encounter a villain you sympathize with and want to learn more about is stellar.

If you want to play Frank Castle, you don't start out with a move that lets you straight up Punisher someone; you have to Make an enemy out of a friend and -bring up and discuss the idea of using lethal force with a character you have a strong Bond with.
You get those moments.


*Who everyone saw as a slick ultra-spy.

Oh, I only saw this now. Thanks for the reply!

So it's not the moves triggering in those situations, it's you unlocking new moves by getting into situations? That sounds really cool, actually.

Crested Penguin
Jan 12, 2008
Possibly a Replicant
I'm three sessions into a Night Witches game. It's valuable to note that the character sheet packet also contains a starting scenario that introduces the situation really well. It also promotes the GM-swapping component of the game by encouraging you to have each player take turns controlling different key NPCs in the regiment. I can't speak to how well it teaches PbtA mechanics because all of us are very familiar with that. I did find the stuff about the rhythm of the day/night cycle to be really helpful, since that really defines the game and makes it a pretty different experience from other PbtA games I've played.

There definitely has been a lot of low-level pvp, which is certainly supposed to be there. The conflicts so far have been less overt than pvp conflicts I usually see in Apocalypse World, and nothing like the epic confrontations in Monsterhearts, but I guess it depends on your group. I think it does make sense for people stuck in close quarters in highly stressful situations to have it out with each other though.

The night moves are all really scary. The results of a soft hit mean some really difficult choices, especially as planes get damaged and not repaired, or pilots go flying with harm. We're starting to hit the point where people have to really think twice about taking marks. Marks are very interesting, at first they're a good safety valve, but they get less appealing over time. I love the narrative triggers on them, they have really fleshed out some of the characters. It doesn't take long for players to really start desperately looking to get some mission pool to cover themselves for all the hard night stuff.

The day is interesting to GM because it's a little hard to precisely say how many scenes you should have. I've started to use, "you can do that if you cut into your sleep and take 1-harm from exhaustion" a lot. Sometimes a day cycle is a lot longer because some real drama comes up.

We're coming up on the end of the second duty station, and one of the players has said he wants to GM that one. I only ran my PC for a little bit in the intro so it will be cool to see it from the player side.

Trollhawke
Jan 25, 2012

I'LL GET YOU THIS YEAR! EVEN IF I SAID THIS LAST YEAR TOOOOOO
God I love the smell of salty succubi in the morning

thefakenews posted:

I don't know if I should post this here, or in the old Dungeon World thread, but anyways.

Leaving aside anything from Awful Good Games (because I don't want to give that guy my money), what third party playbooks for Dungeon World are worth getting?

Most of Jacob Randolph's stuff is pretty good, although his base Mage 2.0 class can be a little overpowered. I believe there is a variant which fixes the main issue with the class, however. Otherwise, his stuff is generally good.

Pick up Johnston's' classes, they come for free in a red pdf.

The Warlock by Sean Fager is a fun class, even if it is an oldy, as is the initiate.

If you can find the hack-n-slasher by Nygren and Kennedy (produced in Grim World), it's a pretty fun class with lots of room for interpretation.

The fool is amazing.

I can't cite sources for the rest, but that should do for now.

A bit of a mage heavy selection, but what can ya do.

Blind Azathoth
Jul 28, 2006
Dia ad aghaidh's ad aodaun... agus bas dunarch ort! Dhonas 's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!... Ungl unl... rrlh ... chchch...

Trollhawke posted:

Most of Jacob Randolph's stuff is pretty good, although his base Mage 2.0 class can be a little overpowered. I believe there is a variant which fixes the main issue with the class, however. Otherwise, his stuff is generally good.

Pick up Johnston's' classes, they come for free in a red pdf.

The Warlock by Sean Fager is a fun class, even if it is an oldy, as is the initiate.

If you can find the hack-n-slasher by Nygren and Kennedy (produced in Grim World), it's a pretty fun class with lots of room for interpretation.

The fool is amazing.

I can't cite sources for the rest, but that should do for now.

A bit of a mage heavy selection, but what can ya do.

Randolph's specialist mages (Winter Mage, Clock Mage, etc.) are probably my favorite of his (and they come in a convenient discounted bundle!), along with the Witch. EDIT: And the Dashing Hero, if you're looking for something that isn't a spellcaster of some kind.

The Princess is also amazing.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost
One of my players took the Mastermind and had far too much fun with the move that means when you're monologing, everybody present stays distracted while you explain your plan to them.

There was one point where he battled against his mentor, and they ended up trying to steal the thread of the monologue from each other before falling over a waterfall together.

RSIxidor
Jun 19, 2012

Folks who can't handle a self-reference paradox are real suckers.
I rather like the Gallant by Timothy Schroeder. He's also done a few interesting ones, Summoner, Arcane Duelist, Cursed Knight, all on DTPRG.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Cyphoderus posted:

Oh, I only saw this now. Thanks for the reply!

So it's not the moves triggering in those situations, it's you unlocking new moves by getting into situations? That sounds really cool, actually.

You gotta do it to learn it. Sometimes, you'll unlock a new book because you realize you've acted a certain way, which is the complete opposite of "think with your character sheet" roleplaying

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Adam Keobel just announced that he's going to be writing the official Rat Queens RPG, using DW as a base.

Error 404
Jul 17, 2009


MAGE CURES PLOT

Evil Mastermind posted:

Adam Keobel just announced that he's going to be writing the official Rat Queens RPG, using DW as a base.

loving Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Adam Keobel just announced that he's going to be writing the official Rat Queens RPG, using DW as a base.

I really hope they change the basic moves and alter the language to better fit the license because I like the comic and DW itself doesn't fully match the tone. I might be talking out of my rear end, but the comic can't just straightly be ported onto DW without there being some issues.

That said, pretty hype to hearing they're making an official rpg of the comic.

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.
The Hipster Fighter playbook needs a move about only using a weapon ironically, for a start.

Cyphoderus
Apr 21, 2010

I'll have you know, foxes have the finest call in nature

Evil Mastermind posted:

Adam Keobel just announced that he's going to be writing the official Rat Queens RPG, using DW as a base.

I really, really hope he goes for tone instead of setting. We could really go without rules for a fantasy setting that, let's face it, is just like all the other ones (on purpose, even).

And writing for tone is going to be hard. The two things that make Rat Queens stand out in my mind are witty dialogue, that you really can't quantify into an RPG without going at least a little experimental, and a heavy focus on interpersonal relationships. If we get a fantasy RPG focused on relationships, romantic and otherwise, that'd be awesome.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Cyphoderus posted:

And writing for tone is going to be hard. The two things that make Rat Queens stand out in my mind are witty dialogue, that you really can't quantify into an RPG without going at least a little experimental, and a heavy focus on interpersonal relationships. If we get a fantasy RPG focused on relationships, romantic and otherwise, that'd be awesome.
Yeah, I agree, but I have faith in Adam. I believe he'll do right by the property.

That said, there better be a "When you attack Gary, take +1 forward" move.

Fenarisk
Oct 27, 2005

Maybe they should finish the almost-year-past-due final supplement from the DW kickstarter first.

Benly
Aug 2, 2011

20% of the time, it works every time.
I guess this is the thread to post it, I posted it in the AW thread before this thread was a thing. I started work on a hack based on Exalted, focused specifically on the narrative of "innately flawed god-kings reborn after many centuries" as Exalted originally pitched itself, rather than all the piles of thematic and narrative sprawl that came after. I haven't worked on it for a few weeks thanks to various problems, but I figured I'd toss it up for feedback.

Shoombo
Jan 1, 2013
Is the Unicorn Knights game in the examples in Simple World based on a real game? Because I would play that game.

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012

Fenarisk posted:

Maybe they should finish the almost-year-past-due final supplement from the DW kickstarter first.

Did anything ever happen with Juntu's Floating Ice Hell, or is that just a write-off at this point? I wanted a module with a name like that to succeed.

Tevery Best
Oct 11, 2013

Hewlo Furriend
Is there a PbtA hack that deals with Cold War (or Cold War-esque) espionage?

Error 404
Jul 17, 2009


MAGE CURES PLOT

Tevery Best posted:

Is there a PbtA hack that deals with Cold War (or Cold War-esque) espionage?

I forget who it was, but a goon here was working on a hack called enemy action.

Zikan
Feb 29, 2004

Here is a link I found to a version, not sure if it's the latest: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-blUgsUpjcIRXU0dkFwUk9qUEk/edit?pli=1

Davin Valkri
Apr 8, 2011

Maybe you're weighing the moral pros and cons but let me assure you that OH MY GOD
SHOOT ME IN THE GODDAMNED FACE
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

Tevery Best posted:

Is there a PbtA hack that deals with Cold War (or Cold War-esque) espionage?

There's also a hack out there called Secret Police which puts players in the shoes of the not!Stasi. I'm not sure where it is now, but I think Forums Terrorist has access.

Tevery Best
Oct 11, 2013

Hewlo Furriend

Zikan posted:

Here is a link I found to a version, not sure if it's the latest: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-blUgsUpjcIRXU0dkFwUk9qUEk/edit?pli=1

Thanks, this looks like it could come in handy, even if it's not 100% what I'm looking for.

Full disclosure:

A couple of years ago (boy, the time does fly) my friend Lichtenstein ran a session about two feuding Venetian noble houses. The kicker here was that everyone had two characters: one from House Contarini, the other from House Falieri. This worked really well, even though some characters had a lot of prep and backstory, but little screen time (it's hard to find a time to play a Falieri outcast who needs dough to marry a Byzantine heiress when your other character is the Contarini Doge). He then let the intrigue mostly run itself, with the players' actions and reactions guiding it. With everyone having a bigger or smaller stake in both houses, even small bullshit scenes were exciting and prompted a lot of activity from everyone, and with two characters for everyone by design, player elimination was not as big a deal as it would typically be (although only one character actually died - due to a terminal case of bungee-less bungee jumping).

I'd like to do something similar, but about Cold War-style spies. Two rival agencies set up shop in the same place (a Central American country? Not-Berlin? Somewhere else? I'm not exactly sure yet). Both want to achieve something (rig an election? Intercept a defector? Something else entirely?), although they come in with different levels of equipment and preparation, and we take it from there.

The problem is I'm gonna have to most likely borrow and tweak stuff from elsewhere to make it suit my needs. Lichtenstein's game used the A Song of Ice and Fire hack with some tiny changes, but I'd like some more control over the content. I'd like the character sheet itself to feed the players ideas to get them going right off the bat.

I'm not very good at hacking PbtA, though, so I'd appreciate any ideas and help from the thread (even with the general concept building).

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.
Is there a space opera / Firefly-esque hack?

Tiger
Oct 18, 2012

And you, who are you? This is what we've got, yes. What are you going to make of it?
Fun Shoe
Uncharted Worlds is pretty much that, maybe more Firefly than space opera (I'm not really clear on the definitions). It recently had a successful kickstarter, and we backers have gotten most of the rules as pre-layout previews.

Flavivirus
Dec 14, 2011

The next stage of evolution.
After a few years of graft and the support of friends, family, and kickstarter backers Legacy: Life Among the Ruins is now finished!



If you're interested in a game that focuses on rebuilding and exploration and adds a faction-level layer to the AW engine go here to check it out :D

Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Jul 13, 2015

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009

Tevery Best posted:

Thanks, this looks like it could come in handy, even if it's not 100% what I'm looking for.

Full disclosure:

A couple of years ago (boy, the time does fly) my friend Lichtenstein ran a session about two feuding Venetian noble houses. The kicker here was that everyone had two characters: one from House Contarini, the other from House Falieri. This worked really well, even though some characters had a lot of prep and backstory, but little screen time (it's hard to find a time to play a Falieri outcast who needs dough to marry a Byzantine heiress when your other character is the Contarini Doge). He then let the intrigue mostly run itself, with the players' actions and reactions guiding it. With everyone having a bigger or smaller stake in both houses, even small bullshit scenes were exciting and prompted a lot of activity from everyone, and with two characters for everyone by design, player elimination was not as big a deal as it would typically be (although only one character actually died - due to a terminal case of bungee-less bungee jumping).

I'd like to do something similar, but about Cold War-style spies. Two rival agencies set up shop in the same place (a Central American country? Not-Berlin? Somewhere else? I'm not exactly sure yet). Both want to achieve something (rig an election? Intercept a defector? Something else entirely?), although they come in with different levels of equipment and preparation, and we take it from there.

The problem is I'm gonna have to most likely borrow and tweak stuff from elsewhere to make it suit my needs. Lichtenstein's game used the A Song of Ice and Fire hack with some tiny changes, but I'd like some more control over the content. I'd like the character sheet itself to feed the players ideas to get them going right off the bat.

I'm not very good at hacking PbtA, though, so I'd appreciate any ideas and help from the thread (even with the general concept building).

As the guy who wrote that, it's probably not what you're looking for based on your description of your game. It's way more about diving through plate glass windows and doing Mission Impossible shenanigans after all your Sam Fisher bullshit goes tits up. I would thoroughly recommend taking a gander at Urban Shadows, though. You can throw out all the supernatural stuff and what you're left with is a game about Debt, politics and underhanded dealing. The not-quite-PBtA game Undying which has a text preview up on Kickstarter at the moment sounds like it could be productive reading for you, too. It's a diceless game about scheming vampires and the "day-and-night" mechanics as well as the way competing schemes are effectively a bidding war with limited resources sounds like it could work very well for a game about two competing spy agencies.

Like, feel free to tear Enemy Action apart for ideas but it's definitely more of a cooperative spy-themed heist game than a grand espionage Great Game.

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009

Flavivirus posted:

After a few years of graft and the support of friends, family, and kickstarter backers Legacy: Life Among the Ruins is now finished!



If you're interested in a game that focuses on rebuilding and exploration and adds a faction-level layer to the AW engine go here to check it out :D

gently caress yeah, nice one Flavivirus. And Enemy Action still languishes as a lovely google doc...

Tevery Best
Oct 11, 2013

Hewlo Furriend

Doodmons posted:

As the guy who wrote that, it's probably not what you're looking for based on your description of your game. It's way more about diving through plate glass windows and doing Mission Impossible shenanigans after all your Sam Fisher bullshit goes tits up. I would thoroughly recommend taking a gander at Urban Shadows, though. You can throw out all the supernatural stuff and what you're left with is a game about Debt, politics and underhanded dealing. The not-quite-PBtA game Undying which has a text preview up on Kickstarter at the moment sounds like it could be productive reading for you, too. It's a diceless game about scheming vampires and the "day-and-night" mechanics as well as the way competing schemes are effectively a bidding war with limited resources sounds like it could work very well for a game about two competing spy agencies.

Like, feel free to tear Enemy Action apart for ideas but it's definitely more of a cooperative spy-themed heist game than a grand espionage Great Game.

Thanks, I'll look into those!

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

QuantumNinja posted:

Is there a space opera / Firefly-esque hack?

the basic playbooks map fairly directly onto firefly characters

ImpactVector
Feb 24, 2007

HAHAHAHA FOOLS!!
I AM SO SMART!

Uh oh. What did he do now?

Nap Ghost

RSIxidor posted:

I rather like the Gallant by Timothy Schroeder. He's also done a few interesting ones, Summoner, Arcane Duelist, Cursed Knight, all on DTPRG.
We actually found the Gallant to be a little overpowered in play. Maybe I was being too lenient, but Impassioned Speech seems to lean a little too far towards success. 10+ means you get what you want and people sing your praises, and the partial hit basically throws a soft move at the GM rather than the player. And as long as the person they're using it on isn't a bad guy, I generally had a hard time justifying not going along with it.

RSIxidor
Jun 19, 2012

Folks who can't handle a self-reference paradox are real suckers.
Could well be true. Many classes need some tuning to fit with a game.

Fenarisk
Oct 27, 2005

ImpactVector posted:

We actually found the Gallant to be a little overpowered in play. Maybe I was being too lenient, but Impassioned Speech seems to lean a little too far towards success. 10+ means you get what you want and people sing your praises, and the partial hit basically throws a soft move at the GM rather than the player. And as long as the person they're using it on isn't a bad guy, I generally had a hard time justifying not going along with it.

Word spreads now people be gunning for you. It all depends on tone and consequences. Just because the move doesn't have an immediate downside or consequence doesn't mean there aren't any ripple effects on the campaign.

tokenbrownguy
Apr 1, 2010

Is there anything along the lines of a Unknown Armies/Mage: The Awakening style hack? I'm interested in a game that allows "Mages" or whatever they might be called to start picking at the fabric of reality, confronting hubris and obsession in the search for power.

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Shoombo
Jan 1, 2013
I've finally finished up a playable draft of a horror game I've been working on. It's horribly unfinished and work in progress, but there's enough to actually play a game now, so I thought I'd share it. It's a diceless take on powered by the apocalypse, it's built for one-shots, has a neat advancement mechanic, and one of my main goals was to give players something to do after their characters die, because that's always been my major flaw with horror games. So hey, take a look, maybe.

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