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Verr posted: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. There's one called World Of Our Desires, which I believe is literally an Unknown Armies hack. Haven't played it, though. I don't know of any hacks that are straight about playing Wizards. Urban Shadows and Monster of the Week both feature magic heavily, though. US is an Apocalypse World style game, MotW is a very Dungeon World style game.
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Jul 16, 2015 00:49
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Monsterhearts continues to fascinate me. Unlike almost all other RPGs, a limited location (that PCs can't reach the pinnacle of) means to getting what you want is at someone else's expense. Or maybe it's my group.
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Jul 16, 2015 01:26
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Golden Bee posted:Monsterhearts continues to fascinate me. Unlike almost all other RPGs, a limited location (that PCs can't reach the pinnacle of) means to getting what you want is at someone else's expense. That fits my observations of Monsterhearts. The campaign I ran didn't get to a season break / Growing Up Moves, but the intention of the game pre-Growing-Up is pretty clearly that you don't have a toolbox to cooperate and compromise, nor to accept setbacks gracefully, so every victory is someone else's bitter defeat. (I believe this is actually a GMing principle, too.)
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Jul 16, 2015 01:31
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Verr posted: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. Not that I'm aware of. There's Urban Shadows which has a single playbook for each type of supernatural character, but that's not what you're asking for. Re: Mage: The Awakening, the closest I can think of, and still isn't really that close, is Jacob Randolf's The Mage playbook for DW, which has 13 or so different types of mages to choose from. Each one could be considered a House or Faction. General consensus has been that these playbooks are a bit overpowered. The author has rewritten several of the different types into their own playbooks, but only a few. I recommend taking a look at The Mage, It's not a perfect fit, but it might be a good starting place to begin hacking. Ich fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jul 16, 2015 |
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Jul 16, 2015 04:24
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Verr posted: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. There's The World Of Our Desires, but I don't know how good it is (someone at the end of the thread says it ran pretty well). e: oh hey new page.
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Jul 16, 2015 04:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:There's The World Of Our Desires, but I don't know how good it is (someone at the end of the thread says it ran pretty well). I actually tried running this for a few sessions. I felt that it still needs a lot of work. I actually thought separating out different kinds of psychological damage as your playbooks and then making magickal moves optional within them was pretty clever. I think my main issue is with the basic moves that they went with. I don't think anyone ever rolled to Dig Through Their Stuff. And Lash Out has a weird mix of success states. Like if I'm shooting someone why would I care if they understand what's upsetting me? It finally clicked for me when I realized the game is a mutation of Monsterhearts and not a direct AW hack. That explained the fairly lightweight playbooks and lack of MC guidance. I did very much enjoy letting the PCs' chosen obsessions guide the type of antagonists we came up with. It was fun to kind of work backwards from the characters to our own UA-inspired setting instead of just reading it out of the book.
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Jul 16, 2015 05:02
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Verr posted: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. Tbh, I've been thinking about something like that, though I doubt I've got the skill to make it.
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Jul 16, 2015 10:28
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Antivehicular posted:That fits my observations of Monsterhearts. The campaign I ran didn't get to a season break / Growing Up Moves, but the intention of the game pre-Growing-Up is pretty clearly that you don't have a toolbox to cooperate and compromise, nor to accept setbacks gracefully, so every victory is someone else's bitter defeat. (I believe this is actually a GMing principle, too.) Exactly right.
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Jul 16, 2015 11:47
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Thanks for the recommendation guys! I've been wanting to play Mage/UA for some time but don't care for either system much. Seems like PbtA would be perfect for the incalculable-yet-deeply-personal style of symbolism, power, and intrigue that both games have going. The World of Our Desires is pretty neat, but is definitely aiming for that slick, neon and grime UA Occult Underground feel - I think the Magehack I was invisioning would have a sort of progression wired in - as you start on the fresh-faced-recently-discovered-magic side of the power spectrum, the Occult Underground is perfect. But as you gain more power and see more of the Lie pulled back from reality, your character would become less tied to the more "mortal" or illusory aspects of their personality and world around them. Magick would become less about obsession and more about hubris, titanic battles of power, overtly changing fundamental realities, etc... Whereas the UA style will probably end up with a hosed up embodiment of their own mistakes killing most of players in their nerd-basements, which isn't bad, but a little smaller in scope. I think the best way to articulate this progression is a binary between Mortal (The Lie) and Immortal (The Truth); the characters' lives versus their innate magick potential. Binaries would be the core mechanisms throughout this hack. What TWoOD also lacks is a built in flavor for magick. There's no Life, or Fate, or even Forces qualifiers - which directly serves the idea of individual magick-users obsessions fueling their drives, which is rad. Again, I think that if you were to use the "facts" of magick built in to the playbooks, say, each Mage playbook getting to choose from a few magick-types (Death, Time, Matter) you could use those categories of power as an isolated "truth" within the illusionary world. Like, there needs to be no overt rules for where capital M-Magick comes from - each individual game could decide that on their own. Maybe its a great split from the truth to illusion like M:tA. Maybe its' a little more fate-and-doom style like UA. Whatever works. Point is, you could use the power structure that your players advance and manipulate to interact with their world as a fundamental truth on which to build. Example: It doesn't matter if Magick is a cruel joke pulled on humanity by the Greek Gods: Magick still articulates itself in axises like Life/Death, Matter/Forces. The Greek Gods bit would be the flavor on which PbtA hacks thrive. On this note, TWoOD's Cabal and Duke generation is perfect, and could be modified to advance in scope with the players built in. However, the "truths" generated by the stakes from the Cabals and Dukes should instead come from the player's own experiments and encounters with magick. Truth, not fireballs or real estate, would be the real currency. Anyhow, I've been thinking about this for a few weeks. I'm definitely going to try and come up with some basic moves and playbooks ala TWoOD. Arashiofordo3 posted:Tbh, I've been thinking about something like that, though I doubt I've got the skill to make it. I'd love to bounce a few moves and general philosophies off you in the next week or so!
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Jul 16, 2015 22:31
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Verr posted:I'd love to bounce a few moves and general philosophies off you in the next week or so! Sweet, I look forward to it!
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Jul 17, 2015 16:41
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Verr posted:I'd love to bounce a few moves and general philosophies off you in the next week or so! That sounds great, exactly what I've been wanting to play and I'd love helping out! I just finished the tv adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel and I'm desperate to play something similar!
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Jul 19, 2015 11:01
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In case you were interested in Legacy but on the fence, it's 25% off at the moment for DriveThruRPG's Christmas in July sale: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/151507/Legacy-Life-Among-the-Ruins I'm currently writing up the extra material unlocked in the kickstarter as a supplement, and was considering bulking it out a bit - is there anything people would like to see as extra material for the game?
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Jul 23, 2015 17:02
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So regarding a pbta mage game. definitely think that it would need to do a spirit of 77 style split during character creation. I've been trying to come up with some ideas for the mundane side of things. But I'm struggling to find insperation. Anyone got any ideas?
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Jul 23, 2015 18:51
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Urban Shadows just went up on DriveThruRPG for those of you who are interested.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:24
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Urban Shadows just went up on DriveThruRPG for those of you who are interested. And, to backers, your free coupon for the download has been available since yesterday. Also, don't be afraid to split the party, start with the people separated and dealing with their own rumors in the moment, and keep things slow, investigative, and small scale. Until I started doing that, my Urban Shadows campaign didn't really get into high gear.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:27
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Urban Shadows just went up on DriveThruRPG for those of you who are interested. Sweet; everything I've heard about this has me kicking myself I didn't spot the KS.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:34
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I'm curious what people think of Worlds In Peril.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:59
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Arashiofordo3 posted:So regarding a pbta mage game. definitely think that it would need to do a spirit of 77 style split during character creation. I've been trying to come up with some ideas for the mundane side of things. But I'm struggling to find insperation. Anyone got any ideas? I haven't had a chance to read So77. But I agree, the "vanilla" start for Sleeping World is a Uknown Armies style cityscape in which the GM is encouraged to wreak havoc and push the players together. In addition, one of the planned magic-playbooks is Traveler - a concept specifically designed to split the party and be rewarded for doing so. Of course, they're often responsible for being followed by horrible things back to the other players: Life mages might be marked and tracked by the spirits who live inside our veins, Space wizards can be tailed by unfeeling monster from beyond the 4th dimension, and Matter mages might be hunted by the Earth golems who call the NegaPyramids their own! E: Forgot the mundane - I'm using two playbooks per character - one to represent the magic-abilities and proximity to universal truths, and the other to represent the mortal abilities. Each character starts with much of their mundane book unlocked, but as they grow in magic power and reject the illusion, they grow more distant from their mundane abilities! Some examples of mundane playbooks are The Warrior and The Liar. tokenbrownguy fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 21:25
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Verr posted:I haven't had a chance to read So77. But I agree, the "vanilla" start for Sleeping World is a Uknown Armies style cityscape in which the GM is encouraged to wreak havoc and push the players together. Yeah, that could be a good trade off. Especially if you give the player a bit of agency as to how much they swing one way or another. Although I was referring entirely to the character creation. In SO77, the payers pick a roll and a theme. So you could be a kung-fu / driver. Or a X-Tech / Vigilante. It can create an interesting dynamic and a lot of variations and options in character builds. But yes, I like the idea of the different magical focuses having their own problems to deal with. Especially if the other mages are messing with one another as well. Though that said, it would be nice to also be able to encourage team cohesion without one guy trying to split the group up. So possibly a playbook about keeping people together as well? Would need to see the workings of the playbook before really making a call on that one.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:08
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Been wanting this so bad, and Urban Shadows is better than I hoped. It's possibly my favorite PBTA book. Also, I'm probably going to put up a recruiting thread for Urban Shadows later tonight.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:21
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Yes, the player can definitely choose whether to remain grounded in their lives. And So77's sounds exactly what I was planning. The Liar / Tyrant! The Warrior / Unhinged! Guess I really need to get So77. How are the playbooks physically set up? Two double-sided pages each? Both Tyrant and Puppetmaster will have moves that run toward locking everyone else down! And yeah, getting way ahead here. Gotta finish up the basic moves before anything else.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:22
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Verr posted:Yes, the player can definitely choose whether to remain grounded in their lives. And So77's sounds exactly what I was planning. The Liar / Tyrant! The Warrior / Unhinged! Guess I really need to get So77. How are the playbooks physically set up? Two double-sided pages each? One is your 'core' it gives you your look, stats, gear and basic class moves. It defines your major roll as such. Then you pick a theme. its more like a loose grab back of themed powers and bonus gear. I'll find a good example. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_5JoTJwAhskZ1pZNG5nS014cTA/view?usp=sharing Right so this is the main set up of the SO77 playbooks (I've disabled downloads) The first half is the main playbooks. The second half is the themes. Sadly it doens't show you all the options. you'd have to buy the rule book for those. But that's how it sets it up.
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Jul 23, 2015 23:14
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Verr posted:Guess I really need to get So77. How are the playbooks physically set up? Two double-sided pages each? Yes you do.  So does everyone.You can download all the So77 Rap sheets from our web page. http://spiritof77game.com/downloads-and-extras/ There's also a demo adventure with pre-made characters if you want to see how some of the combinations play out. We basically split the characters into a Role which describes what you do (shoot things, beat things, seduce things) and a story, which describes how/why you do it (Street bad-rear end, former military, crazy technology). My reference point for Mage is oWoD, but I could see a lot of different way to split the characters along similar lines; Tradition/Archetype, Background/Sphere etc. But like you said, don't get ahead of yourself, get your basic moves done first, everything else should hang upon those.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:27
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Covok posted:I'm curious what people think of Worlds In Peril. If Monsterhearts is about getting and spending Strings in the pursuit of teen drama, Worlds in Peril is about getting and burning Bonds in the pursuit of superhuman power (for whatever reason). The advancement system focuses mostly on the things that happen to you to unlock new Drives and new facets of your Drive, and so you kind of play to open that up. And possibly get yourself into dangerous situations so your power can kick into overdrive, save your rear end, and give you an upgrade. It's really a game that almost forces you to pursue failure and loss to do anything great, and if you like that kind of risky, striving superhero story you can play it out pretty well. The thing is, there are pretty much no mechanics for what your powers are or how they work, which I think given the available variety is a pretty good decision. You write down the things that are: Simple: the basic stuff. Use my ring to give me simple flight. Use my ring to give me simple ballistic armor. Use my ring to move, at a distance, anything a normal human can carry. Difficult: the stuff you can do as long as you have time and care, and guess what you don't usually have when you need to use your powers! Use my ring to create objects with simple mechanics or properties - a spring, a fireproof blanket, a dense wall. Use my ring to block painful extreme of temperature or the force of a car crash. Use my ring to move a truck. Borderline: what you can do when the situation really demands it, but it takes a lot out of you. Use my ring to replicate military hardware including the ordnance: a tank, a bomber. Use my ring to project a forcefield to protect dozens of people. Use my ring to move a building. Limits of the Possible: the most you can think of, the most you can do. Use my ring to create a squadron's worth of autonomous hardware that can follow simple commands. Use my ring to protect everyone in a city block. Use my ring to move a force of nature: a tide, a wind, a continental plate (mostly to hold that one still). Impossible: things you can't do. Use my ring to create sapient life. Use my ring to move a planet. Each separate concept is its own power, and you start with more or less depending on how street-level you are (but the more street-level characters also start with more Bonds). And when you're trying to expand your powers, you decide where it fits in on that spectrum and roll unmodified. You add it to your profile on a 10+ but can at least do it (at the cost of some strain) on a 7-9.
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Jul 24, 2015 05:59
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As for Mage World, you could take some inspiration in UA and make one of your halves an Archetype, just meanings to your life that come from a concept burned in humanity. Things like Warrior, Trickster, Mother (or Nurturer), Fool, Sage. They are broad enough and help define you as a person instead of a Mage, but since they have connection to the common conscience of humanity they also carry strong cosmic meaning and help define your Magic. Besides some "mundane" moves, they could directly affect your Mage moves.
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Jul 24, 2015 10:49
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Interestingly, some of the "Stat an existing character' writeups the Worlds in Peril crew's done on their google+ com have negative examples for their impossible power line. Like the writeup for Drax the Destroyer has "not know where Thanos is and who he's been in contact with" as his "Impossible" line. Which makes that sort interesting space to play with.
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Jul 24, 2015 11:38
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thefakenews posted:I don't know if I should post this here, or in the old Dungeon World thread, but anyways. I haven't tried them in play, but I really like the feel of the playbooks from Grim World. 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! It seems to be doing well on Drivethru. Top 10 Hottest, yay! Verr posted: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. Nope. But you know what would make an awesome AW Mage-like game? Secret World. The magic system would have to be done from scratch, sure, but the lore is so good. It even already has playbooks, kinda.
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Jul 24, 2015 13:11
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Megazver posted:
Thanks! I think it topped out at #2, before AD&D came out and swept up the charts. A pretty fair review came out for it yesterday too, if anyone's interested: http://www.geeknative.com/53021/apocalypse-2-0-a-review-of-legacy-life-among-the-ruins/
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Jul 24, 2015 13:32
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An Urban Shadows game just got put up by some moron who's probably in over his head, if anyone is interested.
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Jul 24, 2015 13:59
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Does anyone know if there's a swashbuckling/pirates Apocalypse hack? I'm interested in getting my group to try the system, but haven't seen any that are pirate-based.
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Jul 24, 2015 21:24
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tweekinator posted:Does anyone know if there's a swashbuckling/pirates Apocalypse hack? I'm interested in getting my group to try the system, but haven't seen any that are pirate-based. run default aw, set it in the equivalent of Kevin Costner's waterworks, make a conceit for everyone to have a small boat, better if a hardholder, driver, or chopper Report back
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Jul 24, 2015 23:19
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tweekinator posted:Does anyone know if there's a swashbuckling/pirates Apocalypse hack? I'm interested in getting my group to try the system, but haven't seen any that are pirate-based. The was a pirate themed dungeon world book that was kickstarted. I think the guys still working on it though.
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Jul 24, 2015 23:26
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My golden age superhero hack has reached its final In-Dev. I feel that, design-wise, it's pretty much at the end and no major edits will follow. I posted it before, but, due to my love of keeping older drafts as second documents, that one is outdated. It's a little different than most Pbta titles for a few reasons. The chief of which is its hyper focus on the genre. It's very much about Golden Age DC and really nothing else. It's not perfect, of course. Hell, it probably isn't even that good. I'm just curious if anyone would be interested in taking a look at the title. Giving their thoughts and all. Any feedback is appreciated. It can be found here. Also, one of my friends suggested I'd ask if anyone would be interested in playing it. Just as a curiosity.
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Jul 24, 2015 23:37
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Glazius posted:
I really dig the way this is set up (and the way you earn new powers during play, with risky "power stunt" kind of moves), but my major hang-up with Worlds in Peril is that there seems to be no mechanical reason to ever take a new power as anything but simple, since there seems to be absolutely no difference in play whether the ability you're using is difficult for you or not. The only thing stopping you from totally minmaxing your powerset is good sportsmanship, and that bugs me a bit. Just about everything else in the game seems really good, but this is such a central thing to just leave 100% in the fiction like that.
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Jul 25, 2015 01:09
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tweekinator posted:Does anyone know if there's a swashbuckling/pirates Apocalypse hack? I'm interested in getting my group to try the system, but haven't seen any that are pirate-based. You could always try Vincent Baker's earlier pirate RPG, Poison'd.
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Jul 25, 2015 01:50
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Thanks for all the suggestions; I'll see which will work out best!
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Jul 25, 2015 15:04
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So I'm slowly working on my third custom playbook for Monster of the Week, and it's actually coming together pretty well: It's "The Celebrity", for people who want to play Roddy Mcdowell/David Tennant in Fright Night or the remake, Bruce Campbell in "They Call me Bruce" or similar things where the best hope to survive a horror-movie situation is a horror movie actor. It at least is lending itself to some pretty fun moves. Scream Queen: When you face a monster alone and let out a blood-curdling shriek, roll +Charm. On a 6-, you leave yourself open to monster attack. On a 7-9, someone is in earshot and comes to your aid before it's too late.. On a 10+, the monster doesn't attack and flees just as help arrives. Also one called "Fakelore" where you bluff a solution to a problem because it worked like that in one of your movies.
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Jul 25, 2015 15:12
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100% sure I've seen "Scream Queen" before in PBTA. Maybe in the Monster of the Week Google+ group?
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Jul 25, 2015 16:28
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Covok posted:My golden age superhero hack has reached its final In-Dev. I feel that, design-wise, it's pretty much at the end and no major edits will follow. I posted it before, but, due to my love of keeping older drafts as second documents, that one is outdated. It's a little different than most Pbta titles for a few reasons. The chief of which is its hyper focus on the genre. It's very much about Golden Age DC and really nothing else. It's not perfect, of course. Hell, it probably isn't even that good. I'm just curious if anyone would be interested in taking a look at the title. Giving their thoughts and all. Any feedback is appreciated. I haven't read any golden age personally, only some of the more modern homages to it (Starman, JSA, The Golden Age, and The New Frontier). But I really like this! I'd play it for sure, at least as a one-shot. I suspect the concept may be a little too gimmick-y to warrant anything more than that, except if maybe the players are super into the source material. I love the way the game's written in-character, but you might want to dial back on the exclamation marks. They make the text very tiring to read after a couple of pages. The enthusiasm is great, it's the exclamation marks specifically that I think are excessive. Big fan of how harm interacts directly with the fiction. I'm reading it as "when you take harm, the GM makes a hard move". Which is a great way to now have HP but still keep the illusion of it. Also a big fan of how there are two types of "Hx", heroic and civilian. I think in this day and age, it's sort of impossible to play a golden age story straight-faced. I love the way you got around that, by making the game very meta-textual. It's very clear that players are creating comic book fiction and not playing characters as if they were real; the only other PbtA game I can think of that does something similar is World Wide Wrestling.
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Jul 25, 2015 16:42
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Cyphoderus posted:I haven't read any golden age personally, only some of the more modern homages to it (Starman, JSA, The Golden Age, and The New Frontier). Thanks. Comparing it to World Wide Wrestling is a big compliment because I really like what WWW did. I guess my illusion didn't last too long against inspection, but I'm glad you liked it. One hurdle with Golden Age heroes is that they don't really get hurt. The worst is they get knocked out for a short time and wake up in a bad spot. So, I just rolled with it and made HP just how much bad poo poo gets in the way of your crime fighting. A thematic illusion. Hell, one could argue the same illusion the original writers were doing. I could pull back the exclamation points a bit. See, all my previous drafts were written very dry and like a textbook. Then, on a spur of the moment, I write another, PbtA inspired hack called Dungeon Bastards and write the whole thing in character. My friend really likes this and says it drew him into reading. I get this idea of "well, maybe I should do that in that old PbtA hack I used to work on" and re-wrote it in, ironically considering he didn't work in the Golden Age and works for Marvel, the voice Stan Lee used when doing monologues over Spider-man for the PS1 with some added camp. Well, at first, then it turned into it's own voice. I got a little carried away and started using exclamation points exclusively. I could use them a little less, but still very commonly. Get a similar effect without being tiring. Anyway, thanks for taking a look and giving your thoughts. That is very helpful to the whole process!
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Jul 25, 2015 19:26
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