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Gonna second Impulse Drive, it's extremely fun and scales down to One Shot length pretty easily imo
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Feb 22, 2023 15:14
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thunderdome winner
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Crossposting from general chat:UnCO3 posted:For anyone who makes PbtA or FitD games or play materials or just likes little digital tools:
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Feb 27, 2023 17:45
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I feel like this is the most apropos place for this. Because it is truly wonderful art.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:34
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Josef bugman posted:I feel like this is the most apropos place for this. Because it is truly wonderful art. Ugh. I mean, I get it, you put the important guy on the cover, but Doug Dimmadark, owner of the Dimmsvol Darkendome, is Tier D. Nobody's gonna get that high outside of the stunt premades they give you at cons!
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Mar 7, 2023 00:54
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Glazius posted:Ugh. The hat is a Tier IV faction in its own right.
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Mar 8, 2023 04:06
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Thirsty Sword Lesbians has been going great, players are currently reunited after being separated in an abandoned research facility where terrifying bio-weapons have been let loose. Next session will likely begin with a conflict consisting of PCs and some NPCs squaring off against about half a dozen of these things, and its an interesting space to be in since combat in TSL seems to presume opponents who can feel emotions and be, well, people. I'm planning on letting any of the "gain a string on them" rewards for combat being allowed to be aimed at allied characters in the scene, the sticking point for me is that harm is measured in conditions in this game, and these things don't really have the corresponding emotions to be Frightened, Guilty, Insecure, etc. Am I straying too far off the idea of the game to just have them have some conditions like "Injured" to denote how close PCs are to defeating them?
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Mar 19, 2023 23:26
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My understanding of conditions comes from Masks and whenever I run Masks and include actual honest to god monsters the solution to defeating them is usually just following the fiction to a satisfying conclusion. I'm not sure what you perceive as the power level for these things or if your players playbooks are built around dealing conditions and their consequences but if they aren't then just let it flow and see how it goes. Picture an amount of harm that you'd think can beat one of these things and treat that as the goal to be met. I don't think custom conditions for monsters is a bad idea but it may be easier to simplify and just follow the fiction for stuff like this.
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Mar 20, 2023 00:00
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I'm likewise coming from Masks, but conditions are really just a marker of how many hits something can take before it's defeated. It's pretty easy to run the system without giving conditions discrete names at all and just treating them as unlabeled health points, so long as you're good at still doing all the important things associated with those unlabeled health points. But with that being said, there's a reason the system gives enemies emotional conditions for their health points, because emotionless enemies are very dull and kind of against the whole spirit of the system. Which isn't to say you can't ever use them, but I'd be careful to do it very sparingly. If you can at all justify giving an enemy emotions, you probably should.
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Mar 20, 2023 00:46
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Colonel Cool posted:But with that being said, there's a reason the system gives enemies emotional conditions for their health points, because emotionless enemies are very dull and kind of against the whole spirit of the system. Which isn't to say you can't ever use them, but I'd be careful to do it very sparingly. If you can at all justify giving an enemy emotions, you probably should. Yeah, this is my concern. I'm not familiar with TSL, but if the system is built around emotional conditions, it suggests to me that emotionless enemies aren't a good choice for encounter -- or that the real encounter win/loss condition isn't just beating those enemies up, but reaching some kind of emotional state (ally morale? Some intercharacter emotional beat?). Can you design the encounter around something like that?
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Mar 20, 2023 00:55
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Ash Rose posted:Thirsty Sword Lesbians has been going great, players are currently reunited after being separated in an abandoned research facility where terrifying bio-weapons have been let loose. Next session will likely begin with a conflict consisting of PCs and some NPCs squaring off against about half a dozen of these things, and its an interesting space to be in since combat in TSL seems to presume opponents who can feel emotions and be, well, people. I'm planning on letting any of the "gain a string on them" rewards for combat being allowed to be aimed at allied characters in the scene, the sticking point for me is that harm is measured in conditions in this game, and these things don't really have the corresponding emotions to be Frightened, Guilty, Insecure, etc. Am I straying too far off the idea of the game to just have them have some conditions like "Injured" to denote how close PCs are to defeating them? My instinct here would to be to make a sexy enemy here to include who is directing/leading the bio-weapons. An ai driven to despair by their time alone with a holo-body, a hive queen, one of them who mutated into a person, something like that. Then the pc's can help them re/gain their humanity, convince them to help shut the place down, deal with the social problems started by trying to integrate bio-weapons into a community, have a literally toxic gf, that kind of thing. The non- intelligent part of the enemy team can be treated as extensions or narrative tools of the 'character' one.
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Mar 20, 2023 02:23
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On top of what everyone else said, remember the bit about formidable NPCs triggering a move when they get a condition and how that's mostly a way to make fights more dynamic. A weird monster isn't necessarily going to express emotions like a human, but unless it's actively otherworldly you can still go "after that stab, it's Angry and lashing out" or "it's running scared" or "you've backed the bio-wyrm into a corner and it's getting desperate". Conditions are really basic emotions, and you don't need to give every opponent all five. They still fit fine for weird un-flirtable enemies.
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Mar 20, 2023 14:49
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The standard for PbtA: If it's not covered by the rules, that doesn't mean you need to stretch the rules to fit it. The existing rules cover all they want to and funnel you back into genre spaces. If the players do something and look to you to see what happens, then as GM that's one of your prompts to make a Cut (or, as they're called in games that didn't figure out that calling even the things that don't have triggers baked in 'moves' is a bad idea, a "GM move").
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Mar 24, 2023 20:37
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Iron Heart posted:The existing rules cover all they want to and funnel you back into genre spaces.
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Mar 29, 2023 21:12
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Thankfully, MASKS isn't one of those.
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Mar 31, 2023 02:55
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I'm looking to start running a Spirit of '77 game and haven't really played any PBTA games. I was wondering if there were any guides or anything for GMs on how to effectively run a game. I've played Heart/Spire before so I'm somewhat familiar with playing to find out and the more narrative focus.
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May 9, 2023 23:16
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There is a lot of great tips in the free module, cruise ship of the Damned, and the book itself has a lot of great advice! For even more advice, wide world of 77 has more. One thing that isn’t in there is how I prepare players for a session, which is playing a YouTube loop of 70s commercials. Really gets the vibe going.
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May 9, 2023 23:38
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So the conversation about powers' power levels not being baked into the rules has cropped up in a Masks game... again. About how it's weird a dude with a sword can end up rolling with the same bonuses as a dude with terrible cosmic power. Also a lack of a mini game mechanic where the Transformed struggles against their transformation a la Hulk, and the ensuing barbarian rage. Help.
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May 25, 2023 10:32
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Terratina posted:So the conversation about powers' power levels not being baked into the rules has cropped up in a Masks game... again. About how it's weird a dude with a sword can end up rolling with the same bonuses as a dude with terrible cosmic power. For the first one, keep in mind that labels are not just stats. Changing them is meant to signify changes to your person and the perception of you. So in this case where you have a Beacon outshining a Nova or a Doomed, use it as a in character discussion piece, is your beacon pushing the limits of the human body? Is it possible they actually have latent powers? Are your doomed or Nova actually holding back their terrible power subconciously? The Transformed playbook assumes that you're transformed permanently, I think it even says in the description that if you become human again to change playbooks, the "you won't like me when I'm angry" stuff is mostly reserved for The Bull.
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May 25, 2023 10:53
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ItohRespectArmy posted:For the first one, keep in mind that labels are not just stats. Changing them is meant to signify changes to your person and the perception of you. So in this case where you have a Beacon outshining a Nova or a Doomed, use it as a in character discussion piece, is your beacon pushing the limits of the human body? Is it possible they actually have latent powers? Are your doomed or Nova actually holding back their terrible power subconciously? Very good point on the Bull. And I'm not only talking about Labels, I guess folks want a game where they get a Fire Blast +5 or a Hookshot +2 stat or something - that powers are mostly fluff and therefore on the same power level is kinda hard to grok for them.
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May 25, 2023 11:04
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Terratina posted:Very good point on the Bull. And I'm not only talking about Labels, I guess folks want a game where they get a Fire Blast +5 or a Hookshot +2 stat or something - that powers are mostly fluff and therefore on the same power level is kinda hard to grok for them. yeah masks is very much a game about teen drama with a superhero coat of paint rather than the other way around, you can tell really good superhero stories with it but there has to be a understanding for the players that they're all roughly as strong, regardless of powers.
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May 25, 2023 11:06
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Terratina posted:Very good point on the Bull. And I'm not only talking about Labels, I guess folks want a game where they get a Fire Blast +5 or a Hookshot +2 stat or something - that powers are mostly fluff and therefore on the same power level is kinda hard to grok for them. Yeah, they're not gonna get that from Masks, it's not that kind of game--you might try looking at Sentinel Comics: The Role-Playing Game, that's still very rules-light but is much more about "I have Super Strength d10 and will roll that to punch Dr. Malevolence in his stupid cyborg face." Or if they want something crunchier you could look at Wild Talents or Mutants and Masterminds or, God help you, Champions, I guess. But if your players are set on wanting their powers to have mechanical weight, Masks probably isn't the system for them.
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May 25, 2023 11:10
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GimpInBlack posted:Yeah, they're not gonna get that from Masks, it's not that kind of game--you might try looking at Sentinel Comics: The Role-Playing Game, that's still very rules-light but is much more about "I have Super Strength d10 and will roll that to punch Dr. Malevolence in his stupid cyborg face." Or if they want something crunchier you could look at Wild Talents or Mutants and Masterminds or, God help you, Champions, I guess. But if your players are set on wanting their powers to have mechanical weight, Masks probably isn't the system for them. Right. Masks is for telling stories about young people struggling with identity that just so happen to have super powers and maybe fight the odd mechanical dinosaur. Trying to leverage your best Unleash Powers roll or similar isn't going to work out so well.
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May 25, 2023 12:42
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Terratina posted:So the conversation about powers' power levels not being baked into the rules has cropped up in a Masks game... again. About how it's weird a dude with a sword can end up rolling with the same bonuses as a dude with terrible cosmic power. The dial for this is fictional positioning. If you don't meet the fictional requirement, then the move doesn't trigger. If the dude with the sword swings it at Thanos you are entirely within your rights to describe it bouncing harmlessly off of him before he flicks you across the room with his finger. Being allowed to roll at all presupposes the thing you're trying to do is reasonably possible for your character to do. Which isn't to say that you have to care about fictional positioning. The game doesn't break if you treat all the powers as fluff that doesn't actually matter at all. But personally I think it's going to feel shallower for it.
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May 25, 2023 12:51
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The MCU seems to fairly explicitly embrace this. In the abstract, they sometimes try to categorize the levels of power various characters have. In practice, the question of who can beat up who is based entirely on the needs of the fiction at that moment.
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May 25, 2023 15:06
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Masks is a really good system, and the only ready to break it consistently is moves that replace danger with another stat semi permanently. I would use this custom patch that someone made, it fixes a lot of edge cases https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rHSefhKJFZsjy8t-Xfj45AXaMBwnyyVObISDiRbfFOY/edit#heading=h.wrcrswr95do9 . And I agree with the above poster; the nova should be able to solve cosmic threats and the beacon should be dealing with Dinkyness or you’re not giving the playbooks the full package. It’s in the GM moves for each one.
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May 25, 2023 16:46
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Terratina posted:So the conversation about powers' power levels not being baked into the rules has cropped up in a Masks game... again. About how it's weird a dude with a sword can end up rolling with the same bonuses as a dude with terrible cosmic power. Yeah, Masks is not a good game for people who want to have anything mechanically hard about their powers - including a mechanized drawback about the transformation losing hold or taking control. Like, your ur-Transformed is The (ever-lovin' blue-eyed) Thing, and I don't believe he's ever said "You gotta help me here, Stretcho! The rock is taking control!" except ironically on the dance floor. Story-wise the Bull's a decent hook for barely contained rage, and it's heavily implied that they may have been small-t transformed in a more socially acceptable way to gain their powers. But, uh, yeah, fighting in Masks through Directly Engage starts from the assumption that you're "trading harm for harm" to use the AW term, that the conflict as set up in the fiction will play out but you'll get the chance to tweak it up or down a bit. The guiding story behind most power level concerns in Masks is largely "most of the time, any member of the team can engage any threat as well as anyone else on the team can, but sometimes there are team members set up for stories about times when they're strong or times when they're weak". And the way Masks sets up these stories is mostly through the use of playbook moves, which are essentially just some standing prep done on the elsewhere-seen principle of "activate their stuff's downside" - GM moves that work as playbook-specific plot hooks. Like, the Nova has "introduce threats only they can tackle", the Legacy has "raise expectations on them", the Doomed has "push them to the brink"... and the Beacon has "draw attention to their inadequacies" and "make them pay for their audacity". Like, if Fission The Nova's cosmic nemesis, the Deathfrost Doom, suddenly spills the stillness and cold of dark space out into reality, and Sureshot the Beacon  s up to directly engage with it all "stand back guys, I've got this one", then even if he's got Danger +3 and nuclear TNT arrows or whatever the net effect is that he maybe buys some time and someone else has to abscond with him and the stupid look frozen into his face so Fission can openly blast the thing.
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May 25, 2023 19:59
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Thanks for the input guys! I'll pass it along. Unfortunately, opinions are fact in the internet-space and a player sure has a whole lot of 'em so we'll see if gets through.
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May 26, 2023 06:03
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ItohRespectArmy posted:yeah masks is very much a game about teen drama with a superhero coat of paint rather than the other way around, you can tell really good superhero stories with it but there has to be a understanding for the players that they're all roughly as strong, regardless of powers. I would actually disagree here; they have equal narrative weight but as people point out, Nova and Beacon should be able to attempt very different things.
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May 26, 2023 07:55
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Yeah, a lot of the point is that the Nova really is probably the 'strongest' and the Beacon really does have niche powers at best, and it's up to the characters how they deal with that. It's entirely possible for a Beacon to manage to max out their Danger stat but not be able to directly engage a particular threat (at least, not without the Suck It move) because like, dude, you are throwing arrows or martial arts at a guy made out of living fire, you are not capable of actually engaging this enemy. The whole point of the Beacon as a playbook is how they deal with being at that lower level but trying to keep up and be useful anyway in other ways.
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May 27, 2023 01:47
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bewilderment posted:Yeah, a lot of the point is that the Nova really is probably the 'strongest' and the Beacon really does have niche powers at best, and it's up to the characters how they deal with that. There's a lot of fun Hawkeye stories (Clint or Kate, pick one, or both) that can help with this.
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May 27, 2023 03:06
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bewilderment posted:Yeah, a lot of the point is that the Nova really is probably the 'strongest' and the Beacon really does have niche powers at best, and it's up to the characters how they deal with that. Yeah, and when it goes well it works great, too, because soon you'll find your Nova player is going "I guess I summon exodia again" and now half the street is underground and the Beacon player's going "Okay, first I throw a shuriken and then there's a beat panel where I go 'oh, right', and then I turn around and run back down that alley, hoping he follows me" "Which is a provoke" "Which is a provoke, and then I throw shurikens at the water tower so that bursts and floods the alley!". And, like, then you can just give them the hit on that second one; it's a very similar thing to "so the beacon rolls direct engage with superior", but it's giving lots of material opportunities to engage with the enemy with the context of the fiction - the beacon will emergently care more about that than the nova does. (For people wondering where I'm getting that from, it follows from "Say what rules and honesty demand" and "Disclaim decisionmaking", and "make a move when there's a golden opportunity"; you don't have to, and, in fact, shouldn't, just make moves against PCs!)
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May 27, 2023 11:23
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So I've gotten Root for my birthday and I have to say I really like it, but at the same time this seems like a great system to use for a low fantasy setting in general, not just Root. Has anyone thought about doing that?
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May 27, 2023 13:01
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Clarifying question for Blades in the Dark: can you pay an extra Coin during Downtime to gain extra XP when taking the Train action? The game allows you to pay a Coin to improve the result of a roll during Downtime, but Train just happens, it isn’t a roll.
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May 28, 2023 11:55
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Pirate Radar posted:Clarifying question for Blades in the Dark: can you pay an extra Coin during Downtime to gain extra XP when taking the Train action? The game allows you to pay a Coin to improve the result of a roll during Downtime, but Train just happens, it isn’t a roll. No, you can't just make up game mechanics. Also, filling in your character sheet with three different colors of ink doesn't make you immune to supernatural fear, and writing "EHBCA" on the back doesn't secretly put you in charge of Ironhook Prison. We have a dedicated Blades-series thread, but it's fallen down to page 5.
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May 28, 2023 20:16
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Josef bugman posted:So I've gotten Root for my birthday and I have to say I really like it, but at the same time this seems like a great system to use for a low fantasy setting in general, not just Root. Has anyone thought about doing that? If you want to do your own homebrew low fantasy world it'd probably work out alright, you just need a whole bunch of different factions, all of whom want to be in charge, and be willing to prep their characteristic behaviors.
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May 28, 2023 20:35
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Glazius posted:No, you can't just make up game mechanics. why are you cranky posting about someone asking a mechanics question instead of being cool
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May 29, 2023 00:09
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Glazius posted:We have a dedicated Blades-series thread, but it's fallen down to page 5. drat, sorry all, I thought this was the thread for that question.
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May 29, 2023 00:21
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Glazius posted:If you want to do your own homebrew low fantasy world it'd probably work out alright, you just need a whole bunch of different factions, all of whom want to be in charge, and be willing to prep their characteristic behaviors. I mean even the factions seem relatively simple to reuse. I mean to put it bluntly the Woodland Alliance can become the Scoia'tael, the Aerie becomes the former monarchy and the Marquisette can become the imperial forces with pretty much no change whatsoever if you wanted to Witcher it. I'm more just wondering because this seems like such a cool system idea and I am a bit shocked that no-one seems to have approached it at all.
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May 29, 2023 08:26
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I saw early versions of the game and they seemed very combat focused, mostly aping the excellent board game. Maybe it’s different now, but a lot of the character playbooks seemed similar too.
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May 29, 2023 08:56
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Josef bugman posted:I mean even the factions seem relatively simple to reuse. I mean to put it bluntly the Woodland Alliance can become the Scoia'tael, the Aerie becomes the former monarchy and the Marquisette can become the imperial forces with pretty much no change whatsoever if you wanted to Witcher it. Yeah, I suppose you probably could just pick and mix depending on your fiction. If the alliance, eyrie, and marquisate aren't matches for whatever's set up, the riverfolk, lizard cult, mole barons, or corvids probably are. (The game doesn't talk about the Hundreds/Keepers since it was being written before they released, but I don't know if they really fit the faction game too well. The Keepers are really kind of their own band of vagabonds as far as overall reach in the woodland is concerned, and the Lord of the Hundreds can't understand gratitude so he interprets it as resentment for not getting more good things sooner and acts accordingly.)
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May 29, 2023 15:50
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