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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.
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Jun 29, 2015 12:19
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:01 |
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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 
Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 13:26
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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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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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Covok posted:I added in City of Judas and a section titled "Titles Inspired By Powered By The Apocalypse" for Blades In The Dark and Undying. Anything else I should add to the OP? Could I get Legacy: Life Among the Ruins added to the OP? Self-promotion and all, but I like to think it does some unique things with the AW system
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Jul 27, 2015 10:21
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Covok posted:I'll be honest, reading it up for the little marketing blurb I made, made me interested in it. I got no money because of college so I won't buy it for a while, but I am curious how this generation stuff works. Care to drop some deetz? Certainly! Basically you have two playbooks - one for your family/clan and one for your character. Your character does character stuff - exploring ruins, making deals, finding strange remnants of the world before, etc. While they're doing all that you're also controlling the family as they act on a grander scale - sending out spies into other factions, working on grand engineering projects, going to war. When you start the game it's the first generation after people emerged from their shelters and started rebuilding, and you come up with an immediate issue that needs solving - maybe winter is coming and you have no crops, or some horrible beast is stalking the night and eating your family. You build a character from out of the family to deal with the problem, and likely get tangled up in other family's problems too (as all characters have bond-like backstory with each other). Once this period's interesting issues have been resolved, you can call for the age to turn. This advances the clock by a significant amount of time - anywhere from a decade to a few generations - and the family experiences fortunes or misfortunes according to the state it finished the age in as well as getting boosts to its stats or unlocking new moves. Then the table thinks up new challenges the homeland is facing this age, makes new characters (or uses old characters in a new playbook to show how they've changed over time) and play starts up again, now augmented by the extra abilities the family has developed and relics inherited from previous characters that let you use their abilities. So basically the system lets you have narratives that span multiple generations while making sure each age and the characters involved remain important across the whole campaign. Does that make sense?
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Jul 28, 2015 12:46
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unseenlibrarian posted:I may need to pick this up, mostly because it sounds a lot like what I was thinking would need to be done for a PBTA Dragon Pass Gloranth Game. It'd certainly fit that style! It could work pretty well off the bat simply reskinning the playbooks, although I could see custom moves for HeroQuesting work very well
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Jul 28, 2015 13:22
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Bucnasti posted:Yeah kinda, Cyberpunk is an aesthetic as much as a setting, it's about taking the early 80's to it's extreme conclusion and brand obsession was a new thing at the time. The implication is always that something with a brand name is better than something without. Gibson didn't need to say how much of the rambits Case's computer had, he just had to give it a cool sounding name and have the characters react to that name with reverence to communicate to the reader that this was a bad-rear end piece of hardware (this was actually kinda revolutionary for sci-fi at the time). Maybe a potential solution is to take a leaf from Borderlands and have a range of premade manufacturers, each of which applies their own tag to their manufactured equipment? So cheap brands like the Val-U-Ware Ventilator always come with the Unreliable tag, and expensive ones like the Schloss-Mikenburg Eliminator T5 always come with things like Armour-Piercing or Nanotech? That or gate the number of positive tags a piece of gear can have behind how high-end the brand is, so cheap knockoffs have 1 or 2 and top-of-the-line stuff has 5-6. (or simplest solution: branded is an extra tag you can have on gear that means it does something fancy, unique and desirable)
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Aug 12, 2015 09:37
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Yup, Legacy's mine  It's an interesting bundle - I hadn't heard of a few of them, but I'm happy to be among such illustrious company as AW, Monsterhearts and World Wide Wrestling. E: stupid app autocorrecting WWW 
Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 20:50
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It was released as part of his Patreon, which would explain its unfamiliarity.
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Sep 1, 2015 21:56
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Foglet posted:Hey there, I saw the Echoes of the Fall supplement to Legacy that became available yesterday (three more playbooks, some other extras) and got it since I liked Legacy Whoops! Fixed it now. Glad you liked it!
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Sep 14, 2015 07:56
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Dareon posted:Is there any AW hack that does "Settlers in a new land" well? Fantasy, historical, or sci-fi, doesn't entirely matter (Although my thought was originally sci-fi). Just, like, you have among the playbooks merchants and administrators, but there's still a need for explorers and fighters as well. Basic AW will work, but if there's something with a better fit, I'd be interested in knowing. Not to be all IN MY GAME, but Legacy: Echoes of the Fall does this pretty well I'd like to say. Its basic setup is that you're families of survivors rebuilding civilisation after the apocalypse, but I could also see you as explorers of a new planet/continent/dimension. Each player controls a family of survivors/colonists as well as a character sent out from that family into the strange world outside of the family's territory to fix an issue of theirs, so it definitely provides the play balance you're looking for. As a bonus it also has rules for how the world and each family changes over generations, so you can play the colony's growth from small isolated settlements to a grand civilisation full of marvels.
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Sep 17, 2015 19:17
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Josef bugman posted:Must admit got the "Definetly not world of darkness" apocalypse world hack and... well it didn't feel nearly as cool as either Legacy or AW, I am not sure why, could anyone write their own experiences with it or am I just judging a book by its cover a bit? Urban Shadows? I must admit I haven't had time to give it a proper read-through but the corruption mechanic and the range of playbooks was pretty neat. I have so many AW games sitting around in my Dropbox, I really need to get around to running some ~_~
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Oct 26, 2015 21:44
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Banana Man posted:How does publishing pbta stuff work? Gotta slap a logo on it like pathfinder compatible stuff? Basically, Vincent says he'd like to be told if you're releasing an AW hack, and asks that if you directly quote AW you highlight and cite it properly (see Monsterheart's Notes From The Apocalypse sidebars). The PBTA logo is advertising more than anything else, and is definitely not a legal requirement.
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Oct 27, 2015 16:34
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Covok posted:That's actually been done. City of Jerusalem has a system for that. Off the top of my head, there is a d6 on the table that goes up in value when something happens (I forget the trigger) and you can take it to replace one of your dice when you resolve a move at some sort of cost (I forgot the cost). You'd have to check the game itself for more details. Huh, that sounds like a really cool mechanic. Going to have to check it out!
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Oct 27, 2015 22:06
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Yup, my game tends to have character moves resolve conflicts too. For example, here's Legacy's fighting move:Fiercely Assault posted:When you use violence to hurt, capture or drive off your enemies, roll +Force. On a hit, you've achieved your goal – they're wounded, bound or fleeing. On a 7-9, choose one from your list and the GM chooses two from theirs. On a 10+, choose two from your list and the GM chooses one from theirs. Weapons don't directly affect the mechanics of this move - they work on a tag-based system that determine when you can use this move, and what extra effects they have when used.
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Jan 2, 2016 09:29
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That certainly gets to the heart of what makes AW tick. I think it comes from the same root as how the game falls apart if no-one is rolling <10; the game is built to create self-sustaining tension by moves creating more problems or opportunities for the instigator and the other players. Just as too-high stats can force resolution of problems without any new problems to take up the tension, a PC group too united and outwards-facing can remove threats too easily, as only other PCs really have the ability to face down a PC's skillset. (It's one of the most frustrating things about publishing games that at a certain point you have to say a game is good enough and walk away from it - I have a nagging feeling that Legacy falls afoul of this and could do with a refocusing of the playbooks and moves to create a bit more tension between characters and between families, but at this point I have other designs that are more demanding of my attention.)
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Jan 22, 2016 20:53
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Maybe you could play with the idea that Dragon-Blooded generally (with the exception of the Empress maybe) only can achieve great things by working as part of a group - so, like, they can get lots of strength in unity but to do that have to give up their own goals and individuality? Really that's a rephrasing of the service/ambition dichotomy, but it might be easier to work with that way? Maybe give the Dragon-Blooded playbooks opportunities to do the same big things other playbooks can, but have it at the cost of taking on obligations or having the greater organisation take some control of the outcome.
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Feb 14, 2016 18:55
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Golden Bee posted:For totally freeform there's microscope; on the other hand, the fate "Gods and Monsters" supplement rules. Seconding Gods and Monsters - I was in the playtest and it does exactly what you describe, complete with tying every session together into a fable with something like 'and that's why the moon rises every night' or 'and that's why we have dogs to help us out'.
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Jun 24, 2016 08:59
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Yeah, looking at the sample characters it seems that you'd have to stretch quite a bit to find tags to use as drawbacks for most moves. Still, that's the sort of thing that's very easy to tweak at this stage in development.
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Aug 24, 2016 14:44
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There's also Velvet Glove, the game of teenage girl rebellion in the 1970s.
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Sep 23, 2016 11:23
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Ah, fair enough! (To toot my own horn What Ho, World! is at the least PbtA-inspired, though it's pretty far removed from core AW. It's similarly in a pre-release state though so probably shouldn't go up on the page yet!)
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Sep 23, 2016 13:32
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 I've just released a new supplement for Legacy: Life Among the Ruins! Mirrors in the Ruins is all about changing your perspective: instead of playing families of survivors, you're playing one of the inhuman groups that were created by - or created - the apocalypse. The book contains playbooks for robot hives, alien invaders, aquatic raiders and uplifted animals, and compliments this more antagonistic tone with rules for subterfuge and conspiracy and grand projects Families can build over generations that permanently reshape the Wasteland. This book was the brainchild of a Legacy fan who pitched it to me when I had no plans for further Legacy material, and I think it really carves out a space for itself. We're now hard at work putting together ideas for a revised edition of Legacy: if you played or read the game and ran into issues, please do get in touch! Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Oct 5, 2016 |
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Oct 5, 2016 14:53
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Thanks! I had the same reaction when Douglas sent me his pitch for the book - playing the 'monsters' and showing how they're trying to adapt to this new world too fits in really well with the humanist vibe I tried to put into Legacy. Hopefully the book's actual content is to your liking! Though humanist may be the wrong word when applied to aliens and robots alongside homo sapiens...
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Oct 5, 2016 16:46
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Gameko posted:I'm also looking at Legacy as a potential system to try because I like the concept of generational rebuilding of society. I should note that my players are experienced gamers but don't know much about truly modern rpgs. Apocalypse World feels fully fleshed out. Does anyone know how much meat be on the bones of legacy? This bit got a bit lost in the ~sex moves~ conversation but I'd say that Legacy doesn't do a great job of explaining how it's meant to be played. It's something you can work around, and I'm putting some advice on my blog while I work on a revised edition, but it may not be the best fit for a group's first experience of story games. Even so, there's plenty of meat on the bones if you want to give it a try. One big thing that trips people up is the divide between Family and Character moves. When you're playing you can feel pulled between the two different scales of thinking, which can lead to a disjointed feeling. Just remember that Characters are figures with a lot of pull within their family - they've been chosen from the Family's ranks to solve the current crisis, and when a player activates a Family move it helps if you frame it as the Character sending their family members off on a mission. Once you're more comfortable with the system it tends to flow a lot better, particularly as you experiment with the different ways that Characters can be influential forces within their Family.
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Oct 11, 2016 08:21
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Golden Bee posted:The story and breakdown in MF is okay but the math is wrong. There are too many floating -1/+1s and the scale is 5 or lower, not 6 or lower. MF?
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Oct 12, 2016 07:15
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It's likely going to be difficult - many GMs are used to rules being only a suggestion for them. They may not realise how important that part of the system is. Maybe point out that what they're doing is equivalent to decided monsters don't have HP in D&D without telling players beforehand - it's a crucial part of the system you all signed up to play.
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Oct 12, 2016 10:10
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spectralent posted:I get what you mean but it's probably worth noting that loads of people playing D&D do in fact run encounters by going "Well he's taken three hits and one of them was pretty big so he can be dead now". That's fair, though in that case I'd still be irritated if I was playing the game under the presumption that the amount of damage I was doing was really important. I think in my mind one's a bigger magnitude of problem that the other - abstracting the precise value of a numeric damage track isn't invalidating the player's actions so long as the general amount of damage done is respected, but when you're placing discrete traits on an opponent as your only mechanical interaction with them it's a huge removal of player agency to disregard that. It'd be like inventing or discarding Fate aspects on a whim. Really the biggest issue is that it sounds like Pulsedragon expects to be able to win a fight and by rules as written has a pretty good chance, but the GM is deciding to disregard the rules so their own ideas win out - no matter the rules system that's a red flag, but it's particularly an issue in a game written with the PbtA play-to-find-out philosophy.
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Oct 12, 2016 12:14
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 My PbtA game, Legacy: Life Among the Ruins is today's Deal of the Day on DriveThruRPG, meaning you can pick it up for $3.50/£2.80. Legacy was my first published game and I'm still very proud of it - even though the 2-playbook system has been used in lots of different Powered by the Apocalypse games now, I think Legacy's Family/Character divide does some really fun things with game scale. It's sort of my attempt to bring the company structure of Reign and the sweep of history from Microscope into the PbtA space; I've recently posted some examples of play on my blog showing those mechanics in action. If any of that sounds appealing, you have 22 hours to pick it up for less than a (fancy) coffee!
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Feb 8, 2017 17:42
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Covok posted:I'm going to jump in and give you a shout-out 'cause you're game is pretty loving legit and cool and is a total buy, especially while at a discount. Get it while its hot, people. Thanks! I should say I'm working on a revised edition of the game at the moment - there're a few things I'm not happy with, looking back at it, and sections I could explain a lot better. Everyone who bought this version will get a discount to get the new version, though, so don't let that hold you back
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Feb 8, 2017 21:35
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Ilor posted:It's not that I think you shouldn't do it; I'm just pointing out that the more specificity you give to the setting and the overall plot arc of the game (through its end-condition mechanics), the less interesting the game will be from a replayability standpoint. The first play-through may be rad as gently caress, but once you've cured the disease will you really want to do it again just to maybe try a different playbook? Not sure that at all follows - I mean, Night Witches is far tighter in focus and has plenty of replayability through focusing on different parts of the war effort, different squads, etc. A setting with a strong core narrative isn't a hindrance with PbtA - it's often a benefit in getting all the players on the same page.
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Feb 28, 2017 13:57
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ShineDog posted:Any knowledge of a system that does good capers? I was thinking of doing a leverage one shot but it's heavier than I'd like for a one off There's Blades in the Dark? I mean it's a pretty far afield from the AW baseline but it does heists like nobody's business.
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Mar 9, 2017 10:53
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I've just published two AW-inspired card games! What Ho, World! is a game of Wodehousian humour - feckless gentlemen of leisure, dependable servants and meddling great-aunts. Wizards Aren't Gentlemen, on the other hand, takes its inspiration from Jack Vance and Terry Pratchett - naive apprentices, squabbling wizards, and scheming demons bound into service! They're pretty far drifted from core Apocalypse World, inspired by Dream Askew - there's no GM and no randomiser, and instead players use a limited pool of tokens to boost moves. Both games have been designed to get you roleplaying as soon as possible, with Fiasco-like character goal setup and mechanics to build and resolve character subplots through the 2-hour or so session. If any of that sounds interesting, go take a look: Link to UFO Press website
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Mar 31, 2017 13:48
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Halloween Jack posted:I've read 2 books of criticism on Vance (the only ones I know of, actually) and the Wodehouse connection never struck me. Now I'm striking my own forehead I really need to read more Vance - I read The Dying Earth while writing this and it was excellent. To round out the early-20th-century nerd literature stable we're also working on a Lovecraft-themed version, The Butler on the Threshold, so keep an eye out if you'd like to play the heir of a rundown New England estate trying to be polite and hide their tentacles at a high society ball 
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Mar 31, 2017 15:20
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Office Sheep posted:I think the YouTube link on this page is broken. Thanks - it should be fixed now.
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Mar 31, 2017 18:22
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Office Sheep posted:Is Drive Through RPG print on demand significantly different or worse quality wise? I am in Canada and am trying to figure out what the balance of cheapest for me/Quality of components/Gives money to you is. The box isn't as nice and you don't get a printed rules sheet in the box, but the card quality is basically identical (and the pdfs you get include the rules sheet if you want to print it off). edit: I uploaded some (lovely) photos showing the difference to this imgur album. Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 07:12
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I've posted the first batch of playtest material for Legacy's 2nd Edition. This includes rewritten family playbooks, almost completely redone basic moves, and a whole new Character Role system to guide your character's effect on their family - and the family's effect on them. Please give it a look and let me know what you think!
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May 16, 2017 17:22
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Golden Bee posted:The servants of the one true faith have merchant Traditions. Whoops, good spot. Fixed now.
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May 17, 2017 08:25
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Doc Aquatic posted:I haven't been able to give it a full readthrough yet, but my first thought was that I like that every family except for the New Flesh gets to define aspects of the fall with their statline, while the New Flesh's options are more based on their own response, which shapes the setting less. Hmm, that's fair. Maybe it could be about whether the fall was something natural to this world, something alien to it, or something turned strange by mankind?
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May 20, 2017 20:16
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Doc Aquatic posted:I like that. Since they're the ones who deal with most with the natural world (Or, what passes for it now) it makes sense that they get to decide how weird it can get. Cool, I've uploaded a new version with these changes (and some from other places) included.
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May 22, 2017 14:14
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