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Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Monsterhearts 2 PDF is out to backers! :woop:

# ¿ May 23, 2017 21:17

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:19

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

thefakenews posted:

If anyone is interested, I have finally got my poo poo together and updated the archetype playbooks for Malleus. The playbooks are a new one-page layout, which is a bit cramped, but I much prefer the single page. The layout and contents of the reference sheets for Moves and the GM are a work in progress, but at least I can get back to playtesting an up-to-date version of the game.

The new playbooks are here

The current WIP draft of the rules is here.

Getting a working version of the Organisation rules is the next big task.

They don't look too cramped to me, and I like the stats pentagram a lot! I will say that putting specific moves in the Other Moves slot looks a little clumsy, especially if you're only using them if you take a particular move (e.g. The Inquisitor's Fight Fire with Fire). Is there any way to put that text in the move choice column?

# ¿ May 25, 2017 14:33

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

I've put together a 1st draft of a quickstart for Legacy in advance of the kickstarter next week. The intention is that this does most of the work of setting up a game for a group, stripping back world creation, backstory, playbook choices etc to the bare essentials.

In Titanomachy, the players are survivors living among the ruins of a colony devastated when colossal titans surged out of the planet's jungle and tore apart their space elevator and advanced infrastructure. Generations down the line, they've managed to rebuild some civilisation and found ways to survive in this alien world, but it's just happened again: the titan Gigas rampaged through the homeland, causing huge devastation. Among that devastation there's hope, as the titan was finally killed by your combined efforts. Now you know the titans can be stopped, but your families are weaker than ever. How will you build a world where you're safe?

Please do let me know if there's anything that doesn't make sense, or bits where more explanation is required to make sure newcomers can have a good time with this!

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 09:10

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Meinberg posted:

Speaking of tremulus, is there a good, horror-themed PbtA game out there?

I've heard good things about Bluebeard's Bride, though that's a very specific horror niche.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2017 18:51

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

A lot of these issues are things I've attempted to address in 2e, but I understand that that's not much help to you right now! I'm phone posting at the moment, but I'll write a more substantive response soon.

For the time being, if you haven't spotted them I'd recommend you have a read through the examples of play I wrote on the UFO Press blog ( part 1 and part 2) , glance over playtest campaign I have up on YouTube or download the free 2e quickstart we put up to get a sense of how we're trying to solve these problems.

Thanks for giving the game a try, and I'm sorry you're having issues with it. Hopefully I can talk you through them - a lack of explanations for how the game actually worked is definitely 1e's biggest failing.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2017 21:28

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Ilor posted:

Paging Flavivirus. Flavivirus, Please report to the thread.

I have a couple of questions concerning Legacy (which we've just started playing). First things first, I want to preface this with the fact that I'm working with 1st Edition Legacy here - I haven't seen the new stuff yet. That stated, here we go:

OK, so I've read through the complete PDF now (since I'm playing and not GMing I started with just the playbooks) and I feel like this game could really benefit a "How the gently caress do you actually play this game?" section. There's lots of interesting insight given for the various family and character playbooks, but absolutely NO direction whatsoever given with respect to when you are playing at the character level and when you're playing at the family level (e.g. when are certain moves appropriate?).

Generally, you use character moves when your character's the one taking action, and family moves when your character gets the family to do something for them. Whether you're using character or family moves the character tends to be the one inciting action - asking their cousin in the town over if they can look into rumours about the molemen, getting a squad of soldiers to assault a fort, that sort of thing.

quote:

The general advice is that the 2-8 sessions should be about dealing with the central problem/conflict of that particular age, but there's no advice given as to how to break that down into discrete chunks and how to face those to families/characters.

Well, there's advice on how to make a front from the central problem and advice on how you should include social, martial, technological and economic problems? It's a little barebones, I'll accept that.

quote:

With my GM hat on, this leaves me with precious little direction as to how to structure a session. In a "traditional" character-based game, this is easy - set up a conflict, construct a scene, throw in some characters, watch sparks fly. Then you wind it down, use the outcome to set up the next conflict, rinse, repeat. As purveyor and arbiter of fiction, your main jobs are to dress the scene (what it looks like, sounds like, smells like, how it feels), to describe the NPCs (who they are, what they're doing, what might motivate them, what they really want), and to incorporate the results of the various characters' actions (follow the existing fiction to establish new stuff in that fiction).

But I feel like this is a LOT harder in the case of things happening at "family scale." I'm sort of struggling to think of a good way to frame a "family" scene in a way that is as provocative and immediate as a character scene, and maybe that's the problem - maybe actions at family scale don't really break down into "scenes" at all. I mean, even the triggers for various moves like read the wind talk about sending people out for days. The conditions for building things or changing things about the world have timescales in weeks and months, and I feel like it's hard to turn that into compelling role-playing. It almost feels more like something you'd find in a board game.

I think the important thing is to pace the game such that it naturally has periods of frantic intensity when you're focusing on a group of characters, and periods of downtime where days and weeks can pass. Just as your group zooms in on a particular ruin and zooms out to a whole city, sometimes you spend an entire session on a few hours of the character's lives and other sessions you play through weeks or months. It's true that family moves don't tend to be dramatic scenes - they're intended to set up situations and opportunities, that you then zoom into the character level to resolve (and prompt further problems). Here's the section explaining Family moves in 2e:

Family Moves posted:

While it's easy to imagine what a character can do to trigger their moves, the actions families take can be more amorphous and vague. It's worth going over how, exactly, families use their resources to act in the world.
The key is that family moves abstract out multiple smaller efforts:

1. Someone decides something needs to happen.
2. They convince other family members to help do it.
3. Various agents of the family work on the problem according to their own skills.
4. Agents return to the family and tell everyone how the effort went.

Your character's often the initiator in step 1, step 2's what triggers a move, step 3 resolves the move, and step 4 ties things back to the fiction.

quote:

And if family stuff doesn't break down into scenes, that then circles back to the question of "when do we do family stuff in any given session?" After our first session, I made the assertion that I think scenes in Legacy are going to have to be much more discrete (in the sense of in, out, done) because the time scale between events is so wildly variable. Family moves aren't even really appropriate at character scale and vice versa. I feel like there's interesting potential to Legacy, but also feel like it might be kind of an effort-intensive balancing act on the part of the MC to come off as other-than-somewhat-disjointed. I think it'll be cool once we "get it," but we clearly don't "get it" yet.

So what advice would you give to folks who have scads of experience with other PbtA games (Vincent opined at GenCon that I've probably run/played more AW than he has at this point) but who are struggling to wrap their brains around the nuances of Legacy?

I hope the advice here helps a litte - as I say, 2e has a lot more tools intended to resolve these issues. Explicit Zoom In/Zoom Out moves, roles for characters within the family that contextualise them within the family and give stakes for their actions, reworked family moves, that sort of thing.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2017 19:47

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Nifara posted:

So Doodmons and myself and a few of our local group played Pigsmoke last Friday. Had a great time, really good - as many of us are either in academia or have been in academia previously it was familiar and yet a fun catharsis.

I know the author is a goon, and one thing we all agreed was that it could use some improvements to the playbooks. Can someone remind me who it was who wrote it? I've done a fair amount of layout and would be happy to lend a hand and see if I can come up with something that's a little easier to use in play.

That'd be Potatocubed.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 13:59

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

spectralent posted:

So, in Legacy the Remnant has a move called Inhuman Elegance, that's a mirror of Hypnotic (the skinner move). However, the Skinner move generates hold on them that they have to do things to get rid of; you don't get to pick what they do, but they will want to do some useful things for you. Conversely Inhuman Elegance is something you spend to make them do something specific. I feel like that loses some of the flavour of the move and becomes way more powerful; is that intentional?

You know what? You're absolutely right. I can't remember if I intentionally set out to copy Hypnotic (though given the way it's almost identical, probably?), but the AW version has a lot more bite and drives more drama than the current Legacy version. I'll give it another look, and either give it the rest of Hypnotic's effects and spend structure or make it more like In-Brian Puppet Strings. Thanks for bringing it up!

# ¿ Oct 15, 2017 18:21

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Yeah, generally the best way to increase difficulty in PbtA is to add extra steps, or conditions they have to meet before doing the thing they want. The Sprawl does seem pretty great at its zoomed in mission stuff, though I'd be interested in how well it handles non-legwork downtime.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2017 07:34

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

NAME REDACTED posted:

Thanks! I really like the idea of asking what each character expects, and then building off that. I need to get better about Revealing an Unwelcome Truth I can build on, though - this might be a good opportunity to practice.

For an ongoing campaign, this is where a Front can really help. Having one written up in advance means you have something to reach for when it's time for things to go wrong, and you can make sure that all the little problems end up pointing towards a big problem the players can solve and feel like heroes.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2017 11:05

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Doc Aquatic posted:

In Legacy, how large is the area for the Peacekeepers' Settled option? When it says "Your Family is known as the local law and your judgements will be respected" does it just mean one town, rather than a region? I assume it's smaller than the entire Homeland, but I'm not sure if it would extend to the areas of anyone else who'd picked the settled option.

It's the area your family has jurisdiction over - by default, the settlement they're settled in, plus whatever outlying areas are closer to that settlement than any other. How wide the effect is for settled moves would be a pretty good general clarification to chuck in, I'll put it in the manuscript.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 22:53

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Ilor posted:

Flavivirus, are you still taking feedback prior to releasing V2?

Sure! The text is almost done with editing and into layout, but there's still a little time for things to be tweaked.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2017 08:34

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Doc Aquatic posted:

It might be too late, but one thing that stood out for me is that the stat questions for the Uplifted Children of Mankind were more about them and now they adapted than about the setting/the fall.

It might be intentional, since they break the format by also not having nomadic/dispersed/settled options, but all the setting info my group got out of that question was 'these psychic farm animals had to adapt to whatever things were like'.

The intent for that was that you were still saying something about the habitats that remained - whether your natural habitat still remains, if it was lost but related biomes are still around, or if a completely new ecosystem has supplanted it. Similar to the Cultivator options, in a way - we can certainly try to make that clearer.

spectralent posted:

If you're taking feedback, Inhuman Elegance is still weird like it was last time I mentioned (specifically, you spend hold on them, rather than them taking valid actions to spend your hold, making it more of a mind control than a charm move).

Argh, sorry, forgot that one. It is intended to be closer to mind control than charm, but I can see how there needs to be a way for the charmed player to get in on the fun of being mind-controlled. Here's how it currently reads:

When you spend time alone with someone, they become fixated on you. Roll +Sway. On a 10+ hold 3, on a 7-9 hold 2. You can spend 1 hold at any time to have them:

Give you something you want.
Spy for you.
Protect you from harm.
Introduce you to someone.

If they're a player character, they may take 3 Harm (ignores armour) to remove all your hold.

We could replace that last line with 'If they're a player character, they can choose to do one of the actions and remove 1 of your hold'? That or completely rip off the Skinner's Hypnotic.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2017 14:44

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

paradoxGentleman posted:

I've been readino the new Legacy and while it's a great product I often find myself confused by it.

Where am I supposed to find how much Tech and Data the families get? The Synthetic Hive implies that they start with 5 tech, but what about the others?

New version of the text is dropping some time this evening, after being picked through by an editor for exactly this kind of thing. For your particular query: Data and Tech start by default at 0 and you gain them in play.

If anything else is confusing you, don't hesitate to let me know!

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 17:51

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Flavivirus posted:

New version of the text is dropping some time this evening, after being picked through by an editor for exactly this kind of thing. For your particular query: Data and Tech start by default at 0 and you gain them in play.

If anything else is confusing you, don't hesitate to let me know!

And the update is now up - (semi) final game text, new art, progress on the other settings and more!

# ¿ Dec 21, 2017 07:48

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

paradoxGentleman posted:

I see! So that part was wrong?

The Gear chapter also mentions Intel in the intro, but I can't actually find information about it anywhere. Has it been substituted by Data?

Yeah, Intel is meant to be completely excised. And we've removed the starting tech for the Hive - everyone starts at 0 tech and 0 data.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2017 12:01

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Neopie posted:

Is there a changelog? We literally just finished setting up for a legacy game with the last update,so one would be really helpful.

Fair point - I didn't want to put one in the text because it won't be in the book, but that doesn't mean it's not useful for players.

So:

Added two Surplus-related moves - one just saying 'if you claim or create a resource, get a surplus' and one saying 'if you erase a surplus that seems like it could help deal with a problem, the problem is dealt with'.
Altered the Remnant's Inhuman Elegance to work more like the Skinner's Hypnotic.
Added sidebars on character disability, race, and the game's definition of a family.
Removed starting tech and tech move costs for the Hive and the Starfarers.
Changed Uncover Secrets into a rolled move: roll +Data spent to see how many questions you can ask the gm about resources in the world, on a 10+ add your own ideas to the map.
Made the tough gear tag work the same as hardened, sealed, thermo etc - negates disadvantage from a certain set of conditions, and gives you armour against harm caused by them. In this case, physical impact.
Added explicit support for keeping your old character across ages.
All characters can spend one move option to get access to one of their Family's inheritance moves.
The Sentinel's Command move now locks their choices to two options on a 10+, instead of you making the move for them.
Hordes of Night has some suggested starting scenes and more guidance on where to go from there.
Sidebar added to chapter 1 explaining differences from other pbta games.
Added some extra guidance to the first session - particularly moving between the family and character layers.
You can only pick each Fall Into Crisis/Flush With Resources option once per age.
Added a sidebar about how to handle characters trying to investigate a scene (p 31)
Various changes to examples of play to bring them in line with these.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2017 19:40

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Neopie posted:

Cool. These changes are all only in the new plaintext, correct?

Yup, exactly. I might give it at least a rudimentary layout so it's more useful - and update the playbooks, now I think about it.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2017 07:40

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Foglet posted:

I think someone is stealing Legacy 2e's cover art:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/229616/

ed: nevermind probably, the artist is listed as the same name. Still kinda weird though.

Well, that makes a certain decision a lot easier. The cover was one of the art pieces we didn't have exclusive rights to, and to be honest it wasn't perfect. Time to commission more art!

# ¿ Dec 24, 2017 20:37

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

open_sketchbook posted:

Just looking for, like, a test of the waters here... If I were to pitch a game as a "Crunchy PbtA", would you be intrigued, or immediately turned off?

Intrigued, I think. Mostly because it tells me you're aware of the weight of the rules, which tends to be a good sign.

There's definitely room for a range in weights with pbta: I'd say AW is actually on the crunchy end, especially 2e with its battle moves, chase moves, etc, while Bluebeard's Bride or Murderous Ghosts are at the very light end.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2017 12:13

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Somewhat relevant to the current conversation, I've been putting together a game inspired by Castlevania, Bloodborne and JoJo - Legacy: Rhapsody of Blood. In it, players are explorers diving into the depths of a nightmare castle invading our reality, trying to track down and stop its mad regent before they blight the mortal world.

I wanted it to focus equally on castle exploration, boss fights, and the support given by each player's faction, so each of those has their own set of basic moves. I'm particularly interested by what people think of the boss fight rules - inspired by Masks and Titan World, you don't do damage to bosses. Instead, a boss has 3 major qualities, with each giving the GM a few threat moves to use. For example, a Mighty Cleaver might give you the moves 'Shatter their weapon' and 'Smash the environment'. To fight the boss, players identify openings in the boss' fighting style, try to use those openings to strike, and if successful destroy one of those qualities. When all of the qualities are dead, the boss is defeated.

I've enjoyed how it flowed in playtests so far - it basically codifies and supports that 16 HP dragon thing that people always discuss in Dungeon World, while making sure every character has some way of contributing. If you're interested in giving it a shot, current playbooks are here.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2017 23:34

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

DoctorWhat posted:

hook me up for those playtests!

Cool stuff, I'll look into posting a recruitment thread.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 07:28

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Golden Bee posted:

A live game will find errors 30x faster.

Yeah, I was planning on doing that too - as well as running an online game in Discord. Good idea/bad idea?

# ¿ Jan 1, 2018 00:29

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins 2e is finally out!

It's been a strange journey from a design contest on this forum to this point, but I'm very proud of the end result. It's a beautiful book, and does some really fun things with your world's history and how you reshape the map over generations. For this edition, I've incorporated a lot of feedback on the 1st edition - particularly, I've added a lot more play advice, made it a lot smoother to shift between the character and faction levels of play, and added a ton more playbooks to make sure the world your group builds is truly unique.

If any of that sounds intriguing, pick up the free quickstart or check out the full version!

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 15:54

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

gnome7 posted:

Is the PDF supposed to be $21.01? That is a strange number.

Definitely buying this when I get home though, Legacy is a cool game that I never really got to the table, so 2E gives me a good excuse to try again.

Ah, I told Modiphius I wanted to sell it for �15 not thinking of how it'd look in USD. I'll see about tweaking that. Thanks for giving it a look!

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 17:59

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Subjunctive posted:

Loving my read so far. I have the KS version, and have found some errors. Are you interested in reports, or has the ship sailed?

Also, I was wondering if you could say a bit about how the Fortunes and Trials for Age advancement are meant to be balanced. They seem roughly as good as each other mechanically, such as the second on both lists being mechanically identical. Are they meant to imply some sort of soft guidance to the GM or something?

Edit: and am I utterly blind, or are there no character/family playbook sheets that can be filled out?

If you haven't had the DriveThru link sent to you, send me a message on KS - that's the final version, and comes bundled with the handout sheets.

For Fortune/Trial balancing, we wanted everyone to come into a new age with new things to play with. It's a game about evolution, after all, so going through trials can easily make you stronger. The fiction side of things is meant to be the main 'punishment' for Trials - if you get a 6- or 7-9 you'll start the new age on something of a back foot, with injustices to address or wounds in your family to heal. On the other side, getting Fortunes gives you some extra tech as a nice little bonus, and the results imply that you'll be in a high social standing when play begins again. So soft guidance to the entire group, not just the GM.

madadric posted:

Congrats on the release of Legacy 2e! I love the setting and scope for Legacy, so I can't wait to dig into this latest version.

I'd love to pick your brains about working with Modiphius. I'm staring down the barrell of getting my first game published and it's pretty daunting. I don't know whether I should go all out on self publishing or approach an established company like Modiphius. I had a great conversation with Mark Diaz Truman from Magpie earlier today who gave me some great advice about directions I should pursue.

TBH All you publisher folks in this thread are folks I look up to in regards to the quality of your games, your business ethics, and what you want for the TTRPG community in general and I'd love some advice or anything you're interested in offering me in regards to Impulse Drive.

Modiphius has been pretty great for me. They didn't provide financial assistance getting the book complete, but they provided a ton of good advice and introductions to great warehousing, shipping, printing etc companies. Now that the game's out, they're giving me the majority of money earned from PDF sales and once the hardcopy's out we're splitting money earned selling it at cons and in game shops 50/50. Basically, they're acting as a great promotional engine and a route into distribution without the big headaches I'd have handling it myself.

As far as I've seen Magpie is great to work with, and they've got good heads for business. I'm not privy to the financial compensation they ask for, but seeing how well their kickstarters do their advice is probably work heeding. Not necessarily their advice on stretch goal management, though - I think every single game they've kickstarted still has multiple stretch goals left to deliver.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2018 11:52

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Hey, so, I've just brought out five new PbtA games based on Legacy.
Godsend and Rhapsody of Blood are completely standalone and the most diverged from Legacy, being respectively a diceless god game and an action-packed totally-not-castlevania cinematic boss fight game.
Primal Pathways, Worldfall and Generation Ship will work best with knowledge of Legacy, as we didn't have room in the book for full examples of play for the moves and they're written assuming you have Legacy to refer to. They're playable with just the PDF and the included handouts sheet if you're determined, though. Pick them up to play Spore-like biopunk fantasy, Alpha Centauri-inspired political science fiction, and resourced-starved survival between the stars in a ship that was never built to support its now-thawed passengers.
I'm really really happy with the artistic and writing team I put together for these. If any of those pitches pique your interest, go take a look!

# ¿ Jun 6, 2018 17:50

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

The Sword, The Crown and The Unspeakable power has you build the history and mythology of your setting together, and Legacy: Life Among the Ruins has you decide what the world was like before the apocalypse and what its map and landmarks look like now.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 06:40

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Spiteski posted:

I didn't see a specific thread for it, but would this be a good place to ask some questions about Legacy? I feel like some of the questions may be specific to the game itself, but others might be PbtA things we're getting stuck on.

Sure, ask away.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2018 07:07

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Spiteski posted:

* The story moves "In Want". If no one gets a +10, what happens?

There's no crisis. As a GM, I'd then ask the players what they do to take advantage of the lull in the drama of survival.

quote:

* If someone is wanting to take their family into the Wasteland... can they? I know the wasteland survival is a Character move. Is that because the expectation is that family wont move?

Sure, assuming the family is Nomadic. If they're not, they'll likely need to wait for the next turn of the age to shift them to a Nomadic lifestyle, and then get moving. When the family runs into trouble out there, they're probably going to trigger either Hold Together or Claim by Force.

quote:

* What happens if someone has a need and then gets another one? This happened during an age, and we weren't sure how to handle it, so we just sort of said "you're shortage of people is now REALLY short. It's going to take a big surplus to undo that".

The general rule is that if you get a duplicate of a surplus or need you already have, you gain a different one that everyone agrees is appropriate given the current circumstances (page 31).

quote:

* Can people be the same family/but their own? IE two lots of tyrant kings? We've got a 5 person group so there isn't actually enough of the non-ruins families to go around if someone doesn't like one or two of them.

I generally prefer to avoid it, but it can work if they take a radically different tack with the playbook. Alternatively, they could pick an Echoes playbook and choose the moves which minimise the hypertech side of things? The Pioneers can be pretty mundane if you don't take the kraken-summoning atlantean mermen moves, for example.

quote:

There were some more but I forgot. I'll double check with the group and see what I am missing.
There were of course the moments where I fell back into the single die roll resolving a single action/attack mentality, but that'll get fixed with practice I think.

No worries, happy to answer further questions if you find any missing ones!

# ¿ Oct 14, 2018 09:31

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Spiteski posted:

Another one, related to In Want story move.

One of my players selected "Something snuck under your radar" and then the player who was In Want looked at Uncover Secrets. But.... It didn't make sense? It says "The player picks an option from Uncover Secrets as the first sign of danger, adding it to the map"

How does that work? Do they gain a benefit as in the first part of the Uncover Secrets? Or add one of the second section? None of it seems to really pair up with "something snuck under your radar". Probably very obvious, or some conceit we missed but really stuck on that one.

Ah, that's irritating - it used to be that Uncover Secrets was only that second list, and when we changed it we obviously forgot to revise In Want. So essentially, the player picking the 'something snuck under your radar' option adds to their map a powder keg, a shelter or a barrier and contextualises it as the first sign of danger.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 11:13

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

tokenbrownguy posted:

Anybody run a Legacy 2e game? I�m wrapping up a year long Blades game and looking at my next campaign.

I wrote the thing, what would you like to know?

# ¿ Nov 19, 2018 08:33

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

tokenbrownguy posted:

Hey, congrats on the 2e publication dude. You've got a real neat game here! I'm getting stoked about potentially running it.

Like I said, I've a Blades campaign wrapping up. Afterwards, I'm thinking about running Legacy 2e for my crew. I've gone through the core book a couple times�your play advice section has been a big help. However, I've got two big concepts I'm struggling with:

1. I've really begun to rely up on the "score -> downtime -> score" structure of Blades. I understand the core gameplay loop in Legacy is "zoom in -> characters -> zoom out -> family -> zoom in" but I'm concerned that picking up and putting down my player's characters will put off my crew, who loves their lovely, terrible Blades protagonists to death. How do you recommend keeping the family, not the characters, in the forefront of this cycle? How do you keep the pressure on the families as the gameplay loop cycles through the third or fourth age?

2. My players are great, but petty as hell. I'm a strict everyone-having-fun, consensual, non-catpiss kinda MC, but I know, for example, that one of my players would zoom in on the Tyrants and likely start doing Tyrant things as much as possible. PVP would be an inevitability with my group. I understand your advice is to try and keep the players working at cross-purposes, rather than all out war, but how much do you recommend stretching the scope of the heartland and area around it to enable this sort of cross purpose conflict? I understand being a PbtA game there are actually few assumptions about an individual game world, but I'm curious about your recommendations regarding Homeland scope as a way to mitigate / facilitate player conflict.

For example, take the Tyrant family I know will pop up in my game. I would want to give the Tyrant room to put around and smash sandcastles. I guess the "default" Homeland is sorta-populated, scattered communities, with only the other player families actually owning and holding solid ground (assuming any selected Settled starts). In my mind, this would start the Tyrants immediately marching and trying to conquer my other players' territory. Should I try to put more npc controlled territories in the Homeland to give the Tyrant targets that don't put them at life-or-death odds with other Families? Does the default start assume large communities that the families are minor populations of or isolated communities comprised of entirely Family-members?

So, for your first question, just because Legacy characters are more disposable than Blades ones doesn�t mean you can�t get attached to them! If a player wants to stick with their character from one age to the next, that�s possible in the system as long as it works in the fiction; just have the character migrate from one playbook to another, resetting stats and moves but keeping a relic from their previous playbook. As for keeping the pressure on families, my co-author wrote a pretty great article on the ways the social dynamics of the game tend to change over time - you can read it here.

For your second question, it�s definitely important to have other factions in the homeland than just the players. Someone controls each settlement, unless it�s one of the players, and you can encourage your group to build this up by picking npc factions to answer their questions in the History section of world setup. For the Tyrants, it�s important to remember they�re in the empire business. There�s a reason their alliance move keys off them offering someone a place in their heirarchy. As a gm, encourage the Tyrants to recruit instead of crush, and also highlight to the other players that the tyrants draw their strength from their vassals - and that means there�s plenty of points of weakness to hit with diplomacy or subterfuge.

World setup should leave you with plenty of threats out there in the wasteland for the tyrants to conquer, and internal needs they need to address. That, combined with the history they have with the other families, tends to head off immediate PvP in my experience.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2018 09:16

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Last year I made and released Rhapsody of Blood with the help of playtesters from here - a game of castle delving and cool boss fights, designed to emulate Castlevania and Bloodborne. Since then I�ve been pondering ideas for a modern-day version, and I realised that the structure of Persona 5 was a perfect fit - outcasts and reprobates raiding the mindscape of depraved individuals to bring them low.
Enter Voidheart Symphony. The game�s in pretty early days right now, but here�s the basic idea: you�re a group of people who have realised there�s a supernatural force behind a common tormentor, and have banded together to delve into the dungeon-shard empowering them and steal that power for yourselves. To do this, you�ll need to investigate them in the mundane world, fight monsters and shards of their personality in the castle realm, cultivate the relationships that empower you, and all the while try to stop your mundane obligations going to poo poo.

System-wise, I�ve tried to emphasise the difference between worlds by using different stat and rolling systems for each. The castle is standard PbtA 2d6+stat, as you�re able to express your full potential. The mundane world, on the other hand, uses a hybrid of Spire�s stress tracks and Ironsworn�s dice: you roll 2d6, and look to see how many come up over your Health/Stability/Standing etc, with 1 being a weak hit and 2 being a strong hit. The goal is that mundane world play is all about resisting the world�s efforts to hold you back, and desperately trying to maintain your effectiveness as the investigation wears you down.
Anyway! That�s a whole bunch of :words:

about the game but I hope you�re interested enough to grab the current pdf and see what you think of the systems.
And if you�re a fan of Rhapsody in general, you might also be interested in knowing that we just released seven new playbooks for it, to add variety to your games.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2019 12:50

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Ah, nice.

Follow-up question: is this a print-and-pdf combo, or just the book?

Standalone, yeah, and that's print + PDF - currently �5 off as part of their new year sale.

Foglet posted:

That’s great! Will this set be coming to DriveThruRPG?

Yup, just waiting for Modiphius to get things together and list it there.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2019 19:41

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Poltergrift posted:

Really looking forward to more playbooks for Voidheart Symphony; I've got a stalled Persona game, and converting to this system might be exactly the shot in the arm we need.

I definitely want to get back to it ASAP! Just need to finish production on the books people have already paid me to make before I can have fun with this one.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2019 20:46

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Spiteski posted:

Oh man I missed this entirely.
Is this going to be available anywhere in hardback/physical medium after the kickstarter?

Yup! Hoping to put them up on sale once the KS fulfils, so probably June?

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 09:42

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Angrymog posted:

I have some questions about Rhapsody of Blood

Thanks for picking it up! The game definitely would have benefited from an expanded pagecount, but hopefully I can help you out here.

quote:

There only seem to be two moves that explicitlly tick the Regent's clock - Shelter (on a 7-9, and presumably a miss?), and Fleeing a Confrontation. R &R implies it does due to one of the bonus options being 'Don't tick the Regent's clock'.

Yeah, unless you pick that option the clock is ticked. I've also just realised that I didn't put 'Tick the Regent's clock' in the reactions list - it's totally intended that if the players are kicking their heels you can tick the clock, though this option should be used very carefully.

quote:

With the Confront move one of the options is to Not mark contamination. Is that supposed to mean "If you would mark contamination at this point, don't", or "You always take contamination for using Confront, unless you pick this option."

Again, it's intended that you mark contamination unless this option is picked. I should make these implicit costs more explicit!

quote:

When taking a light wound, one of the options is Fall back and Recuperate - does that mean take no more part in that fight, or that explorer returns to a refuge?

It's meant to be just a story beat of you putting some distance between you and the threat, allowing you to heal some harm. The GM will likely respond by saying what the threat does while you're not occupying its attention, but you're free to jump back into the fight after you've had your few moments to recover.

quote:

During the example of play the characters are rewarded with a blood advance for taking down the acolyte; is that supposed to be standard? Would they have the option to refuse it if say they were already close to marking the 5th blood box.

That's the Victory move (under Confrontations). When you defeat a significant adversary you have the option of adding 1 to your Blood, and raising your Covenant with the others by 1.

quote:

It also feels like there's a lot of guidance re: the Regent missing from the book - e.g. one of the bloodline moves has the option of Find out what the Regent plans next and when it will trigger, but as presented the clock is a basic Doomsday clock unless there's an acolyte with the ability to affect the mundane world. Is the intention that the GM has a list of things that happen at specific clock segments?

Talking of that Acolyte ability - if more than one of them has it, are they supposed to tick earlier and earlier in the clock?

Yeah, that's talking about an acolyte doing something on a particular tick. If there are none of those left, feel free to instead let them know what the Regent's planning on doing when their clock fills up.

quote:

How many Wards should there be? I'm thinking three or four feels right - thinking the latter part of Dark Souls, or the structure of Venetica.

I normally go with one per player, though if I have more than four players I'll combine some of the chosen Breach options together.

Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Jan 29, 2019

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 11:42

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Angrymog posted:

Thanks for the responses.

Reminded me of another question I had about Covenants. Are both characters involved supposed to have the same rating, or can they be lopsided like Pact?

They're symmetrical - the rating is the strength of the Covenant. If either strengthens it, its rating goes up; if either betrays it, its rating goes down.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 15:52

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:19

Flavivirus: Dec 14, 2011; The next stage of evolution.

Angrymog posted:

Last question for now - do the Founders have wound boxes, or just Harm? And am I right in saying that they only have access to the Confront and Standard moves?

Also do Founders only get the option of Gnosis if they defeat the Regent, or are the Blood rewards available too?

Just Harm - Wound boxes complicate things a bit and make that opening fight too easy in my experience. They do indeed only have the Confrontation and Exploration moves. They can claim Spoils of Victory if they win and don't claim the Grail, yeah.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 11:25

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