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doesn't make sense, they all came out at the same time If anything, I consider Monsterhearts and Sagas of the Icelanders and Dungeon World to all be first generation hacks and we're only now seeing the release of second generation AW games like Urban Shadows and Undying.
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Aug 13, 2015 07:06
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Fair enough, and I think I'm probably more critical of MH than most people here as I would class it as 2nd-circle instead of 3rd-circle (come to think of it, there hasn't actually been a 3rd-circle game) Part of that is that I have played more than 50 sessions of Monsterhearts whereas I have played maybe 15 total sessions of Dungeon World, so DW's flaws don't really stand out to me whereas everything wrong with MH is glaringly obvious. I think AW is kind of an overdone mechanics-genre (though tbf I haven't played or read World Wide Wrestling and that one seems like it does some actually interesting things.) The Warren didn't change enough from the much earlier playtest release and has a lot of the same problems as MH and Sagas
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Aug 13, 2015 07:32
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Parkreiner posted:I'd actually like to hear some of your gripes with MH; I like it a lot (after ~5-6 sessions or so) and have yet to see any serious criticism of it that doesn't come strictly from being uncomfortable with the game's premise. Sure! The season advance stuff is a shambles, with vaguely written rulings and literally just suggestions that you should go read Apocalypse World for advice even though they're significantly different games. Then there's other GM section stuff that feels under-written as well, in particular the game's example of play text makes reference to the "Disclaim Decision Making" move but this isn't a move in Monsterhearts, it's another piece of Apocalypse World that should be part of the main text of MH but is simply absent. Gaze into the Abyss is a conceptually great move (if you read the forum posts that lead to its development) but it's not great in practice. It's a move where the trigger is more interesting and important than the actual results of the move, and there's going to be situations where the MC is left grasping for straws from the 7-9 result being such a creative heavy-lift. Two of the most important moves in the game, Turn Someone On and Shut Someone Down, can be triggered without the character taking any action at all (shutting down by looking past someone like they don't exist is the most common instance of passive shutdowns) which can lead to weird and unsatisfying results when the mechanics don't seem to interface well with the fiction. The vampire's hypnosis is intentionally written to be really destructive towards player agency, and I think that's totally fine, but it's not a very fun move to be on the receiving end of. AW's Skinner had a move called Hypnotic as well but it was much better executed. In trying to be more simplified/less crunchy than AW, it actually makes the game harder to manage and less fun. I can go on about the season advance stuff, but I'll just keep it short, Growing Up Moves seem fine on paper but they suck in game, whether you hit or miss with them, they're just a disappointment narratively. Changing Skins is the biggest mess. People love doing that but it completely breaks the math in the game because even just one change of skins will allow characters to make most of their rolls at +2 or +3 if they pick their moves in a particular way, without significantly constraining what actions they take. ~5-6 sessions is the sweet spot for the mechanics to shine without being bogged down with all the niggling flaws. Personally, I would never play more than 2 seasons with the same setting/group of characters. I think that's one of the biggest flaws; I want to do the whole Buffy thing of following these characters through high school and into college but the game just doesn't survive that much play. None of this is to say I dislike Monsterhearts (because after all I played the game to death). Things like the String economy metagame and the general feel of each of the playbooks (teen archetypes as monsters) are really excellent. Thanlis posted:I'd be interested in your take on Cartel. It doesn't fall into the trap of using the same basic moves, damage is handled very differently, etc. Perhaps too early to judge given that it's not out in final form yet. I'd love to read and play Cartel but I do not own it. Tulpa fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Aug 14, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2015 08:54
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I think WWWRPG would actually be a pretty natural conversion over to Idols. The main Any Match wrestling move is a great template for an "Any Concert" move (btw I really love the way spotlight is passed around in WWWRPG, spending momentum to steal it is great.)
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Aug 14, 2015 11:56
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Golden Bee, yeah, those are the flaws I see in MH that are things that a competent group and MC can work around but they are still things that will trip people up. Basically, my imagined fix for those flaws would just be a heavily expanded/reworked MC chapter. I've played in games with Avery before and it seems obvious that the MC section was written to support her style of MCing very well. I just wish that part of the book was written to more clearly explain her style of MCing.
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Aug 14, 2015 22:15
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Yeah, agonizing over giant robot statistics is what Mecha fans do, not what Mecha fiction does. Don't worry about bloody statistics. You know, the real robot genre of mecha fiction is pretty legit and a part of the appeal is the 'statistics'. Like, I wouldn't want a Patlabor game where the mechs are genericized by blandly implemented PbtA mechanics.
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Oct 17, 2015 01:48
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I'd suggest checking out John Harper's The Regiment: Colonial Marines for ideas, it's already got gear porn, interesting twists on standard PbtA mechanics and a dice pool system in addition to 2d6+stat rolls.
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Oct 17, 2015 12:42
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megane posted:I've been reading the new AW preview, and it reminded me of a big question I had about AW. So, can somebody explain the idea behind Hx? I get that it's supposed to represent how close you are to someone, or maybe how well you understand them. But... the easiest way to become close to someone is to have them shoot you? And if you come to understand them too well, it wraps around and suddenly you're distant again? I don't get it. It's how well you understand that the other character is a gently caress up. Has nothing to do with actual closeness. I guess you can justify the way it wraps around at a certain point as: if they keep shooting at you even though you're at +4 Hx, you obviously don't understand how much of a mess they are, but all those bulletholes probably taught you something.
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Feb 12, 2016 07:29
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Glazius posted:So you take a page from Burning Wheel and tie advancement to how much you spend? This means the PCs and the plot advance in rough correlation to one another, and distinguishes Fortune as an extra floaty booster that doesn't make anyone stronger. I suggested this to the author a few years back, so I definitely think it would fix things. It would be a good house-rule, I think, and one that can be blanket applied to every 'bennies-as-xp' system.
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Aug 29, 2016 21:55
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Epyllion came out.
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Sep 22, 2016 22:26
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worst part of the crabby shut someone down move is the following interaction You have at least one string on a person. You shut them down and roll a 9. Spend that string to turn that 9 into a 10 and immediately get the string back while getting the 10+ fictional result. The crabby moves really are moves made with little understanding of what the string economy does.
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Oct 28, 2016 02:04
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