TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying

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Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

For 13th Age, what is the escalation dice and what are icons?

# ¿ Jul 3, 2015 23:05

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 08:15

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Huh. Escalation and Icons are interesting design choices to try to improve D&D.

Thanks very much for the write up gents.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 05:30

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

SunAndSpring posted:

Man, I have no idea what setting I wanna run next time I GM a d20 game. Dark Sun is cool because I like deserts and survivalist stuff, Ravenloft is nice because it's got some decent spooky stuff, and Glorantha is great because it's super detailed and has so much variety.

Dark Sun.

Eberron bouncing between Sharn and Sarlona and that Giant inhabited island are good too. Or a noir detective story in Sharn. Featuring players as all part of the antiquities inspection service or whatever it was called.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 20:12

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Dark Sun with Eberron Lightning Rails and magical chariots so you can do a Fury Road game

The Race Away from The Dragon

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 20:12

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

So I am the recent owner of Sine Nomine's Silent Legions ( :neckbeard:

).

It is a great toolset for a game master or world builder.

It brings up an interesting question though that I can't seem to figure out how to resolve. Can you run a sandbox horror game? Does the nature of a sandbox investigation/exploration game detract from horror?

To me a horror game hinges on the mystery first and foremost to draw players in and then end with a revelation as the payoff in the climax of the story. The house really is haunted by an undead cultist in the Call of Cthulhu scenario the Haunting. The investigators discover the true nature of the March family in The Wives of March or the Innsmouth taint is revealed in any Innsmouth game.

Mystery novels depend on a great deal of structure in their rising action to use foreshadowing and red herrings as clues or to keep you guessing to set up the emotional impact of the final revelation. The best Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and Doyle novels have this structure in spades.

Sandbox games by their nature are pretty unstructured.

How can you reconcile the two?

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 21:20

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Lightning Lord posted:

agreed but make sure everything is made of bones

Train made of sand. It starts degrading if you go slower than 50 miles an hour. What do you do, hotshot, what do you do?

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 21:32

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Thinking about it, the only "sandbox" horror game I've seen that appears to work is the Arkham Horror boardgame. And that is because you have a clear existential threat (counters until the Great Old One of choice appears). Even though all players are working towards a goal, really you can go anywhere and work on the goals with any priority you choose (ie gather equipment, persue Elder Signs, kill monsters, whatever).

Evil Mastermind posted:

I'm not any kind of expert on sandbox play, but doesn't the book explain how it's expected to be run?

Haven't gotten to that chapter yet :haw:

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 23:15

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Sionak posted:

It's a tricky balance, but I think that Robin Laws and Kenneth Hite have figured out a way to do it. Robin Laws put together "The Armitage Files" which is a big collection of NPCs and clues, but without a single defining mystery plot. The idea is that it can be an improvisational investigation. You hand the players the first handout, which foreshadows terrible things, mentions multiple NPCs, and several locations.

Then they decide what they want to look up. You pay close attention to the crzy theories that players always throw out and decide which aspects will be interesting. You make sure that things are still building towards some kind of climax or reveal so that there will still be a satisfying resolution to the game. As an example from Armitage Files, some of the letters seem to be written by Armitage himself but he's going progressively crazier, so the players would want to keep an eye on him as things progress.

Kenneth Hite (and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan) have been working on the Dracula Dossier, which applies the same idea to Dracula. They've been working up the same NPC and location list along with an "unredacted" copy of the Dracula novel that you can drop on the table in front of your players and say, "okay, what do you want to investigate?"

I think both of these allow for the player-driven gameplay that's normally associated with a sandbox, but you as GM have to do a bit more work to make sure that they are progressing towards a conclusion instead of chasing down red herrings.

That is really interesting and useful.

I had not heard of the Armitage Files. I have heard of the Dracula Dossier but nothing about it's structure like you described. That is pretty goddamn smart game design.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2015 16:22

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

TehKeen posted:

Hi TG Chat, I've got a question that I ~think~ I've asked before, but now I'm in a position to where I can actually run a game (scheduling-wise):

I'd like to ask y'alls opinions on WW2 settings and which systems work best; I've only really played D&D - various editions - and RIFTS like once in high school - I've heard of and read the GURPS WW2 supplement, heard of Savage Worlds Weird Wars as well as the update to FASA's old Behind Enemy Lines.

Does anyone have experience and recommendations with these or other systems?

There is Achtung! Cthulhu which as I understand it is pulpy WW2 vs the Mythos. :shrug:

quote:

In the Achtung! Cthulhu universe, a band of Allied heroes fight the Secret War against the Nazi Black Sun and their rivals Nachtwolfe. Powered with ancient secrets and terribly Mythos allies, Black Sun and Nachtwolfe are on the verge of unleashing terrible weapons upon the Allied forces. You'll be able to follow their exploits through the roleplaying games, boardgames, graphic novels, audio adventures, wargames, card games and much more.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2015 16:26

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Have you considered plunking in the entire Freeport campaign world into Forgotten Realms Lighting Lord? It's ready made for pirates.

And I second the above suggestion. Just wave a hand and things you don't like just don't bother with.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2015 13:24

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

gradenko_2000 posted:

I didn't think anything was wrong with the Sunset Invasion DLC for CK2, if that's at all comparable. I say go for it, but you don't want to and they wonder where it is, just be upfront about it.

I was thinking along the same lines. If it doesn't disrupt the tone of your game unexpected Mayan Man o'Wars commerce raiding the pirate lanes or even giving priate colonists stiff competition might be fun.

Now I'm imagining a sea battle between a fleet of black flagged Baninite warships armed with green fire, fast skiffs flying the flag of Cyric, a Mayan fleet and traditional pirates all over the place while Drizzt jumps from rigging to mizzenmast Assassin's Creed style.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2015 07:32

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Mycroft Holmes posted:

I'm not sure of this is the right place, but I've been working on a Fallout game set in London. I've got a ruleset and some setting ideas, but I was wondering if anyone could give some ideas? I'd really appreciate it.

There are some Fallout: UK and London discussions here.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Fallout

# ¿ Jul 7, 2015 15:00

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Never played Torg. Skimming the wikipedia page it seems to be a multigenere mashup where anything goes.

Sell me on it. Was the attraction the system or the setting?

# ¿ Jul 11, 2015 00:08

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

oriongates posted:

EDIT: I've also found it absolutely perfect for "I want to play a D&D setting but I don't want to bother with any of the D&D systems". I've had very good luck with both Eberron and Dark Sun conversions.

Is it just me or are other people finding playing/listening to D&D/d20 combat ... boring and tedious? Every encounter take at least an hour.
:shrug:

# ¿ Jul 11, 2015 00:12

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Countblanc posted:

its literally only you

Army of One :911:

# ¿ Jul 11, 2015 01:45

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

paradoxGentleman posted:

Are there any settings where dwarves are evil, for example?

Hmm. I can't think of a setting where dwarves are intrinsically evil at the moment. Naturally the Derro of Forgotten Realms (2nd and 3rd edition) and Chaos Dwarves of Warhammer come to mind, but those are twisted versions of the normal "good" dwarves.

There was a failed wargame called Chronopia that had an interesting take on races. The Dwarves there were more amoral, feral and animistic. So essentially each dwarven clan had their own god that was incarnate and resided with them. Then their gods started to go feral and degenerate into a beast form for some reason. This mirrored the decline of the dwarven culture until most of the dwarf tribes were feral like their gods.

http://www.chronopiaworld.com/artikel.php?id=89

paradoxGentleman posted:

I am pretty sure there is no such thing as an evil halfling.

Lightning Lord posted:

Dark Sun's cannibalistic halflings are pretty horrible.

If I remember my Dark Sun lore, haflings (in the Green Age? Blue Age?) were responsible for making the world a blasted wasteland because they went on a genocidal crusade to kill off the other races. As I recall, the Dragon Kings (or maybe just the Dragon?) are "evolved" halfling genocidal warriors. One was "Bane of pixies" another was "Orc bane", which explains why you don't see those races in Dark Sun.

Edit: I'm taking this from the Prism Pentad books.

The feral cannibalistic amoral halflings you find west of the ringing mountains in the only surviving forest are degenerate survivors of the original proud halfling race that had a world spanning empire.

In the D&D Birthright setting, halflings may have been intrinsically evil or descended from evil I don't know. As a halfling leveled they would get access to shadow magic, specifically dimension door. This was explained as halflings originating from the intrinsically evil Shadow Plane from which they emigrated.

Pathfinder published a book on halflings and as I recall halflings were emigres from the fae world.

In Tome of Ineffable Evil there was an evil halfling race introduced.

Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jul 16, 2015

# ¿ Jul 16, 2015 19:07

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Lichtenstein posted:

One thing that has always bugged me is fantasy RPG books having no clue what to do with plain humans and going with "uh they breed a lot and are very versatile. A human can turn from fisherman to lumberjack and then to a pikeman like it ain't no thing!" gently caress you, all one needs to respec into a medieval woodcutter is moderate muscle mass, how come all these super-swole or super-smart races can't figure this poo poo out?

Still, it gave me an idea.

So, the elves tend to be very old, right? So instead of doing the tired "dickish aristocrats" shtick, maybe frame them as a society full of elderly people. Like, they're not xenophobic and condescending to other races out of spite, but they tend to just blurt out embarrassing poo poo one's grandma could say. The race isn't dying out, it's just that the stagnant elven council is Brezhnev era all over again. The reason that the society blessed with arcane wisdom still clings to dancing around trees is folks trusting their momma's "traditional" methods over whatever the Big Pharma cooks up (also they need to call grandchildren to repeatedly explain how stirrups work). Most of the ubiquitous prophecies are fraud televangelism.

Oh, and Dark Elves aren't really evil. They're the elven equivalent of metalhead teenagers who like to drink cheap wine and draw pentagrams to show their parents just how edgy they are. Hence the dumb gothy clothes.

Not exactly what you are discussing, but I recall some human diversity in rpgs.

AD&D's Birthright had about six or so flavors of human, each with different stat bonuses.

I think the 3.5 (3?) ed version of Forgotten Realms Players Handbook also had different stat bonuses or backgrounds for humans from different cultures. And a bunch of different starting equipment kits per area which was pretty interesting.

Also there was a weird rear end psionic human variant in the 3rd ed Psionics book iirc. Wilder or something.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 01:04

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Yawgmoth posted:

FR has a bunch of "regional" feats that you can only take if you're from a specific area. The psionic human I think you're thinking of is the Elan, who are actually aberrations but were once human.

As I recall, correct on both counts!

# ¿ Jul 24, 2015 02:39

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 08:15

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

gradenko_2000 posted:

RolePlaying Public Radio did an actual play of it where they reskinned it into an 80s action movie, but you should get a good feel for how the system plays.

This is a great episode to listen to purely for the entertainment value

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 01:13

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