TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

quote="dwarf74" post="448240398"]
So I got my $15 copy of Eoris Essence. And this thing is bugfuck insane. Beautiful, but also :catstare:

. Super happy with the purchase, though I feel bad for the author since this is such a labor of love.
[/quote]

How is it bugfuck insane, exaclty?

# ¿ Jul 28, 2015 22:28

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 03:19

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

dwarf74 posted:

Well the author implies that the game is a tool for spiritual enlightenment (and possibly... real?) right off the bat, for one.

It's also got a lot of rules and even more . Weird words. It's like a 90's game. An early nineties game.

Like, does it come off as a character or his actual thoughts?

NinjaDebugger posted:

Meet the Eoris character sheet.

...Well then.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2015 23:25

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

dwarf74 posted:

Definitely the latter.

On p. 11 there's a "Roleplaying in Eoris" section.

If you collect RPGs at all, this is totally worth $15.

I am not entirely sure it's playable, but it's at least more comprehensible than Immortal: The Invisible War, and I paid more for that back in the early 90's

This person sounds coo-coo.

Also, I got Feng Sui 2. Only skimmed it. Am I right in thinking these archetypes are like playbooks from PbtA?

Covok fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jul 29, 2015

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 02:01

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Pretty much. The whole idea is that you pick an action-movie stereotype, choose a melodramatic hook, and start playing.

Cool. I really like that. Pick up and play chargen is best chargen in my book. Wanted to be sure because I remember people being mad that full chargen wasn't in the book or something like that.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 02:19

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Evil Mastermind posted:

That's the fighter.

Welp, got to hit the low-hanging fruit: I like how there is a Faps stat so I know how quickly our fighter can pound one out while he's waiting for the wizard to solve everything.

Covok fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jul 29, 2015

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 20:46

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Evil Mastermind posted:

I'm guessing someone didn't do a "check for unfortunate terms" pass after the translation.

And God bless them for not doing so.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Sphere Lore.

I really hope Spheres are some magical artifact integral to the setting and not how well you know round objects.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 20:54

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Still looking over Feng Shui 2 and I'm wondering if I'm wrong in thinking the Everyday Hero playbook is kind of lovely. Like, it doesn't look like it gets enough to keep up.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 21:22

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

My Lovely Horse posted:

The big thing about this system as I understand it is... you know how D&D has setting specific books that give you an idea how the existing spells, items and so on fit into the setting. Maybe there's a specific school of magic unique to the setting. Or a prestige class or other character option that has entry requirements specific to that setting's background. Must worship this god, must join this order of knights.

DSA is like that all the time. The setting is the rules. Or rather, the rules are a description of the setting. There's hardly any separation going on save for the bare minimum you need to be able to treat it as a game. It's super grognardy and I'm looking forward to seeing it pop up in grogs.txt because I have no idea what they'll make of it. In theory it's exactly what they want, in practice it's not D&D and something new. Well, semi-new.

Also there's a spell that has no other effect than to bodily expose the target, so there's that to consider.

Bodily expose? Like, make them naked? Or flip their body inside out?

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 22:11

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Evil Mastermind posted:

I'm really, really hoping this won't suck.

Let me answer this question for you in the least cynical way possible: have the devs admitted the original game was flawed, correctly identified it's problems, and mentioned sample solutions that actually sound like they will solve the problems or suggest a new system that sounds like it will solve the problem? Then, did they have previews that suggest that they are implementing them well?

Until then, it's an unknown.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 20:56

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

ProfessorCirno posted:

I just wanted to say how saddened I am that the most popular ttg in France isn't some horrifying EYE Divine Cybermancy based monstrosity.

Isn't that lovely fps that no one liked?

Fake Edit: Wait, people liked that game? Some people gave it 9/10? It seemed like a stinker when I played it. Different strokes, different folks, I suppose.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 01:05

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Wil Wheaton's RPG Show, Titan's Grave, released a sourcebook for Fantasy Age for anyone who watches.

Also, to those who watch, is it any good?

Also, I find it funny how all you can see in the preview is two maps.

Edit: Also, looks like the goon made Battle Century G is also out. Congrats.

Covok fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Jul 31, 2015

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 02:51

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Well, the creator is a goon and I even think he has a thread somewhere around here for the game...or I'm thinking of his posts in the KS thread.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 04:42

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

"Is a goon" is no promise of quality (or even finished product) as we have learned in the past. Silly as it might sound, I want someone who isn't the author to sell me on it.

I don't mean "Is a goon" means its good. I mean "is a goon" means you can ask him, but I see your point. Just wanted to clear the air on that.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 04:46

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

remusclaw posted:

True about racing, though I would say that it shares about as much commonality with reality as game violence does. I spend most racing games doing escalating bits of cars violence to my opponents as I run them into divides and use their cars to help get me around corners.

I really like the idea of gaming things other than violence. Where it hits the snag as I said was in being fun first of all, and second in not trivializing it. I have seen long screeds written about gaming companies doing it the wrong way, with Pathfinder and its numbers based romance in their adventure paths sticking out in my mind. People find non violent activities to be important, and so modeling it requires at least as much care as does modeling violence, but what is the right way to do that? Bioware style dialog trees are a new fun way to play a choose your own adventure, limited by needing to funnel you through the same set pieces regardless of your choices. Free-form is what people have been doing for forever when it comes to social interaction, and it works except when it doesn't, but it really isn't part of the game, it relies on the player and the game-master to be on the same page to get any results worth getting, and also necessitates player skill over all else. Skill rules tend toward a dry treatment of such things, the most mechanically consistent and by far most boring approach. Finally there are games like Fate where everything is combat, or more specifically, combat is the same as everything else, and here we hit the problem of whether everything should be modeled in the same way as combat. Does that trivialize violence or does it de-emphasize it as the only solution? I don't have answers, but violence, while a fun part of gaming, shouldn't be the end all of what it consists.

Drama. Have we stripped all the drama from violence? I cant remember the last time an action movie had me tense about the fate of the hero or his or her loved one. Death in video games means a short bit of backtracking and in an RPG it generally means a resurection or a new character being rolled. I don't mean games should be all about PKing, but are we averse to drama as a society? Is that why we stick to no consequences violence and avoid political drama or relationship drama, is it all too awkward for us to engage with? Alternatively, is this just a symptom of escapist entertainment, not to engaged with beyond how it makes us feel in the moment and discarded at a whim as we get back to our lives?

Nah, we just like blowing poo poo up sometimes and like engaging works other times. poo poo don't always have to be one way or the other. If you want a thought engaging thing, seek an indie title. Why? Because big titles seek the lowest common denominator since that maximizes profit. That and the average person is just looking for a diversion.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 21:52

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Guilty Spork posted:

Nah, games don't have to be "hard" to be fun, least of all games that can tell a good story.

Especially because the average gamer's definition of hard tends to be "didn't look around the room 50 times? You die! No Save. gently caress you, Tom!"

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:20

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 03:19

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Simian_Prime posted:

Kevin Crawford's Scarlet Heroes is an OSR hack specifically designed to run a trad fantasy RPG with only 1 player and 1 GM, and it prob wouldn't be difficult to run it 2-player with some modification.

IIRC, he even has rules for including more players in the book.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 23:13

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying