TG August Cat Thread: it was like a sweaty danny devito

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG August Cat Thread: it was like a sweaty danny devito

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Bedlamdan posted:

How do I get my friends' cat to not be such a loving rear end in a top hat all the goddamn time. It keeps trying to bite or claw at my things, while leaving everyone else's stuff alone. And hisses at me when I try to put my stuff out of its reach. So far my friends have settled for just scaring him away with a little spray bottle, but I need a more final solution.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 23:58

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 12, 2024 12:49

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Anyone know of an electronic card/hand tracking utility for online board games?

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 03:32

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Stop talking about Zak S and butthurt about the ENnies and instead talk about the new D&D movie that I hope to Jesus Christ that gets Jeremy Irons and Marlon Wayans again

Hell yea

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 03:05

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Anyone know any systems with a strong investigative system?

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 18:47

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Error 404 posted:

What's wrong with him?

"DungeonWorld is mediocre", he said, throwing the grenade into the thread.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 20:19

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Splicer posted:

I understand the thread opinion is that it's a good Dungeon* but not a great *world.

I've just always found it really unsatisfying mechanically; the combat is painfully boring in a game that's largely based around combat.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 20:59

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

inklesspen posted:

As Swagger Dagger said, Gumshoe. There is even a thread for it.

Yeah, I'm looking at Trail of Cthulhu now; first impression are good.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 21:10

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Slimnoid posted:

It always felt like DW could use a new edition, one that clears away a bunch of the crud and further sheds some of its D&Disms. But, well, I don't know if that will ever happen.

I think it really needs to make the choice of either being a rules-light adventure game, or be a more mechanically rewarding retroclone. Right now it's kinda failing to be both.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 21:33

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

IT BEGINS posted:

What do you find particularly unsatisfying about it? Is it the lack of depth? I'd have thought a rules-light system like DW would result in combat that's more interesting, not less.

It's the lack of depth, combined with spreading out over many rolls what should be resolved with a single test. The combat system isn't particularly rules-light, not in the same way something like FATE is, where players are free to creatively act and respond in ways that make the battle dynamic (mostly due to the Compel system and swinging Fate points). Instead, you're stuck saying 'I hack and slash, with +2 ongoing for 2d8 damage', repeatedly, occasionally pausing to come up with a way to say 'I hack and slash, except with a torch i got off the wall' when you fight a swarm or whatever, or 'I Defy Danger because my wizard got charged'. There isn't enough mechanical options to make heavy combat compelling, and the system tries to make up for this by forcing you to come up with 16 ways of saying 'I hit it with my sword'.

There's very little you can do to affect battle outcome other than roll well and always make use of your chosen abilities, many of which are either passive or situational.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 23:57

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Simian_Prime posted:

Saying "I Hack & Slash" over and over again is like saying "I hit it with my sword" over and over again in a game like D&D and Exalted; it's actively discouraged. The rules explicitly tell you to describe your move in a way that fits the narrative. If your player is just saying "I Hack and Slash" or "I Defy Danger", that's when you tell them to be more explicit in their description. It's as bad a sin as a DW GM's telling players "Ok, I'm making a Soft Move to increase dramatic tension!"

That's what I meant when I said "Come up with 16 ways to say 'I hit it with my sword". It's all just empty RP when there's no real benefit to your described maneuverings, either in terms of dice or real narrative control, a la FATE Compels. There's no real reward for creativity, and certainly no mechanical strategies to be had, so combat is nothing but cotton candy: tastes good for a moment, but leaves you unsatisfied.

Simian_Prime posted:

As much as I like Fate, I think a Compel/Dramatic editing resource like Fate Points goes against the emergent play style of gaming that DW wants to emulate. DW allows players to control the narrative and setting to a certain extent, but leaves enough of an element beyond their control to retain the elements of danger and risk. Fate, for the most part, contains comparatively little element of risk towards its characters. A Complication, even death, is largely just another method for a player to add set dressing to the overall story.

That isn't a DungeonWorld thing specifically, it's common across most of the *world games, and while I agree that it's a decent system for games where every test has story importance, like most of the *world games I've encountered do, it falls apart when you're rolling half a dozen times for every player every combat. You can't have meaningful consequences when each player is rolling 3 partial successes and a failure every combat, times two or three combats a session.

e: this is why the other *world games generally use a single roll to resolve combat; so that partial successes or failures have meaningful story impact.

Simian_Prime posted:

DW is not a perfect system, but I actually prefer it to most PtBA games, like Monster of the Week or AW, that seem to mostly force you to march lock-step to the drumbeat of their intended genre.

Really? Cause DW is extremely focused on emulating a retroclone dungeoncrawl. That's the intended way of playing the game, and I think it utterly fails to be interested while attempting to emulate that. The system isn't granular enough to keep combat, traps, or treasure interesting. It can be used as a rule-light adventure game outside of dungeon crawls, but then you have the issue that around half of the class moves are only of use in combat, and only to a single type of action in combat, so it kinda falls apart again, and you'd be better off working under another system.

fool of sound fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Aug 9, 2015

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 03:04

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

IT BEGINS posted:

I suppose I was thinking 'interesting' instead of 'interesting mechanically'. Coming from a decade of 3.X, I'm welcoming the ability to describe things starting with the narrative rather than a mechanic. I also can't think of a system that has mechanically complex combat while still pushing the narrative first.

Exalted makes an attempt of it; fluffing your actions well gives a bonus, fluffing your actions to build off of already stated fluff gives a larger bonus.

I probably wouldn't ever describe the empty fluffing of attacks as 'interesting' in an of itself. Any action in any game can be fluffed.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 03:29

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

Is it not the case that Dungeon World gives the GM codified options for granting bonuses and controlling outcomes based on declared fluff?

Yes, but they work a lot better when each roll has a meaningful story impact, which they can't when each player is rolling a minimum of 3-4 times per combat, fluffing each attempt to do a thing, especially when their action already has a very explicitly stated effect. At best, you're allowing the players to modify enemy behavior by standing between the demon and the mage. Most of the time, you're not going to get more than a +1/-1 to your roll, because the GM isn't going to be able to keep track of half a dozen fluffed stratagems in a combat and give each one a meaningful effect, especially when most combat moves already have an explicit effect. In either case, any such are entirely in the GMs hands, something goons like to complain about in other systems.

e: It probably doesn't crop up so bad in PbP, but in live DungeonWorld, it's really hard to come up with partial success/failure effects on the fly when people are spamming rolls in combat without repeating or second guessing yourself. It's the big reason I feel that the *world system should always resolve intents with a single roll.

fool of sound fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Aug 9, 2015

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 03:53

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Astus posted:

I think this is flat-out wrong, personally. If the group's fighter says "I swing my hammer straight into the assassin's kneecap", this could still be a Hack and Slash move, if what he wanted was to do damage. But it also has a narrative impact, since if he succeeds in hitting the assassin, it doesn't make very much sense if the GM then says the assassin does some cool parkour to flip over the fighter and try to stab the wizard or whatever. He just took a hammer to the knee, he should be limping from that. Maybe if the assassin was some weird Thin Man from x-com thing that twisted its body to move in ways no human should, then having it flip around after being kneecapped would still make sense.

Similarly, stabbing a brass golem with a knife doesn't make sense, and wouldn't even have a Hack and Slash rule. Trying to use that knife to pry apart the brass scales, giving an opening to the mechanical parts behind them? Sure, that will work, but you'll need someone to distract the golem first, unless you want to risk getting hugged by a brass golem.

I addressed this in the post right above you, but 100% of that is in the GMs hands; trying to do anything interesting in DungeonWorld is a game of 'GM may I?, and thus the main 'mechanic' of DungeonWorld is convincing your GM to let you get away with as much as possible, because there are no satisfactory combat mechanics to fall back on. This is fine out of combat, where rolls are supposed to all have story impact, but in combat this quickly leads to GM fatigue when players are asking you to adjudicate multiple special actions every turn.

e: Basically, the narrative is there, but players have no direct control over it, other than suggesting things to the GM, and as such it isn't really a mechanic in the same sense as the narrative control granted to the players by FATE points. This wouldn't be a problem if they could use the explicit mechanics to achieve narrative control, but in DW those mechanics are woefully light; just the racial ability, maybe one or two starting moves, and maybe two or three advanced moves.

fool of sound fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Aug 9, 2015

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 04:01

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Error 404 posted:

Hahaha. Wow.

Don't be shy, I'd love to hear your response.

e:

Error 404 posted:

Also the creator is working with Adam Koebel on a pbta RQ game.

Get hype motherfuckers.

Actually maybe I wouldn't.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 04:08

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

I guess the way I would phrase it is that in D&D, if a Thief wants to scale a wall, we resolve the entire action as a single roll to successfully scale the wall or not (or some partial success state), but if a Fighter wants to smash a Skeleton Warrior, we have to break it down into multiple granular "combat skill check vs armor difficulty class" rolls because it's accepted that D&D is about combat and thus combat needs to be granular.

Certainly we could do the same with the Thief rolling for every hand-hold on the way up the wall, but it'd only be thematically appropriate if we were playing Sly Stallone's Cliffhanger: The RPG.

Does Apoc World or other PBTA games resolve combat in a faster manner?

Most of the PBTA games I've seen resolves 'I fight the thing' as a single die roll (or a short series of opposed rolls representing gaining and losing the upper hand), with the standard failure/partial/success roll with standard narrative impact. DW is trying to emulate D&D and similar, so it breaks off it's combat mechanics from the other systems, centralizes the game on them, and requires multiple rolls per fight (substantially more than the second version above) using damage/hp/special effects.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 04:13

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Error 404 posted:

Serious question: have you ever actually played Dungeon World?

Spare me your patronizing fanboyism, thanks. I've both played and run DungeonWorld and other story-based and retroclone systems. I thought DungeonWorld failed at both.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Interesting. I'm thinking now of a model where if we consider a dungeon crawl as the attempted accumulation of wealth against the steady depletion of limited camping/spellcasting/health resources, then "is good at Fighting" is a resource to be spent in the same way that "has a spell slot to end a tough fight instantly" can be.

A skeleton warrior would be a drain on the party's resources similar to how an undetected and triggered arrow trap would shoot someone for 1d6 damage. You need the Fighter to kill the monster much like you need the Thief to stop the trap, but the Fighter can only "rage" or activate their "be really good at fighting" ability so many times per day, and outside of that it's a random roll where he's going to take chip damage.

After you've failed one too many detect traps, rolled mediocre on one too many "single roll combats", used up all your spellcaster's spells and your fighter's martial exploits, and run out of supplies you need to bed down for a few hours to get some partial healing and squeeze out a few more spells and exploits, you have to head for the exit (and god help you if you're so deep in that you draw multiple wandering monsters and have to do even more straight/umodified single combat rolls).

This is what DungeonWorld is trying to do, but disproportionately focuses on the combat aspects (because that's what D&D does) without also adding disproportional amounts of content to the combat mechanics (which D&D also does). If it was less focused on combat, it could be good; if it had more codified combat options, it could also be good.

fool of sound fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Aug 9, 2015

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 04:30

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

IT BEGINS posted:

I agree, but I think 'this requires too much of the DM' is different than 'this makes combat not interesting'. At the same time, how is convincing your GM to let you get away with as much as possible something that's strictly a combat issue? Shouldn't you have the same issue with 'skill-type' rolls (basically anything out of combat)?

It's only a problem because DungeonWorld has a lot more combat rolls, with individually less story impact, than anything else.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 04:38

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Simian_Prime posted:

I guess it just didn't go far *enough*?

DM: "Your party arrives in front of The Floating Caves of Danger, where the Three-Headed Amoeba King and his armies are hoarding treasure and threatening the Gnomish Isles! There is a barred crystal door sealing the entrance! What's your first move?!?"

Player: "Hmm... I don't really want to, y'know... "Interact with things"? Ill just make a "Complete the dungeon" move!" *rolls a 7*

DM: "Ok, Elfrick the Elf dies (sorry, Steve), but you go through the Caves and defeat the Amoeba King. Everyone gets 1,000 coin and a level. Well, that was fun... see you all next week?"

Error 404 posted:

Hahaha. Wow.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 05:00

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

Are there games that experiment with, or straight-up use, a method of character creation in which you only define your stats/skills/etc in the spur of the moment?

That is, you can possibly start the game with half or more of your "skill points" unallocated and then you're only supposed to invest them when you see that you need to?

I know I've seen a game (not FATE) do this to some extent with skill choices, but I can't seem to remember which one it was now.

remusclaw posted:

If I remember right, Heroquest 2 uses that as one of the Character creation options.

This might have been it.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 16:32

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Ultimately I'd say say the question is not "what high fantasy game does sailing well" but "what's your favorite high fantasy game?" It should be pretty simple to add in boats from there.

I dunno. I'm not sure I've ever seen a system that I though did ship mechanics well.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 06:56

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

bunnielab posted:

Yo I am still trying to decide what edition of D&D I wanna get back into. I have read the quickstart rules for 4th and 5th, and have acquired a bunch of the old 1ed books I have in storage somewhere. Now that there are two 1st ed PBP games I can get a refresher of that edition, but I would love a recommendation for a really good PBP game for 4th and 5th. Preferably ones that show off the mechanics well. Thanks dudes!

EDIT: I assume 2nd is much like 1st and 3rd is too weird to mess with.

5e plays like a slimmed down 3.5e. It got a lot of the same fundamental problems, but it easy to learn at least. 4e is much better designed but also a lot more complex. It also has a much heavier focus on the (much improved) combat. I'm not super familiar with 4e, but 13th Age is a DnD-like bade by former DnD writers that I really like, and that runs like a trimmed down 4e.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 23:12

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:

Since there is no such thing as 'good' PbP,

Yeah, pretty much this. There is at least like a 75% chance that the GM or the majority of players wander off within a month or two of starting.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 02:51

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

bunnielab posted:

I want D&D due to intense nostalgia. The 1ed books I was given as a kid in the 90's were this portal to crazy 70's madness that I just loved. I want a game that could be airbrushed on a dude's van. I want 10' poles and encumbrance tables. But, I also want to try some PBP stuff as I have a weird schedule so I will never get to play in real life, so I want to learn one of the more current systems and I haven't liked any of the more modern rules lite games I have looks into. Like, they look fun, but not the very specific D&D itch.

Try 4e or 13th Age then. 13th Age is a DnD game in all but name, and is by no means rules lite.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 07:02

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Helical Nightmares posted:

And they wonder why anime fans are socially shunned.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UUcGZ2u4Q1c

My surname irl is also Pantsu.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 00:12

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

If you're looking for a CRPG, the Avernum remake is pretty simple and fun to play.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2015 23:01

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

The Spiderweb cRPGs are all pretty good (especially Geneforge), and made in America.

And yeah, Arcanum has a really frustrating early game.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2015 03:48

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Covok posted:

Random thought, but I'm surprised that the Elder Scrolls never made a cheap, cash-in TRPG. Seems right up their alley.

There's a hilariously bad homebrew one based on a heavily hacked WHFR 2e.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2015 18:20

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Covok posted:

That just sounds like putting a round peg in a square hole.

You should see the Enchanting system they devised. I'd F&F it, but it's really crazy dense and would take forever.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2015 18:22

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

dog kisser posted:

Anyone have any suggestion for a God game? I was reading this game story earlier about a group of demigods plotting for godhood, and now I want something like that! Ideally pretty free form, without being too restrictive. Or, hell, anything that's reasonably God game-y just so I can read about em'!

Nobilis 3e is fantastic for this, though the default setting is very hit and miss.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2015 16:22

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 12, 2024 12:49

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Trollhawke posted:

[*]Why is Monster Hearts so popular, especially in PBP on these forums?

Because goons are deviants.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 01:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG August Cat Thread: it was like a sweaty danny devito