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Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Elfgames posted:

except you don't do that in 4e because if you're more than a few levels over the enemy then they can't hit you and you're either spending 5-10 minutes on a pointless fight you can't lose or you use the level x city guards and you're back to doing 25% damage.

and maybe i'm weird but "bigger numbers" isn't a huge draw to me if it doesn't matter, i'd much prefer smaller more meaningful numbers

Hey buddy, how about you try role playing, not roll playing? If your character's nearly impossible to hit by, and capable of trivially one-shotting, hordes of basic goblins or kobolds or soldiers or journeyman wizards, that makes a dramatic difference to their place in the story and the way they interact with NPCs even if no one ever, ever rolls initiative. Yeah, it'd be really unlikely for a bunch of assassins or soldiers or whatever to try their luck against some level 20 characters, and except for maybe one time for funsies you'd likely not bother rolling it out at all, but that means your party of adventurers can stomp around like Godzillas where they used to need to creep softly.

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Serf
May 5, 2011


Ferrinus posted:

Hey buddy, how about you try role playing, not roll playing? If your character's nearly impossible to hit by, and capable of trivially one-shotting, hordes of basic goblins or kobolds or soldiers or journeyman wizards, that makes a dramatic difference to their place in the story and the way they interact with NPCs even if no one ever, ever rolls initiative. Yeah, it'd be really unlikely for a bunch of assassins or soldiers or whatever to try their luck against some level 20 characters, and except for maybe one time for funsies you'd likely not bother rolling it out at all, but that means your party of adventurers can stomp around like Godzillas where they used to need to creep softly.

Sir this is a Mcdonalds drive thru

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Serf posted:

Sir this is a Mcdonalds drive thru

Thank you for role playing as instructed.

Ominous Jazz
Jun 15, 2011

Big D is chillin' over here
Wasteland style
We forgot the most anime game of all, Cthulu Tech.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Ominous Jazz posted:

We forgot the most anime game of all, Cthulu Tech.
We didn't forget, we tried to not mention it. The way no one mentions why Uncle Kevin's not allowed within 300 feet of a school.

Zandar
Aug 22, 2008

unseenlibrarian posted:

Anima Prime is...no idea, though I understand the rules got released under creative commons, so that's kind of neat but hasn't urged me to go look it up, but no relation to any of those. You can tell by the lack of colon.

I'm not sure how well Anima Prime plays, but it's the only game I've seen that attempts to emulate the feel of Final Fantasy abilities without bringing along a ridiculous amount of complexity. Its basic mechanics are similar to Mythenders' dice pools (I think the authors playtested for each other, so probably not a coincidence). Also, its non-conflict resolution mechanic is "the player decides whether their character succeeds or fails", which is at the very least refreshingly simple.

It's interesting enough that I've been wanting to try it out, but haven't really had the opportunity.

drrockso20
May 6, 2013

Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Ominous Jazz posted:

We forgot the most anime game of all, Cthulu Tech.

I legitimately liked CthulhuTech but I won't deny that it had a lot of issues mechanically and in it's setting in the later books

Ettin
Oct 2, 2010

Covok posted:

Breakfast Cult: Maybe

Two of the characters are literally from Death Note!!

TheSoundNinja
May 18, 2012

Ettin posted:

Two of the characters are literally from Death Note!!

Oh come on, you fanboy over that game too much.

I kid, I kid

Cassa
Jan 29, 2009

Ettin posted:

I posted another game rec thread but I'm thinking about just making a big game rec thread instead of a monthly thing. Or is there one and I missed it? :ohdear:

This remains a really cool idea and I appreciate it.

There's a 'what system should I use?' thread, and fatal and friends is people selling their fav/worst RPGs.

ManMythLegend
Aug 18, 2003

I don't believe in anything, I'm just here for the violence.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Anima: Beyond Fantasy is the most incomprehensible book I've ever read in my life. I refuse to believe it can be understood, let alone played.

One of the last times I ever went to a FLGS a friend and I were talking about our experience with a couple of different systems and this guy came up unsolicited and started to explain that Anima was actually a very easy system to use once you learned all of the tables.

Welp that's my story.

NorgLyle
Sep 20, 2002

Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

BESM is a fantastic game as long as you don't use any of the rules. Sit around the table in a group, make up characters, write down some stuff about them on paper and every time someone tries to do anything roll 2d6 and make up a result vaguely based around what they rolled; it's not meaningfully different than playing actual by-the-book BESM and it means you never have to think about the way damage works.

Ewen Cluney
May 8, 2012

Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

NorgLyle posted:

BESM is a fantastic game as long as you don't use any of the rules. Sit around the table in a group, make up characters, write down some stuff about them on paper and every time someone tries to do anything roll 2d6 and make up a result vaguely based around what they rolled; it's not meaningfully different than playing actual by-the-book BESM and it means you never have to think about the way damage works.
BESM: A game designed by a man who likes anime far more than he likes game design.

The key to understanding BESM is knowing that Mark MacKinnon loves Amber Diceless and doesn't believe that game designers have any power to help with things like game balance.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Ewen Cluney posted:

BESM: A game designed by a man who likes anime far more than he likes game design.

The key to understanding BESM is knowing that Mark MacKinnon loves Amber Diceless and doesn't believe that game designers have any power to help with things like game balance.

what does he think game designers do have the power to do, if not that one specific thing

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


Countblanc posted:

what does he think game designers do have the power to do, if not that one specific thing

"Well if players would just build their characters the way I intended (but never actually spelled out in the rules,) balance wouldn't be an issue!" - A thing MacKinnon has probably said at least once, parenthetical added by anyone with half a brain.

Other than that, I've got no idea. Remember that this is a guy who built his business model around a favorable exchange rate, and when the Canadian dollar got too strong, it torpedoed his company.

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


Ewen Cluney posted:

BESM: A game designed by a man who likes anime far more than he likes game design.

The key to understanding BESM is knowing that Mark MacKinnon loves Amber Diceless and doesn't believe that game designers have any power to help with things like game balance.
Well that explains a whole hell of a lot.

And I don't hate BESM I guess, but 1e was kind of super light so the balance didn't matter. 2e is where it kind of got a bit crunchier and wound up a rolling disaster due to it, and 3e made things even crunchier and a bit better balanced by the time it actually came out we already had stuff like Mutants & Masterminds 2e that handled the same design space a lot better and it was basically obsolete from the get go.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Ewen Cluney posted:

BESM: A game designed by a man who likes anime far more than he likes game design.

The key to understanding BESM is knowing that Mark MacKinnon loves Amber Diceless and doesn't believe that game designers have any power to help with things like game balance.

The story goes that the way BESM 2E's system worked, 2d6 roll-under, that it basically led to combat in the game being the epitome of rocket tag where it was possible by trivially abusing its point-buy system to raise your defense super-high and dodge infinite attacks until someone effectively "rolled a crit" and splattered you across the walls like jam with their trivially overpowered attacks. Mark MacKinnon completely ignored each and every complaint about this until Dave Pulver sat him down and made him run through a 1v1 combat scenario with him.

Of course later on MacKinnon would go on to stiff a bunch of people for the money he owed them, including George R.R. Martin, as well as stealing a bunch of Nobilis 2E books to flip on eBay, before vanishing into the Canadian wilderness never to be seen again until he reappeared in some Kickstarter project like nothing ever happened, so his moral failings extend beyond being bad at game design.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


If you ever want to feel really charitable towards the tri-stat system, take a look at BESM d20. They manage to combine the worst elements of tri-stat and d20 design.

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

The Tri-Stat area

Simian_Prime
Nov 6, 2011

When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.
I had no idea that guy from Kids in the Hall made an anime RPG

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

Kwyndig posted:

Other than that, I've got no idea. Remember that this is a guy who built his business model around a favorable exchange rate, and when the Canadian dollar got too strong, it torpedoed his company.

This is how a lot of Canadian companies work. Nothing abnormal.

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

Ferrinus posted:

Hey buddy, how about you try role playing, not roll playing? If your character's nearly impossible to hit by, and capable of trivially one-shotting, hordes of basic goblins or kobolds or soldiers or journeyman wizards, that makes a dramatic difference to their place in the story and the way they interact with NPCs even if no one ever, ever rolls initiative. Yeah, it'd be really unlikely for a bunch of assassins or soldiers or whatever to try their luck against some level 20 characters, and except for maybe one time for funsies you'd likely not bother rolling it out at all, but that means your party of adventurers can stomp around like Godzillas where they used to need to creep softly.

"A lion uses all of its strength to defeat a rabbit" - Kiryuuin Satsuki

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


oriongates posted:

If you ever want to feel really charitable towards the tri-stat system, take a look at BESM d20. They manage to combine the worst elements of tri-stat and d20 design.
I wouldn't say this was the... worst d20 adaptation but it's certainly close to it, and there's only gems like the Aberrant d20 port and such that rival its badness. It's even more hilarious to put it alongside Mutants & Masterminds, and the two together make a good object lesson about the benefits of just going OGL instead of straight d20...

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


Simian_Prime posted:

I had no idea that guy from Kids in the Hall made an anime RPG

You're thinking of Mark McKinney. Different guy entirely.

What was confusing for me for a weeks last year was John Wick.

Elfgames
Sep 11, 2011

Fun Shoe

Covok posted:

It literally started life as a Twilight joke game before it was developed to be something serious.

Twilight is anime as gently caress, two really handsome dudes deeply in love with a bland everyday girl also they're a werewolf and a vampire.

Elfgames
Sep 11, 2011

Fun Shoe

Ferrinus posted:

Hey buddy, how about you try role playing, not roll playing? If your character's nearly impossible to hit by, and capable of trivially one-shotting, hordes of basic goblins or kobolds or soldiers or journeyman wizards, that makes a dramatic difference to their place in the story and the way they interact with NPCs even if no one ever, ever rolls initiative. Yeah, it'd be really unlikely for a bunch of assassins or soldiers or whatever to try their luck against some level 20 characters, and except for maybe one time for funsies you'd likely not bother rolling it out at all, but that means your party of adventurers can stomp around like Godzillas where they used to need to creep softly.

Plutonis posted:

*after my vision goes completely blood red for a while* Haha yeah that's a good impression.

NorgLyle
Sep 20, 2002

Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Countblanc posted:

what does he think game designers do have the power to do, if not that one specific thing
If I had been sitting here waiting to reply I would have made a snarky comment about running off with people's money but other people responded seriously. That's what I get for doing things other than sitting on the forums for hours at a time.

I'm regrettably a BESM fan; when BESM 2E came out I was right in the middle of my anime phase and just starting to appreciate rules light gaming. I've always wished that the game, y'know, functioned at even a basic level and have tried a number of ridiculously ugly homebrew patches and rewrites to hold onto the core Tri-Stat thing but there are just so many things wrong with it in so many ways that in order to come close to repairing BESM 2E you essentially have to write your own drat game and there are actual working rules light games out there in abundance now so I'm not sure why you'd ever want to try.

I don't know how to quit you, terrible game.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

NorgLyle posted:

If I had been sitting here waiting to reply I would have made a snarky comment about running off with people's money but other people responded seriously. That's what I get for doing things other than sitting on the forums for hours at a time.

I'm regrettably a BESM fan; when BESM 2E came out I was right in the middle of my anime phase and just starting to appreciate rules light gaming. I've always wished that the game, y'know, functioned at even a basic level and have tried a number of ridiculously ugly homebrew patches and rewrites to hold onto the core Tri-Stat thing but there are just so many things wrong with it in so many ways that in order to come close to repairing BESM 2E you essentially have to write your own drat game and there are actual working rules light games out there in abundance now so I'm not sure why you'd ever want to try.

I don't know how to quit you, terrible game.

Yeah I mean, nostalgia is a hell of a drug and all but BESM is basically just a generic point-buy game with a bunch of (not very good) anime art plastered all over it, there's a bunch of other games out there these days to scratch that particular itch, OVA immediately comes to mind.

Probably the best things to come out of the BESM Tri-Stat days was when they tried turning Tri-Stat into a standalone generic system ala GURPS and started making genre/setting books for it, and they put out a cyberpunk sourcebook with some fairly stealable settings including one written by Jenna Moran, there was also the Uresia: Grave of Heaven setting by S. John Ross, and David Pulver had a vaguely Eclipse Phase-ian Before Eclipse Phase setting book called Centauri Knights.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
The funny thing about BESM d20 is that they seemed perfectly aware of some of the balance issues in core d20... and then go on to create all-new balance issues in their own systems.

It's an example of swerving to avoid an oncoming car and driving right off the cliff instead.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."
Jenna's bit was extremely stealable. So stealable, in fact, that she never actually got paid for it.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
To be fair that was hardly the only thing of hers he stole. I wasn't kidding about the backstock Nobilis 2E books vanishing mysteriously, it's one reason why that edition became hard to find except for copies that would regularly pop up on eBay from time to time.

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009

Evil Mastermind posted:

Anima: Beyond Fantasy is the most incomprehensible book I've ever read in my life. I refuse to believe it can be understood, let alone played.

I have played in several campaigns of Anima, and am slowly gearing up to actually run one. If you have a calculator to hand and your body is ready for the Rolemaster, it's totally playable. There's nothing else quite like it on earth - every single supernatural power source has wildly different rules and they're all, without exception, totally insane. Your average psychic is constantly flying, reading the minds of everyone within 800 feet, surrounded by multiple layers of forcefields and moving at 1500 miles an hour. Your average ki user is two seconds away from literally going super saiyan, big golden hair and power levels included. Your average wizard has probably killed himself and all of his friends and rezzed them as a Being Between Worlds one level higher than their original character and now they can buy things off the restricted monster list. Your average fighter-type attacks somebody, then prepares to make his second, third and fourth attacks while the enemy panics that they only have one action to defend with - also the fighter is an invisible ghost moving at 1500 miles an hour and firing twin Uzis which can go round corners in this medieval fantasy setting. There's so much to talk about with Anima and it's all equally sorta unplayable but amazing fun. Hell, if your stats are high enough at chargen and you cross-reference them to the Size & Weight chart you can come out, like a character I once played with was, as a 9 foot tall 800 kg completely normal human being. That's the kind of game we're talking about.

Siivola
Dec 23, 2012

Okay, that sounds pretty anime.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!
"you know how in 3e D&D you can make a wizard who fucks everything up the moment before they even have the idea to try harming him? Let's make everyone like that! :getin:"

I mean, that sounds like it could be fun but I would need to be in a very specific mood for it.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Asimo posted:

the benefits of just going OGL instead of straight d20...

I still say that the BESM d20 design process was:
1. Take BESM
2. Place the d20 SRD on top of it
3. Apply paper clip
4. Take an early lunch

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


Evil Mastermind posted:

I still say that the BESM d20 design process was:
1. Take BESM
2. Place the d20 SRD on top of it
3. Apply paper clip
4. Take an early lunch

Oh come now. the game had original classes too, they were just bad.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


They didn't even bother assigning the same number of points to each class, even though that's entirely the point (get it!?!) of a point-buy system.

Of course, just the idea of a class-based point buy system still kind of gives me a headache, especially when one of the clases is just "X points per level".

I will say, tri-stat BESM did do one thing that was different and showed a bit more thought than most "universal" systems as to how genre affects the values of a character's abilities (well, skills only if I recall correctly) and realized that if you're doing a romantic comedy set in not-Hogwarts then social and magical skills are going to be more valuable than being good at shooting someone in the face.

Of course, that really just shows the inherent problem with omni-systems, trying to assign an objective value to abilities and powers without any context is always going to be a problem.

NorgLyle
Sep 20, 2002

Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Kai Tave posted:

Yeah I mean, nostalgia is a hell of a drug and all but BESM is basically just a generic point-buy game with a bunch of (not very good) anime art plastered all over it, there's a bunch of other games out there these days to scratch that particular itch, OVA immediately comes to mind.
I still like Fate Accelerated a lot. I know that my quixotic fascination with trying to batter BESM 2E into something playable is but still simple and light is a pointless distraction from real game work but whatever. There are dumber things I could do with my time, right?

Kwyndig posted:

Oh come now. the game had original classes too, they were just bad.
I owned BESM d20 (as I owned pretty much everything GoO put out up through Tri-Stat DX -- my personal breaking point) but I don't think I ever gave it more than the most cursory of glances. I remember that for some reason the classes all gained different amounts of CP and having PTSD flashbacks to the Skills & Powers book from 2nd Edition D&D (Fighters get 30 CP, Clerics get 90! No problems here!). I can't imagine what it would have been like to try and actually play BESM d20.

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.

Ettin posted:

Two of the characters are literally from Death Note!!

Who?

Elfgames posted:

Twilight is anime as gently caress, two really handsome dudes deeply in love with a bland everyday girl also they're a werewolf and a vampire.

Meh, it's just trashy American teen romance. The fact it's identical trashy Japanese teen romance is a reality of the human condition.

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Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

Flashy dude who can't stop scheming is Light-o and the sugar-powered detective is L.

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