TG Chat Thread 2017

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slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

The cycle will be complete when children rebelling against their geekcore parents go to the gym and becomes super buff jocks who are really great at sports.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 18:39

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 02:34

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/matttomic/status/859117370455060481

I see your sandwich and I raise you tasty burgers.

# ¿ May 2, 2017 03:39

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

rumble in the bunghole posted:

Congrats to Slap Me and Kiss Me for being a finalist in the 200 word rpg with Might Makes Right: Muscle Marines in Space.

Holy poo poo, really?

# ¿ May 9, 2017 01:11

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

rumble in the bunghole posted:

yeah

E: I am not at all Jealous of the Storygaming Swine who stole my rightful place due to their anti-spaghetti views

Well, I tell you, that's pretty gratifying! Thanks for letting me know!

# ¿ May 9, 2017 02:34

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Lunatic Sledge posted:

What's a good Incredibly Ominous Name for a big, evil medical corporation/pharmaceutical lab? My players are working progressively shadier jobs for a smaller lab that does a lot of psychic/cloning related experimentation, and I need to whammy them with a "pssshhh, that ain't poo poo, watch this" kind of scenario.

Mortuus Esto Vigilans Corp.

# ¿ May 9, 2017 03:47

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

theironjef posted:

I'm half of System Mastery, we were pulling real hard for Muscle Marines and put it in the finalists. It was our personal favorite from our reading blocks.

Hey, thanks! It was real fun to put together, and I'd love to hear more thoughts on it if you have any.

# ¿ May 10, 2017 00:44

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Moss Healing Word: A Svirfneblin's Best Friend

# ¿ May 10, 2017 21:31

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Covok posted:

"Mostly empty, without purpose, destined to undergo heat death."

Infinite monkeys, all arguing about verisimilitude as described through the lens of 3.5e rules.

# ¿ May 15, 2017 18:01

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

I'd work in something about failing a DC 8 check, too.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2017 14:42

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Even if 4e was the worst ever, it still has more game than that dude.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2017 19:20

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

JackMann posted:

His point was that even being a good and wise person didn't necessarily mean things would go smoothly. There was a lot of poo poo that Aragorn would've had to deal with. Tolkien sweeps it under the rug with "He was the rightful king, so of course everything went well," while Martin wanted to point out that that wasn't good enough. It's never been good enough. Even a good man can make decisions that end up poo poo, simply because they don't, can't, know what the consequences would be.

Now, it can be argued that wasn't the point of Lord of the Rings, and that "happily ever after" can be a perfectly valid ending. But thinking about things that way can lead to some interesting stories.

Queen of Tearlings is an interesting take on fantasy kingdom logistics. The first book of the series is a solid read.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2017 20:07

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

After two solid months of work, I've just launched Let Thrones Beware's playtest 005.

Cool new updates:

Ability scores are dead and its rotting corpse has been totally excised from the game
Desperation, an escalation style mechanic that encourages the tactical combat to end quickly rather than drag on for hours
A new team-based initiative system based on collectively bidding powers rather than roll+stat
Rewritten adversaries with rudimentary built-in Desperation-based AI and an evolving power set

You might want to take a look at this if...

... you enjoy tactical combat, but dislike having nothing to do in between taking your turns;
... you want a mechanically interesting non-combat resolution system;
... you enjoy gradated success in modern games like Fate and Dungeon World, but want a tactical component to your gameplay;
... you like the character building of D&D 4e, but dislike the item treadmill and fiddly feat choices; and
... you like the simplicity of D&D 5e's advantages and disadvantages ... but 5e

Download the GM content for Playtest Packet 005
Download the Player content for Playtest Packet 005

slap me and kiss me fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jun 12, 2017

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 18:47

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Anniversary posted:

Looking into this. I found the previous editions a little difficult to follow so not sure if I'll be able to provide any worthwhile feedback.

Looking forward to your thoughts. If you stumble into unclear sections, please let me know! I tried really hard to clean up a bunch of the confusion (esp. around the combat system) for this draft, and I don't want to stop until it's all eliminated.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 21:53

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Thanks! Good catches on p 12 & 18 - all fixed up.

What in the player packet's combat explanation did you find poorly explained, and what in the GM helped clarify stuff?

I don't have any logs, but I am running a playtest on the forums - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3746580

# ¿ Jun 13, 2017 00:13

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

You're right, power management is absolutely critical; part of combat is for sure figuring out when to go balls to the wall and when to conserve powers.

Heroes can refresh extra powers by spending points from their Refresh Pool (which they earn through roleplaying the virtues and flaws they make up during character creation) to pick a specific power they want to get back, or by spending a standard action (of which they have two each round) to refresh an additional power.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2017 00:27

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

ChrisAsmadi posted:

There's a Pathfinder port called the Avowed that's in Beta that's really good, too, even if some of the Pact options are a bit weird (I mean, who wants to be pacted to a literal trash monster?)

Oscar is a stand-up guy, once you get over the grouchy attitude.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2017 14:32

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

why does iron man's suit have muscles

They only paid for one model.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 17:43

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

A strong argument for winding down properties after a predetermined time rather than running them into the ground for all of eternity.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 18:05

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Kwyndig posted:

A homeless wizard?

edit: And yeah those 'doll' punk photos in Cyberpunk were deadly serious when the book came out. They thought it would be the next big thing in RPG art.

Somewhere far away, an ancient knight buried deep, deep underground whispers "you have chosen ... poorly."

# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 22:01

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

# ¿ Jul 6, 2017 19:54

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Serf posted:

You are embearassingly defeated by bears. The bears drag your beaten and bearly alive selves to their leader, the Bearlord. The Bearlord bearates you for your trespass into their lands and charges you with bearancing the scales by destroying a nearby hunters' lodge.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2017 20:24

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

The bearlord is also a 18th level wizard.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2017 20:27

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Kai Tave posted:

Gloomhaven is absolutely an excellent game that I will one day play in depth, but people in general seem real resistant to the idea of RPGs that rely on cards in some fashion.

They're not cards, they're powers

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 14:25

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I've never played Gloomhaven; do you draw them from a deck and only have a random selection of them available at any time? Or are they just convenient physical reminders of how your abilities work?

Even if the latter case I'd want that stuff in the book too, because poo poo gets lost. But there's nothing wrong with having the option.

I'm just being facetious. From what I understand, you pull them from a deck.

I don't think that power v. card is a terribly meaningful distinction for rpg purposes though.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 15:21

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

I'm the emo-looking Xas Rkalla in the top right.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 20:23

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

I was going to photoshop up a completed character sheet, but I'm feeling lazy, so just pretend I posted it.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 20:57

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Bet that guy knows how to play wonderwall

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 22:32

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Working on a special type of adversary. What do you think?

quote:

Mythic Foes

While most of the foes heroes face are surmountable with grit and determination, there are some opponents that cannot be defeated by mere force. These mythic foes pose significant danger, and can only be defeated by the heroes with significant preparation. In fact, if the heroes confront these foes without research and adequate preparation, they will find themselves in an unwinnable situation; Mythic Foes quite literally cannot be killed unless as series of tasks is completed before they are confronted.

Importantly, Mythic Foes should be presented and treated by the GM as more than just an enemy with extra hit points and slightly more damage. Mythic Foes are savage and uncontrollable, forces of nature that must be endured rather than tamed. Without adequate preparation, the heroes will no more be able to stop a Mythic Foe than they would stop an earthquake or a tsunami.

The inspiration for mythic foes are legends like the Lernaean Hydra, which possessed nine (or more, depending on your source) heads that granted it immortality while they were attached to its body, poisonous breath that killed everyone unfortunate enough to inhaled the fumes, and regenerative capabilities that would replace every severed head with two more. Heracles, who defeated the Hydra, was only able to slay the beast after realizing that fire would stop the regenerative process and that protection was needed against the beast�s toxic breath.

Every Mythic Foe has several associated challenges (three, at the Adventurer tier) that must be overcome by the heroes before they are able to defeat the beast. As GM, how you present these challenges is up to you: they may be presented as a series of quests all at once after the heroes decide to hunt the Mythic Foe, or they can be organically woven into the threads of other adventures.

While this chapter includes challenges for each adversary, feel free to adapt or change them as you see fit. Mythic Foes are intended to be significantly more mysterious and deadly than conventional foes, and if your group of players has already confronted the same foe in a previous game, you�ll want to change the challenges so that the foe isn�t a paint-by-numbers exercise.

Finally, just as Heracles used the blood of the defeated Hydra as poison for his arrows, defeating a Mythic Foe will convey upon the heroes a benefit befitting their accomplishment.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2017 16:07

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

gradenko_2000 posted:

I get it, and I dig the vibe, but my apprehension comes from having to weave-in the unkillable-until-quest-completed part.

Like, in Rise of Tiamat (for 5e), Tiamat's statblock is hella gently caress-off powerful, but you "turn-off" certain parts of it by accomplishing quests, such that she's a tough-but-doable boss by the time you face down her 5-times-depowered statblock.

A Mythic foe sounds like the same thing, except perhaps more explicit in that you literally couldn't even try to kill it until you did the quests.

So my question is, "why would you even try to before doing the quests?"

If the DM presents The Sentient Glioblastoma as a Mythic foe, and then lays out the 3-point plan to acquire the Artifacts of Chemotherapy needed to slay it, it doesn't really matter that the Glioblastoma is unkillable if the players never have to encounter it until after they have all of the artifacts.

For any of it to matter, you'd have to structure the narrative in such a way that the players get to dance with the Mythic foe before they're depowered, or create scenarios where accomplishing the steps needed to depower them isn't a given, or involves heavy choices, or both.

Otherwise, the idea that the Mythic foe is unkillable feels to me like it'd just be window-dressing/fluff.

occamsnailfile posted:

The F&F review of the Great Modron March has some good ideas for an adventure with a completely implacable, unkillable foe--most of the challenges revolve around ameliorating the damage it can cause and figuring out why it was happening in the first place. So challenges like 'remove food supply to weaken monster' could be fun, especially if you have to do that without also starving the refugees while 'gather the macguffins that comprise the monster's heart' is just standard adventure fare.

Serf posted:

I feel like if you have an unkillable foe, you gotta throw it at the party a few times to give them that sense of accomplishment when they finally kill it. Have it chase them around or oppose their quest to kill it in an active fashion. Probably works better with a sapient being, but incidentally running into Godzilla a few times while you search for a way to wake up Mothra would make sense.

Plutonis posted:

It reminds me of Sin from FFX. A kaiju sized insanely powerful monster which you fight either individual parts or its spawn before fighting the big guy itself then whatever is at its core.

So my thinking here is that Mythic Foes are integrated pretty heavily into their particular tier; the adventurer tier of my default campaign takes place in the Deep Wood, a v. dangerous place controlled by the Bandit Queen and stalked by a deadly and mysterious killing force that significantly hinders travel between settlements and occasionally breaches a palisade and eats a dozen or so villagers. The objective of the tier is to defeat the Bandit Queen and break her hold on the villages in the Wood, while the heroes could optionally try to deal with the force that does the killing. Weaving said mythic foe into the campaign could be at times as simple as having the heroes stumble across the wreckage of a recent attack on a settlement or caravan.

I do quite like the idea of having the players encounter a mythic foe several times before they're able to defeat it, I'll just have to think long and hard about what to do about the "if it has stats, we can kill it" mentality. Maybe I could run those meetings as non-combat evasion/escape challenges, which would drive home the fact that it's certainly not killable at present.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2017 16:39

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Serf posted:

I would let them throw themselves at it, and once they realize the fight is unwinnable let it easily transition into an escape/chase scene. Or if they persist and lose, they obviously survive the battle but have something taken from them by a lieutenant who can be tracked down and defeated, allowing them to strike a blow against the enemy and get some revenge so they're not on tilt for too long.

That's a pretty reasonable approach too. I'll have to add some guidance text about encountering Mythic Foes before their challenges have been overcome.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2017 17:25

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Huge fan of this + markers. You get to keep the maps you like as ~~momentous~~ momentos.

https://m.staples.ca/en/Staples-Quad-Ruled-Easel-Pad-24-inch-x-35-1-2-inch-1-inch-Quad/product_19312_1-CA_1_20001?sk_test=a

slap me and kiss me fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jul 28, 2017

# ¿ Jul 28, 2017 02:52

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Evil Mastermind posted:

The current owner's actually pretty slim, but it's very much a grog store.

This is the place where, two weeks ago, I heard someone say that they play Pathfinder, but they have to ignore most of the rules to play it (which of course begs the question as to why they're playing it). This person also introduced someone to RPGs by sending her to the Pathfinder SRD.

That makes sense, when I want to teach someone about the world, I send them to a 1970s encyclopedia set (A-E).

# ¿ Aug 9, 2017 20:44

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

I did an awesome thing

slap me and kiss me posted:

Playtest 006: Domain Management, Mass Combat, Mythic Foes

August has arrived, and with it, the 6th revision of the Let Thrones Beware Playtest. This iterative build refines the campaign cycle, adds preliminary domain management and mass combat, provides additional adversaries, and introduces new, uniquely dangerous mythic foes.

Playtest 006 Updates: GM Options

Non-Combat Challenges
Non-combat challenges have been provided more depth with the addition of background and foreground components and blockers. These components will make resolving non-combat challenges much more interesting, as heroes have to contend with a variety of new complicating factors.

Domain Management
Domain management is a new way for players to make their mark on Ceyenus. The heroes success or failure at resolving adventures manifests as changes in the campaign track; advances along the track allow the heroes to construct new enhancements (e.g. basic buildings such as a smithy or a stable at the adventurer tier). These enhancements provide additional resources to the heroes whenever they undertake a new adventure, and will allow the heroes to field a larger army when it comes to the ultimate battle between good and evil.

Mass Combat
Mass combat is the capstone of the campaign cycle. Depending on how well the heroes advanced the campaign track, the nefarious villain behind everything may launch an invasion. The heroes will assemble an army of allies based on how well they performed, and the pitched battle that results will determine the fate of the Deep Wood.

Adversaries
Two new adversaries have been added - one another faction in opposition to the heroes, and one something new entirely.

Mythic Foes
While most of the foes heroes face are surmountable with grit and determination, there are some opponents that cannot be defeated by mere force. These mythic foes pose significant danger, and can only be defeated by the heroes with significant preparation. In fact, if the heroes confront these foes without research and adequate preparation, they will quickly find themselves in an unwinnable situation.

Cult of Man
There exist secretive groups that seeks to discover the vile magics harnessed by the Kingdom to further their own goals. Venerating relics, unholy artifacts, and the bones of the dead, the Cult of Man seeks to uncover ancient secrets that hint at unleashing untold power. The Cult comes with a full compliment of adversaries of all types.

Playtest 006 Updates: Player Options
While 006 doesn't include a significant change to heroes, it does add one new item. Much like how each class has a special feature that provides additional utility in combat, each background now comes with an ability useable in non-combat challenges. This will help differentiate the different backgrounds from each other and will help make background selection even more of a meaningful choice.

Downloads

Player's Guide

Character Sheet

GM Guide

Adversaries

PbP Character Sheet

# ¿ Aug 9, 2017 22:12

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Plutonis posted:

Glad that as someone who is primarly a videogamer instead of a tabletop rube I'd never be tricked into buying the same game several times with only minute changes.

Humour like this keeps me coming back for more.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2017 19:50

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Arivia posted:

Yeah, it's just Pathfinder fastforwarded a couple thousand years in space, straight up. It's ~~intentionally~~ lazily exactly the same in a lot of ways.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2017 19:58

slap me and kiss me: Apr 1, 2008; You best protect ya neck

Exmond posted:

1 has discussion about gender stereotypes and toxic masculinity

The other is full of spergs talking about how Warhammer 40K is the best game ever and they post pictures of dogs

Don't join the trad games discord.

What do you have against dogs?

# ¿ Sep 6, 2017 15:53