TG Chat Thread 2017

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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.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2017 03:22

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:36

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.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2017 06:38

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.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2017 21:11

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Covok posted:

It'd probably be cheating to use my unfinished Friendship, Effort, Victory game, wouldn't it? Then again, it'd probably lose.

Is it post-apocalyptic anime romance at a school for super mutants? Cause that would be the best.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 22:25

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

What ever ended up happening with Pathfinder Online? I remember that everything about it looked hilarious but I can't remember the last update I saw about it here.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 04:58

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

gradenko_2000 posted:

Anime is good though

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 17:08

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Helical Nightmares posted:

Hey System Mastery. Review the Illithiad why don't you guys.

https://www.amazon.com/Illithiad-Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-2nd/dp/0786912065

There was one for Beholders too.

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Dun...HK19474RHMSD03F

Illithid are interesting and have an interesting narrative flavor they can add to games.

Beholders, on the other hand, are floating balls of lies. They're the most game-y monster that has somehow survived through the various edition shifts long after most other garbage like the Catoblepas have long since gone 'extinct'. 'It's a hovering sphere that fires all kinds spell effects at high level adventurers (Because even in 1975 on some level we realized that spells were bullshit and one of the few ways to single die roll gently caress over even a Lord or High Priest)'.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 14:57

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Yawgmoth posted:

They're also the most iconic example of ability bloat; so many really high-level encounters have so many loving abilities that even knowing them all and what they do is a task unto itself; being able to use any significant part of them in a fight requires either an all-day combat or throwing multiples at your players. It's weird and slightly annoying, like why have a few flavorful abilities when you can have a list of 15 spell-likes? I generally just pluck ~3 interesting abilities out of the list and put them on my spreadsheet for quick access, then maybe list the rest in a single cell just in case.

Dragons are another terrible offender. I don't think I've ever given a dragon its spell list; it's usually just a couple buff spells (e.g. resist energy [type they're vulnerable to], maybe a buff to dexterity and/or a deflection bonus to AC, that sort of thing) and if asked the rest are noncombat spells. It's a smug flying battleship, why would it use magic to fight?

Yeah, I've never exactly understood how, in post-2E D&D anyway (after the point that people actually had begun to think about game design) you'd end up with things like

quote:

code:

At will�alter self, deeper dark- ness, desecrate, fear (DC 18), gaseous form, invisibility, 
prying eyes, ray of enfeeblement (+22 ranged touch), ray of exhaustion (+22 ranged touch), 
scorching ray (+22 ranged touch), scrying, see in- visibility, suggestion (DC 18), wall of fire;
3/day�binding(DC 23), enervation (+22 ranged touch), geas/quest (DC 21),
mass suggestion (DC 21);1/ day�symbol of death (DC 22).

Dragons as powerful spellcasters with a giant laundry list of per day tricks is a weakness that comes from the whole idea of the Monster Manual. I have a hard time thinking of any legends where the hero fights four different dragons in separate individual tales. It's not like the storytellers were sitting around telling eye-rolling teenage peasants 'no, no... last time I told you the story of Hercules fighting a dragon it was a blue dragon but the one in this story is a red dragon so it's a lot scarier and more dangerous so listen close!' Dragons in the fiction that inspired D&D were all like unique special individual things so you might get a story where a dragon, in addition to all of its usual dragon-ness also wove a magical song that enchanted the listener and it was exciting and special and cool.00 Unfortunately when you start hard coding the features of 'generic' dragons into a book of stats you end up with the laundry list of '1/day - Flaming Arrows' or whatever.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 19:08

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Evil Mastermind posted:

Oh lord yes. One of the worst adventures ever written.

Believe it or not, Lost Colony didn't have an ending. Deadlands Classic and HoE did, but LC just stopped after one supplement.

Waitaminute...

quote:

Deadlands starts when a vengeful indian shaman named Raven, angry at the white men who killed off his entire tribe, conducts a dark ritual that blasts open a portal to Hell (or, as it's refered to in-game, the Hunting Grounds) during the Battle of Little Big Horn. . . . Part of the effects of the Reckoning was to prolong the battle between the North and the South; in Deadlands continuity the war would continue for at least another 20 years.

History. How does it work?

(For those of you who aren't Americans, the Battle of Little Big Horn took place more than a decade after the end of the Civil War. Broadly speaking, the cause of the battle was the United States forcible expansion into the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory which had been promised to the Lakota but wouldn't you know it there was gold in them thar hills. It would be highly questionable whether the United States would have had the resources to dispatch cavalry to the area to push the tribes out and onto reservation land, let alone even sign the Fort Laramie treaty, had they been busy fighting the Confederacy in an insanely protracted war.)

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 21:53

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/Ettin64/status/876261475748241408

https://twitter.com/Ettin64/status/876266444345888768

I hate certain people in the TG industry with the force of a thousand suns

When I was in high school, I played Vampire the Masquerade because it was the 90s and that's what you did. Even back in 1992, the first tweet is basically what everyone who was aware of V:TM without being in one of the games (so older gamers and one-system types, basically) thought White Wolf games in general were like. They never really did much to fight off those impressions so it doesn't exactly surprise me, given the grand game of cargo cult telephone that is tabletop game design, that it is what the new edition might end up being.

The second one though seems hilarious because I can't figure out what customer group they're trying to reach with it; edgelord teens don't play tabletop games any more.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2017 16:37

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:36

NorgLyle: Sep 20, 2002; Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Rockopolis posted:

Man, I never got to finish watching it, but I loved that setting. Cyborg Taoist wizard space pirates! Like space opera Water Margin.

What kind of a system would you even run that in?

BESM. Only BESM. :smithicide:

# ¿ Jun 19, 2017 00:50

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