Nehru the Damaja posted:

What's a good game with a dark modern magic-in-the-real-world type setting that I have at least a snowball's chance in hell of finding a group for?+

gradenko_2000 posted:

Have you played in a game where Leadership was allowed and used in earnest? What was that like?

A lot of the time I hear to not use Leadership entirely, or limit it to just "I have a background crafter apprentice" because of the balance issues (and the relative complexity of building and maintaining a second 3e character)

Covok posted:

Kwyndig posted:

Yeah but if you go the other direction it rapidly turns into this

Asimo posted:

Spelljammer was objectively horrible.

Kwyndig posted:

Everything about the fourth edition was perfect for a revival of the setting

Kai Tave posted:

The ideal selling point of published adventures has, in my mind, always been the notion that you would want to sit down and not have to gently caress with it, it just works out of the box with maybe some minimal tweaking for your group, not something you have to chop away at and fix all the holes and okay, now it kinda sorta works.

Gobbeldygook posted:

NPCs are stand-ins for real world people like Trump.

Elfgames posted:

until you can actually come up with a complaint about strike! which is anything beyond "it doesn't have a narrative" kindly shut the gently caress up.

oriongates posted:

Who loving cares what anyone else thinks about X Edition of D&D!?

Elfgames posted:

Didn't you also have a problem with the tone of "7 ways to stop a fight?" forgive me if i take your complaint with a grain of salt

Drone posted:

If I wanna get into L5R, is 4th Edition pretty much the way to go? Seems to be out of print, though I could always just get the PDF from DriveThru.

I know FFG is supposed to be rebooting the TCG now that they have the license, but have they said whether or not they'll also do a 5th edition of the RPG?

Ferrinus posted:

This is kind of like saying that Vampire's strategy is mostly "use your disciplines".

Ferrinus posted:

That would be true regardless of Vampire's character generation mechanics because of the incredible amount of work a phrase like "use your powers" does. What you haven't done and won't do is use specific examples tying your vague complaints to anything actually written down in a game book.

Ferrinus posted:

But your description's just wrong.

Mr.Misfit posted:

So, if I understand thread consensus correctly in SA TG, metaplot is bad, right?

But in what way exactly? Is metaplot bad when it means that you have a continuous story with a single story path that forces the GM to adapt as needed?
Or is it only when a combination of factors means that you are watching railroad the tabletop rpg?

Iīm asking to understand and get a better understanding of when metaplot is and isnīt bad. Or isnīt "as" bad.
Because Iīm currently writing a set of connected scenarios with forced endings based on player choice which gets incorporated into later scenarios with "canon" decisions. And I want to do this right. As in...not poo poo.

Mr.Misfit posted:

Which is what I encountered as well, and are therefore asking. Iīm currently writing a localized sandbox module based around a locale (lets call it a "city") in which different factions with different goals plot against each other, and each faction comes with a storyline (aka a scenario) Depending on which scenario the players go for, another gets locked off, as they will be working directly against the opposing faction. Also, each scenario has to include what happened if the players have already finished or are working on another scenario. With eventualities for EVERY OPTION of ending the other scenarios have. Iīve got 10 scenarios so far. That means about 20 different eventualities for each scene that has connections to another faction due to the way each scenario can end...'barf'.

So by having the players being the movers and shakers of that sandbox, Iīm trying to involve and give them guidance, but not force their hand. But at the same time, it feels strange to have this pre-determined as plot in scene-layout. But I canīt think of another way of evolving this, because organic gaming stories that work off of snippets donīt require or are even to combine into this. Its like a totally different string of gaming, in a way. How bizarre. Is it only "free scenario/plot construction" or "story time children!"?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

it's actually loaded down with unkillable NPCs who do absolutely everything of importance

Fuego Fish posted:

I wonder, is there a potential market for "alternate timeline" metaplot splatbooks? As in, here's what happens if your players do murder the Emperor.

Halloween Jack posted:

The key to the whole "ursine swarm" thing is that the druid player in this situation isn't even a min-maxer, just a guy who takes all bear-related options because being the Bear Priest is awesome.

Covok posted:

Anyone here ever play Sierra adventure games like King's Quest, Quest for Glory, or Space Quest? Their love of lethality and generally obtuse puzzles remind me of 70s TRPGs for some reason.

Bar Crow posted:

In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. Inclusion of these crimes in your games are handled by a special squad of arguements called the shut up about rape you creep.

Kwyndig posted:

I'm going to talk about how and why I dislike elves. Elves are boring because they're perfect. They live their ridiculously long lives in their perfect little tree cities and they're so good and twee it drives me crazy how you can even write a story about them! Tolkien influenced modern depictions of elves so heavily people barely remember that they used to be tiny folk that drank milk and played pranks by moonlight.

It's all so frustrating.

Slimnoid posted:

thieving rear end in a top hat cats

Serf posted:

Replace the 9-point alignment system with this, it would be about as useful:

Countblanc posted:

it's also probably evil because like, it's unpleasant to think of your dead grandmother or husband or child walking around without any personality in eternal labor for some shmuck, irl. it's just decidedly gross.

drrockso20 posted:

Honestly this is probably going to happen in the real world as well, or at least it'll be attempted

Brainiac Five posted:

Speaking of AEG stuff that John Wick used to be involved in, are there any good alternatives for katana-and-geta gaming besides L5R and Tenra?

Rockopolis posted:

I just found out that there's a D&D version of Dogs Playing Poker and I kind of want one.

Kwyndig posted:

Semi-serious answer, kill the mind flayer because they eat human brains, gently caress the beholder because I'm curious how that would even work, and marry the red dragon because fire-breathing spouse with shapeshifting, spell-casting ability, and mad treasure.

Simian_Prime posted:

We were all amused by the fact that it had stat adjustments for Age categories up to and including "Infant". Was there some gamer out there who wanted to live his fantasy of role playing a newborn baby?

Elfgames posted:

to be fair, as a dude i think that there aren't enough faeries and kittens in magic.

Haystack posted:

try not to be insufferable.

Evil Mastermind posted:

It was basically what happens when a) the person in charge tries to change basic processes work without understanding how they work, b) the people in charge not accounting for potential failures, c) the man in charge can't accept that he's wrong, and d) the middle management types just tell the people in charge what they want to hear because they know that if they suggest that the man in charge is wrong, they'll be executed as traitors.

Thankfully, that doesn't happen anymore. Corporations don't execute people as traitors.

Covok posted:

My issue is it often puts me in the position of having to defend the choice of system.

Doodmons posted:

I like Legends of the Wulin's damage system, where hitting opponents places a certain numbers of Ripples on an opponent depending on how well you rolled. Ripples don't do anything at all... until a Rippling roll is called for. This happens either if you hit someone super, super well - the crit-equivalent is that you do a bunch of Ripples and also make them roll them out right now - but normally happens at the end of combat. More Ripples = more and more bad stuff happens to you on the Rippling roll. Like actual wound effects, maiming injuries, emotional damage, called shots to the self esteem and so on.

The main effect of this is that two kung fu masters can wale on each other for a few rounds, realise that nobody is going to roll well enough to actually force a mid-combat rippling roll, wale on each other some more until one or both opponents start looking nervously at the amount of ripples that are stacking up, bow to each other and turn to leave. At this point, one of them examines his wounds, realises that he is bleeding to death, both his arms are shattered and he can't see out of one eye and the other kung fu master realises that his leg is broken, his opponent's style was superior to his, that he is a bad Buddhist and then he keels over into unconsciousness.

One of the special abilities Buddhist monks get is the ability to, when an opponent makes a rippling roll, offer them the choice to become obsessed with becoming a better Buddhist in exchange for not having to make that ripple roll. A Shaolin monk kicks the gently caress out of you to the point where you're certain that when you stop fighting you're just going to drop dead and then offers to help you get back to the righteous path. You look at your fifteen ripples that you have stacked up and take his generous offer.

Obsessions, maiming wounds, mental trauma, reputation damage and emotional and psychological effects are all handled the same mechanically and are all equal fodder for results on a bad ripple roll. You can choose to get stabbed the gently caress up and crippled, or sub some of that out for your mentor thinking you're a waste of loving space and having a lingering phobia of loud noises. Meanwhile in combat, there's no death spiral because ripples have no effect until you're forced to roll them out and it takes some serious stats before you can just dunk an in-combat rippling roll on somebody. Meanwhile it's actually really hard to perma-kill someone because that requires a whole hell of a lot of ripples and they're almost certainly going to duck out before then. This way, it sets the stage for long-term continuing relationships between rival kung-fu masters and a lot of pissed off people in bandages questioning their life choices as they learn valuable lessons in self-reflection from the village healer.


And some games just have you subtract hit points until you hit zero and die

Doodmons posted:

I love that the fluff for that style is that the guy who invented it loved wearing white robes and was seriously tired of getting people's blood on his clothes every time he had a kung fu fight. So he invented a style that let him wait until after he'd got out of splash range to detonate someone's body explosively.

Lotus style has a bad rep.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Also Legends of the Wulin sounds awesome.

Parkreiner posted:

For instance; rules as written, Ripples never go away-- I assume they're spent when rolled, but somehow that just never made it into the book. I have no doubt that there must be some serious behind-the-scenes horror stories about dealing with Eos.

Also worth mentioning that poster Sage Genesis is one of the authors.