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Waffles Inc. posted:Apologies if this isn't the place for it; couldn't find a sort of general TTRPG thread and didn't want to gunk up the DM one I have, but there's generally not been a really strict session flow? It generally ended up like a sort of episodic deal where the characters would be on the road, someone would need help, and we'd FRIENDSHIP them. Sometimes there'd be additional things on top of it, but it kind of felt like we weren't necessarily interacting with the system the way it was really meant to be? I feel that way with a lot of the Japanese tabletop games, though. Lemme know if you'd like me to elaborate.
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Dec 28, 2018 03:26
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Waffles Inc. posted:Apologies if this isn't the place for it; couldn't find a sort of general TTRPG thread and didn't want to gunk up the DM one I've been in and run a half dozen oneshots. It's a fun, comfy little game. I've never been lucky enough to be a part of a longer campaign, but it has enough depth to hold a longer game together with fairly interesting character progression and DMPC mechanics changing over time/seasons. Mind, I've only ever played with the Spring dragon, and the other dragons have different suggested tones, like Winter is all about death and mysteries and stuff. That said, most of my sessions have gone like this: 0. If you have time in advance, give the party a couple choices of what take on. Personal journeys are great, but so are short quests like "my husband hasn't come home from his job as a cloud rancher in three days, please go and figure out what's going on with him". Or "nekogoblins have stolen my prizewinning giant gourd! Please get it back!" 1. Send them on their journey after some opportunities to prepare. Make the appropriate travel checks. At a glance, it might seem like the ration and carrying capacity and animal tracking is all a bit too crunchy for the tone, but I find that it ends up being really rewarding to engage with the journeying rules, and it's all surprisingly easy to track. 2. Have one or two minor (10 minutes at most) encounters on the journey on the way there, per day of travel. Encounters meaning anything, not just combat. Wandering strangers to meet, people in trouble to help, merchants and traders, wild animals to tame or escape from, etc. One time we had to chase a giant seagull up a magic beanstalk, because he stole our breakfast, for example. Make sure to ask plenty of questions and let the players fill in blanks about their environment. It's a lot more fun to have everyone helping build the little details together. 3. The main sequence of encounters, usually one or two combats, a puzzle, some ways for the players to flex their creativity. One of these I've run was going into a mine to find a lost miner - some planning, a few skill checks, and a standoff stealth sequence with a giant mole that turned out to be the miners' friendly pet/mascot. 4. Wrap things up. Let the players have plenty of narrative power to keep building the world with a short epilogue. We tried to keep everything simple and moving pretty quickly and we could usually get through all that in about two hours. Rip_Van_Winkle fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Dec 28, 2018 |
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Dec 28, 2018 03:27
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Ah this is so great--thanks for laying all of that out, super super helpful
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Dec 28, 2018 04:04
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Mystic Mongol posted:Well, when are you available? I'm available 7 PM CST till like 1 AM M-F, and whenever Sat and Sun! Also thank you to everyone for your advice.
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Dec 28, 2018 05:41
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So I'm looking for some stuff to add to a 4e campaign I'm going to be starting up soon. Are there any good examples (or hell, even lovely, fixable examples) of summoning systems a la Final Fantasy in a TT RPG?
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Dec 28, 2018 07:20
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Summon-based stuff has been in D&D for ages but it's usually pretty rough, either a game breaker or more trouble than its worth. (or both) A few 4e classes have summons of a sorts, Artificers and probably some Wizards come to mind, and plenty of abilities could be refluffed that way. Depends on what you really want out of it. Can be a little especially powerful in 4e because having more pieces on the tactical board is always nice.
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Dec 28, 2018 07:32
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Final Fantasy summons are usually just big spell attacks that happen to have some extra flavor, summoning in tabletop rpgs is usually about bringing another combatant into the fight.
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Dec 28, 2018 07:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Summon-based stuff has been in D&D for ages but it's usually pretty rough, either a game breaker or more trouble than its worth. (or both) A few 4e classes have summons of a sorts, Artificers and probably some Wizards come to mind, and plenty of abilities could be refluffed that way. Depends on what you really want out of it. Can be a little especially powerful in 4e because having more pieces on the tactical board is always nice. Well I'm not talking about just summoning random monsters onto the table D&D style, I mean like the really ridiculous bullshit like summoning Leviathan or Ifrit or Bahamut or something crazy like that. It doesn't necessarily have to be a playable piece, though in my head I'd like it to be something akin to Summons from FFX or XII or something where the party gets temporarily replaced by the monster and it can fight for a while and then you can return the party to play afterward. I might just end up writing some story specific powers for the Summons and attach them to specific characters like in FF XII and have the summon replace the player on the field for a limited amount of time. Xarbala posted:Final Fantasy summons are usually just big spell attacks that happen to have some extra flavor, summoning in tabletop rpgs is usually about bringing another combatant into the fight. It's been used in a few different ways over the years. But like I'm said, just curious if there are any RPGs out there that have summoning systems in the FF vein. I assume Anima does, but that game's an out of print garbage pile. S.J. fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Dec 28, 2018 |
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Dec 28, 2018 07:37
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For most of the FF games (3,4,5,6,7,8,9,12, T, TA, TA2), summons have just been damage or effect dealing spells. It's invoked, pops in, does its thing, and fucks off again. Doing this sort of effect in 4e is as simple as reskinning/renaming an existing spell/ability or just making one yourself, declaring it's AoE and effect/damage. Big things like Bahamut, Leviathan, & Odin you'd probably want to make Dailies, while you could probably get away with making Ifrit/Shiva/Ramuh Encounter abilities assuming they weren't too broken. For the other FF games (10,11,14), where they persist after being invoked, again it's a matter of reskinning an existing persisting summon ability, and then perhaps making a custom npc for the summon and then filling it out with their apropriate iconic abilities (Meganuke, Diamond Dust, etc.) and probably making them dailies as well. (Summons didn't exist in 1 & 2, and gently caress 13 & 15. I'm sorry. I have FF opinions.) That said, there's probably at least one FF to 4e fanbook kicking around, if not several. Unfortunately I don't know of any off the top of my head, but a quick googling and the first hit gets me poo poo like this: Giant in the Playground posted:Shiva In your position, I'd make my own, but  . So I don't know if something like this will save you some time or not.
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Dec 28, 2018 08:20
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Yeah, that helps a little. I've played enough and am familiar enough with the math that I'm okay with writing my own powers, just posting mostly to see if there are any ideas anyone has come across that I might be able to steal or get some inspiration from, d20 system or no.
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Dec 28, 2018 08:34
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S.J. posted:Yeah, that helps a little. I've played enough and am familiar enough with the math that I'm okay with writing my own powers, just posting mostly to see if there are any ideas anyone has come across that I might be able to steal or get some inspiration from, d20 system or no. Pathfinder has a pretty extensive customizable summoned beast system for the summoner class. The Unchained version is more interesting imo.
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Dec 28, 2018 08:58
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S.J. posted:So I'm looking for some stuff to add to a 4e campaign I'm going to be starting up soon. Are there any good examples (or hell, even lovely, fixable examples) of summoning systems a la Final Fantasy in a TT RPG? Fire, Cold and Lightning are obviously Ifrit, Shiva and Ramuh. Radiant could be Bahamut if you go with summons-as-gods-of-the-setting, or Carbuncle or Alexander. For Force I'm thinking Odin. Poison: Hades or Doomtrain. Psychic: Siren. Necrotic: Diabolos or Hades if he's not poison, and I'm already starting to stretch the traditions of Final Fantasy here, but I think it's best not to go for any kind of accurate translation, inspiration is enough. For Thunder and Acid you may have to come up with your own anyway. (Typhoon?) So right away that gives you a cast of powerful extraplanar players to play with. I guess mechanically you have three options: - leave all powers as they are. Elemental Daily powers are reflavoured into summoning spells. - leave all powers as they are, come up with additional, super-powerful summoning spells that have an immediate effect. Since these are extras outside of the usual power structure, the way you gain and use them should be appropriately outside of the normal character progression/action economy as well. Maybe every character needs to put in healing surges over a round, or something. - do the thing where you summon the creatures as fighting entities. So I'd be careful with that: the usual NPC companion rules are more for things like mercenaries or henchmen or captured monsters and explicitly exclude elite and solo creatures, and I'd classify anything along the lines of a FF summon as at least a solo. What you could do is stat the summons as creatures equivalent to PCs - or hell, even as PCs with a heavy elemental power focus - then every character gets to align with one of them, and under very special circumstances they can summon their "patron" to the battle in their stead, playing the custom creature instead of their own PC for the duration. This basically adds a whole new element to 4E combat and probably needs some heavy reworking of how difficult encounters can be, how long you can go without resting, and what a summoning costs you. Could be very cool thematically, but you're entering the realm of designing your own system from the ground up.
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Dec 28, 2018 11:29
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S.J. posted:Well I'm not talking about just summoning random monsters onto the table D&D style, I mean like the really ridiculous bullshit like summoning Leviathan or Ifrit or Bahamut or something crazy like that. It doesn't necessarily have to be a playable piece, though in my head I'd like it to be something akin to Summons from FFX or XII or something where the party gets temporarily replaced by the monster and it can fight for a while and then you can return the party to play afterward. I might just end up writing some story specific powers for the Summons and attach them to specific characters like in FF XII and have the summon replace the player on the field for a limited amount of time. It's easiest to just write one Daily per primal/eidolon/phantom beast/whatever you call them, then add a new option to APs where spending one lets you use that Daily (you still have to use the action, so it doesn't just end up being "a free action but better"). If you instead want to have the summon replace the PCs in battle, that's a bit more difficult: I wouldn't have one creature replace the entire party because then everyone bar whoever's controlling it gets to twiddle their thumbs while it fights. If you really want this to happen, then just abstract it - the Daily power represents the summon coming in and doing a bunch of poo poo, instead of just one big attack. If you want each summon to replace one PC though, then you can do literally that: stat up each summon as a monster of the party's level, then let the players spend an AP to be replaced by and control that monster for X rounds (I'd suggest 5, and having the summons come with a couple of one-use Encounter-equivalent powers, so they can blow their load early and then the player-controlled monster can stick around absorbing hits and dishing out elemental damage with basic attacks). Thankfully, 4E makes this all incredibly easy thanks to AEDU, monsters operating on the same basic rules as PCs, and action points existing as a currency for cool but rare poo poo like this.
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Dec 28, 2018 11:52
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Action Point as a limiting resource is a great idea. Also take inspiration from existing Polymorph powers. The Warden's Dailies, for example, all (?) give them improved stats in one area or another until the end of the encounter, and an extra encounter power only usable in polymorphed state.
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Dec 28, 2018 12:20
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I'm in a persona inspired 4e game on the forums that has a resource called fortune point that is used for using Persona attacks. Maybe have something like that for your summoning system.
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Dec 28, 2018 12:42
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A summoning system that uses the normal FF way of doing things where the summon shows up, hits somebody and leaves would be cool mixed with some flavor from Bayonetta. Have the summon on a crit success show up and stay there fighting until beaten back by your enemies and on a crit failure have it break free from your control and attack everything in sight until it is defeated.
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Dec 28, 2018 13:59
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Waffles Inc. posted:Apologies if this isn't the place for it; couldn't find a sort of general TTRPG thread and didn't want to gunk up the DM one I've run it. The worksheets you fill out for each scenario are pretty helpful for figuring stuff out. Each scenario is meant to be 1-3 hours of play time, roughly. There's a lot of structure and rules to the travel scenarios and combat scenarios, but the exploration ones tend to be a bit looser because there's not much to do in them besides roll skill checks until the game is resolved. It does ultimately play like a more simplified D&D, albeit with a focus on the travel side over constant dungeon-crawling. Also lots of Dragon Quest references. There's also a weird typo in the inventory section, fyi. The Basic Kit's price is all hosed up. It's either meant to give you a basic backpack, but it costs more than it would to buy it separately, or you're getting a large backpack that's too small. e- and if you've been reading the old F&F entry on Ryuutama, be aware that it's absolutely wrong about not everyone starting out with a weapon. Each person starts out with a basic version of the weapon type they're proficient in. There's another awkward rule, actually. It's not clear if you pick a class or type that can have multiple weapon proficiencies whether or not you start with a basic version of each weapon or not. I ruled it was fine because they'd still have to find space to carry their extra weapons on them and that's a fair balance, in my opinion. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Dec 28, 2018 |
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Dec 28, 2018 14:01
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's easiest to just write one Daily per primal/eidolon/phantom beast/whatever you call them, then add a new option to APs where spending one lets you use that Daily (you still have to use the action, so it doesn't just end up being "a free action but better"). Oh this sounds actually pretty cooler. If we are doing FF12 style I guess it would be that the summon has two strong at wills, one real strong encounter and an ultimate Daily that also ends the summon early if used (and ao you save it for the last turn :P)
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Dec 28, 2018 14:09
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gently caress now I wanna redo my FFD6 campaign on 4E...
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Dec 28, 2018 14:10
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eonwe posted:I'm available 7 PM CST till like 1 AM M-F, and whenever Sat and Sun! If you're looking to dip your toe into D&D or PF, both tend to have fairly active organized play that plays to rules as written.
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Dec 28, 2018 14:55
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Nuns with Guns posted:I've run it. The worksheets you fill out for each scenario are pretty helpful for figuring stuff out. Each scenario is meant to be 1-3 hours of play time, roughly. There's a lot of structure and rules to the travel scenarios and combat scenarios, but the exploration ones tend to be a bit looser because there's not much to do in them besides roll skill checks until the game is resolved. Ah awesome! Thanks so much!
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Dec 28, 2018 15:33
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Liquid Communism posted:If you're looking to dip your toe into D&D or PF, both tend to have fairly active organized play that plays to rules as written.
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Dec 28, 2018 18:02
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Hey, what's the best firefighting rules in RPGs for somewhat realistic small scale combat?
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Dec 28, 2018 18:34
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Moriatti posted:Hey, what's the best firefighting rules in RPGs for somewhat realistic small scale combat? I feel like this is one of the rare cases where I can suggest GURPS not as a good compromise if it's the sort of game you are into, but rather as a game that pretty much just does what you are asking for.
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Dec 28, 2018 18:39
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remusclaw posted:I feel like this is one of the rare cases where I can suggest GURPS not as a good compromise if it's the sort of game you are into, but rather as a game that pretty much just does what you are asking for. Any particular source book?
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Dec 28, 2018 19:06
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Tactical shooting likely has more rules than you would ever want or need for this sort of thing, but like, core GURPS is straight up all about detailed semi realistic squad level combat. Maybe Seals in Vietnam if you want to get a specific setting. High tech if you want ALL the guns.
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Dec 28, 2018 19:12
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So my immediate plan is to have a scaling daily that summons a dude and the cost to summon it is a combination of action points and healing surges. Considering allowing people to sustain the summon by spending actions plus healing surges and then maybe even add additional effects based on flavor like Ifrit deals x fire damage per sustain to the caster every round that can't be mitigated. I'll start writing up some drafts soon and throw them in the 4e thread if anyone is interested.
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Dec 28, 2018 19:15
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As someone who massively likes both 4E and Final Fantasy I'm definitely down for taking a look. e: right off the bat I can say if you put a resource cost to the sustain action, it should be only one out of "healing surge" and "take damage", cause both is kinda doubling down on the same resource. Also consider (save ends) as a way to model an effect that's hard to maintain, complete with "nth failed save" effects and aftereffects. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Dec 28, 2018 |
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Dec 28, 2018 19:19
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Something worth thinking about for the summons system is considering allowing the group to customize their summon builds slightly as they levle, maybe even as a minigame where they can manage a special summon-only resource? I really like the idea of summons in general because they make cool quest ideas and neat little Megaman style bosses where you can capture them for powers. I may straight up steal this system when you are done with it. Edit: also, thank you remusclaw, I'll look at it when I get some downtime.
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Dec 28, 2018 20:23
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Yeah I've considered putting together a limited "feat" selection for them so they can choose from say one of three options every so often to help them supplement the party better.
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Dec 28, 2018 21:59
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I'd consider using the rules for sentient artifacts. With motivations/goals for joining the heroes, then yeah give daily or scene powers based on that powering up. Each player can have their own cool summon.
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Dec 28, 2018 22:35
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IMO you're going to end up with something way too complicated, and it's really best to just stick to a couple of very simple mechanics using a single resource, but which the players can use often enough that they feel like a baseline part of the game, instead of a massively complicated set of dedicated summoning rules.
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Dec 28, 2018 23:28
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Lemon-Lime posted:IMO you're going to end up with something way too complicated, and it's really best to just stick to a couple of very simple mechanics using a single resource, but which the players can use often enough that they feel like a baseline part of the game, instead of a massively complicated set of dedicated summoning rules. Yeah if 4e were a game with barebones, highly streamlined combat it'd be one thing, but 4e combat still has me going to check rules after years and years of playing it. Adding another complex system would just be nightmareish for me unless 99% of that added complication happened outside of the game and was something I could do in my free time (ie character building)
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Dec 29, 2018 00:56
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Moriatti posted:Hey, what's the best firefighting rules in RPGs for somewhat realistic small scale combat? Flashpoint is a good board game.
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Dec 29, 2018 01:21
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A firefighter rpg might be neat but my brain isn't worried able to run it.
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Dec 29, 2018 03:02
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I think one of the FATE setting books actually has a firefighter rpg in it. edit: Appropriately it's Fight Fire in Fate Worlds Volume One: Worlds on Fire remusclaw fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Dec 29, 2018 |
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Dec 29, 2018 03:03
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eonwe posted:I'm available 7 PM CST till like 1 AM M-F, and whenever Sat and Sun! The TTS Board Goons discord is approaching dead, but they manage to get a game of something random going at noon EST (11 am for you) most weekends. I dunno if there's a more active group elsewhere.
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Dec 29, 2018 03:32
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Mystic Mongol posted:The TTS Board Goons discord is approaching dead, but they manage to get a game of something random going at noon EST (11 am for you) most weekends. I dunno if there's a more active group elsewhere. This general TG one is very active.
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Dec 29, 2018 03:49
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Moriatti posted:A firefighter rpg might be neat but my brain isn't worried able to run it. Like what, irl firefighters or stuff like Fire Force
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Dec 29, 2018 05:32
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eonwe posted:So I have been trying to get into doing tabletop games for a while, but I never seem to able to do it. I've tried doing tabletop sim / finding online groups, but I haven't had a lot of luck. Generally the expectation is that you know how to play the game, and don't really know how to play many (especially as far as roleplaying games go). I have a comic book place near me that has people playing at pretty much all hours, but I legit don't even know how to approach getting in a game there. Usually the games are all already ongoing and it seems like groups of people who know each other meeting up there to play a game rather than waiting for people to show up and play with them. What games are you looking to play on TTS? (I fuckin' love TTS) edit: Missed that you were focusing on roleplaying, I got excited about online board games for a moment CuddlyZombie fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Dec 29, 2018 |
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Dec 29, 2018 05:50
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