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Lemniscate Blue posted:My current GM wants to run Numenera when our 4e game wraps in a few months. Is there a Numenera/Cypher system thread I just didn't spot in the past couple pages? I'd like to know what issues and suck-traps to watch out for. I mean, it's the same poo poo for every Monte Cook game. It's less imaginative then it might have initially looked, and you wanna be the wizard, which is the only class actually made to interact with the setting.
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Jan 1, 2018 22:26
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Saguaro PI posted:So when my (adult, in no way Channer) players saw the Dungeon Mom post they all became very excited about the idea of character sheet stickers. Unfortunately I run my game over Discord, otherwise I would be absolutely all over that poo poo. Anyone have any ideas as to how I can implement this stuff online? Print out their character sheets, put stickers on them, scan them, reupload? I mean, that's goofy as hell but it...mostly works. I guess it's more like...what about it are they hyped about? Just that it's kinda like a cute reward thing? If that's the case, Discord does let you give individual lines emojis; depending on how often your group uses that, it could stand out and be nice for you to give a smile from time to time. Again, kinda goofy, but whatever, human beings are goofy, and it's cute.
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Jan 4, 2018 23:36
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Why is "they opened the door to a dragon without spells" immediately assumed to be a combat encounter to the death that you can't run from with spells acting as the party's true measure of power? Isn't the whole point being that we are not talking about D&D?
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Jan 8, 2018 00:36
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hyphz posted:Oddly that wasn’t the problem. I should clarify we were playing SR 4e. In 4e, all extra successes on a shot carry over to damage, rather than the number being limited by the gun you’re using as in 5e. That makes combat really deadly, and initiative really important. Since nobody else has mentioned it: There actual problem is that your players were 100% playing as the A-Team, not as a group of cynical cyber criminals just trying to get one more score. And the A-Team loving rules, but you can't try to treat the A-Team the same way you would a group of cynical cyber criminals just trying to get one more score. Also, since again I don't think anyone called it out as such, your problem specifically is that you confuse metagaming for roleplaying. That's it. That's the root of all of this. You have a serious issue with metagaming. You have overanalyzed games. The TVTropes comment was entirely accurate. You've lost the forest for the trees. A common issue with people who spent too long playing D&D, 3.x in particular.
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Jan 11, 2018 04:19
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Starfinder is what happens when Paizo actually has to try to make their own game.
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Jan 11, 2018 22:35
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I mean yeah it sucks it's for 5e but that shouldn't be hard to transfer over to other games. I really feel weird and uncomfortable giving the makers poo poo just because they made a thing for 5e. Good ideas are good ideas and "what if the feywild was just the strange lovechild of that movie with David Bowie's leather-bound crotch and Lisa Frank?" is a good idea imo.
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Feb 6, 2018 06:37
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Bonus action also isn't a bonus as everyone gets it. It's the best example of "natural language" in the game.
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Feb 10, 2018 23:15
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I can't tell if this is all a great big joke or not, but chakram are a real life weapon that absolutely has existed for thousands of years. They do not return on impact, which is why you carry several, but were supposedly very good at severing bits off your enemy.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:03
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inklesspen posted:Can you go into more detail about this? I'm very interested in the notion of a RPG that works great for XCOM. I'll cover the combat part of this! Fragged Empire uses grid based combat with a focus on cover and shooting. You get two actions on your turn, which can be spend on a pretty wide variety of moves that do different things; Sighted Shot has you making one shot with a significant bonus to your range, whereas Spray Fire lets you move (at penalty) and add all your extra rate of fire die, for example. All characters have two types of HP, defense, and offense. For defense, you have your...well, Defense, and that's how hard you are to hit - getting in cover can boost it big time - and your Armour (  aussie spelling) that protects you from crits. For your HP, you have your Endurance, and your actual stats. For offense, all weapons have Endurance damage and Crit damage. There's more to it then that, but those are the basics.When you roll a crit, you deal your crit damage (minus Armour) to one of their stats directly. If a stat hits below 0, you start bleeding out, meaning you take another point of random stat damage every round. If a stat hits -5, you die. If your endurance hits 0, every attack against you is automatically a crit. This means you can specialize your duders' offense and defense in a LOT of different ways. Aiming for high Defenses and high Armour means prioritizing different stats and weapons; maybe you make a bog standard FPS shootamans with an assault rifle, good at most things, or a sniper with super high crit chance but who suffers against heavily armored enemies, or a screaming lunatic with two SMGs who focuses on burning endurance hard to kill bosses, or someone who does almost no endurance or crit damage, but instead Impairs enemies so your other teammates can just wipe them out, or maybe you don't do anything to enemies, because the weapons list includes drones and red shirts. You get the idea. This also means your characters can be very fragile. Crits aren't particularly hard to get; you're gonna see a bunch every combat. The book straight up advises the GM not to overly worry about making "balanced" combats, and likewise tells players to 100% absolutely ambush, surprise attack, distract, and whatever else you have to do to get the upper hand. So, in the end, you have grid and cover based ranged combat where movement and placement matters, highly customizable shootamans (because all characters have combat skills) with highly customizable gear loadouts that effectively set their "class," and a combat system that can get real hairy real fast. All it really lacks is a simplified turn initiative.
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Mar 7, 2018 06:04
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Andrast posted:rtwp is always garbage
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Mar 9, 2018 22:00
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RTwP is terrible but people using KotOR as an example of where it works are insane. KotOR combat is slow and clunky as hell, it's just also hilariously easy, which makes fights go faster. But it's really, really slow when you aren't in a fight. Trying to actually GO anywhere in either of those games takes eons.
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Mar 10, 2018 04:10
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Helical Nightmares posted:FOR THE EMPEROR It's well and truly amazing just how unimaginative that loving game is.
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Mar 19, 2018 04:45
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Starfinder's setting is our punishment as a species for allowing TV Tropes to continue this long.
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Mar 19, 2018 07:22
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S.J. posted:FRAGGED EMPIRE Gonna second this one.
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Mar 29, 2018 06:12
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I, for one, am glad that our local moderator is dedicated to telling the harsh truths. https://twitter.com/Ettin64/status/979144968890564608 
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Mar 29, 2018 06:58
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That thread starts side-eye crazy, transitions into absolute crazy, transitions further into shithead crazy, apparently involves the holocaust in a bit that got deleted, and ends with me noting that it took until page 13 for someone to point out "hey you're kinda claiming that all non-Europeans are inhuman monsters" and that nobody gets banned because it's ENWorld.
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Apr 2, 2018 22:56
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Splicer posted:I'd love for someone to do exactly this, but with somewhere other than Europe. I'd love to see the grogosphere's reactions to a game where white people aren't a thing* because Europe is and always has been where the orcs live. They got super pissed off at Reign. See, I just want a game/setting based around the era of Pax Mongolica. It's even the same (vague) time frame D&D Fantasy Land happens at, so you can get plenty of slack-jawed foreign diplomats and traders and knights from the exotic West with their silver and slightly shittier everything else.
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Apr 3, 2018 00:16
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It's also worth mentioning that Ernst Cline - and his books - are racist as gently caress.
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Apr 20, 2018 04:19
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Zurui posted:Okay I gotta know more. There's not much to tell, his constant masturbatory nerd fantasies just never quite seem to involve people of color or any of the things they make - except for two Japanese people who are samurai and comment on how honorable and distinguished the main character is. It's not just "a nerd who can't get over their nerd vision of the 80's," it's that this vision is literally just white dudes and the things they personally made, and nothing else.
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Apr 20, 2018 04:24
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Yeah, while system matters, that's more a question on your group then anything else. Mechanically, you could find a way to do that in probably any system; just talk to your GM. But...first make sure you can just talk to your GM. You get the idea.
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Apr 26, 2018 03:00
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:so like everyone who's been involved in making 40k for the last three decades I mean, it's nerd culture at large. Like, there's a reason there's the old stereotype of nerds loving trivia, and that's because trivia is just lists of things that happened divorced from context. Trivia not only doesn't involve critical thinking, it's the opposite of it. TV Tropes came from somewhere.
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Apr 27, 2018 22:00
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Jimbozig posted:I may be misunderstanding Plutonis, but I think that he was put off by Cirno spouting a bunch of stereotypes and degrading stuff that would be awful to say about people with Autism, but saying that it's about "nerds". Except we're all gigantic loving nerds here and Cirno's not talking about us, so... ? Then I will go into detail! I'm not talking about autism. Human beings are already kinda poo poo at critical thinking and real poo poo at examining their own bullshit. The thing about "nerds" as like, a vague culture, is that it's essentially built entirely around consumption of media. Like it's big question is "what intellectual property do YOU go absolutely apeshit over?" But the way that love is expressed is toxic, because it's based purely around not questioning that thing you go apeshit over - based purely around intentionally not critically examining your bullshit. That nerd culture was for so long made of increasingly gatekeeper-y white dudes on the wealthier side of things only makes it worse, because that gatekeeper attitude and that societal privilege (especially once bullying gets involved) feeds into the problem. And where's a lovely culture without a lovely attempt at making a hierarchy? Good lord the hierarchies. There's a lot of other poo poo we can get into like the treatment of transformative fandom, but hopefully this'll do. The problem isn't autism, it's that nerd culture was largely mained by kinda ignorant rich white boys and men who turned their refusal to critically examine the things they love into obsessions. Or, I guess, capitalism. :collbert: EDIT: Covok posted:Funny enough, I ran a one shot of that late yesterday for some people in a comic book Discord. They had a lot of fun even though I was just winging at the whole time and had no idea what I was doing it. fool_of_sound posted:“Freeform 5e” is basically the best possible praise for dungeon world My vague theory of how D&D games accidentally turn into freeform games stays true. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Apr 28, 2018 |
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Apr 28, 2018 19:52
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NachtSieger posted:Yo Cirno do you have your giant caster supremacy essay saved? It'd be somewhere in archives. It was posted on other forums, but long ago enough that they'd be gone by now. I never saved it to a file though, so yeah, archives'd probably be your best chance.
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Apr 28, 2018 21:12
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Halloween Jack posted:I guess my only complaint about Eberron is that most of the religion stuff seems pretty unengaging. Then again, the most interesting stuff in D&D religion is generally either evil cults, or the Factions in Planescape if they count. Eberron's religions, at least for me, are incredibly interesting...once you leave the "mainstream" religion of the Soverign Host behind (but even they're interesting to a degree too). Remember, the lack of afterlife is a known fact to...well, most everyone in the setting. And none of the religions are "provable" in a way that denies the others, and so unlike basically every other D&D setting where religion is little more then a cosmic macguffin, religion in Eberron is cultural. In Forgotten Realms, your choice of deity is shorthand for character traits. In Eberron, it's a declaration of background. Also it's important to state that the Blood of Vol is not about becoming and worshiping undead. It's almost the complete opposite. Blood of Vol states that if the gods do exist, they're all motherfuckers, and the only way we're going to get any justice in life or death is by overthrowing them with the divinity in all living things (and just haven't fully unlocked yet). But we can't do that alone as individuals - we can only do that if we band together, brothers and neighbors and communities. "Living things" is a key part here - by BoV's own doctrine, there's no room in heaven for the undead. Intelligent undead are seen not as heroes to emulate, but martyrs to respect. After all, they sacrificed their share in our inevitable collectivist uprising against reality - literally sold their soul, to never join their community in eternity, forcing themselves to stay in this shitheap of a world, so that they can keep the good fight going. As for non-intelligent undead? Well, what's so bad about them? What, you think your body is so awesome and special that it gets to have it's own special resting place where it can just rot away pointlessly? What a foolish luxury! No, comrade - even in death, as your soul rests, your body can continue to proudly serve and aid your brothers and sisters. That this was orchestrated as something of a great lie around in immortal (but also, like, 14 year old) lich queen is almost incidental. Because in Eberron, belief matters, and so the Blood of Vol does in fact impart divine power that it's secretive leader has nothing to do with. As for Lady Vol herself...well, she does want to become as close to a living god of death Eberron can have, because she wants to find a way to reactivate her dragon-mark, and with her dragon blood, that's going to do things. Who knows - maybe she actually is working to make the heaven her cult believes in. ...How is this not filled to the brim with dramatic hooks to use?
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May 2, 2018 04:09
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The two things that makes the Host interesting for me at least is that a) there's no heaven, so nobody really follows a singular "god" of the Host, you literally just pray to whoever you think can help you out the most, and b) the actual religious doctrine is more just a very loose collection of cultural stories. That people disagree on! Not only is worship of individual gods of the Dark Six not unheard of, there are adherents who would absolutely have a religious debate with you about it. If I recall, it's even mentioned in one of the books that there's evidence of gods that sure do resemble the Dark Six appearing in Dhakaani poo poo, meaning the humans literally just stole the goblinoid gods and put them in their own religion as the "bad ones."
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May 2, 2018 05:08
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Covok posted:This is a question to the fellow GMs out there, but what "character" do you find you default to without trying? Like, when you don't know what to do, what do you end up doing with a person? Why? Over the top and gimmicky, and usually dumb as hell. They're not going to exist in-game for long, so if I want them to be in any way memorable I'll try to think up a dumb gimmick for them real fast and stick to it. Maybe they're extremely loud and boisterous and refer to themselves in the third person. Maybe they're exceptionally quiet and shy and have a bit of a thing for guns. At one point I couldn't think of anything, so I just made the dude hung over so he wouldn't actually intrude or talk too much, and "hung over" not only became his gimmick, they loved it. As for "dumb as hell," my games are dumb as hell in general, because life is loving stupid. I also follow the Venture Brothers storytelling vague doctrine of focusing on failure, which I find honestly helps shape things out a LOT. I'm not kidding, one of the easiest ways for me to "get" my own NPC is to think about where they've hosed up and how it's hit them. Your players are not going to examine your NPCs, and often times you just have one chance to get them onboard with an NPC, so...yeah. Gimmicks and failures work.
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May 3, 2018 02:58
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Halloween Jack posted:For whatever reason I really like the Jobs systems from FF games. One of my takeaways with old-school D&D is that there are two ways you can go with the classes: either make them as open and broad as possible so that people can do anything with it, or deliberately do a bunch of weird particular ones like the paladin, druid, bard, etc. that imply things about the setting just by being there. FF games' job systems work because they're, well, games, and written to work inside games, and written by people who are making games. They're all very mechanical. D&D classes are made by people who view their job as somewhere between amateur writer and another slightly worse amateur writer.
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May 3, 2018 03:49
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Alhireth-Hotep posted:I guess people are... surprised and amused? that the Satanic Panic happened and ruined a whole shitload of lives for no reason? Like, it could definitely happen again, people, maybe you should actually pay attention to extremely recent history. It never stopped happening, they just switched targets a lot. I guarantee plenty of lovely nerds who bristled at the whole satanic cult panic thing had no problems joining in talking about how rap was some kind of "degenerating" force.
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May 7, 2018 02:33
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I feel the need to point out that if anything is XCOM, it's Fragged Empire.
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May 10, 2018 05:13
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Almost as if trying to create some overarching grand mechanical engine to simulate super hero comics as if they were real life events is pointless and futile! Seriously, simulationist engines will always fail.
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May 12, 2018 02:47
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By all means go to the Pathfinder thread to learn more about the wet fart that Pathfinder 2 looks to be so far.
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May 14, 2018 04:44
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Not to be extremely cynical, but "isn't this a bit scary and gory?" isn't really going to phase the generation being gunned down every week in their schools.
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May 22, 2018 05:08
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I'll mirror what others have said and say that 40k is more or less aimed at children already and yeah middle schoolers love edgy poo poo. As for it being bad for them...like, have you seen the internet? Frankly, if they push it as either comical over the top fascism, or tone down the fash, I'll semi-begrudgingly that over what they'd otherwise be inundated with. Frankly the only problem is that it's not just all orks all the time. EDIT: if it is just straight up glorifying fascism then gently caress this, of course. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 07:20 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 22, 2018 06:47
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Yeah, it's pretty much 100% this.
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May 23, 2018 22:27
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Wick is basically the real life tabletop Garth Marenghi
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Jun 1, 2018 19:34
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Wick is absolutely hated less then others, but it's way more fun to hate Wick. Wick's not the dude who makes you clench your fists or try to never talk about again, Wick's the dude that, on being mentioned, gets you to roll your eyes and groan "oh god, that rear end in a top hat."
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Jun 1, 2018 20:10
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Kai Tave posted:What is Wick's problem with Rogues anyway, that one's never been entirely clear to me. Wick is honestly just that one mustard seed GM at heart, he's just in far deeper denial. At the end of the day, the worst thing you can do as far as Wick is concerned is actually play the game - and rogues, as something of a "meta-class" that only exists because dungeons exist, reminds him too much that, at the end of the day, this is a game to be played.
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Jun 5, 2018 20:34
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Halloween Jack posted:The later work on the Dark Sword of Bitter Lies is really a case of making chicken poo poo into chicken salad. Wasn't he enraged that later editions made it an actual thing with actual benefits, rather then an "advantage" that just disadvantaged you?
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Jun 5, 2018 21:39
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occamsnailfile posted:I was thinking about Spelljammer in this regard if one is willing to make up one's own spheres rather than going on a grand tour of the Official Settings without using planar travel, but then I remembered that those stupid helmets require Vancian spellcasting levels or something to operate successfully. Ditch the vancian helmet thing, and instead use Spelljammer to go on a tour of the Totally Not Copyrighted versions of all the popular settings. The low quality midi Forgotten Realms.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:47
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spectralent posted:I don't think anyone IRL cares about the 4e controversy. I met exactly one person who did and he was a guy in his 40s who hung out in a university RPG society with people half his age to bitch about their games. Ok, but the number of D&D nerds who aren't in any way online are a bit rare. There's still no shortage of bizarre and random anti-4e drive-bys being done by people who never played the game, and I suspect they will always exist until some new edition becomes the one "D&D culture" hates. And honestly, it isn't surprising. Right up until 4e was announced you could still see people bitching about 2e, including, don't be shocked now, lots of 3e players who didn't know the first thing about 2e.
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Jun 26, 2018 03:43
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