TG Chat Thread 2018: Please welcome our new mod, Count Strahd von Zarovich

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat Thread 2018: Please welcome our new mod, Count Strahd von Zarovich

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

My Shadowrun game involves us ICly having a gold star board that every one of us takes very seriously, we'd probably be a bit insulted in the GM used a real life one to get us to bathe more.

Of course we don't NEED to be told by another grown rear end adult 'hey maybe you should bathe'.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 04:09

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:02

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Alien Rope Burn posted:

A lot of folks have positioned him for years as some secret master that deliberately tanked 4e (despite it being his livelihood) instead of, y'know, just being bad at design.

All I'm saying is that you don't have to make poo poo up about somebody when their actions are bad enough.

I always like the '(x) tanked (y) ON PURPOSE' conspiracies because they're so clearly always from a place of someone just learning about the handful of times that actually happened and assuming it must be a common business move done in smoky back rooms rather than just thinking 'maybe this guy was dumb and did bad moves'.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2018 18:52

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Moriatti posted:

Yeah, wasn't Mearls jsut a guy who wanted Wizards to always be the best and also made boring, barely functional classes?

I never pegged him as an evil mastermind who hated 4e, just a nerd with regressive design taste.

Pretty much, he thinks fantasy roleplaying needs magic as a major force, D&D is a setting with very strong divides between 'mundane' and 'magic' characters, he did his normal thing of saying 'well then obviously a wizard should be able to fart a world ending destruction spell and a fighter should just pray for a magic axe'.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2018 19:03

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Yea, that's probably as good a balancing mechanic as you can get in a 40k game apart from just 'no mixed parties'. Like, yea in canon a space marine is a way higher 'level' than a commissar but I think for the purposes of an RPG it's fine to be fiddly enough to say 'alright well obviously any given smurf is the big dog to a group of guardsmen, but maybe a commissar would have more authority to handle somethings sometimes so we'll say they're both at the top tier'.

I'm loving running TORG for my group so they already have my interest.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 04:33

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

FFG star wars has flaws but the dice are literally just 'good' and 'bad' symbols in various combinations, with a variant for 'very good' and 'very bad', it's four concepts aside from the force dice, which is literally either white or black pips to represent...light side or dark side....

# ¿ Mar 3, 2018 05:39

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

yea now if you wanna talk the flaw in Star Wars' dice system being the bonuses really mean nothing except a resource to pay for extra raw success/fail dice which makes them absolutely pointless most times and could be done by a 7th Sea/L5R raise/exploding dice system I'm 100% here for that. I'm just saying the symbols are literally just various combos of 'good' vs 'bad' so let's not pretend you need the Rosetta Stone at hand to play.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2018 05:47

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Lemon-Lime posted:

Fragged Empire seems pretty solid, so I'll be getting it. Anyone have anything to say about Fragged Aeternum/Seas/Kingdom or the Protagonist/Antagonist Archives?

Protag/Antag: good 'poo poo we couldn't fit in the core book but also useful to have' books, I'd say to get those asap, Antagonist first just because every GM needs a monster manual.

Aeternum: like said, it's Soulsborne complete with respawn mechanics and multiphase fights. Cool concept but if you're not big into playing a tabletop Dark Souls it won't win you over.

Seas/Kingdom: Very good games that bring the Fragged style to high seas and fantasy genres. They refine the system as needed to better fit the genre, Seas for example has a revamped momentum system and all so you can buckle swashes more stylishly. I'd rank these higher than Aternum because they're much less niche, genre books rather than a hyper specific kind of video game and all, but again only needed if your group is going 'I sure love playing Fragged Empires but gee whiz I wish we were wizards on the oceans instead!' Though, you may want to cannibalize the rules tweaks for your main game, I forgot what changed where though so someone with a better memory can tell you if there's one that adds something big or something.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 21:43

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Plutonis posted:

The Legend of Groggy's Gold

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 05:31

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

One of my favorite guys in my current Fragged group is the party Corp face who is 100% the 'disables/debuffs guys with his loving sweet pistol' guy who fights with drones...and sometimes living faceless security team members... All our fights revolve around this smug Gordon Gekko rear end in a top hat and his blinged out pistol enraging our enemies by making them helpless so our sniper or me as the big weapons motherfucker can just tear them apart. Fragged combat is very fun.

Like already said, everyone has combat skills, and everything is customization focused. Mix that with drones (both literal robots and faceless mooks you can command) and other poo poo being just as valid weapons as a tricked out assault rifle and you've got a game with a painfully rare balance of 'tactical combat' and 'loving fun poo poo going down'.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 06:24

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Bedlamdan posted:

Thought: is it actually okay to roleplay as a person of a different race or ethnicity?

Sure as long as you're not dumb about it.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 23:59

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

i liked it

# ¿ Apr 10, 2018 23:22

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Pollyanna posted:

If WotC isn�t offering them a discount on all their poo poo that just feels criminal. Maybe it pays for other poo poo like securing a location, application fees, food, etc? Kids need a lot of support and they can get expensive.

Yea I really hope that 'kit' is just them saying 'this is what it costs for everything, including stuff like food, location, assorted fees, etc' because boy would it be lovely if Wizards can't at least throw them a nice PR discount or something.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2018 15:10

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

I'm for sure gonna listen to hours of a moron named after a likely fake guy who makes his bones ~defending the west~ so I can dunk on him for using the wrong saving throw rules

# ¿ May 6, 2018 16:59

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Slimnoid posted:

Is there any superhero RPG out there that's both good and isn't an overcomplicated mess of mechanics?

no not really, unless you want to go for a niche like Masks' Teen Titans focus.

I always found Mutants and Masterminds the lowest on the mess scale as long as you already know D20

# ¿ May 9, 2018 23:44

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Sion posted:

Wasn't that the one that was meant to be about the DC Universe until DC was like 'pen and paper games are dumb'?

yea. The DC book was actually pretty solid but DC quickly said 'this is actually dumb' and pulled out almost instantly.

# ¿ May 14, 2018 22:50

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Halloween Jack posted:

The DC Adventures book was effectively a 3rd edition of the game, right? It definitely mixed some nagging issues I had with 2e.

M&M is currently in its third edition, the DC thing was basically a promo alternate book that made it DC rather than just the generic "Freedom City' stuff.

They also released a "Deluxe Player's Handbook" or whatever later that was independent of the DC ties and folded in errata and such.

# ¿ May 15, 2018 04:14

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Splicer posted:

Sigmar wept

eh most of the fun was in how deadly combat is. If they keep that goin I'm fine with it being less likely to die because I fell in an open manhole.

# ¿ May 18, 2018 15:39

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Splicer posted:

It's meaningless. You jump across and are hanging from a root. Now what? Someone pulls you up? Then there's no meaningful difference between partial success and success. You fall anyway? Same result as if you failed. It's not partial resolution, it's delayed resolution.

Looking at the distance traveled as the thing to apply the "partial to" is obvious, intuitive, and terrible gameplay. You ever play through that scenario? It's a pointless waste of everyone's time.

The partial shouldn't be applied to your spatial location, because ultimately that's innately binary. You're in the pit or you aren't. The partial should be applied to the goal you're trying to achieve, or the consequences you're trying to avoid. If you're jumping across a ravine the goal is getting you and your equipment across unscathed. Partial failure is losing some of your equipment, or taking an injury. That's an actual cost that actually matters. If it's a chase scene what matters is time, so it takes you longer to jump the pit than you expected, but less than going around would have. Maybe because you choked, or had to scramble, or yes because you caught a root and needed to be helped out. If it's a fight scene you're jumping the pit to get away from something, or get toward something. Your next attack is hampered or their next attack on you is easier because you're scrambling out of the pit.

"Rather than just failing to jump across the ravine and plunging to your death, maybe you almost made it and are left hanging onto a root at the other side of the gorge." is heartbreaker language. It's the kind of thing you say when you first think of the concept of partial success, not the example of someone whose actually integrated it into a game. It's also the most loving hilarious possible example in the context of "these tests give you a result that keeps the story moving." because "Steve is stuck on a root" is the goddamned definition of halting the story for no good reason.

e: well that was a bunch of unnecessary typing

OH I thought you were grumbling for making the game 'less deadly' or something. Yea, 100% agree there, partial success/fail rules are fine but that was a terribly dull example.

# ¿ May 18, 2018 21:46

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

yea I was an AoS hater for a long while but they're actually doin cool stuff

# ¿ May 19, 2018 03:31

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Halloween Jack posted:

Well yeah, if you asked John Wick to write "grilled cheese sandwiches are good," it would come out as a grandiose rant about how he's a mad prophet who wandered out of the desert to speak truth to power with this shocking revelation.

And you know what else he'd do?

You don't know, but I'll tell you.

Oh, I'll tell you.

He'd make every single sentence...

And I mean. Every. Single. Sentence.

Its own paragraph.

That's how you know his writing is really important.

I'm angry you've hit my L5R fan ptsd so hard

# ¿ May 31, 2018 20:12

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

I like 7th Sea and L5R a lot, including the new 7th Sea but I can't defend Wick in any way other than 'he's pretty good about getting his promised products out and communicating well on KS'.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 20:17

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Anniversary posted:

And when I killed your favorite NPC.

I.
Wrote.
Just.
Like.
This.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 20:18

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

occamsnailfile posted:

I got the impression Wick had improved somewhat from the original Play Dirty days (or what I vaguely recall of the Play Dirty 2 writeup) but PD2 seemed both less controversial and less...there. Just sort of rehashed a lot of standard good gaming advice in a kind of Wicky tone which is eyerollable but ultimately not a huge issue in modern gaming.

Like it sort of puts him in the camp of Luke Crane and Ron Edwards for "sometimes has good ideas, capable of very offputting tone, not a huge racist or anything." I don't know if/how he's responded to any criticism of 7th Sea 2nd edition. Gosh we have such low bars to clear.

Yea basically, he's improved...in some ways...from that stuff but he's still kinda a wad. He's just a wad with some clever ideas who's wadness is mainly confined to just being a bit of a pompous dick.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 21:25

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

yea no one seems to hate him like we rightly hate morons like Zak, it's just kinda 'haha he's kinda a pompous wad at times and he used to be a weirdly over-adversarial GM'. Dude's a dork, it's funny to point and laugh at it when he acts like a dork but no one seems to HATE him, more just 'aw man this dingus' at worst.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2018 01:13

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Wick's real beef with them is that the rogue/thief/whatever is the most easily available and non-exhausting hard counter to the lovely dungeon design bread and butter that is 'you didn't check the doorknob, the frame, AND the keyhole so when you touch it the door explodes and teleports you into the core of the elemental plane of fire you die no save'.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2018 16:20

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

that sounds like good chicken

# ¿ Jul 12, 2018 04:59

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

^^^Yea and that too! Part of the fun of being a level 1 douchebag was when your GM said 'and, sleeping in this chamber, is an ogre!' you knew that meant 'cool sneaky/tricky time' because you super aren't supposed to wake that dude up and fight him because he will eat your butts without a sweat.

fool_of_sound posted:

Yeah, I really like some of DCC's ideas. It's take on Warrior, Cleric, and Thief are pretty good. The racial classes, on the other hand, are disappointing, and wizards have like 4 different obnoxious subsystem 'balancing' factors instead of just trying to balance their spells. Also imo the game really misses that a major thrill of dungeon crawling is finding big cool randomly generated treasure piles, including quirky magic items.

Yea they got WAY to obsessed with 'at low levels a cat can kill you and you should be lucky to get a nice sword' and forgot that almost every actually fun dungeon crawl ends in a Scrooge McDuckian pile of fun randomly generated garbage to play with as you reward for not getting murdered by a cat. Like that's what I don't get about all these old school love letters, did my group and my social circle of other gamers just all have a MASSIVELY different experience with this stuff or was the point of sucking poo poo for the first few levels not the fun and satisfaction of rolling into your dirtball village with a baby dragon corpse and a bag of shiny gold coins and cool trinkets to show off.

That was an 'official' D&D image, right? That drawing of some clearly new adventurers proudly hanging out around a strung up young dragon's corpse and the colors were bright and it was a good time? Where was all this dark dank dirty no shiny fun rewards gaming going on?

sexpig by night fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Aug 30, 2018

# ¿ Aug 30, 2018 04:45

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Hey, classic D&D is about HIRING shifty low stat companions to walk into traps, not BEING them.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2018 07:06

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Plutonis posted:

The new myfarog supplement is incredibly epic because it's set on a modern setting instead of fantasy land so the ultra racism and christophobia are completely out there

Haha for real? So did Varg just drop all pretenses and make RACE WAR: The RPG with that supplement?

# ¿ Sep 9, 2018 04:41

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Pendragon and Runequest deeply shaped how I consider what makes a good RPG. By all accounts he was a genuinely good guy who had brilliant ideas, and I'm happy he at least was able to go peacefully.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 04:08

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Ratoslov posted:

Yeah, let's talk about the currencies in Invisible Sun and why they are all stupid.

Orbs: Orbs are the normal currency and the least stupid one. They're little orbs filled with different kinds of emotion and qualities of thought. They come in four denominations: Glass orbs, which are full of very common thoughts or ideas like 'what cheddar cheese tastes like' and are made by child laborers, are worth about ten US cents in Shadow. Crystal orbs have more mundane ideas like 'a recipe for lentil soup', and are worth about ten dollars. It's not described what kind of thoughts go in Gem Orbs, but they're indestructible and are worth about US$1000. So it's a decimilated currency that's a pain to keep in your pockets because it's not flat. There are also Trueorbs, which contain actually important secrets. While they have the same denomination as a Gem Orb, Vislae can destroy them to extract the secrets within for a point of Hidden Knowledge, the meta currency you spend to get a +1 on a die. Now, you'd think that these being rare and having an unusual property only powerful and rich people can use would mean they'd be worth more than Gem Orbs, but that would make too much sense. Banks offer checking services for Orbs and Orbs alone, and you can also transfer Orbs through the No�sphere, the magical thought internet.

Magecoin is not a particularly nerdy bitcoin variant, but rather a currency that nobody knows where it comes from that is used for exactly two purposes: Buying and selling magical goods and services, and you can destroy one to instantly restore one of your stat pools. There's two kinds of these, one which restores the physical pools and one which restores the intellectual/magical pools, but they spend the same. Now you may want to exchange these for orbs or other services, but...

Apparently, wizards never need to pay rent. You can get magecoin by doing work for wizards, and you spend it on magical goods and services. They're also occasionally an ingredient in Maker stuff.

Demontears: Not actually demon tears. Blood-red pearl thingies which are valued identical to Magecoins, but can be destroyed to restore any of your pools. Demons carry them around. Also, some people don't like them because they're afraid it has some sort of demonic influence.

Bloodsilver: Slver coins worth about 10 bucks a pop, except almost nobody accepts them because they're loving cursed. If you own more than one bloodsilver (not hold, own- if you keep it in a bank deposit box or vault, you're still cursed), you have to make a resistance check at a difficulty related to how much of it you own in order to avoid the curse, which is left for the GM to make up. So why the hell do people consider this a currency and not a type of toxic waste?

Apparently, assassins never need to pay rent either. Aside from being an ingredient in Maker stuff, a lot of the fighty magical items cost Bloodsilver in addition to Orbs. Worrying about why these craftsmen or merchants want cursed bullshit coins is apparently stupid when you're talking about magic.

Bits And Bobs: The generic term for lesser currencies that use precious metals or whatnot. Magic can only create Bits And Bobs, not real currencies like Magecoin or Orbs. Five bits and bobs to a glass orb, which makes them extremely spare change.

this is so dumb, what is even the point of this, how did they sit down and brainstorm up 'so yea there's four moneys and one is cursed and one is demon stuff no one wants and another is magic money that you have to use only for magic and the main one is orbs of memory' and no one went 'shut the gently caress up'?

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 20:44

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

hey those guys who wrote that get that when you have fairy tales of poo poo like some ancient fae king bargaining for the emotions of a mortal or memories of some mundane thing is meant to be a sign of how alien and detached from the mortal world the fae are where 'you enjoy cheese, just cheese? Tell me what that's like' is a novel concept to some inhuman being who can get energy from an orgy or whatever the gently caress, right? It's not like, meant to be an actual economy.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 22:31

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:02

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Wrestlepig posted:

I'm basically a pizzagate guy, too many celebs and powerful people are utter sex freaks

the only thing pizzagate got wrong was assuming it was only libs

# ¿ Dec 24, 2018 00:40

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat Thread 2018: Please welcome our new mod, Count Strahd von Zarovich