Covok posted:

No, you make hard moves when they roll under 6. You make soft moves when they look to you. They're not being punished, they're asking you to advance the plot. This already happens in games. It always happens. When the players have nothing to go off of to advance things, they rely on the GM to introduce a new element. Otherwise, the game would die there. Pbta simply spells it out.

It is no more punishment then running a game for them being a punishment. The point of the game is to overcome challenges, if new challenges are not introduced, there is no game. Therefore, it is not a punishment to introduce new challenges, that is simply providing a gameplay experience.

hyphz posted:

That's what they apparently do in Shadowrun. Hey, don't blame me if the setting doesn't make sense.

hyphz posted:

It doesn't matter what system you're playing.

If you have a map in advance that says there's a dragon in that room, the players use their spells up in the first four rooms and then open the last room and see the dragon, that's fine because you are maintaining the integrity of the map.

If you don't have such a map and the players use their spells up in the first four rooms and then open the last room and see a dragon that you've just spontaneously decided was there, then whether you like it or not you've just set up for that outcome because you know too well what is going to happen.

quote:

But what about when having a dragon absolutely makes perfect sense but will also absolutely cause the PCs to lose the mission?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

well I mean at least one person has made the argument that no tabletop game works on those assumptions, meaning not even D&D

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I disagree.

Especially with regards to Elfgames' post:


because this is literally "no, no RPG can or should work like that" and that's what I'm reacting against.

hyphz posted:

What do I mean by manipulation? “I’ve taken a bunch of Harm and the GM is spawning encounters as long as we’re interested. Quick! Everybody get bored!”

hyphz posted:

Pretty much any sane person if you have a game with rules based on fun that thus creates a stupid feedback loop. Look at the choices:

1) Keep having fun, keep having encounters, Dave's character being seriously injured probably dies to those encounters and that's less fun for him
2) Stop having fun for a moment, the encounters end, we get the treasure, that's fun, the next adventure can be fun again and Dave's character is fine

thefakenews posted:

Why is difficulty easier to overcome if I am preparing a D&D 5E adventure?

gradenko_2000 posted:

To be fair, there's a smidgen of a real issue with what hyphz is describing with his Shadowrun story.

If you can create a character that dumps all their points into Shoot, it's possible if not likely that that character will be able to shoot everything in the premade adventure really easily.

The natural reaction is for the GM to make the monsters harder to shoot, but if the rest of the party did not dump all their points into shoot, then you have this extreme dichotomy where a monster is either piss-easy to be shot by the Shootman while being "just right" for everyone else, or difficult to shoot for the Shootman while being impossible to hit for everyone else.

This is why D&D 4e moved to the "Half-Level Bonus" as a baseline number for all of their stats: the designers realized that in 3e, there was an unsustainable disparity between a character that went all in on AC like a Paladin, versus a caster. Or the disparity between a Fighter's poor Will saves and their good Fort saves. Or the disparity between a skill that you were maintaining full skill points into, versus one that you weren't.

At least with 4e's Half-Level Bonus bringing up the rear, there's still a disparity, but one that is within the range of the d20 to be able to capture (and within the player's power to try and mitigate).

In Shadowrun 5e, the current workaround is to use the Run Faster sourcebook's Life Modules character generation system to buy predefined packages of skills, that result in more well-rounded characters, rather than a pure point-buy where you can buy as many points of Shoot as you can specifically afford.

Serf posted:

why didn't they just ride the eagles to mordor

why do guards on the chase never look down that one alcove that the heroes ducked into, thus allowing them to escape

why doesn't skynet just send a terminator back to cowboy times and end the connor line there

why doesn't the villain just shoot the hero in the head instead of monologuing and giving them an opening

i can only imagine the kinds of nightmare games you run and the poor, tortured souls who are desperate enough to subject themselves to that

quote:

The same thing came up a bunch of times. I set up a meeting between two gangs in a warehouse that was intended to be a neat set piece but the players just blocked the entrances and sieged it. The players committed a bunch of crimes but any time Lone Star showed up they just surrendered instantly (because they had no problem with actual atrocities that could be justified as scum-on-scum but didn’t want to touch “innocent” cops), so I had to have them mysteriously never show up or campaign over.

Foglet posted:

Now let's try and be reasonable, that would've just gotten a bit too over the top.

ed: I mean, you have to draw a line somewhere.

LuiCypher posted:

My point of contention with the whole '5e' thing is that I believe that rule systems are evocative of your game's theme - 5e is explicitly 'D&D 3.5 refined', and D&D 3.5 is a fantasy themed tactical murderhobo game of nerd wizard supremacy. That might not be what they wanted to go for.

The theme is awesome, but I feel like they're making it a 5e supplement either because it's what the author knows or what they believe will sell. Either way, I feel that it's a missed opportunity to adapt a better system that would be more evocative of the theme. I'm not saying it should be a PbtA hack (I say as I brainstorm a hack for Night Witches, itself a PbtA hack), but there has to be a better option.

Drone posted:

I mean, the strategy is debatably working. WOTC is clearly putting minimal effort and resources into D&D and it's selling like hotcakes apparently (thanks to clever digital marketing more than anything), so I don't see Wizards changing that formula at all.

Lurdiak posted:

Yes, I understand that, but if you cast a speed spell in, say, Dungeons and Dragons, and the result is that the target hits harder, it's going to be met with some confusion.

Nuns with Guns posted:

Well, yes, improving a story is ultimately what pen and paper RPGs are for that's not really in dispute, but Dread's whole point is the visual of the Jenga tower. That'd be fine for those games hosted as Youtube videos, but wouldn't that lead to a lot of dead air on a podcast while people wait for the draw to happen?

Countblanc posted:

My dream is to find people selling boxes of the monster rancher tcg cards at a convention but I haven't see any since like 1999

Countblanc posted:

Surprisingly, no. iirc it was designed to be played in groups (I can't remember how large though) and there were separate Training and Battling phases where you raised monsters and then fought them in round robin tournaments with the ultimate goal being to win 3 Star Chips. As you can see from a monster card it basically had zero resembalence to the GBC and (the significantly better) PSX game.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

I'm reminded of my old idea where Digimon, Medabots, Mega Man Battle Network, Beyblade and Yu-Gi-Oh! all share a setting and compete for the same demographics. A collection of neglected monster pets (and an outdated sentient antivirus program) all competing for their disinterested owner's attention or otherwise trying to kill time.

Covok posted:

Is there a way to play a Ranma-like character with the sex-change curse without being seen as weird? While it was never intended as such, I attached to that kind of thing as a teen because of my own confusion with my own gender identity. But, I can see it not playing out well.

Kai Tave posted:

I highly doubt that's the dumbest line to be found in an Ernest Cline novel.

Martin Snazz posted:

Zurui posted:

Torchbearer is fantastic. It's D&D through a punk rock lens: you're an adventurer because you're a loving nobody from loving nowhere and the only hope you have of not living a life of near-starvation until you die of some disease in your middle age is to set out to maybe make something of yourself or die trying.

Read the book. Not skim. Read it. Run a conflict round on your own to understand how it works before you try to teach it to people. Follow the rules closely (especially timekeeping and checks) and, if your players are a little smart, a little lucky, and very determined, they might just come out alive.

NachtSieger posted:

tag yourself im sensual broken

Haystack posted:

Physical book pros:

• It's somewhat easier to flip back and forth through a physical book, which is handy for a reference text.
  
• You don't need a laptop or tablet to have the text at the table.
  
• They're generally easier for your other players at the table to use, since they don't have to be computer literate to use the text.
  

Cons:

• They're more expensive, obviously.
  
• PDF readers have nice built in search and bookmark features and whatnot.
  

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

When I said slowly I meant it; I've only had a chance to run Strike! and (if it counts) Shadow of the Demon Lord so far.

Strike! is very easy to prep for, runs very fast, and I like the combat well enough. Unfortunately I'm not really a fan of how it handles any of the non-combat aspects of the game. There's a little too much FATE in its DNA for my tastes and the "absolutely everything is modular and optional," means that all the GM work you saved on encounter design now has to go in to basically building a game from the pieces.

Shadow of the Demon Lord is by one of the lead designers on 4E and plays sort of like a "greatest hits" of 2E, 3E, and 4E with some Warhammer Fantasy RP on the side. It's stretching the definition of "4E clone" quite a bit to call it one, but I'm really enjoying it so far. I do wish it gave everyone powers like 4E instead of using Vancian spellcasting, but it's the most sensible implementation of Vancian spellcasting I've ever seen.

Gamma World 7E is built on a 4E framework but with vastly streamlined character creation, very disposable characters, and no "adventuring day" to speak of -- a 5-minute rest restores all your powers and hit points. While understanding that it's necessary for by-the-book 4E, I've never especially liked the attrition-based model of combat difficulty, so I'm really looking forward to giving this a shot.

I'm interested in running Valor, if it ever gets bookmarks in the PDF so that I can reference it.
It has you build 4E-style powers from modular bits which sounds incredibly cool if also like it could be a balance nightmare.

As I mentioned, I'm keeping an eye on Let Thrones Beware, although the last time I read the rules was a whole bunch of beta releases ago. My brief impression was that it seemed pretty closely married to its setting, which I think is a good quality in an RPG in the abstract, but in this case didn't do much for me.

Lemon-Lime posted:

The One Ring isn't even remotely D&D-like, this document sucks.

quote:

B: Yes, I want to play a fantasy adventure game, but it doesn’t need to be D&D or D&D adjacent. I want to go on an adventure with a group of friends and have a good time, but I don’t need all that stuff listed in answer A to do it.

Pollyanna posted:

It’s under the “I want exactly D&D” section too.

oriongates posted:

The biggest problem is that it's thematically limited...it's fine to abstract your decker jamming cybereyes and confusing drones with bad signals, but if you're just fighting low-tech gangers or a pack of feral ghouls you become useless.

drrockso20 posted:

To be fair in every game the change that's being presented is an extremely bad one

Payndz posted:

The three things that the name Monte Cook makes me think of, thanks to TG:

1: "Beaners"
2: Coming up with exciting new mechanics and then blowing the implementation
3: Smithers from The Simpsons singing "I work for Monte Cook, da dah da dah Monte Cook..."

Bedlamdan posted:

Exciting stuff, very reminiscent of works like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, or FATAL.

I can see why it has such has a devoted following on our own forums!

Bedlamdan posted:

lol, no, random tables that describe "weird/hilarious" things that can happen to your genitals is literally a thing FATAL does, and is also something a lot of other, different games do not bother with for some unknown reason.

The comparison is justified in this case, as it's something pretty unique here, my dude!