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Seatox posted:And I thought "gold pieces weighs 1/3 of an ounce a piece, you need 2.1 metric tonnes of gold to develop the simplest Epic Spell" was a good rag on D&D. There was an a article in Dragon, somewhere in the mid-double digits that redefined the coinage. They changed the standard, heavy GP for an SP the size of a dime. Their GP was the same size and worth about 20 times an SP. Coin hordes got much more manageable.
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Sep 15, 2019 08:38
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Deniable Assets 2/x In this update, we'll look at a playbook and then start delving into the mechanics of the game. Since only one person had playbook requests, and I forgot which they were, I'm going with the Fastlane, which sounds right. From the book, The Fastlane is a dumb, flashy young idiot who acts impulsively and crashes and burns quickly. If a new player’s just joined, it’s an ideal starting point, not least because pretty soon they’ll be ready for their next character. Mechanically, this is your normal PbtA game at the core: When you trigger a move, roll 2d6+stat and hope for a 10+ or at least a 7+. DA has more structure - the corporate environment and trying to get a project to market - than most PbtA games, and it has the mechanical structure to make that work. The stat array in DA is: +beast: How aggressive is your character? +grip: How stone-cold is your character? +eyes: How aware is your character? +slick: How charming is your character? +outtabox: How’s your character at things not taught in business school? The game also suggests that your stats inform how other people see the character. Someone with low +grip won't be relied on in a crisis, while a high +slick character will be seen as, well, slick and/or charming. And like all PbtA games, your character is their playbook plus the basic moves. Mechanical terms like Authority or Damage will be bolded on their first use. I will be using only limited quotes from the text, this is still in playtest after all. All of the following Moves have an example of play (except Get Help). I'd say they're almost done with the basic moves, but there are a few spots where they know what they want, but just haven't gotten the wording right. Basic Moves in Deniable Assets Shoot the Devil. +any. When you finally make your play for a seat on the Board you pick a stat and narrate how it helps you make your move. On a 10+ congratulations ! You're an NPC now, but the player get to do a metaphorical victory lap because this is the only happy ending for a character in this game. Test the Waters. +authority. Authority is the first of the unique to DA mechanics. Playbooks generally start at 1 Authority. This stat represents your ability to do fire people and defend your own actions. It plays a crucial role in DA's version of Harm. It's also restricted in scope; Debbie from accounting can't tell two security guards that they're fired - she has to cut Security's budget and try and get into the archives after staffing cuts have been made. Test the Waters is rolled by someone at the start of every session. On a hit, everyone gets budget equal to their allocation, and whoever rolled gets handed a new and exciting opportunity. On a 7-9, the division has hit an obstacle and someone is in trouble. The player who rolled decides who was responsible and who was blamed for it. The scapegoat doesn't get their allocation, and the session starts with them being dressed-down by the division's Executive or one of the Bosses. On a 6- the division is in crisis mode. Nobody gets their allocation, except for one person of the rolling player's choice; everyone else gets a hook on that character. Allocation is another secondary stat, and budget is your in-game currency. A hook is like a string in Monsterhearts: you have some mechanical influence on the other character. Draw Blood. +beast. When you gently caress with someone (violence, lies in the lunchroom, sabotage, altering archives), roll +beast. There's a list of damages you can inflict and slips you can suffer. On a 10+ choose two damages. On a 7-9 you choose a Damage and a Slip. On a 6- The Board chooses two slips. For Damages, you can take a hook on the target, damage their target, take less Harm if they retaliate, or outright take something from them. Slips can be making a bigger mess, exhausting an asset, drawing unwanted attention, or giving a hook to another PC. Eat Trouble. +grip. When you try and move your own rear end out of harm's way, roll +grip. On a 10+ You avoid the danger and can get a hook on the responsible party. This move is currently poorly written. Avoiding the danger can be limited if The Board rules you just can't avoid all of it, and you only get the hook if you already know how you'll get revenge. I can see that the designer is putting a lot on interpreting the fiction, but this stands out in a game with a lot of mechanics to help prop up the fiction. On a 7-9 you get a choice; get ALL the way out, taking ourself out of the picture and into a panic room, or cheap motel room two states over; saving yourself costs you something important,; saving yourself costs a favor. On a 6- you narrate your action but "The Board, or player who put you in danger, puts you in the way of worse trouble." Again, weak as rules and relying too heavily on the fiction. Read the Room. +eyes. When you size up a situation, roll +eyes. On a 10+ keep 3 (keep is just hold renamed) and gain a hook on someone in the scene. On a 7-9 keep 1 and gain a hook on someone. On a 6- you left your guard down and someone gains a hook on you. You spend keep during the rest of the scene to ask questions from a long list; "What are they hoping I don’t ask them?", "What’s getting left on the table?" and so forth. The move doesn't specify who answers the questions, I'd assume The Board for NPCs and the other player (oh yes, there is PVP in DA) for PCs. Play Somebody. +slick. When you're messing with someone's head and trying to use them, choose your scam (there's a list) and roll +slick. If you spend a hook you have on your target you can choose your own scam. This move works differently on NPCs than with PCs. On an NPC, when you Play Somebody you pick your scam and roll +slick. On a 7-9... yes, 10+ is missing, on a 7-9 "pick a loose end too." So I guess the 10+ result involves "...and they buy it" and/or "take a hook". On a PC, when you Play Somebody, choose a scam and roll +slick. On a 10+ either they believe it and they act accordingly or you gain a hook on them. Also, they tell you what you learned about manipulating them. On a 7-9 they gain a hook on you if they believe you and act accordingly. Tell them what they learned about you while you were tryin to scam them. On a 6- they gain a hook and have the option of believing you or not (in an adversarial, weird, cyberpunk game this makes a certain sort of sense). Scams: ❏ I’m more important than you thought ❏ You’re more important than you thought ❏ Don’t worry, I’ve got your back ❏ I’ll tell you who doesn’t have your back... ❏ Relax! It’s under control ❏ Listen close, because the poo poo’s about to hit the fan Loose Ends: ❏ The longer your scam lasts, the more pissed they’ll be when they figure out you were playing them ❏ They seem to believe you a little too much for your liking ❏ Your scam is not going to stay secret for long, and somebody out there won’t like it ❏ You have to sell the scam by doing something you’d rather not. This move works whether or not you're lying, but it doesn't work if you're being earnest or sincere. The trigger could be polished a little, but the name of the move is "Play Somebody" and if you aren't playing them, you don't roll this move. We're still in playtest, it can get cleaned up. Enter The Mix. +outtabox. When you search for advantages in the surreal and illegal VR network known as The Mix... This is your attempt to look for clues, dig up secrets, or buy illegal poo poo. The player is expected to describe their personal VR environment. Fun thing mechanically: there are 5 options to choose from and you can take as many as you want. If you get greedy, you'd better get a 10+. WIth a 10+ you pick one Hangover, they range from leaving a clear trail to drawing law enforcement attention. On a 7-9 The Board picks as many Hangovers as you chose options. On a 6- you also take that much harm. you always get what you wanted, everything else is just haggling over the price. Get Help. +bleed. When you’re about to go down in flames and are forced to put your fate in someone else’s hands, name your savior and roll +bleed. You can name a PC, but if they’re not willing to help, you get an NPC instead. This move is about target and hooks. Target is basically hit points. You have 5, this move can recover up to 3 of them. The tradeoff is, whoever saves your worthless, well-tanned rear end gets as many hooks on you as you regain target. Hooks are good for die modifiers against them - both if you're rolling something or they are, fictional leverage, or make up a scam for the Play Someone move. You can 'forgive' or give up hook at will, especially if you can use it as leverage; “Back me up on the Marlinspike deal and maybe I’ll forget about my little vendetta and just in time for your big presentation.” The last two moves are project management moves. No matter how much wheeling, dealing, mind games, thuggery, and cocaine you do, you do still have a day job that all of that is in service of. Form the Project. +budget. When you kick off a brand-new project, spend budget on it. The amount you spent is equal to the project’s target, and that times the number of players is the project’s prestige. Then roll +budget spent. Budget is a resource, it comes from the Boss and from executives. The more you can amass before formally launching the project the higher profile (prestige) and harder to cancel (target) the project is. The opening phase of the game is about - as I read it from here - gathering as much budget as possible and maneuvering to be the one who formally launches the project. This move is a choose from a list move, there are four potential problems; on a 10+ you can avoid 3, on a 7-9 pick 2, on a 6- pick 1. In high-level corporate life holding a "get-out-of-If the project fails, you’re practically guaranteed to get blamed for it" card is golden. Launch the Project. +viability. This is when everyone gets their goodies, or rather track. Track is basically XP, you advance you character after every 5 track you accumulate. A lot of track will come your way through familiar PbtA means, like rolling a highlighted stat, but when a project is launched its prestige is split up as track for everyone involved, at, of course, The Board's decision. Since a project's prestige is its budget/target multiplied by the number of players, there's generally a LOT of track tied up in a product launch - you only need 20 to take your shot a joining The Board. Viability is accumulated through play as actual work gets done on the actual project. So someone rolls this when a member of the team presents, sends off, or otherwise steps up to push a project to market, roll +viability. The example in the book is about someone putting on a prototype personal defense shield and handing another player a loaded gun to test it. What I get out of that example is that this move is for when you test the product with real stakes and find out what you've got. In the example they get a 7-9 and find out that the shield is only good for one shot. At least they know that before they have to stand up in front of an audience with their pitch deck. The roll mostly determines how prestige gets split up for track. On a 10+ any flaws remain hidden and The Board divvies up track however the people upstairs would see it. On a 7-9 at least one glaring issue shows up in the demo. The Board divvies up track again, and also assigns blame - often to the person who got the most attent... track. On a 6- everything sucks and everyone is rolling Eat Trouble because upstairs is pissed. That's the basic moves for Deniable Assets 0.31. On the whole, the designer knows what they want and is almost there in terms of nailing down the exact wording of moves. Next time, more detail on the mechanical terms introduced here and possibly a look at a playbook.
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Sep 24, 2019 03:20
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I've been neglecting Disposable Assets, but since Monsterhearts 2 just got reviewed, I'll chime in with a pair of 3rd-party playbooks that I think show excellent design. The Oni and the Kitsune: Monsterhearts Playbooks HyveMynd is a freelance TTG writer with these two playbooks available on her itch.io page, https://hyvemynd.itch.io/ The Oni Play this if you want to be the bully. The Oni playbook gives you a choice of supernatural powers. You will be trying to enforce conformity and the status quo, putting down those who stand out. This will be a tricky playbook to incorporate, since they're also a treacherous lover; they're built to exploit those whom they have been intimate with. For supernatural abilities, the Oni has: Unseen Spirit: this is the ability to turn invisible. On a high roll nobody even notices you've gone, on a mixed result either someone who saw you vanish gets a string on you or something destructive happens nearby. Stormcaller: Just what it sounds like, an instant storm you can call when you name someone who has wronged you. The specific trigger is very cinematic, "When you stand under the open sky and bellow the name of someone who has wronged you, roll with volatile." A clean hit gives you control of the storm, a partial hit gets you the storm but things get out of hand. This would be a great way to wreck a pool party or any other outdoor event. Those are two of the Oni's moves, you only get to choose two, so maybe save a choice for: Bully: a stat replacement move that lets you shut them down with volatile. Uniformity: When you've bullied someone into hiding what's special about them, they gain the sell out condition and take -1 on shut someone down and lash out physically rolls. The Raised Nail: Taken from the Japanese expression, the raised nail gets pounded in. I'll just quote it, it's harsh. "When you humiliate or brutalize someone who is different for public entertainment, mark experience." This playbook has very clear goals, the mechanical tools to help achieve them, but could cause serious hard feelings IRL if actually played to the hilt. Oni Wa Soto: More from Japanese mythology. If someone orders you out of a place that is absolutely theirs, take a String on them if you promptly comply. Here's where the playbook gets really harsh. Iron Club: When you deal harm to someone with the condition stands out you get a choice from a menu of mechanical bonuses; one forward, -1 to any rolls against you for the rest of the scene, or a String on a witness who did nothing. Where does the condition stands out come from? Your sex move. Your partner tells you how they are special or different, and you can take a String on them or give them the condition. That all does exactly what it sets out to do, but I'd be very wary of having one at the table. Next is the Kitsune, the compulsive liar archetype. I've been fortunate in my life to have more Kitsunes than Onis to deal with, but neither are pleasant. The Kitsune This playbook is an expression of the fox spirit myths. They can not only mimic someone's form, they can take control of someone. The Kitsune's natural state is their fox form, they have to make an effort to appear in human form. This makes an interesting twist on the supernatural, you can't escape it if there's a Kitsune around; if they want to fit into human society anyway, which they might not. This is another "betrays those closest to them" playbook. They start with these two moves, Nine Tales: When you tell the complete, unvarnished truth anyone listening gets a String on you. This is meant to encourage lying, and also to give the Kitsune a way to pass out Strings, which keep them involved in the action and in fact substitute for an XP move. Skinchange: Choose an item, when you balance it on your head you assume your human form. Take it off and you return to fox form. Also choose one ore move from, Sincerest Flattery: This is the mimic someone's form move. When you mimic someone who has no Strings on you, roll with Strings spent. On any hit you assume their form until the next sunrise or sunset (your choice), on a clean hit you can revert to normal whenever you want. Vixen: when you successfully turn someone on they choose an extra option from the 7-9 list. False Promises: Use this move to pay or bride someone for something with worthless junk. There are options for how long it lasts and other handy details. You can't do this to someone who has Strings on you. Kitsunetsuki: Stare into someone's eyes, roll with dark, and possess them on a hit. There are real drawbacks to any of the choices you make on a 7-9, but a clean hit is total possession. Blind Trust: More manipulation of your closest people. When you tell the truth to someone with the infatuated with [your name] you can choose not to give them a String on you. Having Strings on you severely limits the Kitsune's most powerful abilities. Good news ! Your sex move can give your partner the infatuated condition if you, ahem, fake a spectacular - and obviously fake - orgasm. If you do, they get the condition, and some options. Including tagging you as a faker. Anyone with the infatuated with [your name] condition counts as having no strings on you for the purpose of your abilities. So there you have them. Two well designed playbooks covering two all too common archetypes for your Monsterhearts game. Use them at your own risk, but you just might get something very different out of the game. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Nov 10, 2019 |
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Nov 10, 2019 02:15
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Heliotrope posted:Did these skins get updated for 2e? I ask because Bully is a stat replacement which is absent in the new edition. Also, what good stats does the Oni have? I'd assume a skin about bullying others would be Cold/Volatile. Those are from the PDFs labelled MH2. Oni Stats posted:Hot -1 Cold -1 Volatile 2 Dark 1 I can't speak for the author's mind other than to say that the Kitsune is supposed to have a non-standard dynamic: quote:Nine Tales encourages you to lie by giving away Strings any time you tell the truth. That isn’t all bad though, as people with Strings on you will use them, giving you more screen time. Lie enough and people might offer you XP to tell them the truth for once. This is the reason you don’t have a “mark XP” move. Use it to your advantage.
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Nov 17, 2019 00:37
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Leraika posted:Honestly I feel like kitsune would be fine as a reflavoring of either werewolf or fae, depending if you wanted to go 'vicious, human-hunting beast' or 'creature that aids humans when it feels like it and repays its debts'. It's set up as the pathological liar archetype. I've run into those in real life, so this playbook speaks to me.
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Nov 17, 2019 01:32
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I think the really crazy initiation rites and annual mindashing for the Ministry agents can be easily reconciled: The PCs haven't done all of that, at least not yet. The shadowy figure who gives you assignments and might burn your cell for the good of the movement is a fully-initiated Minister. The PCs can be encouraged to work through the initiation steps, but that doesn't have to be a focus of the campaign. Just make sure all the PCs are committed revolutionaries, they don't also have to be Ministry cultists.
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Nov 24, 2019 21:05
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Someone should unfuck the DL series and run it as a Fellowship campaign.
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Jan 31, 2020 05:27
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The more I see of Dragonlance behind the scenes, the happier I am that we quit just a few modules in. We played 3 or 4 of them in 2e back in, oh, 1988. I have distinct, fond memories from several games run that year. Dragonlance ? Not a thing stuck other than a vague impression of sneaking past something scary to get to the end of the adventure alive, but missing out on a big chunk of XP and treasure. The GM called it when he did the math and decided that we'd either end up severely under-leveled by missing XP, or dead the first time we stood up to something with a breath weapon. One of the other games that I do remember was another D&D game played concurrently with DL, and with the same players (having two competent GMs at once is a luxury I don't expect to ever have again). Mike was running DL from the modules, so he ended up reading us the blocks of text that the module said to read to the PCs.. Arthur sketched a treasure map on a sheet of paper, crumpled it up a couple of times, and added coffee stains. He didn't do much more prep than that. His descriptions came right out of his mind's eye and so were naturally more vivid and natural than poor Mike's. I think there's a lesson there, beyond "DL sucks and was never really playtested".
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Feb 2, 2020 09:49
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I Am Just a Box posted:Only in the sense that "prince" as the default term of rulership is meant to be a bit diminutive of the idea of rulership as a whole, on the idea that "king" has a stronger connotation of legitimacy than "prince" does. Prince is also a Machiavelli reference and I don't think you need to look much past that.
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Mar 25, 2020 09:12
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Everyone posted:BTW, a really cool take on a Warhammer Witch can be found in the Gretel and Hansel movie. Another one ? The Hansel & Gretel movie from 2007 is also period and tone appropriate for WHFRP. It knows it's a bit silly and just runs with it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1428538/
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Apr 28, 2020 19:13
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Night10194 posted:And yes, I know the long travelogue had little to do with the adventure, but it's a goddamn long way to just handwave them traveling all the way across not-France. This would probably stand out to me as one of the high points of the campaign.
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May 6, 2020 00:53
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Night10194 posted:The Elf is also a teen! He's 35, but that's like, Elf for 17 or 18. The New Knights !
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May 6, 2020 18:25
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This playbook can. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TgymOFRNrVakl2dmNVeldlOHc/view?usp=sharing GimpInBlack posted:"Hi, Mom." Well played !
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May 17, 2020 01:13
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Night10194 posted:I'm afraid that's just not something I feel comfortable doing in this specific thread; it's a little beyond its scope and I already feel like I was stretching things with what was basically an LP of the adventure modules rather than a strict review. It turns out that a well-written LP of adventure modules can be amazing, and I hope more people handle reviews of adventures with the same skill and creativity.
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May 17, 2020 19:39
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Night10194 posted:It's a completely loving miserable game full of terrible design decisions, system mastery traps, and a heightened sense of everything I hate in 40kRP. I suspect some of the love it gets is because if you've been playing the system a goddamn long time and buy into its assumptions, it's also kind of an optimizer's paradise. Let's hack this into 40K http://www.onesevendesign.com/regiment/the_regiment_2_5_colonial_marines.pdf
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May 18, 2020 03:02
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tanglewood1420 posted:One cool idea I'm kicking around You two might be on to something, BitD would be great for superspies vs anything. Vampires, the Laundry, Mission Impossible, Bond, Austin Powers, Avengers, Cold War, all sortsa poo poo. Lean into one option, build the base mechanics, and then all the other settings are fluff and some mechanical customization. e. The crew book is exactly where defining the sub-genre happens. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 09:28 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 09:24
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:God, I remember the shitstorm that happened when that was being sold at Gencon. People went loving ballistic about the art. Well, yeah. Sex, drugs, violence, the occult, teenagers... Not a great game, but it's a hell of a package - Erol Otus did the art and it's some of his best.
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May 20, 2020 22:29
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Joe Slowboat posted:I listened to the review, and are you sure you’re thinking of the right game? There’s nothing occult in what they reference. Oops, I was thinking of an image that turns out to NOT be from the actual RPG.
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May 21, 2020 16:32
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The Lone Badger posted:I really really want Rogue Trader With Good Design. There's a PbtA Rogue Trader adaption that's actually good, I'd say try that.
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May 22, 2020 14:13
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Joe Slowboat posted:(I've been thinking about running games set in that setting for a while but can't actually settle on whether I'd want to run a nation game there or a personal level adventure.) Grab Legacy and do both ! There's even already a generation ship playset. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242791/Legacy-Generation-Ship-Worlds-of-Legacy-1-PDF
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May 26, 2020 17:56
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Night10194 posted:To be fair Gilbert's charge across the lava bridge at some confused, extremely inattentive Skaven was a direct call to Lancelot's approach to stab the poo poo out of a wedding. It was appreciated.
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May 27, 2020 01:48
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Night, do the needful. A WHFRP 2.0 hack for playing Troika. That can't take more than 40 or so new or adapted careers...
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Jun 21, 2020 10:11
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Mors Rattus posted:I really intensely dislike the decision to have 12+ results by default, especially with the ease of odd improvement that you get with Power Points. I feel it does bad things to the narrative flow produced by moves. I'd normally agree but I'm going to make an exception here. This is the game where the power of friendship is going to save the world over and over. The mechanics support the players doing exactly that. They still have to do it; play off relationships, build power through teamwork, all working towards putting an irresistible finishing move on the boss. To get those really high bonuses and power points the players have to set it up in the fiction, succeed at several preparatory moves (that could fail and derail the whole thing), and then set up on the boss for the finisher. I think that's enough work in-character, in-genre, and in-theme that a nearly-automatic KO-the-big-bad finisher is earned and not excessive. The chance of getting a negative outcome on any of the preparatory moves is the key factor in making this work. If you get partial successes, you'll thwart the evil plan but the big bad will be back. Any failure can leave the group with a big mess to clean up before they can go after the big bad again. Only if they hit multiple successes are they going to have power points and modifiers at +4 or higher. It's a campaign pivotal moment, they should have a chance to win big..
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Jul 1, 2020 20:45
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I've long since considered that the influence of the Terrans on the Ziru Sirka is dramatically underestimated in two areas, one cultural and one technological. Cultural. Given the difficulties involved in making native Vilani foodstuffs even edible, and the social structures that arose and persisted around resolving them, Terran cuisine would have gone through Vilani space faster than conquering fleets. Show up at a subsector capitol, put on a banquet, and show the local authorities where to sign. Your average Free Trader needs a chef more than it needs a Ship's Lawyer. The fate of worlds turned on pizza. Technological. Given Vilani society, their primary software development methodology isn't Waterfall, it's Glacier. Terran code will outperform Vilani code on the same hardware by orders of magnitude. And hardware ? The Vilani would never have allowed Moore's Law to take effect, the Terrans relied on it. A flavor of Unix would be ported to all Vilani standard hardware just for the exercise. Then the black hats go to work on Vilani infrastructure...
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Jul 14, 2020 04:16
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Falconier111 posted:edit: But yeah, I can easily envision running campaigns around coders or hackers cutting through Vilani infrastructure or a shipfull of chefs whipping up wild new dishes with undiscovered ingredients for nobles. And that speaks to the vibrancy of the setting, really. Roadies for a pop act is the canonical best Traveller campaign idea.
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Jul 14, 2020 07:24
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BinaryDoubts posted:Re: the deck of encounters, one of the cards saying it can lead to another card made me think of an adventure packaged as a deck of tarot-sized cards, one for each major encounter. You could have cards at the back with monster stats etc so you just lay 'em out in front of you according to the encounter card. Hell, you could package a basic RPG (maybe one aimed at being played while travelling) that way. Preset cards for every character, instruction cards you flip and read as you go through the adventure. I'll back that Kickstarter. Falconier111 posted:they govern the trailing part of the empire (picture a map with coreward as up and rimward as down, trailing is to the right). Hey ! Let's look at maps ! Here's the Traveller Map website set to the Interstellar Wars millieu. https://travellermap.com/?p=-7.08!-7.331!2.6&options=58359&milieu=IW Note the Coreward, Trailing, Rimward, Spinward directions. Also note that each of those fuzzy little dots is an inhabited system. Each of those is at least one jump (one week travel time) apart. There's Terra down in the bottom center and Vland about 4 sectors Coreward. That's about a three-year travel time, each way. Up at the top of the map should be a "Viewing IW data. Tap to return to M1105". Hit it, or find the Golden Age milieu in the settings at the top right. Now we're in the time period where the basic map was generated, Traveller history started here. You can see the Imperium, its neighbors Major and Minor, the big bite out of the Solomani Sphere where the Imperium obviously won a war. Zoom in. The sector names show up, you start to get the subsector grid within them, and trade routes show up in green. Zoom in again and names of governments start showing up and the hex grid this is all based on is drawn in. Push in again and subsector names appear, and worlds take on some detail; the letters are starport types with A being full-service and can build starships, blue worlds have liquid water, a dot at about 2 o'clock indicates a gas giant, and more icons start to fill in. Keep zooming in and you'll get world names, and a string of numbers and letters called the Universal World Profile which gives details about breathing the air, how may people live there, and what their government is like. I absolutely love this site. Falconier111 posted:Odds are low, but extant. See, I’d have to buy it first No, no you don't. If you'll review it, I'll provide it. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Jul 20, 2020 |
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Jul 20, 2020 02:28
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Falconier111 posted:Also, Yup. My background is in the Spinward Marches, so a guided tour of the Rim of Fire will be a treat.
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Jul 20, 2020 17:32
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mellonbread posted:My next review will probably be another map or dungeon generator. One I like better. Have you done anything with How to Host a Dungeon 2.0 ?
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Jul 23, 2020 03:52
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mellonbread posted:I had never heard of it until you brought it up. I can't tell from looking at it if the end result is actually a playable dungeon that you can take a group of players through, or if "dungeon creation" is just the theme. It's more of the theme. You won't map it down to individual, keyed, rooms but you will get "fire giants moved in here, there's an otyugh population nearby" or "a dark elf civilization was over here, now antlings moved in to some of the chambers" You start the Primordial Age by throwing dice at a sheet of paper and filling in an origin story, caves, caverns, magma pools, and whatnot. The the Age of Civilization begins. Pick a civ (dwarves, dark elves, magicians, or demons) and play through several rounds as they grow, dig new areas, accumulate treasure, and finally fall. There are simple rules guiding this, but you'll have as much creative input as you like. After the Fall, the Age of Monsters begins. Monsters spawn on the map, sometimes fight each other, some die out or leave, and one group eventually becomes dominant. They will be the Big Bad in the... Age of Villainy ! The dominant monsters become either The Horde or The Empire and follow their own lifecycle as before until they stagnate or conquer the world. At any point you can stop, draw some detailed maps, and send your players in. Every stage of the game is loaded with adventure hooks. If you play through the whole thing and keep notes, you've got an Underground with a deep history for your players to explore. I've done two. My maps kind of end up like this person's,  And I've seen some really good maps from people with visual talent. /pic425563.jpg) Playable demo version: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/299498/How-to-Host-a-Dungeon-FREE-VERSION
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Jul 24, 2020 19:13
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Falconier111 posted:It’s the drug control stat, too < Well, it started in Traveller as the gun control stat. Law level was "what guns can you carry" and a target on 2d6 for the authorities to mess with the players.
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Jul 28, 2020 02:47
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Dallbun posted:Old elves don’t die, they simply retire to These days playing ecoterrorists is a good campaign hook in its own right. And by the way, I don't think you've gotten enough love for the clever intros to each part of the review. They add a lot and are very much appreciated.
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Jul 29, 2020 02:46
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Falconier111 posted:E: I just discovered the Sumerian word “Dingir” is a term that describes a divinity. Neat! Centuries later, the Dingir class destroyers were the mainstay of Solomani escort squadrons during the Solomani Rim War. And a popular ship in playtests of Squadron Strike: Traveller Fleet Book 2. If you want to get in on the Rim War, we teach (and play) Squadron Strike online here: https://vtt.mikezekim.com/learn
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Aug 1, 2020 05:51
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Ultiville posted:And of course we have lots of evidence that people migrated pretty frequently and over long distances even in pre-modern times. So the idea that it'd be unheard of to have some centaurs in your city or whatever is both less realistic and less interesting than it could be. So bring on the doppelganger townsfolk, but like, as a thing that just happens, IMO. Elizabeth Moon's Paksennarion series gets a certain amount of flak for just being someone's D&D campaign down to the Village of Hommlet and being able to follow Paks as she levels up as paladin and gains abilities. But it's a well-thought out D&D novelization, down to, you guessed it, the deep ties between the elves and their human neighbors that are major plot points in the series. It's not as original as her science fiction (especially Remnant Population) but they're solid books that hold up, and they're better than almost all of the licensed D&D novels.
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Aug 6, 2020 03:24
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Sunlands In times of legend, the sun goddess killed an enormous monster here, piercing it with her spear of pure light. the body is long gone, leaving behind well-fertilized plains, and noisome swamps over the remnants of corruption. Empires came and went, and now the Sunlands call to adventurers ! Sunlands is the product of Kickstarter's second Zine Quest, now available on DTRPG.com. It's a system agnostic hexcrawl on a 17x21 map, each 6-mile hex having at least an encounter or point of interest like a small town or keep. There are also terrain-based random encounters for hexes where the unique encounter is hard to find. There are also two insect-themed species to deal with. Pale Elves are bug-happy elves, keeping them as companions, and brewing some wildly potent hallucinogens. Vespix are intelligent wasps with various castes; soldiers are dangerous but the psychic factors are worse. Neither have any stats given. You're getting a complete campaign in 32 pages, but the GM is going to have to do the heavy lifting for mechanics. So what do you get ? A ton of whimsical, charming encounters, twists on ordinary monsters, and a number of quest-lines built in. It’d make a solid framework for a campaign. The GM gets a lot of stuff to expand upon, tied together with common themes, and there’s enough here for many gaming sessions. Quests. There are two main quests built around finding items in different locations. One involves finding the three items necessary to lay a ghost to rest. Including the knife she killed her husband with. Another involves three cursed musical instruments. If they're all brought to a natural stage in one hex will lead to ghostly performances of beautiful music every night. Places and encounters. There are a lot of hexes. Places marked with a certain symbol are Obvious and can be seen by anyone traversing the hex, and avoided or visited at the players' whim. Other places are Subtle, a thorough search or following directions will always turn them up, otherwise they are found on a 10% by a party just passing through. Some encounters are Mandatory, they will always be encountered by the party along with any random encounter rolled - timing up to the GM. Optional encounters only show up if a random encounter is rolled, and "usually" only replacing the 1-4 result on the regular d10 encounter table, GM fiat time again. Random Encounters Each terrain type has its own encounter table accompanied by a description of that kind of terrain. This ranges from grassy or forested hills, to the poisoned scar or the great swamp. The best terrain is the Blessed Lands, all under cultivation with small villages or hamlets scattered about every few miles. Roll for a random encounter once during the day and once at night, 20% chance. In poisoned lands or the Great Swamp roll twice at night. Taking the first table given, grassy hills, as an example you can encounter: * A shepherd (95% chance of human, otherwise Other at the GM's discretion) who knows the local area (this and adjacent hexes) and can give directions to Subtle places nearby. * A pack of wolves, with advice to mix in other predators if wolves keep coming up. * Minor or major goblin raiding parties, which will also establish that their lair is within 2 hexes, which is where their loot is. * A necromancer (tied in to a specific location) with a mercenary escort looking for interesting corpses, and willing to create them if they find one that isn't ready yet. * A bunch of rear end in a top hat hunters out looking for a specific phoenix. * A specific demon bound to a specific hex, the farther away from that hex, the weaker she is. * Rolls on tables for different terrain types * A serious storm, find shelter RFN. What we don't get Any kind of summary of the major plot threads, major encounters, special locations, or active factions in the region. The GM is going to have to go through a lot of hexes to pick out recurring elements. That necromancer on the encounter table above ? Their family is named, they have an innocuous-looking home base, and villagers in two specific hexes have their suspicions. I suppose a GM could get by just keeping ahead of the players by a few hexes, but there are story arcs present that a GM could fumble just because they didn't know something over here was related to something over there. There isn't a lot of art, so were not getting any in this mini-review, just use your imagination !. Hexes Hexes ! So many hexes to explore. I'm going to pick out a few favorites and a moderately random selection of other hexes. This section is the meat of the product and what actually makes it a campaign framework worth playing. 1708: Mandatory encounter. "The Titan MANOS is learning to cook and demands that any visitors let him feed them. He is a terrible chef." The players have a chance to piss off a titan. Or make friends with a Titan. Or pick up a quest-giver who is interested in exotic ingredients. Those two sentences pack in a lot of game play potential. 0509: Subtle place. "An unremarkable cottage contains the halfling sage HOLLY GOODBARREL. A potent wizard in her own right, she is also a member of the notorious Goodbarrel crime family." Any GM who can't turn that into pure gaming gold just isn't trying. 1013 Subtle place. “This ‘shrine to the sun’ is just a way for the eleven-year-old aasimar girl TIA (local to Howling Hole, 0912) to trick money out of travellers. Tia uses her various light-based magic powers to enhance the con, and sometimes to play other practical jokes.” 1022 “Every sound in this area carries an echo. No-one knows why.” I love a good red herring. 1014 not-so-Subtle place. “A group of 6d10 kobolds in a shallow cave have acquired a large barrel of potent grain liquor, and are now all friendly drunk.” Another uncommon RP opportunity. 0216 Optional Encounter: SANDRA the dwarf pretends to be just another hard-drinking dwarf miner, but she is secretly the greatest romance writer of the region; bards for hundreds of miles tell her tales and sing her songs. The next one is going to feature very thinly disguised versions of the player characters.” 0801 Optional Encounter: The bounty hunter OLEG is looking to collect bounties on the notorious Goodbarrel clan, and he heard there are two easier-to-catch members here in the Sunlands. Failing that, any kind of dead halfling who looks kind of right will do.” That goes a little dak, but the Goodbarrel plot line is still gold. 0905 Optional Encounter: “YURIA is a burglar and pickpocket engaged in a year-long contest with her younger sister Svetlana (1414) to see who can accumulate the most money.” 1414 Optional Encounter: “SVETLANA is a con artist engaged in a year-long contest with her older sister YURIA (0905) to see who can accumulate the most money.” These two NPCs will make for some interesting encounters. 0401 Subtle Place: “An aging OWLBEAR claims this territory; although slow it is exceedingly cunning.” A nice twist on a classic monster. It’s left to the GM to figure out how to handle an “exceedingly cunning” owlbear, but the effort should be worth it. 1015 Subtle Place: “A depression here holds a pool of water and a stone in the approximate shape of a pregnant woman, up to its “waist” in the pool. Water from the pool eases the pain of women in childbirth and minimizes complications.” That’d be super useful in any quasi-medieval society 0619: Optional encounter: “This giant crocodile once ate a heretical priest, and as a reward was blessed by the god with superlative size and spell-turning scales.” 1214: Mandatory encounter: “Anyone entering this hex is challenged by the sphinx FATIMA, whose 'riddles' are all terrible puns. Getting the right answer – spoiling her punchline – angers her, but playing along and groaning appropriately guarantees a good reaction.” Tricky. For the wrong GM this will be an awful waste of time. 1605 Subtle place: “A stone dais sits here, unmarked. Local rumour maintains that when someone is about to die, Death visits the dais to dance – and when present, can be bargained with.” A reminder that the book is annoyingly vague about the farms, hamlets, and small villages to be found in the better farmland. I’ll leave off the actual hexes here, that’s a representative sample of what you’ll find in the Sunlands. A 32-page booklet is a very short format for a whole region to adventure in, but I think any GM willing to put flesh on these bones is going to get a very good campaigns setting out of it. I’d rate this as way more useful than the encounter decks. Even if you don't use the setting as a whole, there's a gold mine here of interesting ideas for your own game.
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Aug 8, 2020 05:39
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I'm keen on Solomani right now because I'm working on Squadron Strike: Traveller Fleetbook 2, which covers the Solomani Rim War, plus some shenanigans with the Aslan trying to pick off territory while both Imperials and Solomani are busy. Fun fact about the timing of the war: the Solomani had to attack when they did, they had technological parity with the Imperium with both side fielding TL14 navies. The Imperium was starting construction on the first wave of TL15 fleet units, and the Solomani had to have a settled defensive position when those arrived in force. They didn't make it, so the Imperial counterattack came from fleets with a technological advantage over Solomani fleets out of position to offer a strong defense. The new Imperial units also had a uniformly higher thrust to go along with an electronic warfare advantage. We need playtesters ! We teach the game online ! No purchase necessary ! https://vtt.mikezekim.com/learn
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Aug 9, 2020 20:52
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Falconier111 posted:
You dodged a typo. 
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Aug 16, 2020 20:13
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Mothership has some interesting stuff in it, but I think you'd be better off using the Alien RPG which doesn't have the obvious gaps in the rules. The Mothership adventures should work just fine in the other system.
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Aug 19, 2020 18:00
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Mind War ! Warriors of the Green Planet !  The first thing after the cover is a full page of typewritten history. This is 1976. I’m still in Massachusetts. Desktop Publishing is a decade away. Cut and paste still meant an Xacto knife and actual paste. The fact that they got the chapter headers in with a larger typeface says a lot for the quality of the layout. In 2037 the Earth flipped on its axis. This isn’t an extinction event, but pretty much everything man-made falls down all at once. Civilization ends and people start digging out and putting everything back together. It turns out that Africa got lucky and had the least damage from the event. On top of that, there is a continent-wide Wakanda moment as they discover special diamond forms good for fusion power and directed-energy weapons. As a spinoff they have lots of free helium, so there you go: fusion powered airships with beam weapons in an age of warlords and rebuilding. That’s as good an excuse for airship warfare as any setting has ever had, I’m completely hip to this. 500-odd years after the cataclysm psychic powers have also emerged. There’s more history about the Mind Guild, but we’re on the first numbered page and we already have psychic wars and airships coming out of Africa to re-civilize the globe. It’s a goddamned shame this setting faceplanted as soon as it hit retail. But this is 1976, gaming is in its infancy. Social mores weren’t maybe in tune with “Africa re-civilize the world” back then, but a revival of this property today could hit six figures on Kickstarter. Not least because at least one of the three games they did was actually good. Mind War !  After the backstory and some art, we get to the actual game. This is a WEPLOT-WEGO game. Everybody plots their moves, attacks, and defenses. Then movement happens and there’s a phase to plot a reserve allocation to attack or defense. Para-psis come in three classes. They have a base strength from their class (which is public knowledge), plus a small random factor which is a secret. That total is fixed for the game and you can neither spend more points than you have, nor save points for next turn. The random factor is based on a secret chit draw, so there’s a record.  If you look at the game tables, a class 3 is worth three or 4 class 1 characters in raw power. You’ll also see that movement costs ramp up very quickly. Ignore the Attack Strength table for now. You plot movement, attacks, defenses, and reserves in a very structured fashion I will not go into. Any mistakes invalidate and cancel all of your attacks and defenses. That’s bad. You may examine your opponent’s plot at the end of the game if you think they’re sketch. Note later that some actions might not be revealed, this adds to the bluffing quality of the game. Movement. Let's start with the map,  Movement is point to point on the map, instantaneous, and secretly plotted. If two characters end up in the same circle, both characters have their plot cancelled for the turn, including attack and defense. On the first turn, all characters must move onto the board, paying 1 psi point for a 1-space move. There is a small ambiguity here. First, if Albeth moves from 3 to 12, but Bekel also moves to 12, fine, they bounce. What happens if Caron plotted a move to 3 ? It’s pretty obvious that Caron also gets bounced back to where they started, but it’s left unclear - possibly for reasons of space. Or they’d already laid out that page and didn’t have room for it. Attack. An attack has a range of 2 and does not diminish with range. An attack is plotted into a circle adjacent to where the character ends their move and then into any point adjacent to that one, along with a strength in psi points. If two or more attacks enter a circle from the same direction, their strengths are combined. You may plot more than one attack, and you may launch multiple attacks into a circle that split off and end in different, adjacent circles. Attacks are capped at 7 psi points each. One nice touch, if nobody is in range to even possibly attack another character after movement is revealed, then the turn ends without plotted attacks and defenses being revealed. Defense You can spend up to 7 psi points to put up a shield between your circle (where you ended movement) and an adjacent shield. Any attack points coming from that direction have to overcome your shield. You may have more than one shield up, covering different directions. Do not reveal defensive plots if no attack tests them. Reserves You may save 0,1, or 2 psi points from your initial plot each turn. After movement, you may add them to any existing attack or defense plot, observing the 7 point limit. Class 1 psis may not allocate reserves. Resolution Now we’re using the Attack Strength table ! It’s pretty simple, subtract the defensive shield’s strength from the power in the attack. If there’s any left, find that column and roll a d6. Results are in whole classs lost. If you lose a class, you draw a new random chit to add to your new - lower - base psi strength. So landing a 3 point attack on someone has a 50% chance of them losing at least one class, and a 16% chance of two. The game ends when only one player (or team) has characters on the board. Optional Rules There are two: The Black Maw of Baak. Spend all of your psi points creating a void in one circle. Anyone moving into or through a Maw is *poof* gone. The Move of Last Resort. Something else a class 1 can’t do. If you are taking an attack AND have 2 points of unused Reserve plotted, you can try and cancel the attack and move into an adjacent circle. Hope there aren’t any attacks plotted there. You roll a die for effect. One a 1 it doesn’t work and all attacks and defenses are as plotted, 2-5 it works, 6 it works but you lose 4 points of strength until the end of the game (or you lose a whole class). Scenarios There are 5 scenarios, and three of them are class 1, 2, or 3 1v1 duels. But they come with backstory, so that’s cool. Number 4 is a class 3 against 2 class 2s. The fifth scenario is 3 players each with a class 2 psi. Rolling your own matchups should be easy. There you have it, Mind War in all its 1976, typewritten glory !
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Sep 9, 2020 04:19
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FMguru posted:There's a copy up on eBay! $47 + $7 shipping, own it yourself! https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mind-War-1976-Richard-B-Jordison-Complete-in-original-packaging-/303641082741 That's a lot of shipping for four sheets of paper with words on them folded in half and stapled. And the original packaging was a ziplock bag. Mine's in the original  The counters are punched though.
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Sep 9, 2020 04:32
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FMguru posted:I have a fondness for weird old gaming artifacts of the 1970s and early 1980s, especially from little one-man hobby game companies that probably sold them at just their local con and out of their PO box. Real DIY energy. And nobody knew what you couldn't do, so they tried. Like this series.
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Sep 9, 2020 05:20
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