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Mors Rattus posted:The game’s assumption is the party has been recruited by Bureau Noir, yes. Screw that, give me a campaign where PCs are all working for Bureau Aegis and building cases against corporations for labour rights violations instead.
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Jan 7, 2022 03:04
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Eberron is definitely held back by having to be a D&D setting, but it at least succeeds in making the boring-rear end whitebread PHB races slightly interesting in the same way that Dark Sun succeeds ( Plus, you can actually make "monsters of the world, unite" jokes and have them be 100% in-character-accurate to the setting.
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Dec 10, 2022 12:10
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Halloween Jack posted:The way the mechanics for actually Shifting was handled smacks of that era of design where developers went into a stinky flop sweat at the thought of ever actually doing anything interesting. Now that I'm on the topic, the way Shifters were designed reminds me how much I loving despise 3e-era design, and the extent to which that lived on in 4e. With the Go gently caress Yourself ability, X times per day you can gain a +Y bonus to Who Gives A poo poo for Z rounds. There's a whole chain of Who loving Cares feats you can take to gain an extra +A to Some Combat Option You Never Use Because It Sucks poo poo, but only in Bullshit Situation That Will Come Up Twice in a Yearlong Campaign. I don't think of that as 3.x-era design - nickel-and-dime game design is still alive and well today. It's really just what you get in a lot of (badly-designed) rules-heavy games. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 17:51
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Everyone posted:Very specific WHFRPG2e answer but because somebody has to toss the Nasty Chaos Thingie into a volcano/blast furnace/hole-in-reality. They're the only ones immune to mutation. Every other race risks getting Screaming Dick Tentacles but them. Plus they make awesome pies. And are great for stealing poo poo. No, that's hobbits.
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Dec 14, 2022 00:12
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Fivemarks posted:I actually have a major complaint about Artificers. They're the ONLY PEOPLE allowed to use firearms, blackpowder or otherwise. But this seems bullshit to me: Firearms are way easier to use and learn how to use than, say, a Longbow or a Sword, and if we're talking about Black Powder weapons we're looking at single shot weapons. You can absolutely have a fantasy milieu that includes the martials having the ranged and single shot hitting power of weapons to give them some kind of flexibility. Eberron has mass-produced magic wands that stand in for guns, blackpowder weapons basically aren't relevant to the setting.
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Dec 23, 2022 17:49
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Cooked Auto posted:5e is exceedingly popular these days, pretty much everyone has made, or converted, something for it just because its so accessible. It's not even remotely "accessible" except in the sense that you can find places to buy it. It's both expensive to get into and a huge pile of poorly-written, fiddly crunch, which is the opposite of actually being an accessible system. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 01:51
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Nessus posted:Final Fantasy XIV addresses this by having the various races have distinct sub cultural groups, many of which are just folks, some of whom are furious cultists who attack on sight. The furious cultists aren't a distinct subcultural group, they're normal people who've been brainwashed and had their souls corrupted. They're also used as a convenient excuse to label the cultures they used to belong to as nonhuman and deny them all the rights and legal protections afforded to "civilised" peoples, because it's politically and economically expedient for the protagonist city-states to do so. The game occasionally points out this is all a crock of dogshit.
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Jan 25, 2023 19:11
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Kurieg posted:The lead up to endwalker is you doing a tour of all the city states and demonstrably showing that not only is this a crock of poo poo, we can now actionably reverse the soul damage. Then telling the people who hate this new status quo to pound sand. With honor duels. Come to Etheirys, where your choices of nation to call home are: - fascist imperialists with a persecution complex who are obsessed with blood purity. - genocidal xenophobic ultraconservative christians pimping for a thousand-year blood war. - one of two settler-colonial city-states whose fortunes were built entirely on the back of breaking treaties with the natives to steal their land and resources (bonus: one of them once weaponised a zombie plague to genocide their rival city! the other is pirates). - a quaint little village in the middle of a sapient forest. The forest is hell-bent on murdering everyone inside it but it's okay, it selects children to speak for it so they can tell people what not to do to avoid getting murdered, and it turns out that mostly what you need to do to not get murdered is be very, very racist.
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Jan 25, 2023 21:17
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Pvt.Scott posted:I think the problem is that PF2 Fighters don't do anything cool. They just murder dudes real good. That's fine I guess. Sometimes all I want to do in a fantasy RPG is roll to hit. They've solved the problem of fighters being mechanically useless, but not the problem of 3.x fighters being incredibly boring.
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Feb 23, 2023 11:32
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AmiYumi posted:Fire Emblem wouldn’t even be in my first 5 thoughts for a JRPG series, but drat if it doesn’t work as good inspiration here It's essentially FF14 fanart, so not really hitting Fire Emblem notes.
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Apr 28, 2023 21:52
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Runa posted:To second your post, not only is that illustration directly emulating the art style of the official art that gets posted on the ffxiv official community news site, players familiar with the game can actually see what armor pieces inspired which outfits. Including a white-dyed 2B dress from the Nier crossover alliance raid. The artist (Catthy Trinh) does FF14 comms and her art generally owns: https://twitter.com/CatthyTrinhArt But yeah, it's mostly just funny. The Fabula Ultima iconics are a PLD/WAR/WHM/SCH*/NIN/BLM/BRD/DNC static, and two thirds of them are just wearing their AF sets. *counting what's probably a Tinkerer as the second healer because that's obviously a carbuncle stand-in. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Apr 29, 2023 |
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Apr 29, 2023 00:57
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AmiYumi posted:Eh, it's all pulling from the same "Western fantasy seen through decades of iterative JRPGs" design lenses in the end, I just felt like defending myself. Y'all enjoy the rest of your weekend. Sorry, but you were very slightly wrong about some incredibly inconsequential detail on the Internet, so the punishment is death.
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Apr 30, 2023 10:51
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MatteusTheCorrupt posted:Unless I misread it completely, Breach boosts damage every time the target takes damage, so If enough allies hit the target, it might be better than a regular attack. It looks like it even boosts damage from enemies hurting themselves. This is my reading as well, given the specific wording.
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May 30, 2023 12:25
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Josef bugman posted:Does anyone have any suggestions for what, other than D&D I could run Eberron in? I love the world but am not the biggest fan of using the system. Which part of Eberron? That question doesn't work because the setting contains a whole bunch of different genres and tones that would each be supported by a different system. If you're looking for an all-in-one D&D replacement that doesn't have a bunch of other flaws, none really exist. You could try Tiny Dungeon or Fantasy AGE or (if you can get over how bad some of the classes are) 13th Age, if you just want D&D But Not D&D. You could also just run it in Fate, because Eberron is just pulp adventures wearing a high fantasy getup. The answer is otherwise going to be very different based on whether you say you want to run a game set in Sharn where everyone is playing PIs and journalists, or a game where the players are important people in some of the Houses and overseeing trade and commerce.
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Jul 21, 2023 22:03
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FWIW, in the context of Eberron, Baker is on record specifically saying vampires are Evil because Evil == selfishness, and the act of being turned into a vampire stops people from being able to feel empathy and gives them intense predator instincts, turning them into blood-sucking sociopaths even if they have the moral fibre and mental fortitude to not act on those instincts. There are heroic vampires (especially in the Blood of Vol), but they're still cosmologically Evil for that reason. e; the BoV also prefers to turn their bodhisattvas into mummies instead of vampires, because they don't have these problems. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Oct 31, 2023 |
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Oct 31, 2023 23:14
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That Arcanist rework sounds fantastic, but it definitely feels like Arcanists should learn Arcana like other classes learn spells instead of as pure fiat. I'm assuming this is Patreon playtest material - hopefully the core book will just get updated with this version when it's finalised.
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Nov 18, 2023 01:34
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The Mournland is just the STALKER Exclusion Zone and that's why it's good. It being a sudden and utterly inexplicable catastrophe is the point, not only as a plot device (that's why it ended the war, as pointed out in the post above this one) but also because it means you can make it spooky and put all kinds of hosed up things in it if the PCs go there.
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Nov 20, 2023 20:18
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 Did you know there's an official Cowboy Bebop roleplaying game? It made half a million euros on Kickstarter last year, and was written by an Italian graphic design studio whose tabletop output before this is almost entirely made up of D&D 5e supplements (always a great sign). You'd be forgiven for thinking there's no way this is anything but a cheap cash-in, but no: it actually has an original system that's very dedicated to replicating the tone, aesthetics, and flow of the show. Unfortunately so, because in a lot of places, it ends up feeling less like a game that wants you to play a cool crew of sad bounty hunters in the anime's setting, and more like a game that really, really wants you to just play the crew of the Bebop as they go through the events of the show. I read this recently after getting my copy of the game, and thought it's interesting and flawed enough that it deserves a write-up, so here we are.  Chapter 0:  Something about the chapter title and completely random Ed quote next to a single-paragraph summary cracks me up. The game starts out with the quasi-mandatory "what is an RPG?" section, except it's mercifully short. It then moves on to what is honestly a pretty great intro - first, it lays out a few aesthetic and thematic touchstones about the setting:
Money is never enough, but it's never a problem: bounty hunters are always broke, which is why they're forced to hunt people and risk their lives for a living instead of sitting around enjoying a life of leisure. On the other hand, this isn't a game about making or counting money - the crew always has enough money to pay tolls, bribe informants, or procure whatever things they need for the plot to move forward. More importantly, the characters' morals and principles frequently clash with their job, and win out - because they're tragic heroes and the bounties are always people. The past will come back to haunt you: every bounty hunter is dragging around a bunch of baggage from their past that they ran away from and never resolved, and dealing with that baggage is core to their character arc. One of the core mechanical parts of a character is a Memory representing this baggage, which can be tapped into to push themselves - something that will eventually lead to their past catching up with them. Death is always dramatic, never meaningless: this is a game about telling a story. There are no cheap, easy PC deaths - if someone is going to die, it will be as a character-defining moment that represents them coming to term with their past, not because they ran out of hit points. Drive your character like a stolen car: bounty hunters are dangerous people in a dangerous line of work, with vices and foibles and pasts they're on the run from. They don't take safe, logical choices that keep them out of harm's way - they take risks and they get hurt, because that's what makes for an interesting story. Writer, director, actor, and audience: everyone fills all four of these roles, and contributes to building the story. The game is explicitly about playing through a TV anime series, not about dealing with fiddly minutia, and is framed in terms of scenes and episodes. Characters are made through actions: as an extension of the above, characters are defined purely in terms of what they do, look like, and wear or carry - because everything is defined as though this were a TV show. You don't represent character ideology or feelings directly; instead, you model the way they look, the things they do, and the tools they use, and those things in turn represent the character's beliefs and emotions. The chapter ends with a quick acknowledgement of what the designers call its primary influences:  The namedrops will seem a little odd by the end of this read-through. COMING EPISODE: we take a look at chapter 1, which covers the basic resolution system. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 20:01
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 This chapter covers the basic task resolution mechanics of the game - Tests and Clocks - but you'll actually have to wait for me to get to the next chapter, which goes over session structure mechanics, for parts of this to make sense. Overall, I feel like the book is reasonably well-organised (and the PDF has good bookmarks, which helps a lot) but this is definitely one of those things where the split makes sense when using the book as a reference, but not when using it as learning material. Cowboy Bebop: The Roleplaying Game: Part 2: Chapter 1: Rules (part 1 of the rules) Before I start talking about the actual rules, I want to mention something about the book's art direction and layout:  See that? Basically every spread is like this. The book contains absolutely no original art - every piece of art in it comes directly from the show, and a lot of the times the screencaps they choose feel completely disconnected from what the text is actually talking about. Alright, with that said, let's move on to how to actually play this: Sessions and Tabs The first thing the game tells you is that it's organised into Sessions (in the musical sense, not the roleplaying sense - the book explains that each Session should be 1-2 hours long, so you're actually probably getting two Sessions to a session), each of which corresponds to an episode of the show in terms of structure. Sessions are divided into Tabs, which are escalating phases - there are exactly three, they're always the same, and they're named after the only lyrics in the Cowboy Bebop opening. The game doesn't actually explain Tabs at this point, so neither will I. You'll just have to wait for the next post. Tests At its core, the resolution system starts off mechanically pretty simple: you roll a pool of d6, then add them up together. If this beats the Difficulty (which is primarily determined by which Tab you're in - again, more on that later), you score 1 Hit. If you roll two or more 6s, you score another Hit, for a maximum of two Hits per roll. On the same roll, for every 1 rolled, the GM (called Big Shot in the game, but I'm not abbreviating that) scores a Shock; if you don't roll any 1s, they get a single Shock automatically anyway (this will increase later on in the session as the stakes escalate). This means every roll moves things forward - in the players' favour if they score Hits, or against them when the GM scores Shocks. To build this pool, you:
The game makes it clear that Tests only happen if two conditions are met: the players have something they want to do, and the consequences for not doing it are interesting. Otherwise, no roll happens; just adjudicate things in a way that fits the fiction (pretty standard stuff). The player who rolled then has the opportunity to negate one Shock by wounding one of the Traits they used (Traits can't be added to rolls as long as they're wounded; you can still use the corresponding item or physical feature in your descriptions, you just don't get the d6), and the opportunity to negate one Shock by marking a Bullet (more on those later). After all that, you tally all Hits and any remaining Shocks, then player and GM both get to spend them at the same time. At a rate of one for one, they can be spent on:
Note that there's a number of special actions (called Riffs) that bounty hunters and the Big Shot can take to further modify rolls - these allow them to do things like force a reroll at a cost, or take Disadvantage to a roll to heal wounded Traits. The book has them in this chapter because they modify Tests, but I'll be covering them in the next post because access to specific Riffs is limited based on what Tab the Session is currently in. Most of these cost Rhythm (a player resource allocated at the start of a Session) or Risks to use. Clocks ...actually carry most of the game. You see, every single Tab of every single Session has a Main Objective clock and a Main Threat clock, each of which will be between 4 and 8 segments, depending on how easy/hard it is to accomplish the particular thing they represent. These get created immediately at the start of a Tab, so the two clocks that have the power to actually move the Session forward are always there from the very start. If the Main Objective clock fills, the bounty hunters have accomplished the main thing driving the plot forward in this Tab: they've found the bounty, learned their secret, won their chase, come victorious out of the shootout, successfully evaded the triads, or whatever else the table agreed was required to move on to the next Tab. Conversely, if the Main Threat clock fills, the threat it represents has come to pass - the bomb goes off, the bounty slips away, the crew are forced to withdraw, and so forth. The Tab is still closed, but the player characters don't get what they were going for - in a Classic Session, this is finding out information that lets them take on the bounty (in either of the first two Tabs) or capturing the bounty directly (in the third), but there are a few other possibilities. It's entirely possible to have or create through play other Objective clocks tracking things the player characters are trying to accomplish, or other Threat clocks tracking bad things that will happen when they fill - you just have one of each designated as the clocks that move everyone to the next Tab when you set the Tab up. If either Main clock fills, the Tab is closed and all remaining clocks stop being relevant and disappear - the action has moved on, and those plot threads never actually mattered or resolve themselves off-screen. It's also worth noting that unlike FitD, you can never untick a clock - clocks only ever tick forward. Approaches Clocks and bounty hunters both have five Approaches, which are all named after musical genres. Given what the authors say about the games that inspired them, you might expect these to be the equivalent of PbtA stats or FitD actions/attributes, i.e. a numerical rating that's somehow involved in your rolls, but no - player character Approaches have no numerical value attached to them whatsoever. Instead, they serve primarily to limit what Traits players can bring in when rolling a Test - Traits are tied to specific Approaches, and you can only use Traits under whatever Approach you're using when you roll. For clocks, the Big Shot picks one of the five Approaches when creating them. Objective clock Approaches are picked based on what the GM feels is the most logical way to achieve the objective; to actually fill a clock, you must make the final roll against it using the clock's Approach. This feels a little contrary to the spirit of FitD clocks, but I actually don't mind the idea - it solves a problem these sometimes have where players describe their character's actions in a way that wouldn't logically resolve something fully in the fiction because they're not expecting to tick all remaining segments on this roll, then get lucky and accidentally fill the clock, and everyone is left trying to figure out how a Sway roll to sneak into the kitchen ends up opening the bank vault somehow. This way, players can still progress a clock with any Approach, but the GM is gently guiding things towards an action type that makes sense as something that would definitively resolve things in the fiction. By contrast, Threat clocks Approaches are chosen based on what kind of consequence the Threat clock represents, and have a bit more mechanical weight - each Threat clock Approach is tied to a specific mechanical penalty that gets imposed on the player characters if the clock manages to fill. The five Approaches are: Rock, which is the Approach for acting under pressure or withstanding danger.
COMING EPISODE: Sessions and Tabs, but for real this time. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 21:40
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Covok posted:I backed this on kickstarter. I remember finding it really good. So, I'm surprised at your tepid response and insistence it can only do one story. I am interested in what you will explain for that determination. Also, I am shocked these guys only ever did 5e before since they didn't use a single 5e-ism. To be clear: I don't think the system can literally only tell the Bebop's story - just that the book is written in a way that makes it really clear that playing the anime's characters going through the anime's plot was what the designers had in mind, rather than providing something for the players to use to build their own stories about bounty hunters weighed down by their pasts (it definitely still works for that, and it's mostly a matter of presentation). I'll talk about the distinction in more detail when I hit chapters 4 or 6. There are also things I personally dislike about the system, but I don't think those are problems with it. All in all I think it's a pretty good game, and I think the designers deserve credit for actually building a specialised system for it.
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Nov 29, 2023 09:28
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Chapter 2: Session The book finally gets into the game's structure. Strap in, because it's a pretty long one. Tabs We start the Session chapter off with a brief summary of Tabs and how they work. As mentioned in the previous post, each Session (which, as a reminder, lasts 1-2 hours of play) is made up of exactly three Tabs. In order, they are:
 The GM is responsible for framing each Tab: they set the scene, choose the Difficulty (a base number depending on the Tab, +1 for every Risk the GM chooses to spend when framing), and define the Main Objective and Main Threat, then it's off to actually play as the bounty hunters say what they're doing and Tests start happening. Progression from one Tab to another occurs when one of three things happen:
Personally, I both like and dislike this system: breaking play down into three separate acts with escalating difficulty and stakes is smart, and is completely appropriate for the source material, but I've never been a fan of games that have an explicit scene-based structure (e.g. Hillfolk), and forcing the three-act structure on every single Session feels needlessly restrictive. Note that there's a separate type of Session that can optionally not use this structure; we'll talk about that a little further down. Next, we get a recap of the three Tabs, listing the base Difficulty, usable Riffs, and any rules unique to that Tab. The Riffs I'll cover in the next section, but for the Tabs:
The Let's Jam section here explains that in order to actually capture the bounty in the third Tab, the bounty hunters will need to have succeeded at an Objective to reveal the bounty's Secret beforehand. This is generally going to be an Objective in a previous Tab (maybe even the Main Objective of one of them, if the bounty hunters are explicitly digging into a bounty's past or motivations), but if they didn't manage to do so, you should create an 8-clock Objective here that they'll need to clear before they can actually close out the Main Objective clock and capture their bounty (assuming capturing the bounty is still their goal in the third Tab). We also get told what the reward for actually succeeding at a Tab is: this creates a Session Trait representing some new gear, information, or other advantage the bounty hunters got by accomplishing their Objective, which any player can tag for any Test, regardless of Approach - this is pretty nice since it's effectively a free +1d6 to every Test that you can work the Trait into. Naturally, the bounty's Secret makes a great Session Trait, since it will always be related to overcoming the bounty, which is going to be the the Main Objective of the third Tab most of the time. Optionally, the Big Shot can also reward the players with a Session Trait for closing out a non-Main-Objective clock if it would make sense, but you can't create more than one Session Trait per Tab. Riffs Okay, so as mentioned before, these are actually listed in Chapter 1, but I'm talking about them here instead because access to specific Riffs is determined by which Tab you're in, and it makes more sense to talk about them after explaining Tabs. Riffs are universal moves that bounty hunters have access to which manipulate their rolls in some way. These are primarily how you heal Traits, reroll bad rolls, push yourself to be able to guarantee Hits, or help other bounty hunters. To model the way characters get progressively more involved in the events depicted on-screen as the episode progresses and the stakes increase, bounty hunters start out with access to fewer, sometimes less powerful Riffs in the first Tab, and unlock more options as the Session progresses. Riff availability is always cumulative, i.e. if you're in the Let's Jam Tab, you have also have access to everything that requires being in the 3, 2, 1 Tab. The following Riffs are always available, straight from the first Tab:
From the 3, 2, 1 Tab onwards, bounty hunters gain access to:
Finally, from the Let's Jam Tab onwards, bounty hunters get access to the Jam Riff:
Next, we get rules for Chases, which are a special kind of scene that replaces some of the Tab rules. Contrary to the name, Chases don't just model actual chases - they model any kind of scene in which action is frenzied, dangerous, and all-or-nothing, so you can also use them for bar brawls, shoot-outs, or space dogfights (something the game doesn't actually tell you!). Instead of Objective and Threat clocks, the Big Shot creates one Chase clock per objective that each of the parties involved is trying to accomplish (each of which has an Approach). The game doesn't mention how many of these you must or can create - technically, you could have a four- or five- or infinite-way Chase scene with as many Chase clocks, if you wanted - but you'll probably end up doing two (one for the target, and one for the bounty hunters) or three (multiple competing objectives, or a chaotic three-way fight) most of the time. Then:
See You, Space Cowboy Finally for the Tab rules, we get the rules for wrapping up a Session. If the bounty hunters succeeded at the Main Objective for the Let's Jam tab, every bounty hunter can choose to either gain a new trait, or to change the Approach for an existing Trait. Since Traits are both the main way you increase your chance of succeeding on a Test and the main way you can absorb Shocks, the second option there is a particularly bad choice at first - but since you're limited to a maximum of three Traits per Approach, being able to change Trait Approaches does make sense as an option. The game doesn't say what happens if you want to move a Trait from an Approach that already has three Traits to a second Approach that also already has three, which feels like an oversight, though. Personally, I'd either houserule this so players can do both options (gain a new Trait and optionally move an existing Trait), or at least change the second option so you have the choice between moving one Trait or swapping two Traits around. On the other hand, if Let's Jam ended with a failure (the Main Threat clock filled up), whichever bounty hunter(s) are most affected by the failure should write the Session title down as a Weight (more on those later). If the third Tab failure happened because someone marked their last Bullet, that bounty hunter should generally be the person to pick the Session up as a Weight, but otherwise it's up to the players to decide among themselves. As usual with clocks, it's possible for both these outcomes to happen if both clocks fill on the same Test! The book then suggests a formal feedback phase as part of the wrap-up: going around the table, each player (including, obviously, the GM) picks something they really liked during the Session, and then describes something they'd like to see in a future Session. Session Types Next are the rules covering the different Session types. There are four, modelled after the four different kinds of episodes the Cowboy Bebop show has: Classic Sessions (the default style, your bounty-of-the-week episodes), Personal Sessions (episodes focused on a specific bounty hunter's past catching up with them, like the one where Jet goes back to Ganymede), Filler Sessions (literally filler episodes where the stakes are low or nonsensical, like the one where Spike forgets food in the fridge for so long it turns into a venomous alien monster that hunts the Bebop crew down one by one), and Season Breakpoints (mid- and end-of-season climaxes). Something that's worth noting here is that Season Breakpoints don't happen randomly - they happen at set intervals based on how many Weights the player characters have accumulated. The first Breakpoint happens once every character has gotten one Weight (after any Personal Session if the last Session failed as a result of someone marking their last Bullet), and the second and final Breakpoint is the season finale (requiring that every bounty hunter have 2 Weights, and at least one bounty hunter have a third). This means every Cowboy Bebop campaign has a definite ending point, although how fast or slowly you get there will depend on how often your players are failing Sessions. Each Session type has different rules for Setup: how much Risk the GM starts with, how much Rhythm players get, selecting the Session Genre Approach (which grants an extra d6 when rolling with the same Approach, and is used to randomly pick the bounty's Secret if using one of the pregenerated ones from Chapter 5), and sometimes specific rules on Session structure that deviate from the standard three-Tab structure. For Classic Sessions:
Instead of the normal See You, Space Cowboy wrap-up, if the Session ended in a success (the Let's Jam Main Objective clock was filled), the spotlight characters get to mark the Weight they picked during setup. The more unmarked Weights a character has by the end of the campaign, the more likely it is they'll die as their past finally and definitively catches up with them in the dramatic season finale; the more marked Weights they have, the more likely it is they'll get to finally come to terms with their past and move on to a better life. Additionally, regardless of whether the Session was a success or failure, every bounty hunter clears every marked Bullet on their sheet. For Filler Sessions:
Finally, Season Breakpoints:
At this point, Setup happens again:
THE END If that was the second Season Breakpoint in the campaign, it ends. Each bounty hunter rolls vs. Difficulty 10, using a pool of 1d6 base, plus 1d6 per marked Weight. This isn't a Test, so no Riffs or Grooves apply. If they somehow roll both possible Hits (a total greater than 10, and at least two 6s), they've finally managed to free themselves from their past, and they'll get to move forward with their lives, once and for all. If they roll a single Hit, they've managed to come to terms with what haunts them. They'll never be truly free, but they can at least start to move on. If no Hits are rolled, it's curtains for them: they either die, or they fall irrevocably back into their old ways. They will forever be burdened. That's it for the rules on Session structure - all in all, I think these rules do a good job of very strongly driving the source material's themes and tone. I especially like the way the different Session types use Weights and Bullets to generate Rhythm and Risk - it's a great way of making mechanically explicit the things that give the characters motivation or weigh against them in the fiction. As mentioned earlier in this post, my one piece of criticism is that the forced three-Tab structure in Classic Sessions (which will be a significant majority of your Session types) feels artificial and stifling, to me. Part of that is that I'm not a fan of explicit scene-framing mechanics, but I also think the game would vastly benefit from a BitD-style game structure with a downtime phase in which the player characters can freely roleplay and engage with each other and the world. COMING EPISODE: we finally get to Chapter 3: Characters, where we get to see the different parts that make up a player character. Hopefully, that one shouldn't take 4000 words. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Nov 30, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 22:32
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Chapter 3: Characters This chapter covers character creation and the different parts that make up characters in the system. So you can follow along, here's the game's character sheet:  In the same order the book lists character elements, they are: Name and Concept These have no mechanical effect, but are obviously something you want for your sad space bounty hunter. The game suggests you might take either one as a Trait if you wanted to lend them mechanical weight; since Traits are explicitly supposed to be something visual, though, I feel that would be somewhat difficult to make work unless your character wears something that's distinctive to their concept (a uniform or badge of office, but you can just take those as Traits since they're things) or is just very famous - I guess you could make your own name a Trait and then shout "do you know who I am?" every time you use it. Traits Each of these is tied to one of the five Approaches, and you can have up to three under an Approach. We get reminded that Traits are always purely visual elements that you can describe in terms of things that the audience sees on-screen in an episode of the show - whether it's a weapon, clothes, a particular set of skills, physical appearance, etc. The book then spends a dozen or so pages listing example Traits, how they might work for a couple of different Approaches each (depending on what you want the Trait to mean for the character), and how it might look in the fiction if you've wounded the Trait (whether you just want to work it into the description for fun, or if you're using the Show Your Wounds Riff). The game lists five broad categories of things you might take as Traits:
Here are a handful of the example Traits they build out, just because I think they do a good job of illustrating how a visual element can be interpreted different based on the Approach it's tied to, and how you would narrate wounded Traits:    Characters' MONOs also have three Traits that reflect their distinctive appearance, gear, and weaponry. Memory Every character has one Memory, which is a short sentence that describes how their past haunts them. There are examples of these given later on in the setting chapters, but they're all very generic and mostly cribbed straight from the show:    The Memory itself doesn't have any mechanical effect, but since it should logically be a huge part of what makes the character tick, it's a bit disappointing they didn't provide more interesting examples. This section also talks about Bullets and Weights, since these are tied to your Memory. Bullets can be spent to either add 2d6 to a Test, or to absorb 1 Shock per Bullet marked. In both cases, you should work a description of how your character's past is helping them or bearing down on them. Weights come from failed Sessions and represent parts if the character's unresolved past weighing them down. Groove Every character gets a single Groove, which is a special talent that showcases how they're exceptional and can do extraordinary things. There are eleven to choose from in total, and the game stresses that you shouldn't let multiple bounty hunters have the same Groove - these are part of what makes the character mechanically and narratively unique, so everyone should choose a different one. Five of the Grooves allow your character to use Traits from a specific Approach whenever you roll one of two specific other Approaches (for example, Lone Wolf lets you use Rock Traits on Blues and Jazz Tests, and Memento of War lets you use Blues Traits on Tango and Rock Tests). Most of the rest directly interact with rolled dice in Tests in some way, like giving you an additional Hit (still up to a maximum of 2 per Test) when you roll doubles on a Disadvantaged Test (Against the Odds), letting you change a single die to a 6 on any Test in exchange for 1 Shock (Out of the Box), or letting you remove a rolled die from a Test to be able to add it to the rolled dice in a later Test (Long Term Plan). The last two let you partially ignore wounds on Traits, either by allowing you to use wounded Traits on Diasdvantaged Tests (Utter Determination), or allowing you to substitute an adjacent (physically, on the character sheet) Trait for a wounded one, ignoring Approach (Virtue of Necessity). The game explains that Grooves aren't written to be balanced against each other, because every character is meant to be working together! This is honestly a complete cop-out, especially since most of the Grooves follow a similar format and are roughly equal in power; there's only a couple that seem like they're slightly better or worse than the others. We also get told the narrative effect of each Groove, and what having the Groove is liable to mean for your character in terms of what they can do:  All in all, a pretty good system - these aren't very heavy mechanically, but they help characters interact with Tests in unique ways. The Approach substitution ones are kind of boring, though - they're effective, but I just find dice manipulation mechanics more interesting to engage with as a player. Character Creation Finally, we get a walkthrough of character creation:
COMING EPISODE: we look at the game's setting in Chapter 4: Hunters in the Solar System. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Dec 1, 2023 |
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Nov 30, 2023 13:36
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Mecha_Face posted:Ya know, I was just thinking yesterday about how easily the SSC Emperor could be reskinned into Sage from FFXIV. So there's that. There's already someone trying to make a FF-style-fantasy straight-up hack of Lancer: https://pirategonzalezgames.itch.io/beacon-ttrpg Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Feb 6, 2024 12:58
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I'm going to get back to the Cowboy Bebop F&F within the next couple of weeks, it's just been a crazy busy Q1 this calendar year.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:17
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 21:32 |
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Fully-automated luxury gay space communism only exists in non-corprostate Union core worlds. Everything outside of the core worlds is the space frontier, where the post-scarcity isn't a thing because there aren't enough printers and people are busy trying to survive. The corprostates have some post-scarcity but they're also scifi supercapitalism so enjoy having to work a 9-5 to pay for the basic necessities of life.
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Apr 29, 2024 23:51
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