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Modiphius Entertainment offers a range of pen-and-paper RPGs based on a core "2d20" mechanic. This thread is for discussing any of these games.
Modiphius has additional products including board games, and RPGs not based on 2d20 system, but this thread is specific to just the 2d20 games; you can chat about Modiphius the company and its other products too I suppose, but that's not the intended focus here. In January 2023, Modiphius published announced its 2d20 Worldbuilder's program, which includes a license agreement, guidance, and a free 2d20 System Reference Document. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jan 17, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2020 20:42
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The 2d20 system in a nutshell Whenever characters try to do something, players identify a skill. In most iterations of the system, characters have both a base character attribute, and a skill, and in some of them the skill can have both an Expertise and a Focus number. Typically the expertise and focus values are either the same, or, the focus is lower and the expertise is higher. The player then rolls (baseline) two 20-sided dice, trying to roll under the sum of their character attribute plus their expertise on each die. Each individual die result that is lower, scores one Success: any result that is also lower than the Focus (on its own, not added to the base attribute) scores a second success. Players have several ways to add more d20s to their roll, up to a maximum of five dice. So in theory a player could generate as many as ten successes on one roll. The difficulty of the thing being attempted determines how many successes are needed: extra successes turn into Momentum, which is spendable either immediately, on a variety of ways to enhance the success (get extra info, do extra damage, etc.) - or, momentum can be added to a shared pool for the whole party (in John Carter of Mars, with the focus more on individualism, there's individual rather than shared momentum pools).. For example, from Conan: your Awareness stat is 11, and you have 3 ranks of Expertise and two ranks of Focus in the Observation skill. You try to watch a crowded marketplace to see if you can spot thieves operating among them. The GM determines your target number of successes (the Difficulty) is 2. You roll 2d20 and your results are a 2 and a 10. 11+3=13, so both rolls are successes: the 2 is also below your unmodified Focus, so that's a third success. You succeed, and generate 1 momentum as well! Subsequent players acting can use Momentum from the shared pool, to get extra dice, or do other cool stuff. Momentum pools decay at a rate of one token per round in combat, or one token per scene out of combat, so there's pressure to use momentum before it trickles away. Additionally, the GM has a pool - (called Doom or Threat or Heat or similar). Critical failures (roll a nat 20) can add to it; players can also add a token to the threat pool to do things similar to spending momentum tokens, so the momentum pool running out doesn't throttle player agency. Some encounters might begin with extra threat added to the pool. The GM can use threat tokens to empower enemies, add new complications to the scene, trigger scene effects, and otherwise make life more difficult for the party. A natural 20 on a skill test die not necessarily a failure (if your target is somehow 20 or above), but it always adds a Complication, which is either immediately added to the result in some way, or, results in two threat tokens added to the GM's pool. Players also have another spendable resource (called Fortune or Chronicle or Infinity points or Determination, etc.) that permits greater success or narrative input in some way. For example, in Conan you can spend a Fortune point to get an additional d20, which is automatically a 1, generating at least one success, and two successes if the character has any ranks of Focus in that skill. You can also get additional dice from expending resources, like equipment, medical supplies, etc. Note that the Difficulty of a test can be 0; in this case, you can sometimes be offered the choice to either choose to just auto-succeed, or, you can roll in an attempt to generate Momentum (but at the risk of potentially rolling a Complication). There are also cases where you're allowed to auto-fail a test (by declining to spend resources to get enough dice for a success to even be possible). The GM may also permit a "success at cost" result from a failed roll: in this case, the character succeeds but Complications are added (in addition to any Complications rolled). Most (or all?) of these games are not played on a grid. Conan uses a concept of incremental "zones" with fuzzy, flexible boundaries depending on the nature of the scene: so Reach, Close, Medium, Long, and Extreme. These might be rooms in a house, areas a few yards across in a tight outdoor scene, or areas dozens of yards or more in an open outdoor area. I think all the other games use the same system but I'm not sure. The games make no distinction between combat and noncombat skills; you can try melee attacking someone, or attacking their Resolve with some kind of persuasion or intimidation, or pick a lock or do some other quick skill interchangeably in a fight scene. There is a robust cooperative element; it is often advantageous (especially in Star Trek) for characters to pool their efforts to accomplish some task. Each game implementing 2d20 has variations on the base system that attempt to instill some of the flavor of the setting. So in Conan there's more focus on being able to hew through mooks, weapon reach matters, there's a system for sorcery and alchemy, etc.; in Star Trek, the set of possible skills is unbounded (so you can be skilled in, say, Romulan Poetry or Interphasic Biophysics or the History of Ferengi Macroeconomics or whatever) and there's a ship combat system; in Infinity there's a system for hacking and more focus on ranged combat mechanics, and so forth. While initially reading through the explanations of the game mechanics can make them seem complex, in practice the 2d20 system is quick and intuitive. I think the best way to learn may be to watch a video or two, if you haven't got a group that can show you the ropes. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 21:00
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Been playing the Infinity version, it's fun. No idea what's the best way to spend XP though, already started with 17's in two of my signature skills.
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Jun 2, 2020 02:37
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It'll be interesting if we can compare/contrast the rules a bit. I intend to make an effortpost soon (in the next day or five) laying out the full system for Conan along with a few questions and critiques. I haven't really played it yet though so my ability to do that is somewhat limited.
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Jun 2, 2020 02:58
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Alright! So it looks I'm gearing up to be in a Conan game depending on who wins the fight for the time slot, the rules seem straight forward with some real neat stuff going on with the Doom and Momentum spends and having much more solid guidelines than the equivalent system in L5R. Currently the party is shaping up to be a Stygian Sorcerer (every party needs one), a Zamoran rogue, an Aquilonian noble and a Nordheimer Barbarian berserker (thats me!). A bit worried the berserk thing is a trap and am looking basically any advice for playing/running the dang thing if anyone shows up to the thread!
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Jun 2, 2020 04:11
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So far your writeup lines up with all of what I've experienced with Infinity. I still don't understand it well enough to go in depth, but the versatility of the Warfare/Infowar/Psywar is a pretty neat interplay.
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Jun 2, 2020 05:34
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I've been backing Modiphius projects on Kickstarter since Achtung! Cthulhu. The company is cool and the games are interesting. I'll do a breakdown on Mutant Chronicles sometime this week.
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Jun 2, 2020 16:10
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EthanSteele posted:Alright! Where does the berserker thing come from? Is it in the base book or one of the supplements, maybe Conan the Barbarian? I want to look it up. e. Ah I found it, it's a Talent tree in Conan the Barbarian called Berserk. Looks like it's got that whole "might attack an ally" problem, but the GM has to spend 2 Doom to make that happen, and you can make a D4 Discipline test to end your rage, so definitely load up on Discipline. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 20:14
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John Carter of Mars doesn't use skills or Foci like other 2d20 games; when you want to do something, you just add the two most relevant stats together for your Target Number (shooting someone with a rifle is Cunning + Reason; hacking someone with a sword is Cunning + Daring) and if a d20 rolls less than or equal to the lower stat, that's two successes. All of your stats can go up to 12, so yes, you can actually have a situation where you have a Target Number of 20 or higher. (You still roll the dice anyway, just to see if Complications happen.) I have a little more experience with Star Trek Adventures-- you do have Foci, but the Narrator is encouraged to interpret them as broadly as possible (for example, my engineer in our group's old game had Hand Phasers; he could tell you all about how a phaser pistol worked, how to fix one in a hurry, how to rig one into a bomb like in the TOS episode "Journey to Babel", how to fire one if you ignore his pathetically low Security rating... the list goes on.) I love the STA version of 2d20! My only real issues with it are that some of the playable species in the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook are a little overpowered compared to the Core Rules species, and that Modiphius promised that you can play in any of the three Star Trek eras (Enterprise, The Original Series, The Next Generation) but made you buy another book so you could have the stats to the NX-class starship and 22nd-century ship weaponry. (Yes, I actually LIKE Star Trek: Enterprise. No, there's no word on whether there's going to be any canon character sheets or ship stats for Discovery or Picard-era ships, though I'm sure the Continuing Mission blog has them among the various Star Trek Online ship stat blocks.) Dishonored... it's weird. The character creation is less involved (you don't have a Lifepath like in Conan or STA or John Carter, instead you just pick your archetype, make a decision or two about which stats/styles to boost, and you're done), Modiphius had to errata in one of the system's original uses of Momentum, armor doesn't reduce incoming damage (it just increases your health), and the supernatural powers characters can take are extremely limited. This still needs a bit of work, I think, and Modiphius is well aware of it (they're putting a new revision out this week, I believe.)
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Jun 3, 2020 02:12
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OK right on, I was hoping the thread would attract folks who have played multiple 2d20 games so we can do more effective compare/contrasting. How do you find the Star Trek ship battle mechanics?
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Jun 3, 2020 02:19
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Leperflesh posted:OK right on, I was hoping the thread would attract folks who have played multiple 2d20 games so we can do more effective compare/contrasting. On the one hand, it solves the usual problem you see with ship combat in games like Starfinder or Coriolis or Buck Rogers XXVc. Every character on the ship can do something to help out. On the other hand, your opponent gets one action per Scale (ship size; the Defiant from Deep Space Nine and the NX-class from Enterprise are Scale 3, the Galaxy and the Sovereign from The Next Generation are Scale 6, the Intrepid from Voyager and the Constitution from The Original Series and a couple episodes of Discovery are Scale 4.) Our group only did ship combat once in our campaign. We fought a (thankfully already heavily-damaged) Borg cube. (The stat block for a Borg cube gives them Scale 13, for reference.) Yes, the game rules do model Borg adaptation to phasers/torpedoes.
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Jun 3, 2020 02:45
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Oh cool, I am actually enjoying the system. Played it as a player for Star Trek Adventures and ran an Infinity campaign. Those two are definitely very different. I do love the system and enjoy the momentum and heat mechanic.
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Jun 3, 2020 03:02
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Leperflesh posted:Where does the berserker thing come from? Is it in the base book or one of the supplements, maybe Conan the Barbarian? I want to look it up. Yeah, attack an ally thing is rough, but it's Doom spend and there's a talent to increase that so it shouldn't be too bad, just Regular Bad. The main thing I'm looking at is the Momentum thing. You get bonus Momentum (up to 3 with a talent) and so does anyone attacking you which sounds like a recipe for getting donked on because you can't parry or dodge. But also that 3 free Momentum can be used to hit a second target and all other sorts of super good stuff, like doing 3 extra damage to a man which is real rude or even just using it to fill the pool to spend on Create Obstacle if you want to be selfish! It's obviously not a thing you use all the time and is a risky move, but it'd be nice if it wasn't a recipe for getting wounded and beat up! I'm sure it's fine, risk/reward mechanics like this are always something I get anxious about because classically it either doesn't matter so its busted or it matters too much so its busted in the other direction.
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Jun 3, 2020 05:54
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I've been backing Modiphius projects on Kickstarter since Achtung! Cthulhu. The company is cool and the games are interesting. I'll do a breakdown on Mutant Chronicles sometime this week. Sounds great! I would love to read this. In particular I'm interested in the lore and what parts are differ from Warhammer 40K lore.
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Jun 3, 2020 05:55
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Helical Nightmares posted:Sounds great! I would love to read this. In particular I'm interested in the lore and what parts are differ from Warhammer 40K lore. Pretty much everything. Super abridged background... A long time ago, the Four Corporations took over. Capitol, Mishima, Imperial, and Bauhaus. They saw that the Earth was rapidly dying due to their resource predation and made their plans to start fresh. The rocketed out into space where they took new corporate fiefdoms. Capitol on Luna and Mars, Mishima inside Mercury, Imperial in the Asteroid Belt and the moons of Jupiter. The cost of the terraforming of Luna, Venus, and Mars was staggering let alone the entire development of a colony on Mercury, but as the Cartel had already decided to completely gut Earth for its treasures, this was not considered unreasonable expenditures. Then came the Exodus. This expansion had been done in a high degree of secrecy. Very easy to maintain when you control all media and government. The Corporations left Earth to all those they didn't deem important, necessary, or rich enough to bring with them. The Earth was then known as the Cursed Lands and no one would return. After a few centuries of plenty, Imperial, which as you recall had claimed the riches of the outer system as theirs, sent exploratory vessels out to the edge where they found a planet called Nero. Larger than Pluto and much denser. Thinking it a mother lode of super-heavy minerals they landed and discovered a curious artificial structure. A circle of standing stones. As they entered, they scuffed through a ring of some material which analysis proved to be common salt that had been poured around the outside of the circle of stones. Once that ring of salt was broken they were set upon by an intense desire to to enter the stone circle and examine what lay at its core. This proved to be a steel plate about ten meters on a side, and this discovery was their last report from Nero before all communication was lost. We did not find out what happened to them till much much later. The first effects were quite subtle. The Symmetry enjoys interfacing with advanced systems such as Thinking Machines and finds it quite simple to do so. It gradually took over and corrupted the essential mechanisms that the members of the Cartel relied upon to manage their empires. Credit webs crashed, automated factories ran amok killing their workers or self-destructing and destroying large portions of cities. Then new diseases appeared, rumors of sabotage filled the streets and the boardrooms and everywhere people assumed one or another of the Corporations was making a power play of immense size. The intelligence analysis machines lied to their users claiming that one or another of their corporate rivals was responsible. Deeds of ownership, invoices, contracts ceased to exist and there was no trace that they had ever existed. The Dark Symmetry then started its work on human minds. Greed, fear, hatred, spite and other less pleasant emotions were stirred up in the populace. Diplomacy broke down and the First Corporate Wars began. These wars fueled the corporation's and the general populace's belief that technology and Thinking Machines were evil and that there would not be enough left for one corporation let alone all. "Then came Nathaniel Durand. He was the first to recognize what he called the 'Dark Symmetry'. He spoke out for peace, and discipline over war and confusion. He showed how it was the Dark Symmetry that had corrupted the Thinking Machines and he called for their destruction to remove the taint of this evil. The people listened to his teachings and took hammers to the Thinking Engines, they destroyed great machines and power plants in order to cleanse them of the corruption. Durand was the first practitioner of our blessed Art and he wielded the forces of light. In time even the corporations realized that his cause was wise and just and assisted him in spreading the word and billions began to follow him and so he was proclaimed first Cardinal of our Blessed Brotherhood. Knowing that a divided humanity would be the key to the Symmetry's success, he sent emissaries to each of the Corporations and bid them to lay aside their grievances with each other and instead join forces to fight the true enemy of all that lived. After 25 years of threats and promises the Treaty of Heimberg was signed and so ended the First Corporate Wars. The Cartel was created to arbitrate disputes and the Brotherhood with Cartel assistance finished clearing tthe scourge the Dark Symmetry had spread. An age of hope began, but greed overtook sense yet again and another expedition found its way to Nero. There they found the First Seal of Repulsion, the Steel Plate, still undisturbed. The forces that had plagued the system were nothing more than mere shadows bound by the ring of salt. This second expedition broke the plate and the servants of the Dark Soul, that entity from which the Symmetry is its outside presence to the conscious world, were unleashed. The first sign was the Terror Wave which spread madness and hysteria. Some Brotherhood Seers plucked their own eyes out to destroy any trace of the visions they were granted by the Wave. Some affected by the Wave became Heretics, acolytes of the Dark Symmetry. These individuals would spread pain in order to still the madness in their tainted souls. Then the armies of the Dark arrived. Destroying all in their path. The Cartel's forces attempted to fight them back, but eventually it was down to Luna being the only standing stronghold of humanity. Finally Cardinal Durand went to each of the Corporations and delivered his ultimatum. Work together and the Brotherhood will defend you against the Dark Gifts the Symmetry granted its forces. Work at cross purposes and you will lose everything. What could the Corporations say against that truth? Finally able to resist the fell powers the tide began to turn culminating in the final battle of Durand and the combined Special Forces of all four members of the Cartel against the Stronghold Citadel of Algeroth, the Apostle of War and Dark Technology, here on Venus. The battle was epic and thousands upon thousands were lost during the push to the Citadel's walls but finally Durand confronted Algeroth on the very summit of the complex. For a day and a night they fought, neither giving way to the massive forces arrayed against them. They fought simultaneously on the physical, the mental, and the spiritual planes until Algeroth was forced to flee into the very heart of the building. And there, in his sanctum in front of his own altar, he was vanquished by the First Cardinal but not before delivering a mortal blow of his own. That defeat broke the Dark Soul's second attempt on the system and humanity. Representatives of our glorious Brotherhood went forth and stamped out every last trace of Heresy they could find. Making sure humanity remained pure in word and deed,that no forbidden research was carried out, and that Cardinal Toth's three edicts were as law. Those being: --No human shall attempt to make a machine that thinks like a man. --No human shall travel beyond the orbit of Jupiter, lest once again they should disturb the Dark. --No human shall ever seek knowledge of the Darkness. This peace lasted for a thousand years at least. But men forget hard-learned truths and start to doubt wise decisions and laws. The Corporations started to reject the edicts especially the first and second. Then they started to doubt that the Darkness had ever existed in the first place, they began to believe the Brotherhood had created these 'legends' to gain secular power. That the Brotherhood was as corrupt and wicked as any of the members of the Cartel. And sadly, that was not entirely untrue. There were those who had joined the Brotherhood for temporal power and not to assist in the protection of humanity. And finally, one by one the Edicts of Toth were broken. Firstly Cybertronic emerged. A new mega-corporation that was born from massive stock manipulation. This entity sneered at the edicts as mere superstition and created the first new Thinking Machines seen in a millennia. Secondly a new round of Corporate Wars began and in the race for resources and innovation, ships began to fly beyond Jupiter. Even to Nero where they disappeared. Then after the wars had raged for several years a new Citadel was detected on Mars. Doomtroopers, the Cartel's anti-legion specialists, were reinstated went to investigate and the few survivors returned with news that it was inhabited. The Dark Legions, the servants of the Dark Soul and Symmetry, were expanding again. There is now a covert war now in the midst of the Second Corporate Wars. The knowledge that the Legions have returned is controlled by forces high up the Corporate and Brotherhood chains of command. The Symmetry feeds on fear and keeping their presence secret may help in reducing their food supply.
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Jun 3, 2020 07:20
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Thanks very much for the write up. I remember playing the Doomtrooper card game from years back and that was my first introduction to the Mutant Chronicles. Did they ever get into whether Cybertron was humanity's technological salvation or just a tool of the Dark Symmetry? The Dark Apostles always felt like the 40K Chaos gods to me. Do they go further to differentiate them? Does this edition go into Doomtroopers or the blighted Earth at all?
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Jun 3, 2020 19:30
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EthanSteele posted:Yeah, attack an ally thing is rough, but it's Doom spend and there's a talent to increase that so it shouldn't be too bad, just Regular Bad. The main thing I'm looking at is the Momentum thing. You get bonus Momentum (up to 3 with a talent) and so does anyone attacking you which sounds like a recipe for getting donked on because you can't parry or dodge. But also that 3 free Momentum can be used to hit a second target and all other sorts of super good stuff, like doing 3 extra damage to a man which is real rude or even just using it to fill the pool to spend on Create Obstacle if you want to be selfish! It's obviously not a thing you use all the time and is a risky move, but it'd be nice if it wasn't a recipe for getting wounded and beat up! I'm sure it's fine, risk/reward mechanics like this are always something I get anxious about because classically it either doesn't matter so its busted or it matters too much so its busted in the other direction. Yeah a push-your-luck mechanic can be excellent if it works well (blood bowl), but if it's balanced too hard one way or the other, it becomes something you either always use, or never use. I'd be interested to hear how it works out in your game. Generating momentum does seem to be pretty great though. You can use it yourself as you said, or pass it off to other PCs to help them succeed too. Narratively: the berzerking barbarian draws everyone's attention and now your archer can get in some good shooting at them, etc. Don't sleep on that "do a free Display" upgrade either. Chop off some heads and then show them to your enemies and drive them into dispair! (Dead Man's Stare display, normally a minor action, and with your upgrade you ignore the increase in difficulty: does 3 dice of mental damage with the Area and Vicious 1 qualities). This is why it's good for anyone in combat to have lots of Personality: it provides bonus damage dice on base Threaten attacks. And, normally Threaten attacks use the Persuade skill, but even if you don't have much or any ranks in Persuade, Displays are useful in that they offer alternate skill bases for their attacks: Dead Man's Stare uses Melee, for example. (All Displays can use Persuade instead if you prefer.) So depending on how your berserker is built, you might find just cowing your opponents into giving up or fleeing is a useful option when you're berserking. One of the things I really love about how 2d20 combat works (at least in Conan) is that there's a fully-realized morale system that allows you to inflict what amounts to emotional damage on your opponent (fear, panic, doubt), such that you can defeat them without ever striking a blow if you're convincing enough, and just as five Wounds kills, five Traumas turns you into a permanently helpless gibbering wreck. Characters have a Stress (separate Vigor and Resolve tracks) as their (basically) physical and mental HP, and if you either do a bunch of damage to one, or reduce them to zero, you start doing Harm (Wounds or Traumas respectively). Stress refreshes after a fight, but Harms take skill to treat (with Healing or Counsel skills) and time to fully heal (treated Wounds/Traumas stop affecting you, but aren't actually gone until suitable time/rest has happened, and if you take another Wound or Trauma the healing gets un-done), and in the meanwhile they inflict penalties to physical or mental abilities.
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Jun 3, 2020 20:16
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Yeah! It's cool as hell! Learning that maybe the civilized folk might be onto something with those "not punching anyone who looks at you funny" and "use your words" things she's heard so much about is on the list for cool and good things to happen. Its 100% on genre for the fight guy to be assisted by the skald or sorceror just completely demoralizing people with weird stares and vicious mockery. Love to make minions flee by telling them how stupid they are to stand against you. Anyone using the Conan sheet in roll20? The skills have tick boxes next to them and we can't figure out why
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Jun 4, 2020 05:11
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Is there a decent overview of the various Conan books and which ones are good, and which ones are meh?
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Jun 4, 2020 10:27
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I'm gonna be super unhelpful and say that so far all the books have been good if you want what they have. The Barbarian has new chargen options for making proper Barbarian characters with loads of setting details, plot hooks, enemies and stuff for being from Cimmeria/Nordheim, for example. Book of Skelos feels like a must have for sorcerers though, it's just full of so much stuff that's useful for the setting. All of the ones I've read through properly so far have had asides where they go "here's how Howard did it and if you want to do that cool, but please remember he was racist so think about what you're saying and doing when you're playing the game. Here's why we changed what we did" it's basic stuff like "have you considered having a Nice Queen and an Evil Sorceror or an Evil King and a Nice Sorceress instead of Howard's favourite of Nice King, Evil Sorceress?" and "if you don't have a reason to have a character be white/dude then make them not that" but its good its there.
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Jun 4, 2020 16:23
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I have all the supplements because I kickstarted the "everything in PDF" tier of Conan, but to be honest I've avoided reading most of them because I kind of wanted to just get good with the base rules before introducing a ton of extra stuff. That said, I did start paging through King Conan the other day. It introduces a different mode of play: court intrigue, plus a little segment on army fights, and a mechanic for tracking a person's prestige within a court. You can vie with opposing factions, certain things can cause you to be leading a faction and there's a mechanic for interfaction power struggle. I haven't got through the whole thing yet but I really appreciate at least what it's trying to do: two or three of the Howard Conan stories are about Conan being King, or being deposed and winning his crown back, and dealing with struggling factions, and leading an army in a war, and that mode of play sounds pretty cool. I will say the art is very hit-or-miss. I paged through the art book and some of it is excellent, and some of it is just... not. The books seem to be laid out well, there's functional TOCs in the PDFs (but the indexes aren't clickable, which is a bit annoying, you have to use your PDF reader to navigate to a page number). The text is very readable. I have found the occasional typo but nothing too egregious. The worst so far is a duplicate label in the talent tree in King Conan, so you have to kind of study the text to figure out which one of two talent upgrades was supposed to come first, but on the other hand Modiphius has been great about republishing updated versions of its books with errata and copyedit fixes, so if you get the PDFs from drivethrough you'll get those updates periodically. If you want to you can just use the character generator, turn on all the supplements, and then only look up stuff that the players choose to use. I do think it makes some kind of sense to base an adventure or campaign around the core book plus one specific supplement, which lets you cleave more closely to a particular theme. So like, do Conan the Thief if your players want to do some sneakin' and stealin' style adventure, instead of trying to open all the books for the game and then still do the sneakin' and stealin' thing with a more random, less coherent party. e. I've been meaning to make a post about how Modiphius addressed the problematic aspects of Howard's writing but Ethan covered it pretty well. It's impossible to even look at a map of the Hyborian Age and not see some of the racism... but the authors of the game seem pretty determined to be open-eyed about what is in there, and adapt (and tell the player how to adapt) the material to be not gross at your game table.
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Jun 4, 2020 21:05
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Leperflesh posted:I will say the art is very hit-or-miss. I paged through the art book and some of it is excellent, and some of it is just... not. Hit-or-miss is the size of it, yeah. Most of the PDFs from dtrpg I've got have clickable indexes on the TOC at least, I know one of the supplements didn't though which I thought was weird. For our party we basically ended up each picking a different book, I went with Barbarian, then we've got Thief, Book of Skelos and the Noble is mostly King with a little Mercenary. Gonna do some sailing, sorcery, thieving and mass battling. Speaking of! We did our first session, a short one because we wrapped up our L5R campaign finale in about an hour so we had 2 more hours to kill. It went super smooth! L5R has a similar thing to Momentum and we struggled to come up with things and it was often a choice between succeeding or choosing the flavourful options, Conan was much easier and the flow and investment in everyone's rolls with Momentum was rad. Barbarian ran in and chopped a guy up, Thief used Momentum from that to go "I'd just run if I were you" while gesturing at the dying guy, later on Barbarian did some rock-climbing using momentum from the heal test to treat her wound and then the Thief used momentum from the athletics roll to follow to improve his roll with "Dumb northerner will probably just forget what she's looking for" while actually trying to copy her Excellent Climbing Form. It all just flowed! The setup was we'd been caught by slavers and put on a boat then a rich guy wanted us to get him out and would pay us handsomely to protect him, we did so and got our stuff and ran up on to the deck of the boat. Only one lifeboat and the slavers were prepping it, willing to let the whole ship sink with the slaves on board. The Aquilonian asked who was going to stop them, the Northerner answered with a bloodcurdling scream and charged a guy dealing 8 damage and taking him out. The Zamoran thief threatened them with the Stygian helping and that got another guy to just leap overboard and take his chances with the sharks. The Northerner got stabbed for 5 damage, taking a wound and then the Zamoran and Aquilonian joined the fray. Then the ship cracked in two and we fell in the water. We swam to the lifeboat (barely, difficulty 3 for the wounded Northerner) and then when the Aquilonian tried to help the rich guy, the rich guy got pulled under the waves! The Aquilonian yelled at the Northerner to "go get the money!" to which the Northerner, wounded, said "gently caress the money!" which the Zamoran considered blasphemous so we both jumped in after a little bickering to see him getting dragged away by FISHMEN??? After that we got to the shore, battered and bruised as the Slavers started washing up including the Captain, we were outnumbered but they knew we were willing to fight so just left us to go after the rich guy who was definitely worth more than our lives and whoever we took down with us. After that we hosed about trying to find shelter and the Northerner got her wound healed, though she was wary of the Stygian. After that we climbed up some rocks to get a good view of the surrounding area, the Stygian led the way on finding a little ravine to bed down in for the night and then started loving about with his alchemy to make a torch (with green flame) and brewed some acid so he'd have a weapon for the future. We ended the session with the characters finally asking each other their names before setting off after the rich guy. We'd totally just fell into the extremely Conan thing of just calling everyone by their obvious homelands. All in all two thumbs up, there was only one time out of four where we couldn't think of a complication that made sense and just gave the GM the Doom. Is there a list somewhere of generic hiccups for when obvious things don't leap to mind?
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Jun 5, 2020 02:34
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EthanSteele posted:All in all two thumbs up, there was only one time out of four where we couldn't think of a complication that made sense and just gave the GM the Doom. Is there a list somewhere of generic hiccups for when obvious things don't leap to mind? quote:Whenever a result of a 20 is rolled on any d20 in a skill As mentioned here, as-written the GM is supposed to invent the Complication. I think it's totally cool and fine for the GM to ask the players to come up with some of them, but in many cases only the GM can do it due to their knowledge of aspects of a scene that the players don't have. There's some advice for that on page 271 of the main rulebook, in the GM's advice chapter: quote:Complications But to answer your question, I don't see like a table or easily parsed list of generic Complications. I'll note that the sample adventure in the book, Vultures of Shem, includes a few notes on possible Complications and/or Doom spends for various scenes. That makes sense to me as a thing for the GM to do some prep work on. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 02:28
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Yeah, we've read the rulesy bits. The GM came up with two complications, couldn't think of a thing and so opened the floor for the third and then for the fourth one did the same but nobody could think of something so the GM took the doom. The main reason I'm asking is that the GM is struggling with getting to grips with what's an appropriate level of complication and we all thought a bigger list of examples could help with that compared to the 4 in your quotes. I've told him about the notes in Vultures of Shem and coming with 2 or 3 as prep for his big scenes, so we'll see what he says, thanks for pointing that out!
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Jun 9, 2020 02:50
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One way you could tie players in with Complications is having the players come up with a few "impending issues" for their characters? Like, some person in their past who could show up inconveniently, or an old war wound that could give them trouble for a while. If you have developed your backgrounds, that can give the GM things to cue off of. Perhaps that Thief of yours cheated a fence, and the fence has hired a mercenary to come and recover what was paid to him, with interest, or perhaps that Noble has a rival house in this area and now his name has gotten into the ear of someone who recognizes it. Another option the book talks about is environmental triggers; a fight on a beach might have a hidden sinkhole in the sand. You could also add neutral dangers, like a huge crab camoflauged by the seaweed and wrack that grabs a character's ankle. These can take a little prep work, and can activate using Doom spends or a Complication. I think it works best when the Complication is tied somehow to the skill roll being made. The game book suggests a weapon could break, which is really severe in a game like D&D where your magic axe of the badger +2 is integral to your character's ability to perform to par, but in Conan stories, gear is generally pretty fungible. Easy come, easy go, and losing an axe should really only be a temporary setback lasting a scene or two. But the fifth time you have a character rolling a Complication on a Melee check and losing yet another weapon (which might well be the most common roll you make in an adventure, so the one most likely to generate lots of Complications) it's gonna seem really tired at that point, so you need some more stuff besides "woops your gear got hosed." It might be good to spend some out-of-game time brainstorming some universally applicable melee complications, so you'll have a go-to cheat sheet when it's gametime. So what it all really boils down to in the end is your GM and players' ability to be creative a lot. I think "convert it into two Doom" is a reasonable relief valve for the game to recognize that sometimes you're just not going to have a quick idea or something prepared, and it's fine to do that as long as it doesn't become the default thing you usually or almost always do with Complications.
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Jun 9, 2020 03:38
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Yeah, we've got a little deck of generic combat ones with stuff like weapon destroyed, armour strap comes loose, overreach and losing Guard etc.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:16
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Doublepostin' but it's a new thing! So, proper session 1 happened! It was good! We got a success with complication for finding food and the complication was "it's alive and it's four crocodiles ambushing you" Later on we ambushed a freaky fish dude and his cultist friends before stealing their uniforms to sneak into a freaky fish dude ziggurat and a big fight happened and undead were summoned and we got some trauma from all the spooky horror creatures going on. GM ran out of Doom though! We're still a little fuzzy on Sorcery. In the book there are examples of the spells, like the Raise Dead one that gives you a Toughened Skeleton for a day being D3. I get that its D3 because it's D1 base and then two momentum spends get it to D3, but you spend Momentum afterwards, so you don't have to declare up front? I think the deal is that its D3 if you Cast for Consequences because you tally up all the Momentum and stuff for that so you know how much bad poo poo happens, but otherwise you just cast the spell and spend momentum as normal, so Raise Up the Dead is D1 and does nothing without Momentum, whereas Dismember does damage even with no spend. Edit: best Doom spend of the night was 1 Doom to make the Noble look into the pit with the Unspeakable Horror Creature in to give him the scare EthanSteele fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 03:54
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Yeah the description of how to cast a spell (page 171) seems a bit confusing to me too. But I think you're looking at the spell description, and the explanation is on page 173:quote:Difficulty: Difficulty (DX). Note that in these examples 1. You're doing a Sorcery so you have to take a minor action and Focus. But, see step 3... 2. Then you have to spend a 1 Resolve, because that's the Cost to Cast (p. 184) 3. Make a Sorcery test. Note the modifications to the normal test rules: every failed die is a Complication, and a natural 20 is two Complications. The rule then says you can choose not to Focus (or fail somehow, but Focus isn't a die roll), but if that happens, Complication happens on 19-20. Which I guess should be two complications, per the rule in the previous sentence, but why wouldn't they go ahead and say that? Also the first sentence says that "To cast a spell, you must take a Minor Action to Focus," and the word must there conflicts with the "If a sorcerer chooses not to Focus" clause of the following sentence. I think this language may relate to the language in the following section, "Consequences", which says in part: quote:Every time Sorcery is used to cast, control, This parallels text from earlier in the book about taking making skill tests, where the GM can allow you to auto-succeed but with consequences on a test you'd normally be unable to succeed at (because you're not rolling enough dice). The "include Momentum spends in calculating the Difficulty" clause I think refers to spell momentum spends, so, even if you definitely won't be able to generate enough Momentum to achieve a particular spell result, you can "buy" them with additional Difficulty on the test (which in turn, you definitely won't hit, so you're effectively paying for Momentum spend spell effects with Consequences.) The Difficulty of the Sorcery test is dependent on the spell you're casting, and any modifications to it, plus any modifications provided by your Talents, equipment such as Talismans, sacrificial offerings (see p 171), etc.; plus anything determined by the previous discussion. Hence, for your base Raise Up the Dead spell (D1), you're adding in one point of Pick of the Slain and one point of Death Watch, so you effectively need one success plus two more Momentum to spend. But this is not the same as a D3 test. You roll two dice (unless you get more dice somewhere), Succeed at the D1 test if you get at least one success, and then can get Momentum to buy the two enhancements from either your own roll, or by drawing from the shared Momentum pool of the party. In the book on page 185, they give an example of a Necromantic Servant, which says D3, and then says Includes Unhallowed Minions and Death Watch. But, look at the quote I put at the beginning of this post... it's not really D3, they're just adding in the momentum spends for some reason that I really think is quite misleading, given that you can get Momentum from the party pool rather than just having to always generate it from your own skill roll. Notably, the rules say on page 102 quote:During any successful skill test, a character may spend Is there such a rule somewhere? Do we think maybe the intent is such a rule, expressed in a very oblique and clumsy way by showing "momentum spends" for a spell as raising the spell's Difficulty instead? ...maybe you have to declare these effects you want before you roll, which means they don't want you to wait and see how many successes you get before you find out if you need to draw Momentum from the shared pool to buy them: instead they want you to have to buy more dice? Or something? Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 04:35
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Leperflesh posted:Is there such a rule somewhere? Do we think maybe the intent is such a rule, expressed in a very oblique and clumsy way by showing "momentum spends" for a spell as raising the spell's Difficulty instead? ...maybe you have to declare these effects you want before you roll, which means they don't want you to wait and see how many successes you get before you find out if you need to draw Momentum from the shared pool to buy them: instead they want you to have to buy more dice? Or something? I believe the answer is "yes the Momentum spends are calculated as Difficulty if casting for Consequences, but otherwise you just do it normally" based on a cheat sheet made by one of the playtesters. Which makes sense because when you do it for Consequences you get everything you ask for and each point you fail to reach that by bad stuff happens, so you obviously need to declare what effects you're going to be getting.
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Jun 12, 2020 19:15
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EthanSteele posted:I believe the answer is "yes the Momentum spends are calculated as Difficulty if casting for Consequences, but otherwise you just do it normally" based on a cheat sheet made by one of the playtesters. Which makes sense because when you do it for Consequences you get everything you ask for and each point you fail to reach that by bad stuff happens, so you obviously need to declare what effects you're going to be getting. It seems weird that they wouldn't have the default not-casting-for-consequences be the way they show Difficulty, then. As-is, the annotation of Difficulty as inclusive of momentum spend implies the designers think you'll usually be casting-for-consequence. But why would you? There's so many ways to get extra dice.
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Jun 12, 2020 19:54
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Has anyone tried adapting the Conan ruleset to other Fantasy series? I was reading through the Core rule book and I was thinking it might do some bits of A Song of Ice and Fire better than Green Ronin's RPG did. Or the Gentleman Bastard books.
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Aug 1, 2020 14:59
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There’s an upcoming Fallout RPG from Modiphius some time soon, but you can’t find information about it on their website. Previous articles said it would be implementing both the SPECIAL system and 2d20, so it will he interesting to see how well things bolt together. Modiphius is also producing a Fallout rpg that interacts with their skirmish miniatures game that is NOT 2d20, and doesn’t seem to serve a purpose, given that they’re also developing a full, different rule set. I feel like it’s just gonna muddy the waters.
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Aug 1, 2020 15:49
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Dr. Lunchables posted:There’s an upcoming Fallout RPG from Modiphius some time soon, but you can’t find information about it on their website. Previous articles said it would be implementing both the SPECIAL system and 2d20, so it will he interesting to see how well things bolt together. I'm aware of both Fallout systems. I picked up the Conan corebook beccause I wanted to get a sense of how the 2d20 system worked ahead of the 2d20 Fallout game. The Wasteland Warfare rules were not for me. I like the Conan core rules, but Howard is a tough sell for people I might try to recruit for a meat space game, and I'm not very practiced at online play.
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Aug 1, 2020 16:09
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Dr. Lunchables posted:There’s an upcoming Fallout RPG from Modiphius some time soon, but you can’t find information about it on their website. Previous articles said it would be implementing both the SPECIAL system and 2d20, so it will he interesting to see how well things bolt together. I can see that working. Dishonoured manages to bolt a bunch of Fate Accelerated and Blades in the Dark on to 2d20 and it works pretty well.
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Aug 1, 2020 17:45
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I love the production values of Modiphius books. I do wish they'd release the Conan hardbacks a little sooner. The quality of the writing, rules, artwork and book design is consistently high. Are there plans for an updated version of Achtung! Cthulhu? Dishonored, Dune, and Homeworld are all on my to-buy list. I will say that the new Vampire books are works of art. Extremely high quality in terms of design. It isn't a game I play, but it's almost certainly one I will collect and regularly read or browse. Getting a Conan game going is a post-pandemic goal.
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Aug 3, 2020 19:28
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Just finished running the third and final session of a homebrew Conan campaign and... I still think the system is over-written, but I'm a lot more open to it than I was, in no small part to last night being one of our best sessions in months. First session, the players began at a festival with a few mini-games and some roleplaying opportunities that hinted at the bigger picture, including a fortuneteller. A 30' stone ape attacked the festival, they fought it, and the fortuneteller asked them back to her tent where she revealed mirrors lining the walls that reflected not their Conan characters, but all the other characters they'd played across our history as a gaming group. Second session, the fortuneteller told them there might be answers to why they seem to be stuck in a reincarnation cycle in a keep about a half a day away, but when they got there it was nothing but empty ruins. They absolutely demolished a small pack of wolves and were getting settled for the night when a figure appeared out of the darkness. He announced himself as the reason they have been reincarnating, and told them the cycle would end if they'd only just sign their names in his book. One of them did, and immediately fell into a comatose state. Their initial course of action last night was to investigate their friend and make sure he was still alive. He was. Kind of. When they had learned of their previous lives, I gave them all access to Atavistic Voyage as a way to channel the abilities and wisdom of their previous characters. Even though none of them were sorcerers, they rolled really well each time, and eventually found their way BACK to the fortuneteller, who guided the three conscious players in projecting their astral forms to where their unconscious friend was. It all ended in a big brawl where they awoke bound to obelisks in separate rooms before breaking free and fighting evil, animalistic versions of some of their toughest previous characters in a windowless sanctuary. I almost took down two of them, but one of the players was rolling INSANE amounts of damage, like 13 or 14 per round minimum, earning and spending fortune and momentum like it was going out of style. After the doppelgangers were murdered, and the BBEG behind everything was one-shot without any questions or answers as to what was going on, they each cut down a tapestry that hinted at their characters for the 5e campaign I'll be running after the start of the year, entered doorways into a white void, and awoke on the road to their next adventure in their new bodies, none the wiser of their previous lives. My frustrations with the system were almost certainly from not knowing enough Conan lore to have the right feel from the start, opting instead for my own weird meta-story, and not reading the book thoroughly enough to have a full grasp on the beats of a Conan session and how it differs from the other games we've played. The books have all kinds of interesting mechanics and prompts, but I feel like they're not presented super intuitively, more like an addled toddler telling you a story they only half-remember and weren't super invested in telling you to begin with. We'll be playing John Carter of Mars sometime soon, which already looks like a much more streamlined version of the system. I'd like to play Star Trek, but as the only person in our group with any interest in Star Trek, it's more likely I'll end up running it. Oh well.
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Nov 6, 2020 20:20
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John Carter's definitely more streamlined; sure, you actually have to create Talents yourself, but the core book has guidelines to do it, as well as a whole bunch of pre-made talents (the three sourcebooks add Talents, too.) I refuse to call it by the full name Modiphius insists on ("John Carter of Mars: Adventures on the Dying World of Barsoom") and just stick to "John Carter."
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Nov 7, 2020 04:46
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you say the whole thing, like "A Tribe Called Quest."
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Nov 7, 2020 05:47
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I picked up the Dishonored book having never heard of the Modiphius system. I want to run my group through a one shot some time soon, but so far I have yet to play it. I haven't a clue how the other versions of the 2d20 system(modiphius is a mouthful) works. I don't know what here is purely Dishonored, and what is grabbed from base 2d20, so sorry if I explain some poo poo that is basic knowledge. Here is a brief overview of Dishonored. Skills are Fight, Move, Study, Survive, Talk, and Tinker. Styles are Boldly, Carefully, Cleverly, Forcefully, Quietly, Swifty. You combine one skill with one style for your action. Sneaking through the shadows would be "Move Quietly", sneaking across rooftops might be "Move Carefully". This bit of the system I like. Next, your Focus increases your Critical range for more successes. There is a big list like your normal d20 fantasy game. Acrobatics, deception, etc. Momentum and Chaos are very tied into the Dishonored games, though it is a bit too gamey for me on first glace, but having not played with it that could just be my knee-jerk reaction. It goes like: Every extra success you roll after beating the DC gets put into a momentum pot, that can be used to buy a 1d20 to any roll by any other player character. You can also create a Truth with 2 momentum, which in essence is just giving the player a bit of narrative control over the scene. The once smooth stone walls now become ornate brick work and easier to climb. Stuff like that. You can spend 1 momentum to ask the GM any question. This seems silly. Players should be able to ask the GM questions for free. Chaos is the inverse of momentum. In the Dishonored games this is represented by more guards and harder levels. Here it is literally just momentum for the DM. You spend 1 Chaos to add a 1d20 to a NPC roll. Create a truth for an NPC. or use it to prevent a PC from creating a truth. I don't like the last bit. Players do not get enough chances to control the narrative in these games as it is, and DMs already have full ability to say no to over the top truths. I like some of momentum, I think Chaos could use some work. Bone Charms are just magic items for this world. Grant you rerolls, or make weapon attacks have riders or tags. Stuff like that. The Outsider's mark opens up magic powers. You can get void points that you spend to give you an extra action, summon fog, grab stuff from a distance, blink short distances, and a bunch of passive ones too. That is about it mechanics wise. I can explain anything in more depth if anyone has any questions. Edit: forgot to mention the players can willing give the DM chaos by buying d20s for their rolls. Huckabee Sting fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Nov 7, 2020 |
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Nov 7, 2020 06:20
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Huckabee Sting posted:Momentum and Chaos are very tied into the Dishonored games, though it is a bit too gamey for me on first glace, but having not played with it that could just be my knee-jerk reaction. It goes like: Every extra success you roll after beating the DC gets put into a momentum pot, that can be used to buy a 1d20 to any roll by any other player character. You can also create a Truth with 2 momentum, which in essence is just giving the player a bit of narrative control over the scene. The once smooth stone walls now become ornate brick work and easier to climb. Stuff like that. You can spend 1 momentum to ask the GM any question. This seems silly. Players should be able to ask the GM questions for free. So this (and the Chaos bit) are used similarly but not identically in the other 2d20 games. I haven't read Dishonored but I can tell you that in Conan, the ability to spend momentum to affect the scene isn't supposed to be used to re-write something the GM already said was a fact (like the GM already said that wall was smooth, then the players don't get to just declare actually it's not smooth without some kind of in-game plausible explanation for the change): it's more, the ability to add to or modify the scene in a way that flows naturally out of details already given, or omitted. Some types of momentum spending is done after making some kind of skill roll (in Conan, you roll skills both in and out of combat). So you might have just made a Observation roll, and you spend momentum to expand what you found out. But there's also Immediate spends that can be done at any time. For example, the Create Obstacle spend can be done at any time, and it lets a character make things more difficult for a foe. In this case, the player has some narrative control Like: the party has arrived at a narrow pass on the road, with boulders strewn about. It's an ambush by Kushite mercenaries! A little later, a player spends momentum to declare that the boulders from which the ambushers are firing upon them be loose and unstable - there's now a hazard where the GM hadn't said there was one before, which one enemy will have to deal with. Specifically, the GM has to make a single skill test that an enemy rolls one or more Difficulty steps harder, (one step for each two momentum spent). So in this case the GM decides to make an enemy's ability to safely navigate the boulders harder. (Note that it might have been Difficulty 0, with the ambushers not making any rolls, but now it's D1 for the next guy who tries to move through the boulders; or, the GM may have already been rolling ) Or: a player spends momentum to declare that one of the mercenaries seems familiar... ah, he knows that guy from somewhere. The player is using Create Opportunity to add a d20 to their Persuade skill check, as they try to get the mercenaries to stop attacking them, and the GM rolls with this new info, declaring that this mercenary once hung out in a tavern with the player character for an evening, swapping drinks and stories, a year or two ago. Makes sense that if the recognition is mutual, they might be less eager to slay the players... time to roll the dice! There's a more powerful "Declare" action available as well: one thing you can spend a Fortune point on is Story Declaration, where you get to introduce a fact or add a detail to the current scene, with the GM's approval. This is more open-ended and more powerful (because fortune points are worth more than momentum points). Using the previous example of the boulder field, it'd be reasonable to spend a Fortune point and declare that the entire boulder field is unstable; now the GM decides that rather than a D1 Hinderance, the boulder field is now a D1 Hazard. (Hinderances slow movement by one zone, or if the character doesn't give up one zone's worth of move, they instead have to make a terrain test with failure stopping their movement; Hazards are Hinderances, that additionally do damage on a failed test, typically three dice worth). Or, perhaps the GM decides that if any of the opponents fail a terrain test in the boulder field, they trigger an avalanche that could damage everyone within or below the boulders! For a simpler example, perhaps in a noncombat scene in a marketplace, a player spends a Fortune point to have an ally of theirs run into them in the market. The GM decides that that ally could conceivably be there, so it happens. Alternatively, the GM knows that ally is currently in another city, because that's about to be relevant when the players are prompted to travel to that city, so she suggests that a different ally show up (without explaining why the first one was overruled) and the players agree. ... The asking a question isn't just stuff you'd normally expect to get an answer for. With the Obtain Information momentum spend, you get to force the GM to answer a question that reveals something useful or important with a single question, which they have to answer although they don't have to answer completely. For example, again in the above Kushite mercenary ambush, you might roll a Perception check to see how many mercs there are, and with an additional momentum generated, spend it to ask: who hired these mercenaries to attack us? And the GM might say, OK, as you scrutinize the enemy you recognize one of them - you've seen him before, in the employ of a nobleman who is a rival of your current employer. It must be that guy! (But note, this info could be incomplete, although not a lie: maybe there's more going on that just a simple case of hiring mercs to attack a rival's hirelings on the road.) Or, you might ask: what language do these guys speak, even though none of them has said anything yet. And so the GM says OK, one of the mercs calls out to another in Kush, telling him to shoot that drat guy with the greatsword! Which doesn't mean all of them speak Kush, or that none of them speak anything else, but it's still a correct answer worth one momentum point spend if it gives your party an opportunity to negotiate or intimidate better. The GM is not supposed to let you waste that momentum asking something that your character would already know. Like, if you ask "how well armored are these guys" because the GM didn't initially describe how well armored they are, and your character can see the enemies that are out of cover and in melee with the party... so the GM should just tell you what those guys are wearing without you having to spend to find that out. But, maybe some of them are still hidden, so the GM gives you that info when you spend a momentum point on an Observation check, by both giving the info, and also inventing a reason for your character to know it. (She can hear the clanking of their heavy armor? She caught glimpses of the sweaty thews of the barely-dressed warriors?) So anyway I'll just reiterate it might not work exactly the same in Dishonored, but I thought this might be useful.
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Nov 7, 2020 08:49
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