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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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Dang. The $15 level basically gets you what people paid £40 for in the kickstarter, and a huge bargain off what the PDF set costs retail.
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Nov 12, 2020 08:05
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Hiro Protagonist posted:How essential are the proprietory dice for Conan? The only one that really seems essential is the hit location die. Not at all. There is a hit location table on P121 of the main rulebook, and a combat die table on page 93. So you can use normal D20s and D6es for everything. That said: I have the official dice set and I like it. The dice have a kind of matte finish to them, they feel nice in the hand and roll well. It comes with seven dice for twenty bucks which is really pricey for plastic dice; there's also just a single hit location die available for five bucks which is even more ridiculous of a price. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Nov 20, 2020 |
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Nov 20, 2020 22:18
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Azhais posted:Conan question: I'm a little unclear on the defense reaction wording. If I parry someone, is the struggle affected by reach and such, or does the struggle replace the usual melee resolution? i.e. if I have a reach 3 spear and someone is attacking me with a reach 1 dagger are they doing a d3 check for the struggle or are we both on d1s I agree, this is a confusing case in the game text, and I had to do some reading to figure it out. Basically: yes, you still apply the modifiers. So, even though it's now a struggle, your opponent would be adding +2 Difficulty to their roll due to your spear reach 3 vs. dagger reach 1 advantage. E.g., if you roll one success on your test, they need at least three successes to avoid a hit. Also, despite the example on pg 113, the defender declares if they're using a Defend reaction before you roll the attack. They don't get to know how many successes you have before deciding to add a token to the doom pool and try to actively parry. To crib from an (unofficial) FAQ I found: quote:For example, Conan attacks a Turanian soldier. Conan is armed only with a dagger, while the soldier has a spear. The soldier will use a Defend Reaction. The soldier's spear has 2 more Reach than Conan’s dagger, so Conan will test Melee vs D3, while the soldier tests Parry vs D1. Both roll at the same time. Conan uses extra dice by spending Doom and hits his skill Focus a couple times, resulting in 5 successes. This gives him 2 Momentum. The soldier rolls 2d20 and only gets 1 success on his Parry test. The soldiers test is successful, but he earns no Momentum, making Conan the winner and leaving Conan with 2 Momentum to spend on the hit. I think this makes sense, as it preserves the weapon advantage, whereas if you ignored it, a defender with a spear would often be better off not parrying, to keep their reach advantage, vs. parrying and losing it.
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Dec 24, 2020 00:56
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I don't see a thread about Modiphius tabletop minis games in the live threads, although I might have missed one. Feel free to make a thread! There's sort of a conceptual overlap between the general boardgame thread and the tabletop minis thread - tabletop minis boardgames. Some of them have their own threads, like the star wars ones, and some don't. If you don't want to make a thread for a particular game like Fallout, or a "megathread" for Modiphius minis games, you can also just ask questions in the boardgame thread or in the chat thread.
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Dec 24, 2020 21:35
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It is 100% totally cool to start a thread even if you don't know anything about the game. Not every thread needs an effortpost like it's going to be a megathread.
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Dec 28, 2020 20:01
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I don't know if it's explicitly stated anywhere, but modiphius RPGs seem to have as a design principle that theater-of-the-mind combat be fully possible, and not just in a throwaway "you can dump some rules and fudge poo poo to make it work" way. A map with zones can be sketched in 20 seconds if you really need one, and using zone naming can help if needed, but you can also totally just say "everyone by the tree is in close; and then let's say there's a ring of four zones around the tree, north/south/east/west, each adjacent to the tree zone and adjacent to two other ring zones" or "the inn's common room is a zone; each door from there is a zone boundary with the adjacent room or hallway being another zone; and if it comes up, windows/outside are zone boundaries too" and you can improvise additional zone breaks if they're suddenly needed (oh okay Conan is on the roof busting through the ceiling, that's an adjacent zone but due to the height, no melee attacks across that zone boundary.) I can totally see an Infinity minis player wishing for an RPG that gave crunchy, grid or hex minis combat as a priority over the default; but Modiphius is leveraging their 2d20 system and not trying to re-invent the wheel with each new game, and there's a lot of advantages to doing that for everyone: The system is already playtested and its strengths and weaknesses well understood; modifying it carries much less risk than starting from scratch. Also, if you've played one 2d20 game, you are already well-primed to pick up the differences and play another one. Also, they can eventually do some kind of "2d20 second edition" and update all their games with it, so investing in that costs less than investing in a system upgrade for several mechanically incompatible systems or having to choose just one to update because that's all that's in the budget.
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Jan 7, 2021 23:26
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I don't have an exact answer for you because I haven't played, but I figured I'd mention this first anyway: the last two seasons of TNG overlap with the first two seasons of DS9, and then the TNG movies have further overlap with other series. This may be helpful as a timeline resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Star_Trek These timelines are assembled by fans, because the shows' various producers have often played a little fast-and-loose with chronology. Given how many alternate-timelines we've now proliferated with the films, you also have the choice to easily say "eh well in OUR timeline, the dominion war never happened, Sisko didn't become a wormhole aliens prophet to the Bajorans, and the situation out there is static and not too important" and just plow forward with your mainline TNG story regardless. Anyway: Modiphius' star trek site lets you filter, so here's all of the adventures and campaigns they've published: https://www.modiphius.net/collections/star-trek-adventures/star-trek_campaigns-adventures?page=1 The standalone PDF adventures are under $6, so the bar isn't too high in terms of maybe just sampling a few. Clicking through, some of them have a stardate, some don't. The Gravity of the Crime, Nest in the Dark, Stolen Liberty, Back to Reality, and The Prize Supplement have blurbs saying they're set in the TNG era, but with notes for adapting to other eras. I suspect that with some adaptation work you could adjust other adventures to suit TNG era as well; especially if your players aren't the type to say things like "hey wait a minute, by TNG era this planet we're supposedly making first contact on had joined the federation, are you running an original series adventure on us???" or whatever. Of course, there's also compendiums, which I think have adventures for multiple eras? Just based on the artwork preview, compendium 1 looks more TOSy and compendium 2 looks more TNGy, but that's just art and the blurbs don't say.
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Jan 11, 2021 20:43
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Azhais posted:How does area damage affect squads in Conan (assuming its any different)? The rules are not clear on this, mostly because the rules for Area attacks are confined to a single paragraph on page 152.However, this is my own take: The Area weapon quality only allows the attack to "target" additional targetable entities, usually enemies unless you roll Complications. Squads (and Mobs) act like a single target, so if a Squad is in a zone, you target that squad as normal, and then "one additional target within Close range for each Effect rolled, starting with the next closest target." As-written that would have to be a separate Target - a different enemy, perhaps a Toughened etc. one, or a different Squad/Mob. Then you'd roll damage, and the nature of the Squad is such that if you inflict Wounds, you take out a squad member and then additional damage laps over onto the next member as usual. That would mean that an Area attack against a zone only containing a Squad is strictly worse than against a zone with two or more targetable entities. I don't like that, it seems bad to me, so I think I might rule that each Effect allows the player to roll Damage a second time, applying it to the Squad again, until/unless the Squad runs out of Minions. There's more problems here though. All of the Area weapons in the Core rulebook are in the Sorcery section, they're generally the throwable alchemical preparations, and these are unclear about use. What's the range of a thrown alchemical device? Is it the same as an improvised weapon (see the Improvised Weapons sidebar on page 152), which would mean it also has the Improvised quality, doing zero damage whenever Effects are rolled? (I think the answer has to be No, since it's not mentioned, but with no actual ranged weapon statline anywhere for these, we still have to just assume it's probably Close and work from there). If you hit enemies with an Area attack, do you still roll hit locations for them, to determine Soak? (I think probably yes, but this is odd and I wish the rules said so explicitly.) Overall I think as a GM you may have to just make a reasonable ruling. If you rule that the Area attack hits each individual member of the Squad you could do that, although the main point of Squads is to simplify combat for both you and the players, and this would do the exact opposite, you'd wind up rolling individual damage (and hit locations?) for each enemy. And then what will you do with Momentum spends like the one that lets you target more enemies with an attack? What if the player wants to spend Momentum/Fortune/Doom prior to rolling, to make it a "called shot" against the leader of the Squad? The abstraction of having damage just work from one member of the Squad to the next isn't supposed to be read as if the PCs always gang up on one member of the squad at a time; instead, it's intended to produce a running attrition effect on the squad, with members of the squad getting taken out in quick succession, and also the leader using them to protect himself. Part of this abstraction is the lack of Wounds - each minion is out as soon as you score a Wound, and if you do 5+ damage in one attack (after Soak) you do two wounds and take out a second Minion. If you keep to that abstraction with the use of an Area weapon, you can still describe it as the weapon hitting everyone in the zone... just, only one or two members of the Squad succumb, with the others being hurt but not out yet.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:56
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ohhhh yeah lol
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Feb 15, 2021 18:48
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Toebone posted:Humble Bundle has a pretty nice looking deal on Wasteland Warfare stuff (link) I haven't played anything from Modophius, is it worth grabbing? I've got no particular knowledge about the minis game, and the Wasteland Warfare RPG stuff appears to be built on top of the minis game system, e.g. it's not a 2d20 game. I would guess that you might like it if you already are interested in the minis game, but that if you're not into the minis game, the RPG as an add-on is probably not the best place to start. That's just a guess, though.
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Feb 19, 2021 08:28
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2d20 GMs: how much info do you normally give your players, when you spend from the GM's pool (e.g., the Doom pool)? For example, it costs 1 Doom to add a Minion to an encounter, or 2 to add a Toughened NPC. If my players know that, then they immediately know if an NPC I've added is one or the other by how much Doom I spent to bring them in. I sorta feel like that's fine? But the game rules are silent on the subject.
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Mar 25, 2021 17:15
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Oh yeah they always know how many tokens are in the pool, that's the requirement. I meant, do you tell them when you spend some Threat, exactly what you've spent it on?
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Mar 25, 2021 18:20
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Subjunctive posted:If they always know how many tokens are in the pool, wouldn’t they necessarily know when and how much you spend by simple subtraction? I may be missing something here... The players have not necessarily read the GM stuff, to know exactly what everything costs in tokens. Or, if I pull say four tokens from the pool and then things in the encounter are escalated, they don't necessarily know that: 2 were for this new Toughened reinforcement, and 2 were for <some other thing> vs. a 1, 3 spend, or a 1,2,1 spend, etc. So what I'm asking is, do you say to the players "I'm spending 2 doom to add a Toughened reinforcement!" or "I'm spending 2 doom from the pool. An NPC enters the fray... it's a winged ape looking thing and it's real angry!" or maybe you just scoop out four doom, you say "DOOOM" real ominously, and then say "An NPC enters the fray... it's a winged ape looking thing and it's real angry. Also, the west wall, the one with all the cracks in it, gives way! It's falling on you!" e. an extension of this question is the degree of information asymmetry you have at your table. Broadly, I'm convinced it's not a good thing if players never have a way to assess the threat they're facing. But this system gives the players multiple options to assess threat: Observation rolls, the Obtain Information momentum spend, etc. If I felt it was a D0 check to know that a given foe is a minion vs. toughened vs. nemesis, I might volunteer that info up front, but I prefer not to use exactly those terms, especially for players who know the rules. It's important IMO not to trick the players into routinely wasting resources. So if it's clear the players think a minion is actually a nemesis, I don't want them blowing multiple limited resources to throw big piles of dice that aren't needed; similarly, it's not good to trick the players into dismissing a serious threat as a minor one, at least not very often. What this actually accomplishes is a distrust of the GM's descriptions, leading to hoarding of resources, endless un-needed hemming and hawing over every obstacle, and obsession over information gathering in advance of every possible encounter. So a balance is needed between a reasonable amount of information that the players can trust, so they have a basis to make good decisions, vs. a desirable amount of surprise and mystery to the world, so their characters aren't always making the optimal, tactically perfect decision. Since the players have some tools, I don't think it's an absolute requirement to tell them which foes in a battle are minions vs. toughened etc. every time. Especially for less familiar enemies. But it's certainly an option and could be fine? Just wondering what other 2d20 GMs do. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Mar 25, 2021 |
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Mar 25, 2021 21:40
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I went through the treatment rules pretty recently and to be honest they're a bit of a mess. One thing that wasn't obvious is that you're assumed to not really bother treating Vigor in combat (even though that would be a very useful thing to do) becuase it's assumed the player low on Vigor will take a Recover action to do that instead. While the rules do say that a simple D0 test is a free action in combat, I think this clause in the Test Difficulty section (p 97) applies: quote:In circumstances where something significant is at A test taken in combat to heal yourself or someone else has enough going on with it that I probably wouldn't allow a free action non-rolled test for it. There's a risk of Complications I want to be evaluated by the dice. I can't find any rules that suggest courage soak can't be applied to any source of mental damage, so I'd allow that.
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Jun 7, 2021 17:39
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My advice: don't worry about rank, it's meaningless, just go with what you need or want for the adventure. You can justify it easily: some captains are micromanagers, some are over-promoted limp noodles, some are distant cloistered half-retired seat warmers, some are genuinely helpful enablers of their crew's competence, etc. Captain could do nothing but start an adventure by issuing an order which serves as sort of a framing for your away team, some could constantly be a communicator-call away to provide resources or assistance whenever, some could actively interfere and effectively serve as an adversary (one you're not allowed to shoot with a phaser).
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Sep 23, 2021 18:54
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I picked up as an xmas present to myself, thank you very much for the alert! Note also that at the $25 level you get a coupon for half off a print copy of the core rulebook ordered direct from Modiphius, which is a $31 value: but also the core rulebook is currently sold out.
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Dec 24, 2021 23:02
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Looks like they re-upped stock since I posted! Nice.
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Dec 26, 2021 07:59
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It does! Thanks, I am thousands of posts behind in that thread, but I do want to read that review now, for sure.
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Dec 30, 2021 00:59
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Azhais posted:Conan question: What's the purpose of non-lethal damage? I can't find any indication in the rules that you can actually accomplish anything at all with it. If you'd take a wound you get a daze instead, but there doesn't seem to be an "actually defeat the enemy" clause Once you're all out of Stress (Vigor or Resolve), every hit that causes damage causes at least one Harm (Wound or Trauma). In case you missed the rule: if you take 5 or more points of Stress damage from a single attack, you take a Harm even if you're not out of Vigor or Resolve (whichever applies) yet. You also take a Harm if you take any damage while being entirely out of the applicable Stress, or if it is taken to 0 by that attack. These two stack! So if a single hit of 6 Stress on a character with 4 points left in the applicable defense will cause two Wounds: one for being 5+, and one for taking the character down to 0. Note that this should give players and GMs some ideas about how to best use Momentum... a very good one is to roll some extra dice when you're pretty sure an opponent is low on the Stress stat you're attacking, for example, because it can push a hit up from 3-4 damage to 5+ and maybe do multiple wounds. Wounds actually affect characters' abilities, by adding Difficulty to all tests taken for skills under the applicable character attributes. So Stress is basically your "recover after every scene" damage that you can afford to lose, before you wind up in serious poo poo. Stress is also what Soak soaks up, so it gives armor, cover, and morale something to do. The idea here is that your Conan characters are pretty tough, and can handle some combat hits before they wind up in serious trouble... but very heavy hits can still break through their defenses and cause Harms even before they've used up all their Stress. As for your other question: some weapons and display types have activatable attributes like Stun, that you can use on enemies when you roll Effects on your damage dice. You can also inflict the Dazed, Staggered, and Hindered conditions, which reduce combat effectiveness. A character that has suffered 4 Harms is incapacitated (see Core page 119). I think that's the "knockout rule" you're actually looking for; but keep in mind that the shittiest enemies (Minions) go down after a single Wound and the typical enemies (Toughened) go down after 2. I like to sometimes flavor that as being knocked out, or having their morale ruined, when it's convenient to do so or it seems like the attack probably wouldn't have killed that enemy.
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Jan 3, 2022 02:39
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Ohhhh The Non-Lethal quality is a weapon quality and it also appears on some sorcerous powders and stuff. quote:Non-lethal So you straight up can't inflict Harms with this attack, even if the rules would otherwise say so (such as by inflicting Stress 5+ damage, or taking onf of a character's Stress values to zero)... but it can still inflict conditions, and if the other qualities don't impose a condition (say, Stunned or Knockdown or something) then it falls back to Dazed. How do you defeat an enemy with it? I suppose that'd be on the GM to decide that an enemy surrenders rather than fighting to the death. Or, you could take advantage of them being Dazed to try to tie them up or something. I notice that the only weapon in Core that has non-lethal is the Net, which has Grapple, Non-lethal, Parrying, and Thrown. Grappled enemies can't take an action other than an attempt to escape... and Dazed enemies take all tests at one higher difficulty. So if you hit an enemy with a Net and roll at least one Effect, they're confused and grappled and can't fight. Taking an enemy out of a fight with a ranged attack, even temporarily, is pretty good... you could use that opportunity to fight someone else, or maybe just run up and stab them. In the Sorcery section, Blinding Powders (P 164) also have the Nonlethal quality (note the lack of a hyphen... the game uses "nonlethal" and "non-lethal" interchangeably, which is why I didn't immediately find all the rules lol); they generally apply a Stun, a couple are Blinding, and one is Fearsome. Blinding (p. 152) is another Quality that converts any Harms inflicted into the Blind condition instead: this would be an "alternate harm" referenced by the Non-lethal quality, so a powder that is both Blinding and Non-lethal will either Dazed condition, OR, if a Quality is activated (by rolling an Effect), it Blinds instead per the Blinding rules. What isn't clear is whether the Dazed condition is only inflicted if the attack would have caused a Harm, or if it's inflicted whenever the attack even hits. I suspect the intention is that it should Daze whenever it hits at all, since that's a minor penalty and I'm not sure it makes sense otherwise. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 06:57
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There's some of that communal faction-building in Conan the King, I wonder if they're re-using some of those rules for Dune.
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Jan 16, 2022 02:59
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Helical Nightmares posted:What book has these rules? I'd love to know because I'm updating a list I made with Something Awful traditional game's help about base building, domain management, or organization building rules in RPGs. https://www.modiphius.net/en-us/products/conan-the-king Conan the King is a supplement for the Conan game. I have not actually used the rules in it, so I can't comment on whether they actually function as-written; but the intent is pretty clear. This sourcebook has material on one region of the world, some new character archetypes, NPCs, magic, etc. all focused on Aquilonia and playing nobles, which isn't directly relevant. The stuff you're talking about is mostly contained in Chapter 8 (The Road of Kings), which is really about nobility not just kings & queens; it has guidelines for courtly-themed adventures and campaigns, scheming and plotting, some specific rules for some of the kingdoms on the Hyborian Age map, Kingdom management, etc. The Kingdom Management section has topics on factions, and a bunch of stuff to do during the "carousing" phase (a formalized play phase that takes place between each adventure) including three required skill tests: one each for Control, Order, and Justice. Every kingdom has several Factions, the ruler always pits their own Power against the power of other Factions and usually the ruler has more than any one of them but less than all of the others put together, which means they can't rule with total impunity. You gain (or lose) support of other factions through roleplay. You can crush a rival faction through conflict (or even war), use politics to subdue a faction (reducing its power) by spending money and succeeding at Society tests, or you can spend more money and effort trying to convince a rival faction to ally with you instead. Factions always include one for the Ruler and (at least one) faction of Nobility, but then typically several more, and it looks like their Power is supposed to be between 0 (dormant) and not much higher than 2, although there's no specific limit stated. There's also an annual big deal challenge that represents a more significant event, could be a natural disaster or an assassination at court or the revelation of a dangerous cult, etc. There's a Kingdom worksheet you use to manage all the formal mechanical elements, a table of factions you can roll on (although the GM is encouraged to make up more). Each faction has a Power level, and if the ruler fails a Control roll, a new faction forms at power level 1. Failing an Order test allows one existing faction to gain a power level, and failing a Justice roll a "serious grievance" against you is created, which prevents the ruler from gaining Legitimacy in the short term. In each of these cases, these are also roleplay prompts. If a ruler passes all three tests, they get to roll a Persuade test to try and increase their Legitimacy (which starts at 2). It costs money, and the difficulty is higher the higher your Legitimacy already is; and even on a success, the GM can spend Doom to create a new faction or increase the Power of an existing faction. I would not say that these rules are extensive or complex; there's a few moving pieces, mostly coming down to the normal skill rolls for Conan, but there's enough flavor built in to hang a lot of worldbuilding & RP off of. The actual faction-building part is not very crunchy, you just... make up a faction or roll for one. Most of the factions on the table are just descriptions. For example: quote:4 Family or quote:9 Merchants but there's one that has some random generation to it: quote:18 Cabal So this one is a small group of people who come from some other entry on the list, working together in a conspiracy. Does any of this stuff pique your interest? Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 21:30
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Modiphius marketing email posted:
quote:Star Trek Adventures PDFs
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Jan 28, 2022 21:35
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I think that's fairly common of D&D players going to any other system, honestly. Fortunately, the game still functions reasonably with a suboptimal character in a full party, if the rest of the players are OK with the lousy character using most of the spare momentum from the shared pool to juice their rolls enough to compensate for low success values. For your combat sorcerer, have you delved into some direct one-on-one RP to do with their patron? I think flavor is really important here, and "just being a sorcerer is a terrible idea, you are doomed, every time you use these powers you're messing with horrible poo poo that will definitely destroy you eventually" is a theme that is built into the rules. It sounds like that player is also not really aware of how the math works out for this game, and you can't really try to min/max a character if you don't understand the math, so that may be another issue there.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:21
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Conan has options for how random you want chargen to be. You can see them presented up front in the online character generator: https://conan.modiphiusapps.hostinguk.org/index.html  "Normal" gives you options at every step, e.g. you can opt to roll or you can just pick:  "Play the hand you are dealt" forces mostly random rolls, with just a couple of direct choices that affect your numbers. Even here, in many cases you're picking from options: there's a roll for a couple of traits that affect your base stats, but then you pick from among the options for best and worst. For example:  If you opt to roll Archetype, you still get to pick one of three skills as your elective skill for a bonus, and then the generator randomly picks your second from among the remaining two for that Archetype. This happens again with Nature, and also you pick from a shortlist of Talents that come up based on previous picks, and so on. "Random" autogenerates almost everything, but still lets you swap any of your dice rolls around to customize: you can play with this a lot, although if you want to actually know what all these different results do, you need to xref them with the rulebook while you do it.  This approach still gives you the best/worst attribute picks and the elective skill/talent picks like "Play the hand you are dealt". So, tl;dr, there's no totally-random chargen option, and there's a completely-nonrandom option too. That said: if you play with more than one or two supplements, the randomness goes way overboard. You can wind up with really mismatched stuff and characters that aren't coherent. I recommend using one of the semirandom options with just the base game, or maybe base + 1 specific supplement, for newbie players who don't know the system... and I recommend the fully manual process with experienced players who are less likely to hit analysis paralysis or spend ages looking up every option in order to try to optimize. The game in general does not require tons of charopt. Everyone can compensate for weaknesses by using momentum. On the other hand, watch out for overpowered characters who have optimized one or two aspects, especially if you allow attributes above 12 (you can restrict to 12 with the Shadows of the Past rule). Characters with a 14 in a stat (ancient bloodline) can completely dominate an area of the game to the point that they just always succeed and also spew loads of momentum into the pool for their buddies.
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Feb 28, 2022 23:11
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In Conan, there's an explicit, structured "Carousing" segment that happens between each adventure, so it's clear to everyone where an adventure ends.
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Mar 7, 2022 05:11
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Yeah despite its name, the Carousing segment is really important and not just about spending all your gold on ale and whores. But you could totally have an analogue for e.g. star trek, when the ship puts in at space dock for a month of retrofits and shore leave and crew have the opportunity to go home and visit family, get involved in drama, have their social standing elevated or radically cut, restock on personal and mission supplies, visit with their sorcery demonic patron to receive severe punishment for failing to burn the still-warm heart of an innocent child upon their altar as demanded, have a costly tryst, be featured in the Space News and have their Renown increased, attend a local festival, get promoted, or get some new borg implants. To be slightly more clear: after each adventure, upkeep is paid, which is higher for higher standing but lower for higher renown; xp is spent (for example to advance ranks in a talent); ammo, food, and basic items replenished; and then characters can spend any extra gold they have on carousing activities, which includes shopping for new items, gambling, gathering rumors, recovering wounds and traumas, cultivating renown, or receiving a title. Then, regardless of which of these things the characters did, every character rolls on the carousing table, which ranges from really good stuff if you roll low, to really bad stuff if you roll high. Al lot of the "stuff" on the table includes some mechanical benefit or drawback, but all of them also have a prompt that can amount to a little off-screen adventure... nothing the player/gm have to really play out, but often the player needs to make a choice, and often a thread is left open to become part of the next or a future adventure if desired.
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Mar 10, 2022 01:49
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I think that's the sort of thing I'd have a serious OOC discussion with my players about, with the goal of either retconning the setting so that easy cheap suicide nukes just aren't an option, or establishing ground rules for in-play threats and use intended to prevent it from becoming a recurring theme. Because, frankly, it's a dumb mechanism and it was an error on Herbert's part to begin with. Real world experience tells us that human beings at a governmental level might be able to resist mutually-assured destruction (the jury is still out on that one), but humans at a personal level definitely don't. Unless you postualte a psychological shift in human nature - which you could, as part of that OOC discussion - it's going to feel "unrealistic" how every desperate person with a lasgun decides to be coolly-rational instead of, well... you know. Human. It also beggars belief that the makers of personal shield technology would not either solve the whole nuclear bomb issue (they've had centuries to do so, right?), or abandon the technology. I have no qualms about correcting Howard's errors in Conan whenever I come across them, and I think it's a thing any of us should do when working within pre-established settings.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:33
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