|
CitizenKeen posted:“Everybody rolls” is a big shift in mindset, but it works well in Agon so I have high hopes. It's just more abstract than the games I usually play so I'm having some troubles visualizing how it plays around a table. Definitely wants to try running a Season once though.
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 06:32 |
|
|
Kwyndig posted:I was wondering when somebody was going to bring up Fragged, I would have but I'm not 100% on how it works. Yeah it's kind of in that same tactical ttrpg design space that LANCER is in where you can actually do a lot of elegant work once you completely shed any pretenses of world simulation to just focus on having rules of a game that work. And it actually applies this philosophy to having a mechanically crunchy but still pretty satisfying non-combat gameplay loop, of which LANCER has none while ICON skips the process to instead import FitD. Fragged's Acquisition Rolls as a system basically cover the entire gamut from purchasing/bartering, crafting and modifying, or straight up researching and prototyping.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:37
|
|
|
Cool Dad posted:My RPG crafting story is a guy in D&D wanting to make a katana at a blacksmith shop for no reason, in about an hour. I pushed back on this for some reason as the GM (the reason is I was 16) and he argued that he had gone to Japan and made a katana there and it only took an hour. You've never been to Japan? 1-Hour Katana stores on every corner. There's like twelve companies doing it. Katanas while you wait.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:40
|
|
|
theironjef posted:You've never been to Japan? 1-Hour Katana stores on every corner. There's like twelve companies doing it. Katanas while you wait. If you get a katana from a vending machine people will be very scornful if you don't finish it up and throw it away right there at the nearby proper receptacle.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:42
|
|
|
theironjef posted:You've never been to Japan? 1-Hour Katana stores on every corner. There's like twelve companies doing it. Katanas while you wait. The really funny thing is that I'm pretty sure that sort of thing would be illegal in real-life Japan; swords are subject to restrictions on ownership similar to guns.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:50
|
|
|
TTRPGs are stories with dice for emergent play. Crafting is only as interesting as the story behind the craft, and only interesting to the people whom the story is interesting for.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:51
|
|
|
the impressive thing about katanas is that the steel is folded a thousand times, which just means you have to fold the steel every 3.6 seconds and boom, katana.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:54
|
|
|
Benagain posted:the impressive thing about katanas is that the steel is folded a thousand times, which just means you have to fold the steel every 3.6 seconds and boom, katana. this post is triggering me lol it isn't! it doesn't! no! nggg
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 01:57
|
|
|
Silver2195 posted:The really funny thing is that I'm pretty sure that sort of thing would be illegal in real-life Japan; swords are subject to restrictions on ownership similar to guns. I don't know what you're talking about, I'm in Japan right now just filling both my hands with sweet convenient katanas that were made in an hour.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 02:01
|
|
|
Don't you only have to fold it like five or six times and anything else is decorative.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 02:02
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:Don't you only have to fold it like five or six times and anything else is decorative. More around a dozen times, give or take.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 02:05
|
|
|
I thought the actual real-life marvel of katanas (other than their beauty etc.) was that they were quite decent swords made from the crappy iron Japanese smiths could get hold of.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 02:31
|
|
|
do you guys actually want me to say e. no no you do not google "crucible steel" and "pattern welded steel" and "wootz steel" and dive into the deep end e. and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamahagane which isn't technically any of the above, maybe, depending on who you ask Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Apr 14, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 02:36
|
|
|
Listen I have no idea how long it actually takes to make a katana. Maybe you can knock one out in an hour and I was really unfair to Charlie, master swordsmith. It's especially impressive since he was like 450 lbs and confined to a wheelchair and could barely breathe. How he managed to do all that while also seducing beautiful women and hanging out with all the celebrities he said he knew, I'll never know.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 02:59
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:do you guys actually want me to say Are wootz the sounds you make when you finally get your finished katana, which by the way is sharp in every direction at once, made in an hour at a convenient Japanese kiosk?
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 04:01
|
|
|
I liked kill Bill where you take your katana on the plane, putting it in the handy katana receptacle
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 04:12
|
|
|
I also liked Kill Bill. I liked that part made by the guys who did the animatrix and I think they should have used them more Edit: every sword is a beaut and they all do 1d8 slashing damage UNLESS they're magic like if a witch kissed it or if it was owned by a sufficiently cool sword fighter and developed a personality
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 04:27
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I don't know what you're talking about, I'm in Japan right now just filling both my hands with sweet convenient katanas that were made in an hour. I committed seppuku like 5 times before even leaving Narita airport. Frankly, I'm a little burned out on it at this point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 04:52
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Are wootz the sounds you make when you finally get your finished katana, which by the way is sharp in every direction at once, made in an hour at a convenient Japanese kiosk? undoubtedly
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 05:14
|
|
|
Well, I’m looking for advice in a place I’m reasonably sure my GM won’t see it. We’ve been doing a play by post campaign of Lancer’s official Wallflower module, and just started the second mission in a set of them that had a bonus objective to beat a boss mecha that had been sent to hunt down my character specifically, thanks to me stealing the plans for a very powerful weapon from one of the setting’s megacorps. Because I had gotten the stat sheet on the boss due to passing a check between combats, I saw that it had a few tricks that would make it incredibly dangerous to us if we were all grouped up, and persuaded everyone to let me go first so I could get some serious distance away from them and bait the boss into going across the map to give them all a chance to score some damage. …Long story short: a couple bad defensive rolls and me underestimating the boss’s reach later, and I took exactly enough damage that the bonus objective was failed in the middle of the first round. Now, sure, I’m kicking myself for letting it get the best of me like that, but I accepted that that was a risk going in. But now I think my usually chill GM is really beating herself up over how quickly poo poo hit the fan for me, and is almost definitely afraid that she dipped into Killer GM territory despite my own (and the rest of the group’s) assurances that it fit within the fiction for the guy to pull no punches on me, how this could be an opportunity to turn him into a recurring/future antagonist with now-established stakes, that part of keeping the game from getting boring is keeping us in some genuine danger of failure, etc. Any other suggestions you all might have for me to try to put her mind at ease?
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 08:14
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:Any other suggestions you all might have for me to try to put her mind at ease? I'd tell her that we wouldn't play if we knew what would come up on the dice and sometimes the dice tell our characters to sit the gently caress down. That's the fun of Finding Out!
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 08:16
|
|
BlackIronHeart posted:I'd tell her that we wouldn't play if we knew what would come up on the dice and sometimes the dice tell our characters to sit the gently caress down. That's the fun of Finding Out! Exactly! And it even led to a heavily symbolic moment with my pilot who’s been obsessed with getting her hands on the heaviest firepower she can being put in a position where the very weapon that got her into this mess was loving worthless in that moment because she hadn’t had a chance to reload it… a realization that’s sure to have some major consequences further down the line if she lives.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 08:36
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:Well, I’m looking for advice in a place I’m reasonably sure my GM won’t see it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 08:48
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:Don't you only have to fold it like five or six times and anything else is decorative. That's why you shouldn't waste time in those one-hour katana shops! Go to the thirty-second katana shop, it's just as good!
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 14:15
|
|
|
With the money you save you can get two katanas, then dual wield.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 14:34
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:Any other suggestions you all might have for me to try to put her mind at ease? Also, as a designer, I want there to be danger in the first round just as much as any other time. That's when the players start with the most HP, but it's also when the enemies have the most resources to bring to bear. They are fresh and the players haven't put any statuses on them yet.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 17:30
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:I liked kill Bill where you take your katana on the plane, putting it in the handy katana receptacle Those used to be real! They only canceled that service on planes there when it became so utterly easy to simply have a new katana fashioned in about an hour while you browsed the local shops wherever you were headed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2024 17:53
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:Well, I’m looking for advice in a place I’m reasonably sure my GM won’t see it. What actually happened was, the NPC had guzzled a potion of invisibility and a potion of enlarge person, allowing him to creep up to a spot where he could reach over with his weapon and slap the mage. This was an intelligent monster who had the tools and tactical sense to prioritize a dangerous target. Completely fair play given the circumstances. At the time I thought it was kind of bullshit, a monster appearing out of nowhere with no opportunity for us to detect it (we failed the relevant skill tests) and downing a guy in one hit. Looking back, it was one of the most memorable moments in a couple dozen sessions of tactical combats that have otherwise disappeared from my memory. And that's how Pathfinder is meant to be played. You waltz past some challenges because you prepared the right combination of character classes, spells and items, it's the stuff you didn't anticipate that forces you to improvise and use your imagination.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 01:20
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:What actually happened was, the NPC had guzzled a potion of invisibility and a potion of enlarge person, allowing him to creep up to a spot where he could reach over with his weapon and slap the mage. This was an intelligent monster who had the tools and tactical sense to prioritize a dangerous target. Completely fair play given the circumstances. Consumables are a bit bullshit when used by monsters. When a player uses one, that's a resource they won't have for the other hundred fights in the campaign. A monster's only going to show up in one fight, so giving them consumables of an equal value to the permanent magic gear they could have had and having them use them all in the fight makes them much more powerful than they ought to be. An extreme example would be if a mage enemy could have a +1 wand for 5% more chance to hit and slightly more damage, or instead they could have a scroll of Meteor Storm which they read in round 1 of the fight to one-shot your party.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 11:47
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Those used to be real! They only canceled that service on planes there when it became so utterly easy to simply have a new katana fashioned in about an hour while you browsed the local shops wherever you were headed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 14:52
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:I distinctly remember katana holders on planes in the early 80's. I found a katana in one, that someone left behind, when I was 7. I got to keep it, because finders keepers is the true law of the samurai. kinda lazy of you, tbh, should have just folded your own
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 15:48
|
|
|
Gort posted:Consumables are a bit bullshit when used by monsters. When a player uses one, that's a resource they won't have for the other hundred fights in the campaign. A monster's only going to show up in one fight, so giving them consumables of an equal value to the permanent magic gear they could have had and having them use them all in the fight makes them much more powerful than they ought to be. I'm with you in spirit though because there are other cases where the difference between the relative value of X to players and the value of X to monsters can produce outcomes that are a pain in the rear end. PF1E has are a bunch of poisons and toxins and other effects that do temporary ability score chip damage. These are a hassle to get hit with as a player but basically useless for the players to use against NPCs, unless the monsters you're fighting specifically fear their stats being debuffed and act to safeguard their points (in my experience the PFS modules were pretty good about specifying the conditions under which non-mindless foes would retreat or give up fighting). I think ability score damage is bad because I hate anything that modifies one number and forces the user to then modify a bunch of other numbers on the character sheet. But that's a beef with ability scores broadly and one reason why I moved away from d20 fantasy altogether.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 18:57
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Has there ever been a tabletop RPG where crafting was good? solar system. part of why i like it is that it's simple enough I think it can fit in one post. first, the system in general. if you're doing a thing, and you have an ability for it, you roll three fudge dice and add the ability. abilities can be from zero to 4, so results can be from zero to seven, everything but zero is a success. various things can give you Bonus Dice: roll that many more dice, only ever using the best set of three. and if your roll is immediately setting up another roll, then the first roll's result can just become that many bonus dice on the second. the system's "crafting" is actually a more general system. In summary, roll results can be saved as Effects which can hold bonus dice for later rolls, and Effects can be made into Equipment, which are a part of your character and can give you an edge on every roll in a few different circumstances, and also can give you arbitrary new powers and mechanics. so on any success, you can commit a point of the ability's Pool (this is basically something like effort, stamina, concentration), to save those bonus dice indefinitely, to use on any future relevant roll that you choose. the saved package of dice, and the fictional object or circumstance they're connected to, is called an Effect. forging some documents? roll your Forgery, that's the level of the effect "Convincing-looking Prisoner Release Form", and how many bonus dice whoever takes the documents could have on future rolls to get in, out, or past places they aren't allowed in. when they run out of points, obviously the last guard you show them to takes them, or the fake ink has started to run, or the real people you're impersonating have arrived, or poo poo, just, as audience members we're bored of that trick, do something else if you want us to keep suspending disbelief. this also can be used for stuff you don't "craft": you can roll an ability like Barter to buy sturdy horses in town before an overland journey, or one like Strategy to make a plan before a battle, or one like Carousing to make yourself well-liked in a bar before a fight, or one like Dungeon Scrounging to gather lost treasures and magics, whatever. and special materials are Effects which you use to give bonus dice to later "crafting" rolls. roll Survival to harvest dragonhide to use for a later Leatherworking roll. and when you make that Leatherworking roll, you'll want that armor to be a permanent and dependable part of your character, right? so, for that, spend five experience to upgrade the Effect into Equipment. choose one circumstance where it helps you, that's going to be a Rating from 1 to 3. i'll be 1 for something general ("my battle-wizard hat helps me interact with people"), 2 for more specialized ("my fancy dress helps me interact with nobility"), and 3 for very specific ("my signet ring helps me interact with masons"). the gm then gives the Equipment more Ratings of their choice, up a total number of it's Effect level. If you have a Rating which applies to a roll, you can choose to ignore the dice and just take the rating as your result. but if your roll would have been a failure, your equipment takes damage and drops one effect level, which does causes it to lose a rating. oh right, effects can be damaged by rolls, making them lose levels and ratings. you can refresh your equipment's effect level by rolling something that makes sense, like roll Soldiering to sharpen and oil your sword or Animal Handling to brush down and care for your horse. last thing: equipment can also give you arbitrary special abilities. this uses the exact same system of powers that characters can just learn, but while giving your character powers costs experience, if the Equipment has powers, using it in a scene costs you Pool (remember, stamina, effort, etc), basically because it's a big powerful thing and it has narrative weight. you can totally have the soul -drinking demon sword at first level, you just will want to be very selective on when you use it, it will leave you drained, or work erratically, or however you want to describe it. thanks for reading. solar system captivates me for some reason and i thought this was the right thread to babble about mechanics in.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 19:06
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I don't know what you're talking about, I'm in Japan right now just filling both my hands with sweet convenient katanas that were made in an hour. The vending machine katanas aren’t poo poo compared to the Japanese 7/11 katanas.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 22:02
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:The vending machine katanas aren’t poo poo compared to the Japanese 7/11 katanas. Why yall not talking about the KFC katanas? Afraid someone might get on your level?
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 22:19
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:I distinctly remember katana holders on planes in the early 80's. I found a katana in one, that someone left behind, when I was 7. I got to keep it, because finders keepers is the true law of the samurai. ...and that's how chris the pirate became chris the ninja pirate
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 22:31
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Part of Pathfinder's premise is that the rules are basically symmetrical between players, NPCs and creatures, meaning the monsters can carry and use consumable items that change the course of an encounter. It's good to produce an unexpected and memorable result now and again, you don't always need to follow a predictable power curve of how tough the monsters "ought to be". It's a flawed premise that collapses under even the most basic examination.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 23:15
|
|
|
I feel like another part of the issue is that "technically possible within the system" doesn't necessarily jibe with "makes sense and works in the fiction." Pretty much any sapient Pathfinder antagonist could be armed to the teeth with consumable magic items and pull off weird tricks with them, but that's probably going to be unsatisfying in the fiction unless there's been some establishment that you're fighting tricky bastards, well-prepared ambushers, or something similar. To me, that's the big difference between the Lancer story, where the fictional positioning was well understood and the PC took a risk that didn't pay off, versus "look, those potions are within the wealth expectation for his level, okay?"
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 23:23
|
|
|
Splicer posted:They're not symmetrical at all though. Players need to worry about attrition, monsters do not. Layering symmetry on top of asymmetry is still asymmetry. If the GM can trivially wipe the party within "the rules" and the only reason they don't is gentleman's agreementing not to except when they really want to then the rules aren't real, it's just the GM doing what they want to do and using the rules as a thin veneer of justification.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 23:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 06:32 |
|
|
Doc Hawkins posted:solar system. part of why i like it is that it's simple enough I think it can fit in one post. Now that I think of it, Blades in the Dark also had a cool "crafting system" in the downtime activity, which was more a straightforward expenditure of resources in exchange for creating a cool project. The game I played ended well before our gang got anywhere with our project. Humbug Scoolbus posted:I have played/read through 100s of games over the last 50 years, and all TTRPG crafting systems basically suck with one caveat, 'Weird Science ' creation systems tend to suck less (except for TORG's, of course, which is a massive dumpster fire). The ones that have sucked the least are one's like Castle Falkenstein or even Space 1889 1st edition. They went more freeform rather than rigid structure.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 00:02
|
|