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PeterWeller posted:3 are competent Did we watch the same Cowboy Bebop?
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May 28, 2021 20:37
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 17:16 |
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Nonsense, there's also like twelve different drawings of the Roseblack in that scratch pen style, where she's making a face like she just ate a whole lemon.
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Jun 20, 2021 17:13
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Heart's a little more refined mechanically, and while I quite like Spire's fluff, Heart is exactly my thing when it comes to venturing into the unknown. Also there are subway paladins.
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Jul 10, 2021 03:13
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Dawgstar posted:Then that means... Hard-Wired Island is a comedy RPG! Hoisted on your own petard, Ettin! You take that back, Ettin's never been funny in his entire life!
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Jul 27, 2021 16:04
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PDQ felt like more of a game than Fate Accelerated.
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Aug 5, 2021 21:19
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moths posted:Movies or books would be a good analogy, but people don't go into a book forum like "hey I'm interested in getting into reading, where should I start?" I doubt there are even five good books.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:57
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Coolness Averted posted:I'm either running it or Heart in October so might have an update on whether 13th Age is still a decent game or just had 2 or 3 really cool ideas to work into more modern stuff. I cannot fathom a universe in which running 13A is preferable to Heart. 13th Age is ultimately okay. It's more an evolution of 3.5 and Pathfinder than 4E, but it still has caster supremacy problems and a bunch of garbage ideas that reduce down to stupid dice tricks instead of tactical choices. If you gotta play a d20 fantasy dungeon crawler, play Fantasy Craft.
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Sep 25, 2021 02:51
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Kinda pointless based on Lancer's sales model, which is to offer the rules for free, but you support the devs and get the pretty PDF for money. Point them to one store that takes a low cut and is slightly less evil.
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Oct 17, 2021 16:31
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Nessus posted:My DM style is Desty Nova from Alita, with slightly fewer brain injuries. Same, except more. I'm running on a Gameboy right now!
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Nov 17, 2021 17:55
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How are the non-Blades games in this FitD bundle? I've heard of exactly zero of them. https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Forged
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Dec 6, 2021 20:10
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CitizenKeen posted:The rulebook sucks. My goto anecdote is that the rules for (1) grenades, (2) grenade launchers, and (3) explosions are all in different chapters. This and the fact the game is five years late because Gutier won't stop loving up the production process makes it one of the most faithful adaptations in the whole of media.
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Dec 10, 2021 21:51
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Halloween Jack posted:Dune would probably be less successful if Stilgar said "Bless the Maker and his pee, may his pee make us trip balls and let us see the future, bilal kaifa." I see you are unfamiliar with the extended works of @duneauthor.
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Dec 18, 2021 02:01
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Zeerust posted:Whenever I finally finish running my Godbound game, I'm really jonesing to offer to run Mutant Chronicles for my group, the 2d20 implementation seems interesting. The other Fragged games are very slightly refined compared to base Empire, but aren't really radically different. Think like the difference between PHB1 and later D&D classes, versus a whole new edition. Though ostensibly FE2's coming at some point here. TBZ really hits a sweet spot between crunch and flowing narrative for me, and I highly recommend running a game.
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Dec 20, 2021 03:27
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MonsieurChoc posted:Nice, I got a copy but haven't done more than skim yet. Respectfully to the original poster, literally the only thing HWI has in common with Battle Angel is that it has cybernetics. It's also not a very mechanically robust system. While not everything needs to be crunchy, I would personally find it wildly unfulfilling if the final race against Jashugan came down to "burn all your prep, then rub your highest modifiers against one another until you win."
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Jan 5, 2022 19:34
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Leraika posted:I've always found the kijin stuff to be the most numberfuck and least interesting part of TBZ. I strongly suggest you don't look too close at the ayakashi rules.
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Jan 6, 2022 02:44
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Dawgstar posted:Nah. It works. I can make an android street fighter with a sword battling against the crushing weight of societal oppression and a search for identity. And wouldn't 'rub your highest modifiers against one another until you win' be in like any game? Neither of these things supports the other, though. HWI is a game about the horrors of grinding poverty. OG Gunmn uses poverty as a background element to emphasize its dystopian elements, but it's not something that impacts the plot - being poor is something that happens to tertiary characters to push them into conflict with the protagonists, sometimes. Everything after Last Order, money and capitalism are no longer relevant concepts. In the original series, Alita herself produces what was assumed to be a literally impossible amount of money just by pushing herself for a bit during the bounty hunting arc. Then she transforms into a combination rockstar/Formula 1 racer/gladiator who needs a pit crew to maintain her body and rubs elbows with the biggest star in the Scrapyard as a peer, not as a toady. Once you hit the big Zapan arc and Nova enters the game, money is not an object or even relevant to the story. The story is about lofty scifi ideals, fate, societal control, quite a lot of conspiracy theory woo and a shitload of martial arts. Eclipse Phase, TBZ, and even Fung Shui are explicitly about some or all of those things, although the degree to which each matches their intent is definitely a matter of debate. Nova's deal is torturing someone physically and mentally to see if he can unlock the secrets of fate itself, 'cause he's a lunatic. He's not going to repossess the Berserker body because Alita didn't make her last payment on time. Moreover, in a series that is explicitly about person-to-person combat to such a degree that whether the Hertza Haeon can beat Maschine Kratz style is a vital plot point with emotional significance, you need more mechanical support for the combat system than "I roll 2d6 plus five and get eleven, plus one because I spent time gigging for VectorEats" versus "I roll 2d6 plus five and get eleven too, but I get to reroll because I looked up your long dead Martian kung fu style on my phone before the fight." That's not what HWI is aiming for, and that's not a problem, because that's not what the game is trying to tell stories around. Take Motorball. Simulating a match needs to determine who is fighting who and how, who is maintaining control of the ball and how, and positioning along the track. The lazy way to do this would be to take TBZ and add a battle map and some forced move rules, so there's some strategy to moving around. The smart and difficult way to do it would be to craft your own PbtA or equivalent rolls, where you're still using simple dice rolls - potentially even the same 2d6 plus modifiers - but instead of number-go-up or number-go-down, you're staking and playing for narrative consequences: I dodge the blow but now I'm at the back of the pack; I fail to block the blow and lose one of my arms, which means I have the Unbalanced state for the rest of the match, I'll be at a disadvantage during combat, and I won't be able to fight while carrying the ball unless I know a style that emphasizes footwork; I block the blow and because I am a Kunstler fighting a larger opponent, I can choose to strip them of the ball, break one of their limbs, or make them drop back in the race, etc. HWI doesn't do any of those things, because it's a rules-light system for trying not to be so depressed you slip another rung down the ladder of economic distress and sometimes succeeding due to the power of friendship and mobile apps. D&D 3.0 shouldn't be used to run Star Wars, HWI shouldn't be used to run Battle Angel, Aces and Eights shouldn't be used to run my Smallville fanfiction game. And that's okay! None of those things are trying to be the other, except the D20 Star Wars, and we collectively learned not to do that anymore. We live in a golden age for RPG publishing where we don't have to shoehorn stuff into a system that doesn't fit the story we're trying to tell anymore. Leraika posted:the difference between kijin numberfuck and ayakashi numberfuck is that I like the latter Boy, that's the truth. If I recall correctly, forums poster Unseen Librarian picked out exactly the right ayakashi abilities to totally trivialize combat in one of the games I ran. I could either pose a challenge to their character, or not blenderize the entire rest of the party. In their defense, it was a valuable learning experience, and they did have a very cool character.
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Jan 6, 2022 05:53
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The correct form of address for any full-time professor, assistant or not, is "gently caress you, [lastname]." Adjuncts get the first name and the occasional pitying look. Graduate students are not addressed unless you are also in the habit of talking to furniture or plants.
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Jan 14, 2022 22:41
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I swear at the former when they stumble Ah, an advisor. Xiahou Dun posted:What about lecturers? Under 50, unmarried and no other job, as adjunct; over 50, married or with a private sector job, as professor with extra spite.
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Jan 15, 2022 01:01
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Arivia posted:Bieeanshee (formerly Bieeardo) who used to hang out here a lot has died:  RIP. She was one of the players in one of the forum games I ran, probably a decade ago.
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Jan 16, 2022 00:50
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hyphz posted:They try, but it has to be done very carefully to avoid replacing the status quo with one that is dependent on supers. WELL ACTUALLY Power Man can't fly and his powers were forced on him when he was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. You gotta go way stupider than you expect if you want to make a hypothetical superhero nobody's named already. It's one of the most difficult parts of playing a supers game.
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Jan 19, 2022 20:32
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Arivia posted:fixed that for you stay away from my ao3
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Jan 20, 2022 17:52
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RE: TBZ, diaper girl being an original content creator mandate is correct. If you bought the electronic edition or kickstarted the game, you should have the print-friendly version that's a little easier to consume, at the price of not having some of the pretty rad interior illustrations. But also less of the kinda sketch illustrations, too. E: Also, if you think TBZ's got bad layout, holy moly Mouseguard is loving impenetrable. It actively resists being processed and internalized as a teaching document and as a reference document. grassy gnoll fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 00:49
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Glazius posted:This has really not been my experience at all. Mouse Guard was my easiest on-point into that whole system, mostly because mice are just rolling d6s = skill, +1 per source of help whether that's a wise, a tool, or another guard, and trying to get 4s. They know how many successes they need because you the GM are setting it up and either rolling the rating for something that opposes them (from the denizens chapter) or giving them a fixed number of successes to hit based on the static skill factors (from the skills or, rarely, attributes chapter). I admit I am personally more allergic to Craneisms than most people, which is a big part of my dislike. Still, you're correct that the book doesn't ask you to make decisions on information it hasn't covered yet, but it goes the opposite direction. It asks you to repeatedly reference information scattered throughout the rest of the book during both chargen and live play, instead of consolidating everything into one concise chapter. It's a wretched idea for a reference book, and it's not particularly adept at actually teaching you play, either. Compare to Fragged Empire, which is pretty trash at teaching you how to play both textually and via layout, but is a pretty solid reference book once you know what it's doing.
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Feb 9, 2022 18:10
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CitizenKeen posted:I've been eyeballing a used copy of Mouse Guard at my FLGS; shame to hear its full of Craneisms as well. I like Torchbearer, but want a broader scope and less grind. It is the least Craney-y Luke Crane game, for what it's worth. Plus it's nice to look at all the print copies of panels from the comics. I liked it well enough to run a couple of games on the forums, back in the day.
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Feb 9, 2022 19:32
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Halloween Jack posted:It would be worth it to get to see him spin the giant wheel that determines what "dice that aren't successes" are called in this game I've always assumed if you were to play a game with Crane and uttered the word "failure" in his presence it would result in an immediate screaming fit.
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Feb 11, 2022 16:53
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Panzeh posted:The 80s approach to supers was very tactical and fine-grained, very much not icon, but it was weird, often having things like Starfleet Battles-style initiatives so that, for example, you could make the Flash and he really would punch 16 times per second, rather than trying to work that into some kind of abstract thing. It came with an enormous amount of rules overhead, though, like pretty much everything else crunchy and 80s. I once ordered a copy of HERO System thinking that even if it was slightly like its reputation, it'd be good to have around for a lark, even if I'd never run it. This was back in college when my discretionary spending was on the order of a few tens of dollars a month, if that. Eventually I got the call that my book was in at the shop. I picked it up, flipped through it, and immediately sold it back to the store at a loss, because they refused to give me a refund. Not even as a joke.
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Feb 16, 2022 02:34
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Runa posted:Kegel's Saga A real clenching narrative.
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Feb 28, 2022 03:32
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Halloween Jack posted:I just learned that John Wick's writing style has a name. It brhymes.
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Mar 3, 2022 00:30
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hyphz posted:I think I'm getting lost in examples. The issue is that it's almost impossible for an RPG to come up with any system of tactics that makes every tactical situation interesting. I am the GM for your hypothetical example group. I do not allow them to engage in a lengthy combat scenario unless it is interesting, purely by fiat. If they refuse to do anything but fight on the most advantageous, cool, they get a brief description of their plan working and we don't engage with the combat engine beyond a few cursory rolls. If they keep refusing to do anything, while they waste time they get out maneuvered strategically and get pushed into an interesting, decisive fight. This solves the problem.
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Mar 15, 2022 22:59
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hyphz posted:I am very impressed that you can improvise an "interesting, decisive fight" on demand but this seems extremely difficult from my POV. I've played a lot of combat-heavy games over the years, so I have a good back catalog to plagiarize, but an interesting combat boils down to a couple factors. 1) Does it interrupt the player's assumptions? As you note, the players are going to prefer to fight only on their own terms whenever and wherever possible, in ways that put them at minimal risk with maximal benefit, like an ambush. Put them at a disadvantage - they get ambushed, they have to fight with improvised gear, they have to defend one place while the opponent can maneuver around them, etc. Don't do this all the time, since that makes the novelty wear off and it's irritating to have the GM go "ha ha, you didn't sleep in your armor, now you get stabbed to death by goblins," but every now and then it'll keep them on their toes. They'll also feel pretty accomplished when they either beat your challenge fairly, or you discreetly put your thumb on the scales so they squeak by despite the odds. As GM, ask yourself what you can do to put the players off balance in a given context. 2) Is the combat itself unique? A fight with a pack of kobolds/squad of corporate security in a fifty-by-fifty room is bog standard and not very interesting. Consider what you can do to change the mechanisms of the fight beyond "kill the other guys." This could be as simple as adding pitfall traps the PCs and the kobolds have to maneuver around (or for your PCs to knock the kobolds into, which they will love), or fighting in an enclosed space where there's no real room to maneuver, or it could be as elaborate as the classic fight on top of a moving train, or hanging off the side of the war rig as it barrels through the desert, or on top of a crumbling cliff face. There's also setting victory conditions that aren't murdering everyone - each side is trying to retrieve an object, or they're trying to keep each other from getting to the last escape pod, and so on. In general you want things that make the players have to maneuver and consider their approach instead of just rolling their preferred attack method. Ask yourself what you can do in a given fight to make the players adapt to changes in the field, whether they want to or not. 3) Is the combat flavorful? This is the easiest option when you can't be assed to come up with a clever gimmick for the fight itself. Put the fight somewhere interesting - inside a crashing airliner, inside their home tavern, or the classic example of a shootout at the convenience store. You can do this entirely with flavorful narration - the goblin and the thief are jumping between tables and swinging from lantern posts, the candy display erupts in a multicolored spray as machine gun fire hits it, etc. Weird and vivid details sell well, and you'd be astonished what insignificant details players will latch onto. Ask yourself what would be cool to see in a comparable action movie or video game. Above all else, you are playing a roleplaying game and you can make poo poo up. It's playing pretend with some mechanics to maintain a semblance of fairness, as long as it's entertaining nobody will care if it's original or against the rules.
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Mar 16, 2022 14:50
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We're not obligated to confirm your interpretation of things, hyphz. If you want to make an argument, you have to justify your position. Do you like playing tabletop games? If so, why are you hell-bent on inventing excuses to never do so? E: and it's totally okay to not want to actually play a game! People don't have to like everything, and sometimes that can be due to the thing itself, or because of a bad experience surrounding the thing. Imagine you have gone to the Yahtzee subforum, where people talk about all the ways they like Yahtzee, and you make a post about how you like to play a game yourself from time to time. Someone offers to host a game for you, and you immediately respond "oh god no, sometimes you might roll more than one mismatch, or get a papercut on the board, and I don't like the look of those single-pip sides on the dice, they remind me of rat eyes." You would be entirely within your rights to hold every one of those opinions, but then it defies reason to continue to subject yourself to the subject. grassy gnoll fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Mar 18, 2022 |
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Mar 18, 2022 02:29
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Ettin posted:Alright folks: who here has run a scenario (ideally in a fantasy setting, but I'll take any) set in a fancy party? How did it go? I'm currently running a score for my Blades in the Dark group and I could use some stories for inspiration. It is important to emphasize the clothing of both the party and any NPCs they interact with, and GRRM-level obsession over the food, though usually less emphasis on music than you might expect. Ideally someone will be cornered by a complete boor for an inescapable conversation and someone else will be asked to dance when it is the thing they want least in the world. Probably someone's debutante experience will be ruined by an unshaved lout farting in the punch bowl. Players who volunteer exhaustive detail about their outfits or manners should be rewarded, along with anyone engaging in Dune-style narration about how their slightly raised eyebrow indicates they have seen their opponent's veiled threat and have accounted for this turn in their pre-party-planning, and furthermore want their opponent to know they know, and... Watch all the Regency dramas and then edit the players shouting "EXCUSE ME I HAVE TO GO REFILL MY GLASS" to no one when they want to engage in subterfuge.
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Mar 18, 2022 15:09
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Siivola posted:Just use GURPS. This is also good advice for the party question.
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Mar 19, 2022 03:07
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Xiahou Dun posted:O my god it makes a ligature out of f and i into some unholy hell character. Hello! I am a trained graphic designer from an actual accredited university, with columns and journals and all those nice things, and spent years as a freelancer. The ligature "fi" is not only real, but it is so commonplace that Wikipedia uses it as its example for ligatures in handwriting and typefaces. The typeface you can't identify is Arial, which is basically everywhere because Microsoft didn't want to pay for the licenses to use Helvetica. It's certainly not the most attractive typeface out there, but this is about like complaining the pimply teen at McDonalds offered to serve you Diet Coke when you clearly ordered champagne. Moreover, while the term "font" is colloquially understood to mean "the shapes letters have when they're rendered in a particular style," it is technically incorrect - a font is a computer file containing bitmaps or, thankfully more commonly these days, vectorized instructions on how to render letter forms in the style of a given typeface. Any human on the street would know entirely what you meant if you used the word "font" as you did, but I can assure you anyone with any knowledge about typography would very strongly fight the urge to correct you for your unknowing gaffe. Frankly I deserve a probe of my own for this awful loving post, but I hope you'll keep its tenor in mind next time you decide to be aggressively pedantic at someone.
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Nov 8, 2022 01:03
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Leraika posted:fellowship, quest, wanderhome, ryuutama I'll second Ryuutama, with the caveat it might also get players into some weird system-specific habits. I like the game quite a bit, and it's a genuine work of art to have on your bookshelf, but I've never been able to fully fit my brain around the GMPC-and-story-mode conceit. Depending on how the players are at navigating documents, Mouse Guard will teach you exactly how you should be playing it, with very good in-play examples, but unfortunately it's an awful reference manual and it is highly Luke Craneish. All that said, the systems are real easy to pick up, and the lifepath system is a huge help onboarding players.
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Nov 8, 2022 10:31
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CitizenKeen posted:If you're willing to do a bit of hacking, the current iteration of 2d20 (the one in the SRD and the one used in Achtung! Cthulhu and the forthcoming COHORS Cthulhu) is just sublime. (The "hacking" being they're games about WWII and Ancient Rome, respectively.) Can you do a quick rundown of your Infinity game? I'm trying to get into it from the wargame side and bouncing a bit on what a campaign might actually do.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:41
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PeterWeller posted:Hey all, my main group can't all meet for our session this Sunday, so I need recommendations (and links) for good one page RPGs we can play as a filler session. I'm familiar with Honey Heist, Nice Marines, and All out of Bubblegum, but I'm looking for even more options. If your players can ham it up enough, Tactical Espionage Action. 
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Nov 17, 2022 00:33
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NinjaDebugger posted:No the doves are free. Well yeah, they wouldn't be able to fly away in a cage.
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Jan 6, 2023 04:12
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Cessna posted:Or, flukes? No, that kind of injury was pretty common, I think.
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Jan 11, 2023 19:14
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 17:16 |
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Not with friends, you don't.
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Jan 12, 2023 19:17
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