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Absurd Alhazred posted:What's stopping you from taking a one-character-per-player WWII RPG and simply having each player build a squad of character? Are you looking for mechanical support for intra-squad dynamics? A Patrol hack with a randomized mix of personality traits would get you most of the way there. Or make the PCs squad and platoon level officers and NCOs, and let the PC roleplay with an trooper. Maybe OP should go into more detail on what kind of gameplay they want.
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Mar 28, 2021 02:28
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SkyeAuroline posted:In the absence of a dedicated Traveller thread (at least in the past six months) and to satisfy my own curiosity... Has anyone here played/run Across the Bright Face or any of the other "split" adventures? I see them get recommended constantly as alternatives to running a full campaign like Drinax, but - maybe this is 40 years of game design drift talking - they feel pretty antithetical to Traveller's design with how hard of a railroad they're bound to. Just trying to understand why a completely inflexible railroad of a randomized, more combat focused than usual hexcrawl is in or near the top spot for recommended modules for a wide-open space faring game that disincentivizes combat with lethality. The split adventures were tournament adventures, which probably does some of it... but we aren't talking tournament play for these recommendations. I have run Across the Bright Face ! It's a pretty solid hexcrawl with a clear objective. I fleshed out the opposition team that was after your late boss' briefcase, so there was a personal connection with the pursuit (my players captured the leader of the gang, so I sent his wife after them). It's as railroad-y as it is because it's designed to showcase Traveller at it's best (actual travel, alien environment, etc.) and be played in a convention time slot. What I'm going to do the next time I run it, is to start play sooner. As written, the players have already botched the bodyguard job by GM fiat. I'd like to start the players off when they arrive on-planet, and spend some time on the inspection tour. That adds even more meaty Traveller stuff and give the GM a chance to showcase both the hot and cold environmental dangers. The big thing to play up, is to give the players a chance to side with the worker's revolt. There's a lot of good, pro-labor- RP to do with that and lets the PCs be proper good guys, instead of corporate stooges on the run. As it was, my PCs made the trip and ended up rescuing a bunch of management's families from a besieged compound. They were one of the first ships with the new to arrive back in Regina, so they got a lot of attention from the wealthy and powerful, which gave me as many patrons as I could want for whichever other classic adventures - or brand new shenanigans - they found interesting. Naturally the group promptly changed structure and we played something else next.
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May 23, 2021 20:56
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CitizenKeen posted:There's no way just to see their posts in isolation? Find one of the posts, click the '?' on the OP's profile and you get all their posts in the thread.
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Jun 30, 2021 06:30
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Imagined posted:From a pure rules standpoint, what would you say is the best miniatures game around spaceship battles? I'm sure many would say X-Wing, but I would love some alternative, because its model of 'buy ships you don't want to get cards you do want' (or make proxies) turns me off. I'd go with Full Thrust for a generic system that has a ship construction system and a large number of fleets based on established properties (B5, BSG, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.) available. It does cinematic and vector movement. Resolution is simple. I'm a little out of touch but as best I recall and can quickly Google, The current best version of the rules are the Full Thrust Continuum set, https://emeraldcoastskunkworks.wordpress.com/category/project-continum-rules/ The Continuum project has fleet books available for several settings https://emeraldcoastskunkworks.wordpress.com/category/fleet-books/popular-sci-fi-fleet-books/ If you want a slightly less generic (has ship construction rules but they're really crunchy) system that does 3D and has a virtual tabletop, I will shill my publisher's Squadron Strike. The developer had some really good ideas about play aids, and managed to make 3d vector movement both playable and fun on the table without computer assistance. There is also computer assistance. They've got some good home grown settings and (the stuff I work on) the space combat license for Traveller. Naturally I'm biased, but you can check out the publisher page, https://www.adastragames.com/products/squadron-strike-traveller-deluxe Or drop a few buck on the starter kit, https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/171157/Squadron-Strike-Second-Edition-Starter-Kit?manufacturers_id=8922 PM me to get into a game on the virtual tabletop, we teach the game online every week. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 03:37
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West End's Star Wars d6 game worked out really well. Every session I've been in, on either side of the GM screen felt Star Wars-y and Star Wars type stuff could easily happen. It's super fast in play too, even with novice gamers - you just roll the number of dice indicated on your character sheet and try and roll high.
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Jul 16, 2021 04:52
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neonchameleon posted:I'm getting an early Arthuriana vibe from this part. The Roman Empire has collapsed, telling the provinces to look to their defences. Vortigern has invited the Saxons over to settle as mercenaries... which hasn't stopped the raids. And now some nobody has ended up with a sword, which is no basis for a system of elective government. Vince Baker's first big post Apocalypse World project was set up like this. It got into playtestable shape but didn't go forwards for reasons I never heard.
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Jul 21, 2021 16:23
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Traveler had some of the first metaplot in RPGs. The quarterly magazine, Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society (JTAS), started out with in-universe news items with dates given. Those built up until a major event the Fifth Frontier War happened. They were light on detail and had very few NPCs mentioned by name, so GMs got a sense of what was going on in the larger setting, but with no railroad in sight. Some of the published adventures also hinted that something big was coming. This set up three periods within the timeline, pre-, during-, and post-. The post period went on for about a decade in-game time, and then they shook things up again with a civil war in the Megatraveller edition. If the PCs weren't at the Imperial capitol then they'd just be hearing about the really big events when everyone else they know does. They just have to help deal with the fallout. The civil war had one unexpected outcome: an AI scourge breaks out and effectively breaks the setting and wipes everything out. Jump forward a century or so and start a new campaign where you try and put the pieces back together. This was not well-received, despite the post-Skynet campaign setting being really well supported, with a lot of scope for the PCs to be the people making big things happen. There are more NPCs described in this part of the setting than in all the others, but more in the context of "this is your briefing officer, now go get the job done", or "who's in command of this op ? Uh..." One of the current time periods for Traveller material is a "no civil war" setting where the old setting (post-5FW) continues on. I'm pretty sure Mongoose is heading in this direction - nobody wants all of their home brew stuff wiped out without mercy or remorse, or worse - left to wait until the life support system fails due to a loss of imported parts.
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Jul 25, 2021 13:11
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Nehru the Damaja posted:For what it's worth, what's worth playing in urban fantasy out there? Spire. Very much not what your starting assumptions were, but can you really resist Drow revolutionaries versus High Elf imperialists ?
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Aug 6, 2021 08:05
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Is there anything that evokes hyperviolent van-wizard fantasy nonsense with a system that's appropriately lightweight and breezy to keep the fun coming? Some real "melt a skeleton's dick off" stuff? Ultraviolet Grasslands has a lightweight system built in, and it is absolutely van-wizard stuff. Free preview: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/241606/The-Ultraviolet-Grasslands--Free-Introduction
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Aug 13, 2021 17:29
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neonchameleon posted:What does Terry Pratchett count as? "Never mind what category it's in, just read the drat books."
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Aug 14, 2021 23:51
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Antivehicular posted:Holy balls, that initiative system is loving garbage. Definitely a system-killer for sure. I'm going to suggest Goblinville. You play broke goblins trying to hit it rich. As you play along, you develop the town. It's old school dungeon crawling complete with a marching order, counting torches and rations, and making tools in camp. It's rules light, the whole game with a starter adventure fits in a 32 page zine. It's a dice pool system, with a lot of improv and free form options to add dice. The art is super charming. There's a second zine with a few rules, some guidelines, and adventures. I did a review, https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/mllaneza/goblinville-gazette-1/
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Sep 24, 2021 22:13
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hyphz posted:I admit I don't really like that original statement, because the family had no way of knowing how the drive or food would be at the time they made the decision. If the food and drive had turned out to be really enjoyable, chances are the conversation would never have come up or people would alter their reason for joining in. Cultural context. Abiline, TX is a small city, 125k now and probably under 100k when the paradox was coined. A cafeteria in rural Texas in the early 70s is gonna suck. The drive is gonna suck both ways. You're in Abiline. This is what there is to do in Abiline today, https://www.abilenevisitors.com/Things-to-Do edit: 13th Age also has the virtue of its Bestiary, which is a really excellent monster manual. It has a collection of 40 monsters, from classic D&D critters like chromatic dragons, orcs, and basilisks to some really bizarre new stuff. Each creature's entry is jam packed with story hooks, different options to fit them to your style of play, and material you can actually use in your game. I have a full review written for a now defunct website, I should drop that in the F&F thread. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 17:17
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. Doubleposting during meetings.
mllaneza fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 17:22
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For people considering 13th Age, I'll have an F&F review of the Bestiary up in a day or two. I've got images picked out, but I want to hit the text for a third draft before I post.
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Sep 28, 2021 07:30
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My worst experience with gamer flaking was in high school. I invited seven people to play Paranoia on a Saturday, figuring I'd get enough people to actually play on average, and could cope if everyone showed. Nobody showed. Bay Area gamers simply cannot beorganized in the slightest fashion.
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Oct 10, 2021 07:46
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Orc Priest posted:Does anyone know any good youtubers that talk about 40k stuff? I was watching these lore videos but then the guy started going on and on about time or whatever. I just want to listen to the history of the eldar and the eldar only I don't care about the humans or theories about how time works in that universe. I'm a big fan of the Oculus Imperia. https://www.youtube.com/c/OculusImperia In character, he's a historian commissioned by the reborn primarch to collate a true history of the Imperium, starting with the Unification Wars, the Legions and the Great Crusade, and the Heresy. In affect, the Oculus is calm, a true monastic type in a setting that is the opposite. I like the contradiction, and I like how easy he is to listen too. There's lots of solid information, some good commentary, and some wry humor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a41ftLFg_E
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Nov 2, 2021 09:10
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Gort posted:Turns out there are some good ones here and some not so good ones I like Papsikel's stuff, https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Papsikels They do cyberpunk (including some Shadowrun), not-Xenomorphs, not-Predators, not-Starship Troopers, and other. The poor bastards had a really good looking not-Dune line in preview, buuuut they got C&D. Too bad, not-Duncan looked exactly like Jason Momoa. They will occasionally do a xenomorph or Predator with tits, but on the whole their stuff is non-skeevy and prints out super sharp. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jan 9, 2022 |
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Jan 9, 2022 07:09
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Xiahou Dun posted:O so it's completely disingenuous grasping at straws even by chud standards? Cool. Er, well, "cool". Well, that and, in Flying Circus, the PCs get laid - it can be an essential Stress relief mechanism. It's a remarkably sex positive RPG, without being explicit (the novel on the other hand...). So it gets tagged as horny by some folks despite a lack of raunch. Also, Vroooooom !
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Jan 19, 2022 06:35
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Splicer posted:Wildsea 1.0 pdfs dropped last week but I'm waiting for the physical book to properly try it out I think. I backed Wildsea because Traveller in the Treetops, with cool non-human species to play as, is extremely my jam. The art looked cool to, that always help get other people into a setting. Now I'm flipping through the PDF and this is dead sexy layout and art both. They ended up with a good set of rules to support Traveller in the Treetops, but goddamn this book is going to be a gorgeous physical artifact.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:38
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thatbastardken posted:long lists of equipment, basically. sometimes illustrated. Out of 30 handguns, there's one that clearly superior and nobody will ever carry anything else. There are 24 AK-47 variants with identical stats. This is "realistic" and builds "verisimilitude". Which is allegedly good.
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Feb 8, 2022 08:07
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Napoleon Nelson posted:It's so pretty. I've had several physical books come in over the past couple weeks, but I still keep going back to the Wildsea pdf. That's a really good looking game, but I've got Hardwired Island and Orbital Blues in hardcopy now, and those are giving it some competition. And goddamn but HWI is a weighty tome. Dead sexy though.
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Feb 21, 2022 03:26
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Napoleon Nelson posted:I've only flipped through Orbital Blues so far and I think it looks great, but I'm a little worried it'll be too graphically busy for easy reference. Well, as of today we can add Monster Care Squad to the list of "totally gorgeous books". Oh this is pretty, very pretty. I'd read a bunch of text from the PDF a while back, but this is my first look at the finished art and layout. I am extremely happy to add this to the huge pile on my coffee table. Speaking of PDFs, I did start in on the Avatar PDF by going through the GM section. It looks solid, agendas, guidelines, moves all line up the way they should, and there's a good amount of text describing how it's all supposed to work. I think they knew this would be a lot of their customer base's first RPG, and the work on the GM section reflects that. Now to go over it again and make sure it's actually good.
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Feb 27, 2022 08:12
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Our very own Open Sketchbook is posting developmental material from her take on a Trek RPG on Twitter. Torchship has a lot of promise at an early stage.
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May 1, 2022 20:56
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A quick dip into the core book turned this upquote:For the first time, there is a due process for the RDU, You still play cops, but they've found a lot of gray areas and some light to operate in. It looks like you could get through a campaign without ever knowingly offering violence to a Replicant.
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Jun 18, 2022 03:05
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Panzeh posted:Honestly, i've found that people flake really often in online things, particularly if they don't know you, and it's a fact of life. If you recruit six people, you'll probably get 3 at most, and you have to keep churning and churning. People said I was mad to accept ten people for a Dungeon World PBP game. I wanted six people and that seemed like a good ratio to get six actives. I was in fact mad as a hatter. PbtA games can be really good for PBP play. PbtA relies heavily on The Conversation, and if you can get into a conversational groove with enough people, you've got a successful PBP.
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Aug 2, 2022 06:06
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I had a GM back in college who ran a home brew system, which we didn't know, where he'd roll 3d10 and you got to pick 1 die and make it either 10s or 1s/ So you had some input but.... not really. It worked out. The players, self included, liked not having to do math or make game-y decisions. It made for faster play, since you didn't have to wait on people adding up bonuses or figuring optimal placement on the battlemat. There is a very good chance that the home brew system in question was "on a high roll they succeed, on a low roll they don't" with completely subjective judgement calls about what that actually meant in practice. And that's not far off how some GMs roll in a more traditional game, you look at the roll more than the rules. In my PbtA Traveller playtest, the players had traced their main opposition to a control room in a mining facility. THey gathered up some tool, set up a floor above the control room, and one of the PCs was going to rely on rolling good with +Cool to cut through the floor and drop into the midst of the bad guys as a surprise attack. As a GM I'm thinking "great, 30 minutes into the first session and we have a TPK cued up". This forum's own Aldante Fax then proceeded to roll a double six for +Cool on Grand Entrance. If it's stupid and it works...
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Aug 15, 2022 02:58
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EpicScales on Etsy has some Orks at least. https://www.trolls.cz/ has Guard and Necrons in 6mm. I've done business with both, very nice castings.
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Aug 19, 2022 02:15
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There have been a ton of cool adventures for Mothership that have funded, been produced, and delivered while we're waiting for the 1e boxed set. It's kind of funny, but there's a great little content creator community around it already.
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Nov 4, 2022 18:16
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Bucnasti posted:Alternatively, a good rules lite game AND another book that helps new GMs, I was thinking Sly Flourish book but not sure if that's really aimed at a brand new GM. People recommending PbtA is passe, but PbtA games are rules light and tend to have some of the best GM advice around. For fantasy RPGs, Dungeon World will do the job and goons will hook you up with playbooks. Fellowship is objectively better at it and is built to tell stories like the Fellowship of the Ring or the Gaang from Last Airbender; a party with an objective.
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Nov 8, 2022 08:57
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm going to ask: what good space ship battles game? Ken Burnside and I have been around and around on this multiple times. We really want Squadron Strike: Traveller to work as an RPG aid, but there just isn't enough for multiple PCs in a crew to stay busy and all have fun. There are also some concepts baked really hard into the setting that make the smaller ships extremely difficult to do in Squadron Strike, so we're sticking with the big ships. quote:IMO the hardest part is dealing with 3d and, if you choose to, newtonian physics. I think flattening space into a grid that you can more easily handle with minis or a map is a reasonable albeit disappointing compromise, and if you don't want to deal with proper physics you can also basically treat space ships like boats and let them fly graceful arcs like they do in most space shows/movies. Squadron Strike (or the Saganami Island game) handle 3D pretty well without computer assist, and there is now a VTT for Squadron Strike that works really well. There are regular sessions for newbies and a fair amount of people playing it.
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Nov 16, 2022 00:45
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Siivola posted:Oddly enough I think rolling damage works best as a bit of realism spice. It makes some amount of sense that a knife is less dangerous than a big sword and causes proportionally more "flesh wounds" than life-threatening injuries. But this then requires a game where HP represents at least some amount of actual physical health, and that has implications on recovery, and I'm not sure if anyone outside the Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green scene has patience for that these days. Keep in mind that the knife deals less life-threatening injuries compared to a sword which is functionally a really big knife. In the real world, you can tell the winner of a knife fight because he's the one that bleeds out in the ambulance, not at the scene.
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Dec 8, 2022 08:39
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Leperflesh posted:It is, and it was in "The Flying Sorcerers" apparently. And the exact translation of the protagonist Purple's name is "as a color, shade of purple-grey" so I didn't remember it exactly right but close enough. Niven should have worked more with Gerrold than with Pournelle.
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Dec 13, 2022 19:32
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Whenever someone would ask me to play in their D&D campaign, I'd always ask if I could play a Drow. Not a Drizzt Drow, a legit Lolth-worshipping, surface hating traditional Drow." Turn them on to Spire.
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Dec 16, 2022 00:45
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hyphz posted:I mean, the bigger complaint there would be the bit about "it lasts until the end of your next turn". Which makes it useless outside of combat, since a wall lasting for 6 seconds won't make any difference outside of combat timing. This was the bigger complaint - the scaling down of many utility spells in this way. If I wanted to be That Player, I'd argue that it'd last indefinitely, until I got into combat and took a turn.
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Dec 23, 2022 19:03
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Lemniscate Blue posted:There have been a few really entertaining ones (from a spectator's point of view) over the years. My favorite memory was a first time player asking for a rules clarification in the thread: "If I agree to convoy someone's army, do I have to take them to the place I said I would?" I'm actually curious about that, what was the answer? I've played Diplomacy once, back in high school. My buddies invited me to join the group they were in. Naturally the new guy got curbstomped right out of the gate. They apologized, but I didn't go back.
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Jan 14, 2023 07:48
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Yes, this game has been around since the 70s and is a high-tech army with hovercraft and powered armor infantry versus one cybertank and it's a fair fight. Same here. It's got fantastic replay value in a very small package. What I want SJG to do is put out a non-deluxe Ogre/GEV set. The GEV side is two conventional forces facing off, with optional Ogres. I stupidly lent out my collection of the originals, and the used market is absurdly high.
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Jan 19, 2023 20:13
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Siivola posted:We can set all kinds of games in the hard vacuum of space, surely we can figure out how to set those same games underwater or on fire. The blue-collar sci-fi RPG Mothership has had a huge upswelling of third-part zine level support, a lot of them are underwater adventures. So people are solving that problem! e. Helical Nightmares posted:Make it the Elemental plane of Earth and give the submarines all giant drills at the front and have them move like earthworms. <rolls dice> The githyanki and <rolls dice> the beholders. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Feb 21, 2023 |
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Feb 21, 2023 08:18
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It's glorious. I upgraded my printer to be able to print the Scout that I did back.
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Mar 7, 2023 04:42
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Halloween Jack posted:Gateway is fun, it was one of the first "serious" SF novels I picked up at random from a book fair many many years ago. Gateway is a great book, the sequels taper off in quality but you do find out answers to the big mysteries eventually.
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Mar 8, 2023 19:56
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:So these got removed and people are bitching. Yeah. I want to think that some of them are just bitching because anything changed. But I can't bring myself to.
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Mar 15, 2023 02:11
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