Trad Games Chat: squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Trad Games Chat: squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Man I need to start posting more again. I think I barely posted in last year's thread, let alone in general.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2021 19:13

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 00:44

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

DigitalRaven posted:

Please do. You�re a good poster.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2021 23:07

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

fozzy fosbourne posted:

TL;DR: Are games art???

Yes. Next question.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2021 02:34

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

fozzy fosbourne posted:

If a game has never been played, is it still a game?

Also yes.

Man, this is easy.

(90% of this hobby is games that are never played. Or read. God how do I stop buying games)

# ¿ Jan 6, 2021 02:49

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Honestly I feel the biggest obstacle to good RPG reviewing is getting people to accept that it's okay to criticize an RPG.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2021 03:28

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Tulip posted:

Roger Ebert famously considered games to be off-limits because they lacked a singular, final vision in their execution. Games are fundamentally open-ended, and the question of what happens in a even a relatively narrow game like Doom includes a set of audience actions that are ostensibly not possible with a movie or building. Personally I think this turns around quite easily to look at the ways in which a movie or a building are going to be warped and changed by the audience experience and I don't take Ebert's conclusion very seriously, but that aspect of open-endedness becomes far more extreme with RPGs, which do not have even defined story events or mandatory checkpoints. This provides an opening for the cowardly "there's no bad RPGs only bad tables" argument, which I can only imagine comes from people who have only experienced bad tables.

This mostly means that it's generally not valid to critique e.g. Ironsworn for any specific story that is told at a table, since that's kind of outside of what a given RPG is, but it is fair to critique how the RPG biases any stories that come out of it, which rules IMO.

It more an issue of fans of games getting way too defensive about even the mildest criticism of games they like. I mean, look what happened last year when people said "hey maybe D&D could be a little less racist?"

e: also rip dwarf74

# ¿ Jan 7, 2021 23:30

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Leperflesh posted:

For TG, I've already introduced informally one solution to the attention and navigation obstacle, which is to announce/highlight/talk about new threads here, when they're posted. I think graduating that to a sticky is something I'd like to do, if I can establish that I'm willing to habitually update that sticky on a good quick schedule.

I think announcing new threads (mega or otherwise) here in the chat thread is a good idea. I have the problem of only really navigating the forums via my subscribed threads so I don't see new threads or even really go to TG itself to look up new threads that often. Which, yes, is a me-problem and not a forum-problem, but I think it'd help.

Maybe something like the "LP announcement thread" would work too, where people can just post "hey I started a new thread here, check it out".

# ¿ Jan 8, 2021 17:22

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Legacy is at the top of my "I really want to play this" list. I love the idea of hopeful post-apocalypse stuff and the worldbooks are all good. I've only run Rhapsody of Blood, though.

e: Rhapsody of Blood has also kind of spun off into a new standalone game Voidheart Symphony, which is sort of "Castlevania meets Persona also you fight the evils of the world like Capitalism".

Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jan 8, 2021

# ¿ Jan 8, 2021 18:49

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

SkyeAuroline posted:

So I'm actually curious. How many of us are in ongoing (or imminent) games & what are they?
Personally in delay limbo for a switch from Eclipse Phase to CPRED, plus an Over the Edge game that's starting soon.

I'm in a Torg Eternity game every other Saturday and running a Blades in the Dark game every Sunday.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2021 15:12

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Coolness Averted posted:

What's weird is it's not part of the game -from what I can gather. My main exposure to kingdom death was SA pointing out all the titty miniatures and rape demons. So I was a bit surprised when a non-creep friend mentioned playing and liking it with other friends and had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned rape demons and incredibly sexualized stuff.
He'd only seen it as darkest dungeon or demon souls-esque boardgame.
But clearly when you go to the website like 90% of what they're selling are porn minis.
The porn minis don't even seem for the most part have rules or mechanical support like they were actual new units. It's just like if you showed up to magic night with friends and your deck was entirely proxies with hentai art -except WotC sold you those proxies as official licensed products.

Isn't the dicklion in the core set?

(Let's be honest here, KDM has a ton of problems outside the weirdly porn-y art, like the fact that it's a long-rear end campaign game with a "if all your characters die start the whole thing over" factor.)

# ¿ Jan 25, 2021 17:32

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Len posted:

Doesn't KDM also have a chart where if you roll bad enough your character gets a trait for being a poop eater?

Probably. I've only read a partial pdf of the rulebook but I remember a lot of the events having a "if you roll a 1 you die" vibe.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2021 01:05

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

SkyeAuroline posted:

Looking in Red Markets and cannot for the life of me actually find it, but pretty sure RM is one of the ones that says it - I've adopted a policy from some games that the Johnson will not gently caress you.

"The GM cannot screw the players out of payments" is explicitly stated in Blades in the Dark; the idea being that given how many other things will be coming at the PCs from every direction that they shouldn't be worried about doing a bunch of work for nothing.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2021 15:54

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Something just occurred to me; despite everyone being in isolation for almost a loving year now, have we ever had a thread dedicated to solo rpgs/board games?

# ¿ Jan 30, 2021 02:07

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Jimbozig posted:

Well I could let you know, but https://www.isfarwestoutyet.com doesn't seem to exist anymore.

I assure you that it is not out yet.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2021 02:11

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

The Dinette Set is unsafe at any speed.

Working Daze is a repeat.

Super-Fun-Pak Comix got a little off-topic here.

Cul De Sac flies too close to the sun.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 03:24

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Oops.

Still, this is more than I've been posting around here lately so I'm going to leave it to pad my numbers.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 03:39

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

If you want something current that really feels like Richard Thompson, might I suggest Wallace the Brave?

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 03:56

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

KingKalamari posted:

This feels like a political cartoon, but the instructions about which senator's names to label on the T-shirts got mixed up...

Dinette Set is (well, was; it's in repeats) written by someone who loving HATES midwestern white trash.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 04:06

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I thought I'd let people know since a lot of folks have been wanting it: the Sentinel Comics RPG is available for purchase for hardcopy & PDF.

e: it's $60 but it's about the same pagecount as Lancer so you're getting a ton of content.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 16:58

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Dawgstar posted:

I bet that's going to look real nice in hardcopy.

Mine's arriving tomorrow (I hope) so I'll try to remember to post pics.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 18:55

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Woo finally!

e: this is about the same size as the Lancer book, for reference

# ¿ Feb 7, 2021 01:31

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

drrockso20 posted:

Sell me on this game people cause I've been looking for a good Superheroes system

Okay, a slightly in-depth explanation of the Sentinels RPG:

The die mechanic involves assembling a pool of three dice: one from your Powers, one from your Qualities (skills), and one based on your Status. Your Status die is based on your remaining HP (the dice here depend on your backgrounds), and if you don't have a relevant Power or Quality you use a d6. You roll and generally speaking when you will take the middle value, often modified with a Boost (bonus) or Hinder (penalty).

So looking at Wraith there (who's basically female Batman, only not a hardass jerk), let's say she wants to sneak past some bad guys while she's still at full health. She'd use her Agility (d8), Stealth (d10), and d10 Status die. Rolling all three gives her a 2, 6, and 9. Her "mid" value is 6, so that's the number she'd use to see if she succeeded. There's staggered success levels; generally a result of 8 is a success with no downside, but as long as you get a positive final value you'll succeed. So in this example, a 6 is a "success with a minor twist". It should be noted that when a player gets a twist on a roll, they get to say what the twist is, not the GM.

The Abilities are basically your feats or special tricks, and are special ways of using your Powers and Qualities. They're split into Green/Yellow/Red, which correspond to both your current health range and the level of the Scene Tracker, which I'll get to in a bit. Basically, you can use any Ability in your current range or above; if Wraith was in the Yellow health zone, she could use her Green or Yellow abilities, but not the red ones. It's basically modeling a sort of desperation/escalation mechanic where you start uncorking your big moves as things get worse.

So let's say Wraith wants to attack someone from stealth while in the Yellow zone. If she didn't have a relevant Ability, she'd just roll Agility/Stealth/Status for d8/d10/d8 and use the middle die as damage. But with Strike from the Shadows, she can attack with Stealth (using the same pool as before) but with the rider of using her lowest die result as a defence until her next turn.

Speaking of: there's no to-hit rolls in this system. When you attack you're assumed to always hit unless someone has a mechanic that says otherwise.

Now that that's all out of the way, I can talk about the Scene Tracker.

The Scene Tracker goes from eigth to twelve rounds and has the same Green/Yellow/Red coloring. Heroes can use abilities based on the color of their Health track or the Scene Tracker; if the Tracker is in the red zone then all of Wraith's abilities are on the table, even if she's at full health.

The important thing about scenes in SCRPG is that they have an end. Each scene has to have a goal: defeat all the goons, stop the alien doodad from spitting out killbots, destroy Baron Blade's Terralunar Impulsion Beam before it pulls the moon into the Earth. If you don't stop whatever bad thing is going to happen before the Scene Tracker runs out, then you fail. This might not mean you fail the adventure (except for the moon thing), but that you're probably going to be delayed, or have to deal with more crap in a future fight or something.

I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of how scenes actually work, but that's a pretty high-level overview of the system.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2021 16:34

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Gort posted:

I had a vague idea of doing something Dark Souls-ish by having characters level up each time they die.

That's how Keith Baker's Phoenix: Dawn Command works. Each time you die you come back more powerful, but you can only come back so many times before death finally sticks.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 03:43

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

dwarf74 posted:

Know what I haven't heard about in a while?

Pathfinder Online.

Is it still.... Online?

It looks like it...might be?

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 00:07

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

Is that the one where the weirdo playerbase sooked so hard available at the possibility of goons griefing their yet-to-be-released elf simulator that the devs released a statement that anyone from SA would be banned on sight? Or am I thinking about something else?

Yeah, that's the one.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 00:11

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Tulip posted:

Incredible.

Jon Bois did a video of "how good would Sammy Sosa be at batting without a bat" and I like this parallel of "how good would Goonswarm be at trolling without a game."

The thing was, there wasn't even any talk of doing a goonswarm. The entire reaction here was basically "Wow that's going to crash and burn. So anyway..."

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 03:08

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

"Infinite Oregano" was someone's username around here but I don't know if they're still around.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2021 21:08

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I know people were waiting for this: the Sentinel Comics RPG is finally up on DriveThru.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2021 16:40

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Dawgstar posted:

While typing this out means somebody will come up with something much more concrete, check out the Formidable Villain archetype on page 223 where the more relevant their weakness is at the moment the higher a boost die you get to use against them. Hinder also looks like it's used a lot for specific weakness-related things so maybe just make it an environmental type thing.

I think this would be the best way to handle it; there aren't really any characters with a specific "this thing/substance/etc. is my weak point that I can just stumble into" in the established canon. When it has come up, it's because a villain has made something specifically to screw with a specific character, or it's a generic "just turns off powers for a while" object.

Case in point: Baron Blade made a substance that emits radiation that keeps Legacy away from him, but it only affects Legacy and nobody else, and even then what little he had was destroyed.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2021 17:12

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Strands of Fate was such a weird beast. Taking pre-Core Fate and trying to meld it with 3.x option-heavy design created such an insane mess of a system. It comes from the Fate era where you had 10 aspects and people still didn't really get how to write them well. So you ended up with characters like this:

# ¿ Mar 4, 2021 20:08

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

theironjef posted:

Gentlemen the situation is dire. I need a somewhat worse Lara Croft and a clubbin' Poser Art Vampire Indiana Jones with too big a hat on my desk by three. Give me options!

You know what that team needs?

A pseudo-naked mutant hacker!

# ¿ Mar 4, 2021 20:24

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Coolness Averted posted:

knife to meat you

pretend those are meathooks for this joke, ok?

I think they are supposed to be meathooks being summoned out of the street?

# ¿ Mar 7, 2021 23:36

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

That Old Tree posted:

thanks for the great cat toy Miniatures Market!

You laugh, but I've never gotten a damaged item in a Miniature Market delivery.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2021 03:10

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Glazius posted:

There's also a DW setting called Pirate World. It was kickstarted and PDFs were distributed to backers, but it seems like the creator's just dropped off the Internet; it never hit print and it's not even sold anywhere. I'm sharing my copy of it.

Wait, this released? I vaguely remember backing it back when DW hacks were popping up like weeds and forgetting all about it.

e: oh wait, I have this; I just completely forgot it existed.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2021 22:11

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 00:44

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Glazius posted:

Yeah, for some reason for a lot of these early hacks, cross-statting with Fate was also popular? I've got Inverse World and Grim World that also did that.

Well Fate Core came out around the same time DW was getting popular, and it's an easy system to convert to. There was a lot of Fate cross-promotion at the time.

And god, I backed Grim World too. I was so bad at just autobacking every drat DW kickstarter that came down the pike.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2021 19:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Trad Games Chat: squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded