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My friend mentioned that be had read about an RPG where the PC were dragons in past lives and as they level up they gained powers related to that past life. Does anyone know what game this is?
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Jul 15, 2014 00:17
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LongDarkNight posted:My friend mentioned that be had read about an RPG where the PC were dragons in past lives and as they level up they gained powers related to that past life. Does anyone know what game this is? It's called Fireborn, I think, and it was pretty terrible the one time I tried it out.
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Jul 15, 2014 00:29
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That'd be Fireborn, yeah. I remember really liking it, but finding some pretty major flaws with the rules, but hell if I can remember what those are now.
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Jul 15, 2014 00:29
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Sounds like a sweet premise, at least. A D&D game along those lines would not be bad... er-- not worse than any other D&D game at least.
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Jul 15, 2014 00:53
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Can't be any worse the the super railroady "hunger games" in pathfinder one of the guys in my group said he was working on for our next campaign.
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Jul 15, 2014 01:08
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Evil Mastermind posted:The best part of tremulus was the town and mystery creation system, but that was pretty much lifted from Durance. Thank you for reminding me of Durance. There was an attempted PBP of it a long while back, and we got through character and world creation and maybe a single scene before it petered out. I'd love to give that game another shot.
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Jul 15, 2014 01:10
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LongDarkNight posted:Can't be any worse the the super railroady "hunger games" in pathfinder one of the guys in my group said he was working on for our next campaign. Yeas ago I took part in a pretty interesting 3.5 campaign where our characters were all beings kidnapped by Githyanki to participate in controlled magical arena scenarios on the Astral Plane (two competing groups, our party vs npcs, trying to steal a particular gem from a dragon, for example). It basically just episodic challenges, with continuity being the characters and roleplayed downtimes where we interacted with other gladiator-slaves and plotted out eventual escape. I remember that some of the scenarios gimmicks where annoying or too complex mechanically, but I think that it could work in a better system.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:10
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Evil Sagan posted:Sounds like a sweet premise, at least. A D&D game along those lines would not be bad... er-- not worse than any other D&D game at least. Oh, the core idea was really cool. Basically, magic used to be real and dragons used to exist and blah blah blah. Then for some reason magic just ceased to exist and all the mythic races died out. Except for dragons, because they're just to powerful. Their souls get reborn into new bodies over and over, never knowing who they were or what they can do. Fast forward to modern day, and someone performs a ritual to bring magic back. He succeeds, and now all these reincarnated dragons start getting their memories and powers back. Campaigns were supposed to take place in both the mythic age (where you play your original dragon self) and modern day (where you're a person slowly regaining power and dealing with the return of magic), each with their own sheets and power sets. Unfortunately it has a very 90's-White Wolf design, where your options are pretty limiting and this whole weird combat style thing where you had to assemble combos out of basic moves to do stuff. See, if you wanted to fire two guns while diving behind a bar John Woo style, you can't just say "I'm firing both guns while diving for cover, what's that, a -4 penalty?" Instead, you have to assemble a bunch of general moves into a combo, then try to pull it off. So the John Woo dive ("Timeless Leap") is "Dash + Jump + L Fire Pistol + Ready + R Fire Pistol". Ready is a linking move that you have to use to make more than one attack per round. Once you put that together, then you roll to see how far down the sequence you get. If you don't roll well enough to complete all the steps in the sequence, then you stop at that point. So if I only rolled well enough to do two of the steps in the Timeless Leap, I'd only be able to run and dive for cover but not fire my guns. And yes, you have to assemble a sequence for pretty much everything you want to do in combat, most of the time on the fly.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:26
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That actually sounds like a really great base for a combat system, as long as each individual action part was super simple.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:29
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Fireborn's concept was fine, but the mechanics were absolutely atrocious. I just remember that I was the only combat character in our party and I was slicing shadow-beasts in half left and right by spamming the same knife combos over and over while the others all hid behind me.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:30
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Asymmetrikon posted:That actually sounds like a really great base for a combat system, as long as each individual action part was super simple. Well, they were. Unfortunately, there were also 50 of them.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:32
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Asymmetrikon posted:That actually sounds like a really great base for a combat system, as long as each individual action part was super simple. I could see it working as like a deck of cards thing. Not in the random sense, but in a ease of reference sort of thing.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:34
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Basically, it sounds cool and then you try to play it and it's clunky and not very engaging, was how it went for my group.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:39
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Really, Fireborn is a game that I think needs a second lease on life with a completely different system.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:39
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The actual interesting part of Fireborn's system was that it had different pools of dice for various types of actions (aggressive physical, defensive physical, aggressive mental, and defensive mental) and that you could allocate dice from one pool to another, which would temporary strengthen one while leaving you momentarily vulnerable in another area. It was a neat way to approach pouring all of your concentration into succeeding at something but risking getting blindsided by shifting circumstances or something you were too focused to see coming. In practice it was probably less elegant than it sounds, but I always thought the basic concept was worth salvaging for another game someday.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:55
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Cyphoderus posted:There's also Perfect Unrevised. I've never played it so I don't know if it's any good, but it's by Joe Mcdaldno, the same guy who wrote Monsterhearts, which is a really great genre-savvy incarnation of Apocalypse World. It's apparently a game about the price you pay for being a subversive criminal in a dystopian steampunk Victorian England, so it might interest you. Oh man, I love Monsterhearts, how did I not know about this? Thanks a bunch.
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Jul 15, 2014 03:30
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Thought Experiment: This is for a Pathfinder supplement I'm working on. I want to get your collective opinions and answers. There is no wrong answer. First, I’m going to make up two fictional societies off the top of my head. After reading my short descriptions of both, I want you to assign them the alignment you think most closely matches their moral and ethical structures. Ready? Here we go. Society A is a small isolated village. Its inhabitants prize the benefits of collectivism and working together, their economy based upon a system of barters, favors, and shaming to encourage good behavior and cooperation. They have no mayor or king, instead deciding major decisions via temporary alliances of town councils who cooperate together against a major threat or issue. Everybody is equal, and there is no private property; everything beyond personal possessions is either shared or used by people with the proper training. This society does not see the value of written laws, but they do have a malleable system of social rules intended to keep things operating smoothly. Society B is an advanced civilization of art, knowledge, magic, and warfare. Its people pride themselves on their heritage and favored status in the world, believing that their ancestry alone makes them worthier than other people. Racism is prevalent in their ways of thinking, and they have trouble understanding why outside cultures act as though this is not the case. Children of mixed race are doomed to a life social isolation and ostracism, leading many of them to leave. Some cities and subgroups even practice forms of inherent social stratification among their own kind, such as a caste system or even indentured servitude by applying their own racial superiority inwards.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:14
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this is roughly as subtle as a brick to the face
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Jul 15, 2014 05:16
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Libertad! posted:Thought Experiment: Intuitively, Lawful Neutral or Good for A and either Lawful or Neutral Evil for B.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:18
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zachol posted:Intuitively, Lawful Neutral or Good for A and either Lawful or Neutral Evil for B. I don't even play D&D and I know that the joke is that the first one are the capital-E EVIL Orcs and the second are the capital-G Good Elves. Which just goes to show why turning elves into a race of hot guys who make out with each other all day every day would be an improvement.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:26
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Writing Pathfinder supplements is one thing but you don't have to compound bad decisions by diving down the rabbit hole of alignment thought experiments while you're at it.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:29
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Tollymain posted:this is roughly as subtle as a brick to the face This. I get that you're writing for Pathfinder fans and subtlety isn't really a requirement, but yes, we can all see that A is Orcs who would likely be considered Lawful Good once you remove the racial bias component and B are those loving elven Nazis that always get labeled CG in D&D. Really, I want someone to just write elves as actual Nazis or imperialists. I played in a setting where the Evil Empire was a vicious race of imperialist grey elves once and it was awesome living in the human diaspora among the dwarves and working for the resistance.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:29
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Davin Valkri posted:I don't even play D&D and I know that the joke is that the first one are the capital-E EVIL Orcs and the second are the capital-G Good Elves. Except traditionally orcs also regularly engage in violent raids, while elves keep to themselves and their territory?
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Jul 15, 2014 05:30
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Society A is Chaotic Evil and Society B is Lawful Neutral. fascist morality sneers at your notions of peace and prosperity. guns will make us strogn, butter will only make us fat etc.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:32
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I'm pretty sure Spelljammer had straight-up imperialist elves with Nazi overtones or something like that. "What if elves...were actually huge jerks!?!?" is honestly as played out by this point as "elves are super-cool and awesome and pretty and this one is totally my GMPC's hot girlfriend" by this point. Nobody's gonna care about you pointing out that elves as presented sound like a passel of dicks because no poo poo. If you really want to stand out what you've gotta do is go the reconstruction route and write up an elven society where they have all that fancy art and culture and maybe-immortality and magic but actually are super-cool and awesome and not huge dicks about it.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:33
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Night10194 posted:Really, I want someone to just write elves as actual Nazis or imperialists. I played in a setting where the Evil Empire was a vicious race of imperialist grey elves once and it was awesome living in the human diaspora among the dwarves and working for the resistance. I've wanted to do a fantasy pre-war Europe with fascist elves for a while. Maybe I should pull the trigger on that one...
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Jul 15, 2014 05:33
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Kai Tave posted:I'm pretty sure Spelljammer had straight-up imperialist elves with Nazi overtones or something like that. Yes but have you considered gently caress elves and this hobby.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:34
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Kai Tave posted:I'm pretty sure Spelljammer had straight-up imperialist elves with Nazi overtones or something like that. That too is also played out. Elves in general are, unfortunately, the most played out of all things that play, on reflection. Also what the guy above me said about gently caress elves.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:35
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Elves being assholes is a heavily established trope/meme/whatever. I'd actually be really surprised to find someone who honestly thinks elves are "good."
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Jul 15, 2014 05:35
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Elves being assholes is so played out that a Star Trek series made them complete dicks as a plot device, ten years ago.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:40
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In my campaign I use the elven nation as long-term schemers, secret brokers, and black ops goons who are certain they're doing the right thing for the world and it really isn't anyone else's business. It makes it so I can easily justify them enabling the party or throwing them under the bus. One of the PCs is hooked in with the vast elven intelligence apparatus so that's a great way to hand out plot info too.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:44
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Just make your elves grumpy miners who live underground, drink a lot and love gold. But are tall, willowy and ~beautiful~
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Jul 15, 2014 05:51
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If they get sweaty and mine shirtless I'm down with that.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:57
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Tollymain posted:this is roughly as subtle as a brick to the face Then that means the experiment is working. Seriously though, Society A is not orcs, but Anarchists. Anarcho-collectivists to be specific. And I'm not redesigning the races. My true plan is to make a set of rules getting rid of alignment as a game mechanic in Pathfinder. Due to the extraneous details in the game, simply houseruling it to not exist will cause all sorts of things to go out of whack. Alignment-based weapons which pierce damage reduction, spells keyed off of alignment, the paladin's class features, et cetera. In addition, I was thinking of writing a few short blurbs demonstrating how alignment preconceptions don't line up well, although I think that a lot of folks already know that. Anyway, I posted this on several different message boards, and you guys were the first to see through my scheme. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 06:00
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Forums Terrorist posted:If they get sweaty and mine shirtless I'm down with that. Hi-ho, hi-ho! 
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Jul 15, 2014 06:01
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Dark elves were actually dwarves in some forms of European mythology.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:02
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Libertad! posted:Then that means the experiment is working. Only things like demons and angels and poo poo have alignments. Boom, done.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:02
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Maybe give this a read? e: Specifically, the next post talks about spells and there's some discussion about outsiders and DR. zachol fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 06:03
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I want to run a game with elves as an eusocial species, with any adventurers being drones or outcast workers. the looks on my players' faces as I describe the insectile, bloated elf queen as she lays her eggs would be quite amusing.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:07
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FewtureMD posted:I want to run a game with elves as an eusocial species, with any adventurers being drones or outcast workers. the looks on my players' faces as I describe the insectile, bloated elf queen as she lays her eggs would be quite amusing. Anybody who's played Dragon Age Origins would probably take it in stride, you know.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:09
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