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It seems as though I am almost a minority report on this front but I personally found DFRPG very poorly laid out as far as the physical copy. For an RPG whose core books are supposedly a separate setting book and players handbook equivalent, the latter is bloated as poo poo with fluff. Yes, I realise an introduction to the world of Dresden Files is necessary. No, it doesn't need to be longer than maybe 2 to 5 pages. I had read *a* dresden files book prior to playing this and I needed no introduction. This is going to catch me some flak, but I would have been fine without that if someone had just manually told me "It's nWoD" (Not that that would have been a valid solution for Evil Hat). What I'm getting at is that the level of critical setting understanding necessary to properly play in the DF setting is like, barely anything. And yet they sacrifice the coherency of the book for it. Instead, the beginning of the step by step chargen part, the one that has a quick reference for just about every useful piece of information for creating a character, is shattered in two and hidden like a needle in a haystack. Like, there are two pages in DFRPG I would consider to be so important and useful that they eclipse all others, but they are easy to find. And there are ways they could have fixed this. Chapter transitions, for instance, are easy to spot in a physical copy. They could have placed these pages right at the start of the chapter. There are things they've done well, sure: was a good idea to place the chapters describing Powers MUCH later. They don't gently caress around once they *start* explaining things, but you have to be prepared to sit through a few paragraphs of meaningless rant between the actual mechanics. lodoubt fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Jul 23, 2012 |
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Jul 23, 2012 09:16
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sighnoceros posted:Whoa what, a Mistborn RPG? Details! My friends and I have played it quite a few times now, all as one shots. Obviously this doesn't leave me in a good position to judge, but while it is great for oneshots and short campaigns, I get the feeling it wouldn't hold up so well in an extended campaign. I can't see people having as much fun after 10+ sessions with the same characters. The advancement possibilities are a little limited by eye, and coupled with its incredible favouring of specialisation, you have its primary failings, and ones I would possibly like to discuss here once more people have played. OTHER than that, it's a really fun game. The above issues were relatively unobtrusive within the game and they only really come up when you sit back and think before and after each session. Kinda Dresden Filesey, even if it has almost no shared mechanics in the strictest sense. I love its chargen, though its laid out kind of irritatingly in the book.
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Aug 20, 2012 02:40
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Doc Hawkins posted:It's way more elegant to have two stats called Intelligence and Wisdom if the difference between being intelligent and being wise is significant in your game. Analyses of real life are almost 100% beside the point. This is really the crux of the issue. The issue of mechanical weight is somewhat secondary to this because you can adjust the ease of getting certain attributes if it is truly the problem. What the extra stats give you is the ability to differentiate between more archetypes than was previously possible with one stat, and you have to ask whether these new archetypes are worth the effort necessary to make rules that make them distinguished. And frankly that depends on the setting. Furthermore, the possibility of just making up for it with things like feat and skill equivalents that add to specific uses of the attributes is always there. There are times I have acted exceptional to this, like my April TGD entry where the attributes were negative emotions, but that was in an attempt to be as pretentious as possible, and it was a game where emotions running high was a theme. Sometimes your game is some kind of Sonic the Hedgehog RPG and having 3 separate stats for "Going Fast" is relevant. I have made a game where characters had 4 mental attributes and nothing else. It's really if you want to make a relatively general RPG like a fantasy heartbreaker that you need to think hard about this kind of thing. And that is mainly because you likely haven't thought out what things are important *enough* to differentiate yet.
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Aug 26, 2012 14:52
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Nolanar posted:...The idea is that more power results in you being able to do more things with an action, or do the same things but better (by spending multiple successes on one option). It also does a lot to eliminate "dead rounds," since the odds of zero successes are fairly low if you're rolling a decent number of dice. This isn't necessary per se but you should really look into L5R. While it does Roll & Keep rather than a success system, it otherwise is rather centred around what you are describing. As for problems, the only problems in Storyteller really inherent to the core mechanics is the fact that you can't really distinguish between highly damaging weapons and highly accurate ones. But that can be fixed if you have some mechanics that provide autosuccesses provided you had at least one from your original pool etc. I'd be wary about using it SPECIFICALLY because it eliminates dead rounds though. The odds are much lower but I've still experienced plenty of dead rounds in nWoD. Furthermore it isn't really a big enough issue to choose your core mechanic over. I do note however that you are suggesting variable TN. The issue with this is that it is *either* mathmathmath or rather reduces the scale for increases to character potency that can happen before the game falls apart entirely.
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Aug 26, 2012 15:19
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