TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

I would love to play in an Exalted game but I seem to have the same problem with Exalted that I have with a lot of L5R groups: an absurd amount of metaplot I don't have any particular interest in reading or being beholden to. It sounds like it could be an interesting game with a cool setting, but every group I find expects me to know a million fiddly little details scattered throughout a hundred different books and I just don't have any desire to do more research for an RPG character than I did for grad school.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 18:39

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:10

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

neonchameleon posted:

I really shouldn't bother replying to Plutonis. But. You're wrong on almost every point.

You didn't really catch any of the actual points Plutonis was making and instead wrote an apoplectic fanboy screed that would be right at home on the Paizo forums. You basically wrote "you're wrong because AW has mechanics for this that are totally different and/or better than any other system that I obviously only have second-hand knowledge and understanding of!" in four paragraphs. Well done, you're exactly what you're supposedly railing against.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 19:53

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Len posted:

Man gently caress grappling rules.

I don't think I have ever seen a game with grappling rules that weren't awful.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 16:26

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

You are 100% right. As an aside, Fighters have had it bad but Rogues/Thief players were even worse. Even back when I was in my teens playing lovely 2e I realized that Wizards totally made Rogue players redundant by like level 4. You didn't need Hide in Shadows when you could become Invisible, you didn't need Move Silently when you could Levitate, you didn't need lockpicking when you had Knock, and it was easy to pile the loot on a Tenser's Floating Disk before gently sending it out the second story window. Eventually even the climbing skills got assed out by Fly and Thiefs were basically lovely fighters that could read scrolls (LOL) and argue with the DM for backstab bonuses. And get killed by traps, of course.

True story: I got roped back into a 2e campaign around 2010 and I played as a Thief. Pre-campaign, I begged the DM to specifically omit all the magical poo poo that stomped Thiefing flat. I also pointed out that Thief characters would die to traps easily. He assured me that everything was cool and that he was taking what I said to heart. 3 sessions in, our Magic User already had Invisibility, somebody else had Boots of Elvenkind, blah blah blah. Of course I bailed. Later I found out that the character died to a trap. There's just no winning with some people.

In theory, wasn't the rogue/thief/sneaky class supposed to be like level 20 by the time the wizard was level ~6 or some crazy poo poo like that, by getting double xp for stealing things and making spot/listen/hide/MS checks and so on? My memory is hazy because 2e was awful in so many ways (and my DM only made them all 10x worse) but I recall this being a thing.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 18:13

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

I also want to say that if you want to understand how lovely D&D used to be, go download a Sierra game from the 1980s. They are garbage pixel-bitching "you're suddenly dead" turdfests and that's the kind of stuff that professional designers influenced by D&D were puking out. These were adults that were incredibly negatively influenced by the badness of D&D. The typical teenage DM had absolutely zero chance of doing anything of value at all with the system.

Retsupurae did a big pile of LPs of their games and holy gods did watching them bring back memories. Mostly memories of sitting there going "what the gently caress do they expect me to DO?!" for hours.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 21:09

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Ratpick posted:

This is actually a playstyle I'd like to try: everyone starts with a bunch of 1st-level characters and just picks one for their first adventure. If your character gets damaged to the point where normally you'd spend a couple of weeks in town recuperating, you just bring a backup character to play in the meantime. Between forays into the dungeon the DM checks whether rooms the PCs have already cleared out become repopulated.

It'd actually be perfect for a game with irregular attendance: Gary can't make it this week, but that's okay 'cause Dave's schedule cleared and he can now make it to the game with his 2nd-level Cleric in tow.

I was in a game that did exactly this, actually. Our scheduled time was "whenever the DM and at least 3 players are around" and we would go through a dungeon. It was really fun but then our DM shipped off with the navy for some months and it died out.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2015 21:24

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Blockhouse posted:

I've heard enough horror stories about pathfinder rules to chase me off but on the other hand the dumb throw-everything-in setting sounds exactly like something I'd like. Should I look into it? Make decisions for me, TG chat.

PF is exactly like 3.5e except that spellcasters get even more fun stuff and non-casters get a pile of class abilities that make them look like the monk class - a new thing at every level, but that thing is probably crap. If you like the setting, go find the setting books and use the fluff in a good system.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 12:49

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

PurpleXVI posted:

I don't want to drag the argument here but... if you visit the 3E thread, that's not exactly something everyone agrees on. My personal opinion is that it's neither a step forward or a step backward, still poo poo, still roughly as poo poo, but poo poo of a slightly different flavour and texture, which is a shame, a drat shame, because as just about everyone can attest to: The pitch for Exalted is wonderful, if only the reality could be as good.

I just wanna know if combat is still a nonsensical pile of overcomplicated bullshit or not.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 23:45

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Simian_Prime posted:

It is. It's a shame.

Brian Clevinger (Atomic Robo comic and Fate RPG) wrote an open letter a while back to the Ex3 developers hoping that they'd take a less complex, more intuitive approach to the rules; something more akin to Fate or *World. Their response was basically "Nah, we love overcomplicated bullshit."

Welp. Guess I can enjoy not having any desire to play Exalted still. Why can't they just add a sidebar/section for simpler combat like nWoD 2e did? In there you can have your powers with discrete effects and defenses and weapons etc ad infinitum if you like. Or you can just have everyone roll one time, make everything that might help/hider into a bonus/penalty for one side or the other, and move on with the game. I would probably pay for the books on principle if they had a "so here's how you use nWoD mechanics for Exalted combat" section.

Edit: "The main problem with EX3, as I see it from my admittedly distant post, is that no one told its developers that it�s not 2001 anymore." But then that's always been the problem, hasn't it.

Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Mar 13, 2015

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 00:23

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

PurpleXVI posted:

Exalted 2E had its fair share of issues, plenty of them in combat, but I actually liked the tick mechanic. I always felt like it was one of the more natural ways to handle initiative.

I would rather roll around naked in a nest of ticks than put up with combat ticks. They're right next to weapon speeds in the "poo poo mechanics that are always poo poo" bucket.

Honorable mention goes to having multiple kinds of "I move out of the way" stats.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 01:46

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Ratpick posted:

Yeah, I'm not personally a fan of Exalted, but it's still clear to me that a lot of people in its target audience actually want a crunchy game with clearly defined powers straight out of the box.

I am totally down with a crunchy game with clearly defined powers and all that, what I'm against is complexity for the sake of complexity. What good does having multiple "I move out of the way" stats accomplish? How does having a huge map of charm trees improve the game, and does that improvement mitigate the level of character creation difficulty such a thing creates? I don't think that these or any other important game design questions have ever been asked of the Exalted devs, let alone been adequately answered by them or the game they make.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 12:54

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

PurpleXVI posted:

"Tunnel ~~Dogs~~ Drakes Rule!"

But can a tiny lizardman have a pompadour that accounts for 50% of his body by volume?

Anyone who says no has Wrong Opinions.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 02:33

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

paradoxGentleman posted:

There is also Princess: the Hopeful, a fan splat of the World of Darkness of all things. I am no good at judging mechanics, but from a tone standpoint it doesn't really gel with the rest of the setting and it feels really amateurish when it comes to editing.

Every time I read it I can't help but think that if the focus shifted from "look how nice and good and pure the Hopeful are" to "It sucks trying to do good in the WoD, also are we sure we know what's best for humanity?" it could have felt right at home.

Nail on the head on both accounts. The people involved with it fundamentally do not understand the setting or any of its various themes/moods/etc. The mechanics are also pretty piss-poor, since (at least the last time I looked at it) it was this weird, bad attempt at bringing Exalted charms into nWoD. And I can understand to a degree wanting to play a game like that, but why choose WoD as your setting? The other splats only make good antagonists for them if you specifically make them good antagonists, and at that point you may as well just make your own setting.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 15:22

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Effectronica posted:

Hello, anime.

My old friend.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 21:18

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Evil Mastermind posted:

e: "Comments are disabled for this video."

I'd disable comments too if I were trying to sell a game with early N64 graphics as the WoW-killing Next Big MMO.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 20:10

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:10

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Covok posted:

More games need these digital tutorials.

I wish this was better because I played through the whole thing and I still have only the most tenuous understanding of what the gently caress is going on with Exalted rules, doubly so for combat. Then again, I wish Exalted rules were better as a whole.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 14:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day