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I've always got a bit of a love-hate thing going on with PBTA, because on the one hand PBTA games are great, but they're not the flavour I want all the time; I've been GMing a while and they definitely have their own distinct thing. On the other hand, the rules structure is great, and I would love to stick that in 80% of games I run because so often I find myself wishing I could just go "Yeah it's probably your Daring rating, roll it. That's an 8; you get ahold of the cliff face but you're not pulling yourself up unless you drop your staff" or whatever. I always feel like using the dice mechanic without also importing principles and GM moves is somehow breaking the spirit of it, though.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:01
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Cyphoderus posted:Why would it be, though? Plenty of games have done partial successes and non-standard attributes before PbtA. It's also possible to do player moves, GM moves, principles and agendas without using 2d6+stat. Yeah, I know, AW/Simple World just laid it out easy for me and I like the relatively intuitive bell curve.
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Jun 27, 2015 09:17
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Antivehicular posted:That fits my observations of Monsterhearts. The campaign I ran didn't get to a season break / Growing Up Moves, but the intention of the game pre-Growing-Up is pretty clearly that you don't have a toolbox to cooperate and compromise, nor to accept setbacks gracefully, so every victory is someone else's bitter defeat. (I believe this is actually a GMing principle, too.) Exactly right.
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Jul 16, 2015 11:47
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Urban Shadows just went up on DriveThruRPG for those of you who are interested. Sweet; everything I've heard about this has me kicking myself I didn't spot the KS.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:34
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Yeah, I was similarly dissatisfied with Tremulus and I couldn't shake the feeling that the entire game was just someone's AW game with a new coat of paint. I did appreciate that trust works in reverse, though; i.e. people use your trust in them for their assist/interfere attempts, and vice versa. I thought that was neat. I wonder if that's what finding a fantasy heartbreaker's like if you're into D&D?
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Aug 8, 2015 15:23
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You could probably still have a ground/air split but it'd look different from Night Witches for sure. NW is very much about being a Soviet airwoman rather than planes particularly.
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Aug 13, 2015 14:53
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Captain Foo posted:I like this Yeah, AW's thing about naming everyone seems wildly impractical to me for exactly that reason. Especially combined with "Also kill them off frequently".
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Aug 13, 2015 17:12
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Captain Foo posted:you don't have to do it, but i just keep a quick google doc with everyone that gets named, and add notes as they come up: it looks like this This looks like "Remember who people are for versimilitude's sake" to me, rather than "Make everyone a person". Unless that's all it meant and it's yet another example of AW restating things I already do in a way that's just different enough to frustrate me trying to work out what kind of insane madman does that. That happens a lot with AW.
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Aug 13, 2015 17:26
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Captain Foo posted:This was the point of doing it this way. People get mentioned offhandedly, and you keep track of that information. The full list of mine included their loyalties and their stomping grounds, so as the game went on if I needed an NPC for this or that, I could use one that already existed. Makes the game feel more alive, to me. Agreed, just it's a thing I did anyway and it's confused me again. As I say it happens a lot with AW. Parkreiner posted:I'd actually like to hear some of your gripes with MH; I like it a lot (after ~5-6 sessions or so) and have yet to see any serious criticism of it that doesn't come strictly from being uncomfortable with the game's premise. I'd also like to hear it; I've probably played even less but I like what I saw.
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Aug 13, 2015 20:23
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Thanks for the read Tulpa; it's interesting, but I'm not sure I've played enough MH to have definitive counters/agreement. For ages I've had the idea for an RPG where the players are members of an Japanese idol group who're trying to get and remain popular without coming under any particular scandal, becoming cynical, broken and jaded, or getting kicked out. Today it occurs to me that WWWRPG might have some of the kind of structure I'd need for that with the heat and audience mechanics, though I'm not quite sure how you'd do performances.
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Aug 14, 2015 11:30
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Alternatively just have wrestling idols finishing up a jazzy pop number before slam dunking each other off stage  More seriously you're probably right. I think the major issue is part of the drama I'd like to focus on would be off-stage stuff; rehearsals, in-fighting, politics with managers and producers, that kind of thing. For one thing I think injuries make perfect sense as a thing to still be there. Equally I don't think all scandals would naturally arise from being on stage; Japan's idol culture is some insane nightmare world where "teenager has a boyfriend" is grounds for a media frenzy, and that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that'd emerge naturally from being "in-ring" or the kind of things that you'd get up to (though "loving up a performance" or something probably would). I'd have to give some thought to it. You're definitely right that it's probably closer than I'd initially thought.
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Aug 14, 2015 13:08
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paradoxGentleman posted:So I was checking out this goon-made list: I always thought the fury was interesting enough, and that's from an actual (albiet brief) game.
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Sep 3, 2015 16:39
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I just saw the parent. That skin's hilarious.
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Sep 4, 2015 12:35
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Oh my god that's amazing. "When you have sex with someone who isn't your spouse, that's wrong, don't do that."
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Sep 5, 2015 17:22
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I'd be interested but for me, despite the fact people point out the contrary, goonsaying about machine stats is a big part of the appeal and that's fundamentally opposite to good AW design.
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Oct 17, 2015 00:00
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It's not even that I'm big on battletech but encyclopedic schematic diagrams of gundams and development timelines of the different universe suits are things I associate really strongly with the games.
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Oct 17, 2015 00:41
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Yeah, but my point is as a mecha fan I am interested in the statistics, and saying "Don't be!" isn't really helping that. I'd want more than "a strong mech/a beautiful mech/a leader's mech" and maybe a +missiles tag, which is what AW is inevitably going to produce.
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Oct 17, 2015 01:27
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I had seen The Reg the other day but it has a similar issue of not being what I really expect from it. I like Death Moves though. EDIT: Wait a sec, I thought The Regiment was WW2 Movie World, not Aliens World? spectralent fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Oct 17, 2015 |
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Oct 17, 2015 20:28
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ForgedIron posted:Hey, I was going to start a monsterhearts game and was wondering how you squire the second skins pdf. I can't find a link to buy it anywhere. I have a player who is incredibly interested in the neighbor. Any help would be lovely. It's been being written for ages now, I think. I backed it and I don't think I have a backer copy yet.
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Dec 15, 2015 23:06
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Huh; must've done. I'll dig through emails later.
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Dec 15, 2015 23:11
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paradoxGentleman posted:Why do most PBTA games not use random damage? I assumed from the ones I read (which to be fair is not many) that it was because they do not focus on combat, and I imagined that since K6BD does focus on that to a certain extent an element of randomness would avoid having the combatants plink away at each other inflicting a standard amount of damage, making combat predictable. PBTA games aren't meant to have combat in the "two people plink away at each other" sense, because combat in PBTA must always be contextual. You can't "make a standard attack" without doing something, and that will likely imply future things. Like, take "I charge"; you're moving at speed at someone to harm them. So, maybe you hit, and knock the guy through something and end up outside, or you both tumble over and end up awkwardly close and struggling over a dagger, or you miss and overshoot and now your dagger's stuck in a wall. Even in combat, you need to do something to do it, which should mean your combat isn't a static pair of people flailing at each other.
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Dec 31, 2015 12:38
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Error 404 posted:Im with you on the apology option, but losing nerve and mumbling seems totally fair. I dunno; I was almost the reverse. Having said it, you can't unsay it.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:33
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Error 404 posted:The way I see it, you still stand up for yourself but instead of "Hey, gently caress Off!" you're more like "I believe you have my stapler and um...i will burn down the building" The issue to me is that I'm struggling to see how that doesn't amount to either not getting what you want ("they didn't hear you") or a non issue ("they heard you"). With apology, you get "You stood up for yourself on the topic, but now they think they're in control, and are maybe right about it". It's kind of the "redirect the problem" option, rather than a "resolve the problem" outcome (which is presumably 10+). That said, generally, the idea of a comedic-farce-game AW hack sounds absolutely great.
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Jan 4, 2016 23:34
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Maybe just consolidate them both into "You do it but look like a git or an easy mark" etc?
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Jan 5, 2016 00:32
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What're opinions on The Regiment and it's billion subdivisions? AFAICS it's not been worked on for a couple of years now, so I figured someone must've had a go.
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Jan 22, 2016 02:53
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Banana Man posted:One thing my players can't get the hang of is how the story sort of is made up on the fly, they're more used to a dnd style tavern opening where you mull around until plot hooks happen. Yeah, this can be tricky. If you're used to games where the GM is author, having the ability to write your own stuff into the narrative all of a sudden is hard to get used to.
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Jan 22, 2016 11:49
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Boing posted:I have a hard time imagining anyone actually enjoying this style, it's so weird and contrived. "We better just do our own thing until the DM leaves the tiniest trace of a clue to a plot hook and then follow that to the exclusion of everything else because we want to play the thing he wrote down" If you're used to the GM writing good stuff, why wouldn't you? Besides, it's classic heroic journey: you need the call to adventure to come first.
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Jan 22, 2016 12:01
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Would people say The Regiment passes the "understood the game" test?
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Jan 23, 2016 01:16
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The main issue I can see is that it's going to naturally encourage teamwork; you're the squad after all, not the protagonists, who all have different goals. Even if you have different reasons for joining up and aims out of service, the present goal is "finish the mission and ideally don't die"...
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Jan 23, 2016 01:46
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I think you'd probably want a limited PvP thing if you were doing non-madoka magical girls; AW full-PvP tends to encourage a level of mean that's out of character for the usual kid-friendly cartoon. Like, you have personality conflicts sometimes but the moral of the story is always something like "friends should support each other" or "communication is important", and not "it's super rude that Sparkle Queen Kate thinks she can just expect the Ice Witch to not freeze her minions to death all the time, she should get back at her".
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Jan 23, 2016 13:35
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In the thread's opinion what makes a good MC/GM section for a PBTA game?
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Feb 11, 2016 14:23
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I'm thinking up a playbook for Monsterhearts based on the concept of the Familiar; witches cats, genies, ariel bound in service to prospero. On the teenager side, there's shades of the kid who can't fit in so they suck up to the crowd; the kid who's doing everyone's homework so he can hang out at the cool table or laughing at the back of the class while someone's getting bullied so she's not next. Conceptually I've got a split between a "true nature" they're hiding for fear of rejection or reprisals, and a master they're bound to. They're a kind of codependent character, stuck serving another one because they're only any good when they're acting on their interests. Core moves enforcing these things, probably going with darkest self:quote:Bound In Thrall Their darkest self probably needs to be "you snap and break your contract, acting according to your weird, demoney nature, and exit darkest self when you form a new one, willingly or unwillingly"; your master can abuse you to the point of death, but you'll hit Darkest Self at that stage and probably get another one. I'm wondering if the initial mechanics are too strong; "when you fulfil your wishes" seems a bit vague and easy as a trigger. The intent with the first move is that the wishes expressed don't have to be orders; you can be a jackass familiar who overhears "Man I hate how melanie gets better test scores than me" and then goes to screw up melanie's poo poo, and you also can try and both express your nature and do as wanted to score both the bonus and XP. "Rejecting your nature" seems thematically useful but it's also a hell of a leash. I wonder if it's too much of a leash, even, but probably it's lovely and terrible to be someone's magic slave? Other concepted moves are "the demon can come to you when you call it" (cool and definitely mythically appropriate but I'm not sure what's in it for the familiar), "I'm just following orders" (I initially wrote this as a "deflect conditions to your boss" move but maybe that's not how the move should work; feels like it's giving power to the demon to affect their boss), and a "tell me your secrets, eldritch one" where you can give advice when asked which grants bonuses, probably for a string or XP in return (though I feel it's important it's a "when asked" move, because it reinforces their position as someone else's serf and avoids the chance of them becoming a leader. You totally can try and goad your master into asking you stuff in any number of ways, but they can also always tell you you're a lovely demon and start dishing harm back at you for it). I have no idea if I'm onto a winner here or what. No idea what would work as a sex move and I'm even unsure on their stat layout; they're probably Dark, but on hot/cold/volatile I don't know.
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Feb 26, 2016 02:37
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I have a come to a conclusion: I hate powered by the apocalypse games. Specifically, I hate the idea of moves. It makes role-playing into a purely mechanical thing in my experiences. If I want my character to be friendly with another character, but they fail there roll, I am forced to hate them. Similarly, the consequences being chosen by players makes me wonder why it even bothers with a GM. No one in real life can really control the consequences of their actions, so choosing the exact way I want things to go takes me out of the game. In a way, and players have far too little power over their characters, and for too much power over the world. Consequences usually are picked by a GM; it's the weaker hacks where your 6- results are player picks. Unless you mean positive outcomes? In which case maybe that's a preference kind of thing; I know generally in most games I go "I'll roll to open this door" and if I succeed I open the door. I'd generally get kind of annoyed if the GM goes "You manage to steal a magic apple!" or something instead*. The main difference is AW games tell you the kinds of stuff your game is usually about and what the stakes are, rather than have that happen whenever you encounter a thing you're going to roll, which isn't really bad, just different. *and, indeed, frequently do in social systems, especially when the GM tries things like "well they like you but you don't get what you want" or worse the "you succeeded so well now they will become annoying".
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Feb 27, 2016 02:44
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Hey thread, if I take an advance from another playbook, in monsterhearts specifically but I assume this happens in other games too, that triggers off something a different move establishes, do I have to take the first move first, or can it just be activated whenever thematically appropos? Example: I am a non-ghoul (vampire, why not) who takes the ghoul's Satiety, but I don't have The Hunger. Can I pick a hunger anyway, or trigger it on an occasion where I've done some other kind of feeding (blood, say), or do I need both moves for Satiety to do anything? Similar question for things like Ghost moves that work off Blamed, Mortal moves that need a Lover, and so on.
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Feb 27, 2016 16:19
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Night Witches went okay. I think the main ones that are a bit naff (admittedly that I have experience with) are Dungeon World and Tremulus, and they're not horrible, but they are definitely kind of meh.
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Feb 27, 2016 23:13
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I think AW definitely had a PvP bent, so it's definitely easier to port it, but functionally PBTA is just a gameplay structure. Like, Dungeon World isn't great but it's not awful, it's a perfectly serviceable game and I'd rather play it than Pathfinder or something. EDIT: I guess the issue is DW is basically to run Pathfinder which isn't a genre I have tons of interest in anyway, which is an improvement on pathfinder itself because that's also a game for playing pathfinder but has the disadvantages of actually playing pathfinder. You feel me? spectralent fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 01:21
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I'm kind of wondering how much of the improved battle stuff from AW2e might fare ported over to The Regiment.
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Mar 3, 2016 22:41
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As it's just come up, if you have more than 1 person with the most strings on someone, who picks the player-allocated stat highlight? Further things that came up: If you've turned-on someone in the scene, does this prohibit you from getting strings off other people(1)? Do moves like Mixed Messages count as Turn On, or are they a different move that resolves the same(2)? If you used Turn On to get a string, can you use it again to fish for the "give themselves" etc results, and if you can, can they duck it by opting to give you the string you already took(3)? 1. Bob turns on Peter. Can Bob subsequently turn on Dave, or is he all outta sexy? 2. Bob uses Mixed Messages on Dave. Can he then Turn On Dave? 3. Bob uses Turn On on Peter and gets a 10+, for a string. Can he use Turn On again and hope for a 7-9, and if he gets that, is Peter at liberty to select the "give a string", and if he is, can he give the string if Peter already took one? spectralent fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 3, 2016 21:11
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Covok posted:To those interested, I wrote the seventh draft of Friendship, Effort, Victory. It's worth noting that I took a long break in the middle of writing this draft so I might have missed something that needed fixing. I gave it a few once-overs, but I bet I missed something big: I got that feeling, ya know? If you notice anything wrong, please, please, point it out. I gave it a proper read through today and there's a few things that jumped out at me: 1. "What's your story?" being angst based. This feels really weird to me, because I associate angsty types with cynicism, and overwhelmingly picture characters like Nanoha or Hibiki when I think of people who begin fights by asking people what their deal is. I'm struggling to think of angsty characters who nonetheless question every enemy they run into for their tragic backstory. 2. +cool's fight is "If you nimbly demonstrate how dexterous you are, spout out something shocking, or use your signature technique, roll 2d6 + Cool". This is mostly fine, and might be a reading comprehension thing, but what's "something shocking" meant to be? In my head, the first things that came to mind were "Hitler did nothing wrong" or "Luke, I am your father!", neither of which seem particularly cool. Is the intent more Jojos style baffling statements like "We used stone masks to turn these horses into vampires"? Also, I do tend to think of cool characters in shonen as having a bit of arrogance, perhaps good naturedly; +cool feels like it should be the one that lets you go "You're a thousand years too early!" and stuff. 3. Ties feel really weird. At present they basically work like strings, but is that really appropriate for a game based around Friendship as such a central conceit? I can see why villains need to be able to use their bonds with people to be able to mock them and make it hurtful, and I can also see the utility of battling your friends and going "Master wouldn't have wanted this!" or whatever, but it feels like you need some capacity to go "No, if I give up, Weiss will die!" or whatever, and use them for personal benefit or collaboration bonuses. To a degree, this is aided by friendship moves later, but it still feels off to me. But this ties in a little to #4: 4. Playbooks are probably the weaker end of things at present. There's several problems with them, as I see it, so I'll go over them in rough order of how they occurred to me: Forever Young seems to have many moves which feel like they should be things people are just able to do generally. Nakama and Disarmingly Charming feel like core moves, or at least core-like moves. There is conversely definite material in the other Forever Young moves (I especially love the super-eating one). Host also feels weird, though that might be related to the core moves thing; a superpowered evil side feels like something you staple onto existing characters of other archetypes, rather than it's own thing. It also felt weird that one of the results of the finale move can be that you die; I'm aware of plenty of characters who spent periods of time evil or uncontrollable, but being irrevocably evil seems off-kilter, though maybe that's just generally part of "RPGs have TPKs, comics don't". Inventor isn't bad or anything but what's a shonen inventor? Bulma was suggested but I don't think of her primarily as a fighter. I realise Jobber got taken out but it doesn't feel like a particularly fun role to play. Maybe that's me. When I hit the Rival, and later Straight Man, I realised that I felt like I was seeing similar, overlapping archetypes showing up together. Rival, Avenger and Straight Man seem like they're overlapping concepts. Later with Tireless, I felt there was overlap between Tireless and Straight man and Forever Young and Tireless. In general, there was a feeling that the books were all very narrow concepts. Straight Man's Unthreatening felt like it'd be a good move for Jobber, and Friendship Speech also feels weird there. Tireless also has some moves that feel like core: "Training for stuff" seems a genre conceit that shows up semi-regularly for most characters. That said, there's a lot of good stuff in the playbooks too. Mentor feels great, as does Guardian, and there's enough good ideas between the various shades of lancer and hero archetype in there I understand why it might be hard to condense them. But I feel cutting down on the number of books and making them broader might be a good idea generally; also moving some of the moves in the books to core. Please don't take this as absolute criticism, though; techniques are cool, and I loved how the tension system works. There's definitely a lot there worth working on. spectralent fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Apr 16, 2016 |
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Apr 16, 2016 15:41
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Covok posted:Sorry, I saw this earlier today, but didn't get a chance to respond. It's been really, really busy. That's true. I suppose my primary point of reference for "why are we fighting?" is Nanoha, who admittedly isn't shuesha, but "good guys" are people I classically associate the fighting-therapist with. Angsty characters, by reverse, tend to make me think of characters like Sasuke who're ambiguously heroic at best. quote:2. Huh? I'm not sure. I wrote that so long ago that I don't remember. Something shocking could literally just mean a strong one-liner, but that isn't the best wording. Maybe I should update that. Yeah, it's definitely not a problem, just we got "Hitler did nothing wrong, BELIEVE IT!", and were subsequently laughing so hard we decided that probably wasn't the intent of the cool move  quote:3. You're completely right. I was lazy about that and that is something I will be putting more attention on. Cool  I think having ties being mixed bags is probably fine, if that helps; I can absolutely see people fighting bringing up their pasts with each other to create openings or make people hesitate. Just it feels like they should also let you support people and inspire yourself. "I have to keep fighting for my friends!" is practically a genre staple. Also, it probably is appropriate that strongly-tied characters transfer ties fairly directly between opposition and alliance; it mimicks that thing where post-catharsis-moment, the hero and their nemesis team up and have an equally strong relationship, just with a positive disposition instead of negative. quote:4. This got brought up recently, both pre- and post playtest. After a lot of thinking it over, I'm thinking of seeing if a split playbook system might fix this because, as pointed out during the post-playtest discussion, some playbooks are why your fight and some are how you fight. I don't want that to be the split playbook dichotomy, per say, but it does need to be addressed: it just doesn't add up, ya know, if I keep the playbooks like that and splitting them may allow me to make a nice dynamic that is consistent. Cutting them down is another option, but I fear that might limit the game a bit: an issue an unreleased PbtA game had in the eyes of some due to not having enough playbooks. I might try it if split playbooks turn out to be a wet fart. A split playbook idea sounds great, IMO; as I said, the host feels very strongly like an element other characters have. I can easily picture Host/Forever Youngs, Host/Avengers, Host/Masters, etc. "Just the host" seems like a weird niche. quote:Also, as for the Inventor thing, while I know it isn't Shuesiha, I imagine Stein from Soul Eater when I think a fighting Inventor. It's a battle manga, it counts. Huh, that's fair. I've admittedly not strongly associated his inventing with things he does in the field; he's definitely technologically inclined, but he seems to fight with soul wavelength like everyone else, but it's been a while since I've followed Soul Eater. quote:"RPGs have TPKs, comics don't" Hmm, good point. It is dissonant from the source material for it to end in player loss, but it does need a failure state to be a game. I'll think that over. Yeah; another thing that's possibly just an aesthetic mismatch. quote:Jobber was put back in because the only person, who up to that point, was willing to do a playtest without me involved (which is great for evaluating rules clarity) liked it alot and told me "hey, if you put it in, and people don't like it, only people who do like it, like me, will use it." It was sound enough logic and he was being very nice for running these playtests for me so it went back in. Also, truth be told, I like it personally as something you don't often seen in RPGs: playing the guy who makes others look good, not yourself. Also, you can be surprisingly competent as the Jobber as failure is encourage, but you have control over it. That's fair. quote:Also, I just remembered why I was big on specific move advances in FEV which other PbtA hackers might want to know. I thought it was because of niche protection during our post-game discussion, but that wasn't it: I was running a Mask game IRL and found out that, when you only have physical handouts, pick a move from any playbook advances actually slow things down and hurt mid-session advances a lot as players will look through every playbook and stop paying attention. I thought this would stop that and allow for mid-session advances to not bog down live games -- something I wanted in FEV -- and also realized it had the benefit of niche protection and decided to go forward with putting it in FEV. Interesting!
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Apr 17, 2016 15:47
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