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SirPhoebos posted:I've been reading a bunch of Dominions LPs, and it got me wondering how to make an RPG in that setting that wasn't just a heartbreaker with an obscure license tie-in. Probably your best shot there is Godbound.
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Mar 30, 2017 20:08
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Mors Rattus posted:You wait for inklesspen to notice. There was an issue where the update system broke, but it's being worked on.
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Mar 30, 2017 20:29
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I've said this elsewhere, but I wanna say I really do appreciate the work inklesspen has put (and is putting) into the archives.
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Mar 30, 2017 22:08
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As do I. Lord knows I love spreading the word around about how terrible Beast is and an offsite mirror is an invaluable boon.
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Mar 30, 2017 22:16
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JackMann posted:I've said this elsewhere, but I wanna say I really do appreciate the work inklesspen has put (and is putting) into the archives.
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Mar 30, 2017 22:44
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JackMann posted:I've said this elsewhere, but I wanna say I really do appreciate the work inklesspen has put (and is putting) into the archives. Seriously, that work simply cannot be appreciated enough.
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Mar 30, 2017 22:55
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Agreed, it's a great community service.
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Mar 30, 2017 22:56
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quote:Thoughts on Shawn: I don't like Shawn the character too much because he kind of reeks of a certain degree of GM homerule. The plot idea is decent and he's generally an excellent example of why you should never set the Ritual time to be too soon. But he really does feel like the Bather template was added as an afterthought or that he might've been a character/GMPC that one of the writers enjoyed enough to slide on in. quote:
https://youtu.be/NNTpfKqMaXk
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Mar 31, 2017 00:25
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JackMann posted:I've said this elsewhere, but I wanna say I really do appreciate the work inklesspen has put (and is putting) into the archives. It's fantastic to be able to catch up on older writeups and stuff from times when I wasn't following the thread, so I definitely appreciate the work. Another hand for inklesspen.
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Mar 31, 2017 00:33
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Thanks for the archive, inklesspen!
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Mar 31, 2017 04:56
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 Rifts Index & Adventures Volume 1, Part 1: “Dedicated to the thousands of fans who have made the Rifts RPG® a part of their Megaverse®.” And now, for something somewhat different.  The Rifts Index & Adventures Volume 1 review is going to be delivered in an audio format. I wanted to do a bit of an experiment and this is a fairly safe space for that, due to the relatively tangential nature of this book. Also, I needed something interesting to distract me from being reminded of the utter meaninglessness in reviewing a book like Rifts Index & Adventures Volume 1, and the bottomless pit of melancholy which could easily result. I apologize for the amateurish presentation in advance - this is my first time doing something like this, and there are plenty of ums and lipsmacks. I have no excuse other than the fact that if I worked to make sure it was perfect, it likely would never have seen release. This part has a particularly rough cut that I didn’t notice until it was too much of a pain to fix, as well. Nonetheless, I’d like to hear what you think. As a side note, I mention that Rifts Sourcebook 2: Mechanoids wasn’t included in the index because it was too new! That’s wrong!... I have no idea why it’s not in the index! Maybe it’s not “canon”? Who knows? Here’s part 1 of the review! In related news, life has no purpose!  Also, here’s a visual guide of some of the pictures mentioned in the review.    Various pieces of concept art by Kevin Long.  A picture of Triax fighting Brodkil not from any previous book. Next: A town is terrorized by a giant mind-controlling fart.
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Mar 31, 2017 05:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
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Mar 31, 2017 05:49
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 CHAPTER TWO PART ONE BODY THIEVES Blood Bathers take the precious energies of their victims and keep themselves energized and fit. Body Thieves take the person directly. In many ways, being a Thief is worse than being a Bather despite arguably being morally better. You very quickly get entrenched in deep theological/philosophical arguments trying to do that though, so let's examine the central thesis of this book: the easier it is to gain immortality, the more immoral it is. How hard is Thieving? Well, it's definitely higher on the chain than Bathing. Unlike Bathing, there is no central Ritual or mythological thing that binds all Thieves. Being a Thief generally involves A: psychic powers/supernatural willpower of some kind, B: access to magical rituals or applied artifact creation or C: to just be exposed to something inexplicable and one of a kind that happens to do the job. On the plus side, a lot of Thieves can go quite a while between stealing new bodies as opposed to the regular nature of the Ritual. You're not necessarily bound to the rules of your theft. And that's just dipping your toes into figuring out the mechanics of the deed. Thieving in execution is also exceptionally tricky: you have to be prepared for the emotional and mental cost of pretending to be someone else whose life you've stolen, sometimes it's only permanent if you kill your own body, impersonating people is hard, etc. Now, granted, there are a lot more secret societies of Thieves out in the world than there are Bathers. This doesn't necessarily mean they're any more pleasant company. How immoral is Thieving? Well for starters it's theft with a side order of potential murder. As previously mentioned, sometimes you have to off your own body to make it stick. There's also death of the previous owner's self or at the very least you're inflicting a cruel fate on them by putting them in a disorienting situation inside your old body. And, as previously mentioned, Thieving isn't inherently better for your psyche. It is easier to practice self care and get your Mortality back to where it was, but again it all depends on how you play the game of body theft. I'm going to do this chapter a bit out of order because A: there's definitely much less to the mechanics than Bathers because Thieving is much easier and B: the majority of this chapter is split between the three different types of Thieves (Mentally Talented, Magically Talented, Oddities). There's less fluff and lore and everything about Thieves; there is no big list that explains how every type of supernatural responds to Thieves. So this update is going to be all about the merits and the creation of a Thief. I'll also be keeping the mechanical aspects of things relatively light and try not to go too in depth. Creating a Body Thief You do the standard 4 steps before applying the Body Thief template. It's generally recommended that you have an idea for why your character would turn to Thieving and what kind of Thief you want to make/how long the Thief has been at it. Step 5: pick the kind of Thief you want to make (Mentally Talented, Magically Talented, Oddity). Things to keep in mind: a Mental Thief is going to be using a lot of Willpower to do it, a Magical Thief is going to have to be able to forge a sympathetic connection with victims and not all Oddities work in your campaign idea. If a Thief wants to be a part of a society of like-minded Thieves, work with the GM to figure out the advantages, disadvantages and signature merits of the society. The big upside of a society is that they get a free Merit vital to the idea of the society that's up to 4 dots. There are some premade societies (or pre-established Oddities that allow Thieving) but again, they don't always fit every campaign. In a similar vein, sit down with the GM and figure out exactly how Thieving affects the victim mechanically. The book suggests that you keep the Mental and Social attributes and skills, keep the Mental merits and figure out which Social merits should transfer (Striking Looks is explicitly said to be non-transferrable).Then, use the Physical attributes and skills of the victim's body (they're justified as being predominantly rote muscle memory) while picking which Physical merits are either inherent and stick around or are still rote but need to be discovered by the new owner and should be bought back at half cost. This should generally be disregarded or simplified if the Theft is temporary. Step 6: pick Merits. The book recommends not hyperspecializing in Thief merits because other merits might be more helpful for letting your character survive. Resources, Contacts and other Mental merits are a pretty good idea. MERITS Mundane Merits:
Supernatural merits may be part of a society's freebie package but they can be bought by anyone who wants them. If you're a Mental Thief, they cost 1 Willpower to activate. If you're Magical, they're rituals with a TN equal to the merit dots that require at least 10 minutes per roll. If you're wrapped up in an Oddity, talk to your GM but the book thinks requiring Willpower is fair.
NEXT TIME: the mechanics and societies of the Mentally Talented Thieves.
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Mar 31, 2017 07:16
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The Secret Language better just be 'Malkovich Malkovich? Malkovich!' Wow I found the original ending, and it's very very White Wolf. Meanwhile, it turns out that the group hoping to live in Malkovich are being led by the actual Devil himself, in the guise of Mr. Flemmer (the man after whom the Mertin-Flemmer building is half-named). The Devil hopes to get his group into the vessel and use it as a tool for evil - they will rule the world together in the body of Malkovich. But first they have to get Craig out of it. Flemmer comes to Craig in a dream, telling him he must vacate the vessel, but Maxine, who is Craig's producer, tells him that's crazy talk. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Apr 1, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 09:40
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PurpleXVI posted:Probably your best shot there is Godbound. "I'm the monolith from 2001" is a great Fact to have.
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Mar 31, 2017 17:45
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Count Chocula posted:The Secret Language better just be 'Malkovich Malkovich? Malkovich!' I have been to a world that no man should see! e: Being John Malkavian
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Mar 31, 2017 18:01
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I'm starting up a Shadow of the Demon Lord game with my group next week, thanks to the thread, and Serf's writeup in particular. So thanks for the spotlight!
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Mar 31, 2017 20:47
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Hostile V posted:
Body Thieves sounds really close to Dog-Faced Joe in The Anubis Gates. Any chance of a flaw that makes their bodies somehow degenerate the longer they spend in them?
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Mar 31, 2017 20:52
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OutOfPrint posted:Body Thieves sounds really close to Dog-Faced Joe in The Anubis Gates. Any chance of a flaw that makes their bodies somehow degenerate the longer they spend in them?
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Mar 31, 2017 20:57
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my april fool joke is the welsh language 13th Age part 6: I Waste It With My Crossbow The barbarian and paladin are the least engaging and worst-designed of 13A's classes, as they are intentionally designed as a throwback to poorly designed martial classes of previous editions. "I hit it with my axe" just isn't very interesting! The few non-attack-based actions they can take - with the exception of the backgrounds and icon relationships all PCs have - are marginal, limited, and largely included just because those options existed in previous takes on D&D. These problems are also true of the ranger to a lesser degree. The ranger has a stronger theme - hunting a single target and overwhelming it with many attacks - but there's enough space in that theme for more than just statistical buffs to inserting swords into owlbears. 13th Age does away with the bonus accumulation of both 3e and 4e. That means combat and character creation is much more streamlined for these sorts of characters - and that's great! The only downside is that the game mastery and research required to stack up all those bonuses covered up their relative lack of complexity. A 13A barbarian isn't less interesting than a typical 3e fighter or 4e ranger, but the process of making one is less interesting. Eliminating all of the newbie traps and the white noise concealing the good options means that there's no way to trick yourself into thinking that hitting things with an axe really hard is as versatile or interesting as other classes' skill sets. The thinness of 13A's combat is most obvious with these very thin character classes. Raurghagghpbbthtgraughthbbheeeegragphraghicphbbt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c54SvkgQ04A Barbarians rage out. Barbarian Rage is their one single daily/recharge 16+ power: rage lasts for an entire fight, and any attacks made while raging are rolled on 2d20. If one die hits, it's a hit. If both dice hit and are 11+ (or if one die is a natural 20, as usual), you crit. (Crits are double damage, and there's no 3e-style threat confirmation roll.) The one tactical decision to make as a barbarian is whether or not to rage, and it's almost always the correct decision to rage. If you find that one decision too taxing, there's a feat chain that causes barbarians to automatically rage for free after a certain number of rounds in combat. Barbarians don't get much in the way of customization options, either. They have talents, but so do all classes, and barbarians' aren't especially interesting. They can take cleave, or get a little bit of conditional extra damage, or get a free-action recovery (that is wasted if you miss with your attack that turn). It's almost all ticky-tacky little bonuses. Barbarians have special talents that they can only choose at higher levels - this is touted as a special feature of the class - but there are only two talents each at champion and epic to choose from. One of them is +2 to mental defenses one fight per day. Another is "calling on your ancestors to send a spirit army to assist you" - which means for one fight a day you have a chance each turn to get an extra attack. The barbarian's design seems to be motivated by a common apologetic argument for the design of the D&D 3e fighter: some players actually want their characters to do the same thing every round because they don't find D&D-style tactical combat very interesting. Often as not the example player who isn't interested in combat is a chauvinistic "someone's girlfriend" stereotype. Unfortunately, the barbarian's autoattacking isn't very interesting either - and now the barbarian's player is into a PC that can't ever do anything but melee basic attacks. Left unanswered is why you're bothering to play D&D - or 13th Age - when one of your players clearly does not want to engage with one of the most complex, time-consuming rulesets. Barbarians aren't offered any real compensation for their narrow focus. Rage is good for hitting people, but it has no described game effect outside of rolling to hit - even though they explicitly mention you might "decide to rage out of combat for dramatic roleplaying effect". You'd expect barbarians to be tough, but their low AC, inexplicably middling HP, and otherwise unremarkable stats place them behind fighters and paladins, and only slightly ahead of bards. Because Good Is Dumb While barbarians are boring, paladins are confused. In the Original Edition Handed Down To Us By Gygax, Ayn Rand, and Jesus, Paladins were originally Fighters But Better, as a reward for 13th Age's paladin is clearly based on the 3e paladin, and it's nearly as bland. Smite Evil - a generic [CHA mod]-times-per-fight damage bonus on a basic attack - is back as a core class feature, as are passively excellent defensive stats. Their talents - and paladins don't have any paladin-specific powers except for what they get from talents - are a random selection of features from different editions. Paladins can shrug off debuffs, or Lay Hands On allies to heal them, challenge enemies to a duel, intercept incoming attacks, etc. The only thing saving paladins from being hopeless is that they can use talents to loot cleric domain talents or spells, giving them interesting combat options and thematic elements beyond "hit a dude while being really tough in a passive way". 13th Age does do away with paladin codes of conduct. There's no discussion of codes of conduct whatsoever, and no class in 13A can arbitrarily lose all of their abilities in the way of older D&D classes. Paladins are generally good, but not exclusively so. Evil paladins clearly exist in the setting - one of the icons is a paladin who is literally in league with devils - and they're briefly discussed. Even Smite Evil can be used to smite, you know, whoever, since 13A doesn't use Evil tags or alignment. While I can't say I miss fallen paladin shenanigans, 13th Age doesn't carve out any new replacement niche. Heavily armored holy warriors who support their allies already exist: clerics. The relative paucity of player options in 13th Age means many classes have "take an ability from a different class's list" as an option, which means the paladin is even more obviously derivative and unnecessary than usual. Frostkiller, Shiny, and my pet Chwerthinllyd Rangers have a clear, strong concept: they are middling-toughness martial characters who specialize in hunting down a target and taking it down with a flurry of blows. You can choose different murder specialties, different degrees of emphasis on "hunting," "focusing on a target," and "lots of attacks." They're coherently themed in a way most classes are not. The 13A ranger will be immediately recognizable to anyone who played a 4e ranger. You can choose three talents, and your talents are broken up into two-talent specialties: two talents to dual-wield, two-talents to shoot flurries of arrows, two talents to mark and wreck a target, a single animal companion talent that counts as two talents, and a handful of one-off talents to track prey or poach spells from clerics or sorcerers. You're obviously meant to pick up either the bow dual-strike or melee dual-wield talent. They don't guarantee a second attack; rather, if you make a natural even attack roll (hit or miss), you get your second attack. (You can take both, but they don't play nicely together: ranger melee attacks can use DEX or STR to hit, but only STR to damage, so you can't run both ranged and melee off of the same main stat.) Once you've got your main attack, you pick your choice of ticky-tacky conditional bonuses or utility powers. The biggest optional utility power is an Animal Companion, a full-fledged NPC who also attacks on your initiative without costing you any actions, and heals whenever you use a recovery. Pets only have six stats and one "trick," which is usually a conditional modifier on their basic attack. Their stats are pointlessly confusing, however: a pet is considered to be one level lower than the ranger, so a 4th-level ranger uses the "Level 3 Animal Companion" stats, and there are "0th-level pets". Pets stats also almost-but-don't-quite smoothly increase per level: for example, AC goes up by one for each level, except for one level where it goes up by two. It's needlessly fiddly but not overly so, and the end result is that the bear or snake or whatnot grants the ranger an additional attack. Animal companions are conceptually freeform. Pets get a "trick" based on their species - snakes have poison, wolves get a boost when attacking the same target as the ranger, etc. - but players are encouraged to assign whatever trick they like to whatever species they like if they'd prefer, as long as it makes sense. Pets can become large dire beasts at higher levels or be replaced with more fearsome animals instead of leveling up at higher levels - but there's no game effects attached to any of this. 13th Age abandons the idea that any in-universe difference has to be accompanied by a specific fiddly rule effect. Animal companions are revised in the second 13th Age Book, 13 True Ways. Rangers and druids with pets get a small pool of spells and a short spell list focused entirely on buffing and healing the pet. They also get the option to spend only one talent on an Animal Companion; such Animal Companion Initiates (as opposed to Adepts, who invested two talents) can only have their companion around for every other fight and can't cast the pet spells. Rangers get another freeform talent, and this one I like, at least in concept. If you take Tracker, "you get to say things about the terrain that the GM may not have realized." Tracker lets the ranger's player take advantage of the environment in an improvisational way, by making up some natural feature that was always there, which comes into play on a random (but predictable) turn. Tracker rangers can knock a stalactite on foes, lure them into tripping over something, knocking down a hornet's nest, etc. The problem is that such "terrain stunts" don't have a clearly defined rules effect when the enemy sets off your trap card. The suggested effects, buried in a sidebar, are very weak and don't clearly describe how to implement their effects. It's not clear if there's an attack roll (it's implied that there isn't), nor is their any suggested default effect to help bypass disagreements about what the talent should be able to do. Tracker is a great idea, but it's not so much badly designed as not even fully designed at all. With a little text introducing basic templates for rangers - a notable omission - they could have been the "simple martial character" for the strawman 3e fighter liker. It's perfectly reasonable to make a ranger who is really good at stabbing and nothing else, but players who get bored with that and want to expand their options or explore more of the games' systems still have the option to do so. Rangers will still be using their basic attacks for the vast majority of their turns for the vast majority of fights, but they're not as bad off as the other basic-attacking mundanes compared to the rest of 13A's cast. Next: Everything seems possible and nothing is what it seems. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 22:50 on May 8, 2017 |
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Apr 1, 2017 04:13
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OutOfPrint posted:Body Thieves sounds really close to Dog-Faced Joe in The Anubis Gates. Any chance of a flaw that makes their bodies somehow degenerate the longer they spend in them? Well, Dog Faced Joe's bodies didn't really disintegrate so much as "He'd take poison and chew up the tongue before he jumped to a new host" (And also the whole curse that makes him grow excess body hair which was solved with like, shaving or depilatory cream.)
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Apr 1, 2017 04:31
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The Rifts Index & Adventures Volume 1 review is going to be delivered in an audio format. I wanted to do a bit of an experiment and this is a fairly safe space for that, due to the relatively tangential nature of this book. Also, I needed something interesting to distract me from being reminded of the utter meaninglessness in reviewing a book like Rifts Index & Adventures Volume 1, and the bottomless pit of melancholy which could easily result. It's very first podcast episode-y. It could have potential, but one-man podcasts are rough in general unless the host is really good in my opinion.
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Apr 1, 2017 05:32
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Based on this review, I'm kind of baffled why anyone would play 13th Age. It feels kind of... Pathfindery, an attempt at "fixing" D&D without actually understanding what needs fixing. Having never read 13th Age myself, the way people talked about it I always thought it was far more FATE-esque, a lot more narrative.
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Apr 1, 2017 08:30
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It's babbys first "D&D with narrative and storytelling elements" for people who can't wrap their brain around Dungeon World. I ran a 13th Age game and one of the players was fairly new to rpgs and had only ever played 5th edition D&D and he was completely baffled by stuff like One Unique Thing and Backgrounds. It's also easy enough to run and play that I use it as an introductory game for complete newbies - there's enough stuff for you to flex your creative brainmuscles while still having some mechanical boundaries so you're not thrown completely into the deep end.
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Apr 1, 2017 09:55
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gourdcaptain posted:It's very first podcast episode-y. It could have potential, but one-man podcasts are rough in general unless the host is really good in my opinion. Thanks for the feedback! It's sufficiently niche that finding another person willing to talk with me about books like this feels unlikely - I was always kind of shocked occamsnailfile was willing to work with me on going through some books that are obscure even by Palladium standards. It's an experiment, though, so I'm willing to accept it might not be the best idea. Most of what I listen to myself are two or three person podcasts, so it's probably a stronger format in general. I realize the "single person rants about something" is strangely something I see a lot more on youtube than podcasting.
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Apr 1, 2017 11:24
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PurpleXVI posted:Based on this review, I'm kind of baffled why anyone would play 13th Age. It feels kind of... Pathfindery, an attempt at "fixing" D&D without actually understanding what needs fixing. What doesn't quite come across in the review is the degree to which it talks up Icons as a super exciting thing before doing nothing with them.
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Apr 1, 2017 13:51
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13th Age has really strong and flavorful writing, which puts it above basically every other piece of D&Disms ever except maybe Planescape.
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Apr 1, 2017 14:02
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Also, if you're new to things, the whole 'both designers will pop in to explain why they did a thing they way they did' is actually quite helpful and something I'd like to see more RPG books do. I like knowing authorial intent in an RPG's design. It usually makes tinkering with it later easier. Also, and this is a big one, 13th Age is completely playable out of the box. There's no tremendously broken mechanic or concept that absolutely needs fixing for the game to even be run long term. In this industry, that is unfortunately way above par.
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Apr 1, 2017 14:04
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PurpleXVI posted:Based on this review, I'm kind of baffled why anyone would play 13th Age. It feels kind of... Pathfindery, an attempt at "fixing" D&D without actually understanding what needs fixing. The bar for "D&D but better" is really loving low is why.
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Apr 1, 2017 15:04
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D&D is a relatively low-bar to hurdle in terms of game design as long as you're okay with making somebody unreasonably angry.
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Apr 1, 2017 15:25
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I bought a copy of 13th Age last summer. The layout issues you're mentioning now probably turned me off from it a lot, but the Icons and to a lesser extent the One Unique Thing also bothered me. Maybe it was just how all the examples were presented, but I'm not a big fan of everyone having to have a super unique exceptional background. Why can't I just be some guy out of nowhere who becomes a hero? Now that I'm writing it out it sounds kind of petty and  , like I was trying to get it to be Warhammer Fantasy.
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Apr 1, 2017 15:35
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To be fair, your OUT for that concept could be 'Farmer with enormous potential.' and Icon relations (for all that they matter) could be more 'Who is going to gently caress with them and drive the Farmer With Potential to become a hero by accident'.
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Apr 1, 2017 15:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Thanks for the feedback! It's sufficiently niche that finding another person willing to talk with me about books like this feels unlikely - I was always kind of shocked occamsnailfile was willing to work with me on going through some books that are obscure even by Palladium standards. It's an experiment, though, so I'm willing to accept it might not be the best idea. Most of what I listen to myself are two or three person podcasts, so it's probably a stronger format in general. I realize the "single person rants about something" is strangely something I see a lot more on youtube than podcasting. Hey, I'll go all in on any sort of weird RPG stupidity if you need somebody. And as a cardcarrying grog, I might even have my own opinions.
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Apr 1, 2017 15:48
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Night10194 posted:To be fair, your OUT for that concept could be 'Farmer with enormous potential.' and Icon relations (for all that they matter) could be more 'Who is going to gently caress with them and drive the Farmer With Potential to become a hero by accident'. Yeah, Icons are more organizations than people most of the time, and in game terms basically just a marker of who you want to be relevant in to your farmer's story. Like, if you're going for the old "orcs burnt down my farm and now I adventure" backstory, you'd probably have a negative relationship with the Orc Lord and a positive relationship with the Emperor, not because either of them know you or that you're particularly well connected, but because you're a salt of the earth Imperial citizen other Imperials will support, and because other people who really hate orcs are going to know they share your interest in fighting orcs and want to help you out.
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Apr 1, 2017 16:28
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PurpleXVI posted:Based on this review, I'm kind of baffled why anyone would play 13th Age. It feels kind of... Pathfindery, an attempt at "fixing" D&D without actually understanding what needs fixing. Same reason they play Pathfinder - a fixed D&D that can be sold to play groups that are locked into D&D inertia. I actually found it good at getting such groups to think more narratively. One Unique Thing might not be a big deal initially but it's inspiring in that context.
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Apr 1, 2017 16:31
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Also comparing 13A to Pathfinder is unfair. 13A is playable, after all.
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Apr 1, 2017 16:33
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
Sorry. I just prefer the written reviews for a few reasons. For one thing, it's a lot easier to stop partway through and come back to it. For another, I like your jokes and asides that you're not getting into as much here. I like being able to just stop and internalize the information without having to scramble for the pause button, and to be able to just scan back through the last line without having to try and get the track back to where it was. It works with something like System Mastery because Jon and Jef are good about bouncing things off of each other, and I'm okay with dealing with the problems of the format there. However, I just don't feel like going audio here gains enough to be worth the issues. Granted, you're also doing this for the first time, but I feel like you're just not as entertaining here as you are when you write and post.
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Apr 1, 2017 16:54
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PurpleXVI posted:Based on this review, I'm kind of baffled why anyone would play 13th Age. It feels kind of... Pathfindery, an attempt at "fixing" D&D without actually understanding what needs fixing. it's a hybrid of FUDGE and D&D, and its layout and the FATAL & Friends format kind of obscure that. i have more thoughts about this once i'm done with chargen
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Apr 1, 2017 17:04
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JackMann posted:It works with something like System Mastery because Jon and Jef are good about bouncing things off of each other, and I'm okay with dealing with the problems of the format there. However, I just don't feel like going audio here gains enough to be worth the issues. Granted, you're also doing this for the first time, but I feel like you're just not as entertaining here as you are when you write and post. Our first three or so episodes are completely terrible, to be fair. Finding a rhythm for a show format takes a while. I'd also suggest however that the core fix to making a show work is a second person, because nothing builds a rhythm like the beats of conversation.
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Apr 1, 2017 17:14
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 18:20 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Based on this review, I'm kind of baffled why anyone would play 13th Age. It feels kind of... Pathfindery, an attempt at "fixing" D&D without actually understanding what needs fixing. As someone who played a year long campaign, it is a lot more like FATE but it is still very much a D&D but better game. Basically, outside of combat (for the most part), it's mostly FAE-esque "choose your approach" style things with the occasional talent/spell effect butting in or relationship role. Combat is like how people played 3rd Edition D&D, not how it was written (no real concerns for squares, relative ranges, etc.). It's problems are, as pointed out, backgrounds are unbalanced and require good faith actors to work (bad in any RPG), some classes are boring, and its only main supplement actually breaks some things (Wizards can get OP in Core due to Evocation being more powerful than the devs expected but that's manageable, but the multiclassing rules make some things better while making OP as gently caress builds like Wizard/Sorcerer). That said, it's still an okay game, really, by industry standards. It's kind of easy to forget that the bar is pretty low, especially for D&D style games. If it all works out of the box, you have some actual unique aspects from D&D that work and are fun and not done to death, and the game is better than the current edition of D&D at release, you are waaaaaay ahead of the pack.
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Apr 1, 2017 17:19
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