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Serf posted:They should just release the Book of Nine Swords again with the core rules bolted on and call that 6e There's been three different goons who've taken a shot at Book of Nine Swords for 5e:  http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/219565/The-Martial-Disciple-5E  (by Magil Zeal, since their name isn't on the cover) http://www.dmsguild.com/product/224017/Combat-Expertise-25-New-Maneuvers  http://www.dmsguild.com/product/230244/Norts-Universal-Martial-Maneuvers
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Apr 17, 2018 15:08
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Halloween Jack posted:Not really, no. I wouldn’t be pissed, but I’d be disappointed. If you’re trying to do kitchen sink fantasy, you need to be able to have Gimli, Beowulf, or Hercules hanging with your nerd crew. Medieval Harry Potter, where everyone who isn’t some species of wizard is useless, just cuts out a lot of fun character concepts. IMO that’d be a big design mistake, catering to established players who really want to maintain the sanctity of a mechanical system, instead of making the world broader. Which means there’s a good chance it’s on the docket for 6E, but eh.
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Apr 17, 2018 15:20
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Screw it, time for DRAGONS. CONTENT WARNING: misogyny, dead children, torture DRAGONS It's taken me a while to get to this point because I keep rewriting it. Basically, the TT dragons are some of the best and worst content in the book. I like them a lot, and I also hate them. The implicit setting for TT has only ten dragons, each of which is an apocalyptic murder machine presaged by omens and dooms, and they poke their heads out of hiding every so often to bring low a civilisation that's gotten too big for its boots. As a concept, I can totally get behind this. It's an excellent thing for high-level PCs to try and prevent, nice, good. Each dragon is also presented with a selection of omens and dooms it comes with, and those are evocative and interesting. Every one of those ten dragons is presented here, by the way. No room for invention or coming up with your own. I know some people like that sort of encyclopedic categorisation of stuff, but my opinion is that it's better to present 2-4 as examples then let people make up their own, maybe with guidelines or something. This happens again with one of the other monsters later in the book -- 'There are only twelve of these in the world! Here are all their details.' -- so I think it's a pattern. My other minor beef is that the dragons exclusively target cities. Their descriptions are all about what happens to the cities they arrive in. So I guess the rural bits of civilisation just keep on trucking? I dunno. My more serious beef with the dragons is that they are crying out to be represented in a better game than D&D. Their fluff, which is broadly cool, is mechanically rendered as 'this is a sack of hp with high-damage attacks'. For example, Makkas-Nephata has a breath weapon which induces nightmare hallucinations in which people live out the worst experiences of other people caught in the breath weapon cloud. Cool, right? It does hit point damage. Like... either write special rules which reflect the fluff you've written, or just cave and move to a natural-language system where 'terrible seizures caused by standing in a dragon's shadow' means something. The best bits of these creatures are utterly wasted. Anyway, here are some details of the ten mythic dragons. Athonak-Amet Red, rotting, breathes gastroenteritis. Dar-khatep Nah Lives in a Ke-Sectat Hatath Purple. Lives in a landfill. Breath weapon is a swarm of hungry insects. Makkas-Nephata A wingless monster preceded by unnatural rainfall. Quite apart from the hallucinatory-but-no-it's-only-hp-damage breath weapon mentioned above, Makkas has the special rule that if his bite kills you, he swallows you -- but if his bite doesn't kill you, he still swallows you, you go on a turbo-ride through his digestive tract, then get shat out the other end. All in one combat round! Mhego Rui-Sa This one is very sparkly and constantly writes its true name in the air with its tail. If low-level creatures see it, they're compelled to kill themselves! It also flattens castles and fortresses by falling onto them from space, which is a pretty cool entrance. Nahui Ankeru-Zem Yellow, fat, hangs out in swamps. Is preceded by toxic algal blooms, aquatic predators flinging themselves out of the water into people's boats, dead fish, explosively decompressing deep-sea creatures, and ball lightning. It also sings, which is too high-pitched to be audible but loud enough to make people's heads explode. Since Nahui is female, this makes it a fat lady who sings before it's all over, and that makes me like it a lot more. Niska-Getherkhet White dragon. Cone of cold breath weapon. Heralded by birth defects. Sagha Thutmolud A chameleon dragon! Rains fire and brimstone on and around the city she's chosen to ruin. If she casts her shadow on you, you suffer terrible seizures and may vomit up your putrefied internal organs. This does 1d20 damage. Setharam Uus-Ezochel Preceded by some pretty cool omens: green lightning storms, asthma-inducing pollen, plants growing teeth and taking bites out of people. The Teratic Tome posted:She breathes out spores, which sear the lungs, burn the skin, and begin to grow into thick lichen inside the bodies of those who are affected This, like every other breath weapon in this section, does hit point damage. Uchorah-Thanaphor This dragon hangs out in space with "exiled deities and sentient hatreds", also known as Twitter. Before it arrives there are storms, earthquakes, animals behaving strangely, and mass outbreaks of violence and suicide. When it arrives, it's an armoured sack of hp that does hit point damage. It also steals memorised spells with its bite, but I doubt any spellcaster is going to survive more than a couple of hits from a 5d10 bite anyway. ---- I think the most interesting use for these dragons is for mid-level characters to be stuck in the city that they're currently wiping off the map. Low-level characters would be better but most of them have some effect or other which insta-gibs anyone of 3rd or lower level who happens to see them, so. STATS SO FAR Monsters: 41 Female Monsters: 5 (I'm deliberately skipping unique female NPCs for this count) Female Monsters With Their Tits Out: 5 (I'm including unique female NPCs in this one though.) Anti-Theist Monsters: 1 Worm Monsters: 2
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Apr 17, 2018 15:25
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Ultiville posted:I wouldn’t be pissed, but I’d be disappointed. If you’re trying to do kitchen sink fantasy, you need to be able to have Gimli, Beowulf, or Hercules hanging with your nerd crew.
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Apr 17, 2018 15:34
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Halloween Jack posted:Eliminating fighters in favour of spellsword would be a big step towards D&D giving up on pretending to be kitchen sink fantasy, which it has never ever been. It's a weird little subsubgenre cobbled together from a pretty broad set of influences across fantasy fiction and the assumptions of a peculiar skirmish wargame. honestly the issue from the start is treating Gandalf's archetype like a typical party member instead of a panic button for when the party is way in over their head as he kind of actually is - or Merlin as an active force instead of a mysterious mentor figure who steps in only when Arthur needs a nudge. But really, having a tighter focus would do D&D a lot of good.
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Apr 17, 2018 15:58
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Halloween Jack posted:Eliminating fighters in favour of spellsword would be a big step towards D&D giving up on pretending to be kitchen sink fantasy, which it has never ever been. It's a weird little subsubgenre cobbled together from a pretty broad set of influences across fantasy fiction and the assumptions of a peculiar skirmish wargame. Sure, I’d just rather it live up to it’s ambitions and the way people try to use it than redefine those things to try to fit it’s cobbled together system. Funnily enough, though, “everyone uses magic some ways” would be a perfect fit for an MTG themed RPG, though I think D&D’s Vancian casting isn’t.
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Apr 17, 2018 16:03
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I'd just as soon dump every class that isn't some weird peculiar concept, starting with the Fighter ("fights") and Wizard ("does all the magic except healing and some buffs"). The cleric, paladin, ranger, druid, etc. are weird enough to stay.
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Apr 17, 2018 16:36
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replace all classes with the factotum, which you then build how you want with talent options
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Apr 17, 2018 16:36
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Night10194 posted:I mean if magic is going to be the only way you get worthwhile abilities in a game, deciding the game is going to include only characters with magic would hardly be insane. Halloween Jack posted:It would be such an uncharacteristic admission that I think it would be greeted warmly. Luckily, Eldritch rear end Kicking already exists. I'd love to do a review of it, but I don't have time for it these days. The short version is that the kingdom was capital-G Good and the wizards were, too, until, one magical day, the wizards went bugfuck crazy and decided to build towers and kill each other without worrying about collateral damage. Now, wizards are starting to snap out of their murderous fugues and are trying to piece together what happened, all the while dueling wizards who are still bugfuck and settling old grudges with the ones who went sane. There are no traditional skills in the game, just loose schools of magic that get rolled when trying to do something with that school, like using Air to fly over a wall or Earth to make an iron lock soft enough to poke a finger through. Wizards don't jump, climb, or pick locks. Wizards use magic.
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Apr 17, 2018 16:56
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Serf posted:replace all classes with the factotum, which you then build how you want with talent options Druids can't use druid magic unless they wear their funny animal hat.
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Apr 17, 2018 17:13
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Thesis:PurpleXVI posted:
Antithesis: Halloween Jack posted:I'd just as soon dump every class that isn't some weird peculiar concept, starting with the Fighter ("fights") and Wizard ("does all the magic except healing and some buffs"). The cleric, paladin, ranger, druid, etc. are weird enough to stay. Synthesis: You have 4 base classes suffixes like Sword, Sneak, Sorcery and Saint. Each one has 4 different prefix options like Nature, Martial, Psi, Holy, etc, but each prefix wildly alters the classes. Martial fighter is defined by knowing all of the weapons and having the ability to use any of them, maybe 5 at the same time, and at default is the guy who fights with three swords in that pirate anime.
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Apr 17, 2018 17:16
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very close to recreating Warrior, Rogue, & Mage now
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Apr 17, 2018 17:46
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Impermanent posted:Synthesis:
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Apr 17, 2018 17:52
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Hrm... this sure does look familiar.Impermanent posted:You have 4 base classes suffixes like Defender, Striker, Controller and Leader. Each one has Oh right.
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Apr 17, 2018 17:55
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I get it. I really do. D20 broke my brain for a long time. Once you realize that what you really want to play is GURPS with the cinematic options you'll be happier.
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Apr 17, 2018 18:00
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The funniest grogs are the ones who really want to be playing BRP (for rules) or Harn (for setting) but insist on D&D for some drat reason.
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Apr 17, 2018 18:06
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actually what I want to play is either Strike!, fellowship or Chuubo's depending on what day it is but what I want to design is a 4e heartbreaker with a simplified class system and the playbook / bonds structure of apocalypse world.
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Apr 17, 2018 18:07
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Halloween Jack posted:The funniest grogs are the ones who really want to be playing BRP (for rules) or Harn (for setting) but insist on D&D for some drat reason. The reason I tend to end up with D&D is that it feels like most other fantasy games are a reaction to D&D in some sense. Either going "gently caress YOU DAD" and trying to be as different as possible whether it means making something good or bad, or going "this is what D&D was really about" and getting tunnel vision obsessiveness with one interpretation of D&D(like that it's supposed to be a hardcore mudfarmer murder simulator where you're not allowed to have fun and if you don't like that then you're playing games wrong). So as broken as D&D is in any edition, at least with my favoured edition I usually have more fun than these. The alternative tend to be the "universal" systems like GURPS or BESM or something that gets used for more or less anything and that usually almost just ends up as a pretty soulless experience, to me. Lacking some fundamental spark because it's not actually engineered for what it's getting used for. It feels like the only fantasy RPG's I remember playing which didn't feel like a reaction to/response to/recreation of D&D were Exalted and WFRP. I'd welcome some recommendations for more RPG's in that vein, though. 
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Apr 17, 2018 18:57
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Halloween Jack posted:The funniest grogs are the ones who really want to be playing BRP (for rules) or Harn (for setting) but insist on D&D for some drat reason. Rolemaster. 
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Apr 17, 2018 18:57
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PurpleXVI posted:The reason I tend to end up with D&D is that it feels like most other fantasy games are a reaction to D&D in some sense. Either going "gently caress YOU DAD" and trying to be as different as possible whether it means making something good or bad, or going "this is what D&D was really about" and getting tunnel vision obsessiveness with one interpretation of D&D(like that it's supposed to be a hardcore mudfarmer murder simulator where you're not allowed to have fun and if you don't like that then you're playing games wrong). So as broken as D&D is in any edition, at least with my favoured edition I usually have more fun than these. Reign, Ryuutama, Burning Wheel?
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Apr 17, 2018 19:10
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PurpleXVI posted:The reason I tend to end up with D&D is that it feels like most other fantasy games are a reaction to D&D in some sense. Either going "gently caress YOU DAD" and trying to be as different as possible whether it means making something good or bad, or going "this is what D&D was really about" and getting tunnel vision obsessiveness with one interpretation of D&D(like that it's supposed to be a hardcore mudfarmer murder simulator where you're not allowed to have fun and if you don't like that then you're playing games wrong). So as broken as D&D is in any edition, at least with my favoured edition I usually have more fun than these. Then there are games which are very different from D&D in terms of setting, but have sops to D&Disms that look weird in the abstract. Tekumel has dungeons, Harn has an Abhoth-like deity that pukes up monsters, and both seem to have the sort of ecumenical paganism that's more in keeping with D&D campaign settings than with their own cultural influences.
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Apr 17, 2018 19:28
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Rogue Trader Battlefleet Koronus So, before we get to the rules for how to use your flying cathedral-hotel-military-base-supervillain-lair we have a frankly shamefully tiny listing of prebuilt vessels: A refueling/wayfarer station, an ork pirate ship, and a pirate ship. Two very light enemies is it. You won't get extensive alien enemies until Battlefleet Koronus (though they are VERY extensive and provide entire BFG fleet recreations: Eldar are annoying as hell, Chaos are full of fighter pilots and boarding ships, etc). I should note Orks keep their 'roll for the Str of the Macrobattery before firing' rule from BFG, and that in place of a Gellar Field they have 'really big teef' and scary faces painted all over their ships to frighten off demons. This works. And if it doesn't work, da' boyz get to fight demons, so it still worked anyway cuz there was a fight. They also have a BIG RED BUTTON that suddenly makes their ship much faster any turn when it doesn't try to change heading and boosts their ability to ram you and then swing across on space ropes to space board you with their space cutlasses that are also space axes. Also all pirates (ork or otherwise) give extra winbucks if you capture their ship or hulk their ship but don't destroy their cargo bay for salvage. Starship combats are much longer than hand to hand melees. Every turn in a spaceship fight is 30 minutes to an hour. Surprise works differently due to the extended time-scale (Running silent and jumping someone is a time-honored tactic): Surprised ships still act normally, but anyone shooting at them gets +20 to hit during the first round of combat. Ship initiative is determined by the 10s digit of their Detection rating, plus a d10. So effectively, your sensor stat is your init, as well. Distance in space combat is measured in abstract Void Units, with one VU being thousands of kilometers. These ships are moving fast. Facing and range matter a LOT. You can generally only fire a weapon on the facing it's mounted on: A Port Side broadside can only fire off the port side, etc. Very few weapons (Only Keel mounts, which PC ships generally can't get) can fire on the Aft quadrant. Dorsal guns can fire on any of the other three, though, and their 270 degree arc of fire is loving *powerful*. On Light Cruisers and Cruisers, Prow mounted weaponry can fire like a Dorsal weapon; on Raiders and Frigates and Transports it's limited to the front arc. A ship generally gets two actions in their turn without needing special tests to attempt them: A Maneuver and a Shooting turn. When Maneuvering, a ship moves forward at either full or half speed; Starships are huge, have immense momentum, and generally don't actually stop or hold still in combat. The ship may then turn up to 45 degrees if it's a Cruiser, 90 degrees if it's anything else (A ship can turn less than its maximum turn rate). This is the only movement action that requires no tests. You can also declare the turn half-way through your movement speed, then keep moving the rest of your movement on your new heading. This part of combat is literally copied from Battlefleet Gothic. You can also declare you're Adjusting Bearing, rolling Piloting+Maneuverability Rating to turn sooner in your movement; 1 less VU before your can turn for succeeding, plus one per DoS, minimum 1. You can Adjust Speed, doing the same check but moving 1 less or one more VU per DoS up to 2x your base movement or down to 0 (The only way to come to a stop in combat, usually). You can Adjust Speed and Heading, trying to combine the two actions into one move at the expense of -20 to the piloting check. If you fail any of these checks you simply take the normal no-test maneuver action instead. COME TO NEW HEADING! Is the first actual special order (Special Orders should be shouted dramatically in combat) and requires a Pilot+Maneuver check at -10. If you succeed, you move 1/2 speed, turn, move 1/2 speed, then turn again, but succeed or fail you take -20 to shoot this round. You can also Disengage if there are no hostile craft within 8 VU, rolling Pilot+Maneuver vs. Detection+Scrutiny for any enemy within 20 VU as you attempt to maneuver away, shut down systems, and hide in the black. EVASIVE MANEUVERS! is a -10 Pilot+Maneuver check to give enemies -10 to-hit vs. your ship per DoS, with a corresponding penalty to your ship's guns. As you might note it's pretty loving non-negotiable to use a battlemap in space combat. You cannot theater-of-mind a game attempting to simulate momentum, turning rates, fire arcs, etc to get Age of Sail Sci-Fi Space Combat. The general maneuver system also shows that it was really built for fleet and squadron action; a single player ship that can't turn well can easily get picked apart by escorts if it doesn't have any of its own. You can, and will, lose crew during combat. Any time your ship suffers 1 point of Hull damage one of your Crew points is a casualty (you normally have 100 crew, as an abstraction. This doesn't mean 1% of the crew dies every time you take a hull hit). Any losses to crew also drop Morale, which is also measured on a 0-100 scale (with permanent mods for ship traits, equipment, etc). Losing crew brings in penalties; at 80 crew, you increase travel times by d5 days. At 60, you suffer -5 to repairs, damage control, and boarding actions. At 50, you get -10 to Maneuver. At 40, all your special component Winbucks bonuses go away; there's no-one to man the non-essential elements of the ship. At 20, you count as Crippled and are probably screwed (We'll get to that when we get to being Crippled). At 10, you can't attempt to board or raid, etc and suffer -20 to all damage control actions. At 0, uh, your crew's dead. All of them. The PCs might still be alive, but their ship is ripe for the taking. At 80 Morale, you suffer -5 to Command tests. At 60, -5 to BS tests to fire ship weapons. At 50, -10 to Command (Cumulative with the -5). At 40, -10 to Maneuver and -5 more to BS (-10). At 20, you start losing d5 Crew to desertion every time you put into port and you can't trust the ratings with weapons; no more boarding or raiding. At 10, you suffer -10 to *speed*, Detection, and Maneuver, crippling your ship. At 0, all living crew instantly experience a Marxist class consciousness awakening and decide to kill you. Every single one of them. At once. Run. They then become highly democratic pirates with an elected officer corps and set off on adventure with your ship. No, really, it says that. Also, at 70, 40, and 10 Morale you have to make a Command test or else a mutiny happens, and either the Democratic Socialist Pirates happen if you fail to quell it or you simply suffer some damage, crew loss, and morale loss from having to put it down using Intimidate, Command, etc. Extended Actions are actions the PCs and crew take aboard the ship. Your ship's crew has a default skill of 30 at any of these actions if you have an NPC officer do them; you can eventually pay for better crew with up to a 60% base skill. If a PC undertakes one of these actions to boost the ship or protect the crew they use their normal skills. These do things like let you scan for stellar phenomena, prevent crew losses by directing trauma teams and triage, boost critical systems with TECHNOMANCY, lock onto targets for better shooting, lie to the crew to get morale up until the fight is over, try to repair damaged subsystems, push the ship to massive speed and possibly explode the engines while screaming about how she canna take any more, hail the enemy to banter with them, launch commando raids against close in ships to attack subsystems with sabotage, or inspire the sailors. Extended Actions exist entirely because the designers realized you control a single playing piece with a group of 3-5 people and so by giving other characters the option to roll some dice to buff the actual meat of the fighting, they can feel like they participated. In practice, being the one running around rolling dice to see how much of a bonus they give to the person rolling the consequential dice bored the hell out of my players who weren't the pilot and gunner. I already covered the basics of weapons, but an important note: When you fire on a target, they get to reduce your total number of hits this round by their Shields. YOU, the Attacker, get to choose what kind of shot the shields eat up if you hit them with multiple weapons, so you can have a shield eat a single hit from your Macrobattery but your Lance shot get through to deal direct damage. This is ONLY SPECIFIED in an example of play sidebar, not the main text. You may also combine multiple macrobattery shots into a Salvo; you roll separately for each gun battery (The same character can fire all your guns, so get your highest BS guy or a Void Master with the Reroll Failed BS Tests In Space to do all the shooting) but they combine their damage and only subtract Armor once. The downside is if you do this, only one of the batteries involved in the salvo can Crit, even if you rolled multiple Crits. In general this is one of the reasons Macrobatteries are usually more useful than Lances; if you have more of them you can combine them into even nastier volleys that can blow away light ships in one. Lances with more than Str 1 also only get extra hits per 3 DoS, not 1 like Macrobatteries. Guns can fire out to 2x their range, but if beyond their Range rating have -10 to hit, if within 1/2 Range have +10 to hit. Your ship's Turret rating doesn't have any torpedoes or strike craft to defend against in the core book, so instead Turrets add to your Boarding and Hit and Run Raid chances. Speaking of Boarding, if you end turn within 1 VU of an enemy ship, you can make a Piloting+Maneuver-20 test to lash the ships together and board! Boarding rules are *incredibly clunky* and nonsensical. You see, you get bonuses for Crew Population and the ship with the higher base Hull Integrity also gets bonuses for being 'bigger' (and bigger bonuses for differences in population) but there's no actual acknowledgement that, say, a Sword Frigate has a crew of 26000 and a Lunar Cruiser has 95000; it's all based on the Crew Rating remaining. The leader of the fighters from each crew rolls Command, and the loser of the contest suffers d5 Crew or Morale damage (Or 1 Hull damage, winner's choice) per difference in Degrees between them. The loser then rolls d100 vs. Morale. If they fail, their crew has been overcome and they surrender, their ship captured. So loading up on boarding bonuses and a brilliant Commander will let the players just charge a massive cruiser in their frigate or raider and lash together to start sabering their way through the crew until they capture it intact. Every point of damage, as mentioned, subtracts 1 from Crew (and thus 1 from Morale) and if your ship hits 0 HP, it takes huge penalties (Halve Str of all weapons, -10 Maneuver and Detection, halve speed) as it's Crippled. Any further hits check how much damage they did and apply a critical hit of that strength, same as Critical damage in person combat. Otherwise, you suffer critical hits by someone rolling well to hit you, at which point you take 1 Hull damage regardless of Armor AND roll a d5 to see what happened. These crits can depressurize components, space crews, start fires that threaten to burn out of control and kill the ship, destroy sensors, cripple shooting, and smash thrusters; crits can completely change the tide of a fight. Heavier crits, possible only when you're Crippled first, will eventually kill bridge crew, cause massive hull breaches, hulk the ship (dead), cause a massive explosion, or even worse, destabilize the warp engines and potentially suck everyone nearby into an unplanned warp transit. Hope you got a big red 'ACTIVATE THE GELLAR FIELD' button! Combat, in practice, is fine if you have one player. If you have a group, it's 'pilot and gunner roll dice and do stuff, group bickers over what the ship does, everyone else rolls cheerleading rolls'. And if you try to bring it up to BFG scale squadron and fleet combat, the additions like Extended Actions make it much more complex and remove a lot of the abstractions that make a good wargame. Starship combat really, really tries, and the wargame it cribs from is a pretty good wargame, but in the end it's still mostly a mess. Next: More Bote.
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Apr 17, 2018 19:29
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MonsieurChoc posted:Rolemaster. I've only ever played one RoleMaster game, but I had a lot of fun with it. The FRP edition is a decent game, if badly explained by its rulebooks.
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Apr 17, 2018 19:31
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Oh, another weirdness: Because of the customization and all, until you get more options for, say, Broadsides in the Battlefleet Koronus book and other books, a Light Cruiser really doesn't have more effective firepower than, say, a Frigate. Even the Lunar Cruiser is a little less impressive gunfire wise than you'd think, for how much you give up; its biggest buff is high armor, HP, and 2 Shields per attacker instead of 1. This changes with subsequent books, plus big ships will be way more able to mount launch bays or big torpedo batteries once those are in. But for now, a Sword with 2xLasbatteries is actually able to compete with a CL and do surprisingly well gun-power wise against a CA. Unlike on TT, where Escorts move in Squadrons to combine their individually minor batteries into cruiser-scale firepower. E: What else is interesting is how incredibly powerful Command is, as a skill. This means the Arch Militant not being fantastic at it and having eh Fellowship makes them a terrible choice to lead boarding actions and things despite being the supposed commander of the ship's armsmen. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 17, 2018 19:35
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tbh I don't think being a response to D&D is bad. There's at least 5 D&Ds and all of them have something worth responding to in there, and the responsees have worthwhile things to respond to as well. It's a canon, and understanding the canon is useful if you want what you write to have a design that is intelligible to those familiar with the canon. The problem in RPGs is the same problem as in literature - being defined by your response is the killer. Look at how poorly in certain ways Dungeon World has aged, primarily due to the fact that it completely frames itself in response to dungeons and dragons. Most of its major mistakes in design were importing concepts better left behind or failing to think through its modelling of certain D&Disms in the PbtA context, like Defy Danger. If Fellowship were just a response to Dungeon World it'd just be a kind of lackluster DW-but-tolkien-pastoral, but it specifically pushes into its own territory with the Overlord playbook (which I know is inspired by something else but I forget where), the huge and explicit textual focus on a player-generated setting, and the significance of Bonds in play. It acquires its own juicy 16-bit console-era flavor along the way. (A genre of games that somehow RPGs don't borrow enough from, or when they do borrow from they borrow in shallow ways.)
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Apr 17, 2018 19:46
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What's always most interesting is how D&D accidentally created its own genre of fantasy and almost never seems to have noticed.
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Apr 17, 2018 19:51
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I've been reading Ron Edwards' Circle of Hands, which is such a response to D&D that it reprints his Fantasy Heartbreaker essays along with many additional personal notes about how this began as his never-published fantasy heartbreaker. It rules. It's pretty much completely unlike any version of D&D in both rules and setting, with the glaring exception that the premise is a war between old-school D&D Law and Chaos, with the PCs as members of a militantly Neutral faction. Night10194 posted:What's always most interesting is how D&D accidentally created its own genre of fantasy and almost never seems to have noticed. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 17, 2018 20:08
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Impermanent posted:Thesis: Your Synthesis option is similar to how al-Qadim did this in 2nd Edition. All classes were boiled down to the standard 4, but each had to pick a common archetype from Arabian folklore to differentiate themselves from the others.
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Apr 17, 2018 20:37
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Xiahou Dun posted:Reign, Ryuutama, Burning Wheel? I always completely forget Reign. I really, really like what Reign tried to do and I really like ORE as an idea, but it has a few wonky aspects, particularly with regards to initiative, and most ORE implementations seem to get pointlessly fiddly with skills and never seem to split them well across the various stats. Impermanent posted:tbh I don't think being a response to D&D is bad. There's at least 5 D&Ds and all of them have something worth responding to in there, and the responsees have worthwhile things to respond to as well. It's not fundamentally bad, but it does tend to result in, well, a lack of thinking, I guess I'd call it? The ones that try to imitate D&D but do it right, for instance, tend to develop a cargo cult mentality about a lot of parts of the game, which they just accept and hoover up without wondering why those things were designed as they were, and whether they should be altered or not. They're just there because D&D did it that way, dammit, and this is a D&D knockoff. It's not a matter of "is this mechanic fun" or "is this thing balanced" it's a matter of "how D&D is this?"
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Apr 17, 2018 20:50
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ehh that's endemic to shallow imitation in all its varieties. We've seen that happen in a limited sense in the PbtA and now Forged in the Dark works out there, too. D&D is unique in that it's such a common error due to its popularity and influence but that this happens frequently doesn't make it not worth responding to. edit: Oh and White Wolf! Lord knows there's like 20 Blank: The Blankening heartbreakers out there with the objective of playing gothic/introspective power-fantasy horror that all feel the need to exactly replicate the rules systems of WW's flagship line without figuring out why, exactly, their soap opera vampire relationship / lgbtq wizard subculture / subcultural werewolf identity / abusive parents faerie game needs quite so many combat rules and pages about courtly intrigue unrelated to the players. Impermanent fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 17, 2018 20:54
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Is the theory a Light Cruiser in RT can mount a lance supposed to make up for the fact they're not that much better than frigates?
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Apr 17, 2018 20:58
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Rogue Trader Rogue Traders: Great Men or Greatest Men? There was a little more in space-ship stuff about how if you're out more than six months morale starts to drop and people start to get space-scurvy but it's fairly boring and cursory, so we're going to skip ahead. We've also already discussed the base system plenty, so I can skip all of Chapter 9, and Chapter 10 is a basic rehash of the GMing advice from DH, while Chapter 11 is mostly copy-pasted from DH's description of THE IMPERIUM OF MAN. So instead, we're on to the actual Rogue Traders. A Rogue Trader is granted a Warrant of Trade. A literal, physical warrant. The Warrant of Trade is one of the most desirable documents in the Imperium, as it immediately makes the holder a law unto themselves (for the most part), granting them the right to go forth and conquer, explore, loot, and pillage in the name of the Emperor. The book waves off the idea of someone simply claiming a Warrant of Trade without owning one with some nonsense about the Imperium being deeply feudal and tied to staying within one's social roles, but then backs it up with a much better explanation: If a foppish jackass with their own army and a space-fleet shows up and says they're a Rogue Trader, it's in your best interest to believe them because they already have the army, money, and fleet to back the position up, and a Warrant might be 'found' for them if one didn't exist before. The Warrant of Trade doesn't just grant a writ of legal right to privateer; in many cases it also comes with a decommissioned naval vessel and the provision of starter troops and funds as part of the reward that granted the character the Warrant. Warrants of Trade go all the way back to the Emperor. During his murderous reconquista of most of the human colonies from the Dark Age, Empy quickly realized that deputizing thugs and privateers might be of value. These people could spend their own resources to conquer lightly defended worlds and explore new ones, and since he was granting them the right to do it, it came with the nominal acknowledgment that it was being done for him and his Imperium. Similarly, even the Imperium isn't *quite* as stupid as it looks about dealing with non-Imperials: Rogue Traders provide a sanctioned class of merchants and explorers that can talk to aliens, make first contact with undiscovered colonies, find new worlds to populate and new resources to use, track down ancient treasure, and generally do lots of things the Imperium officially doesn't bother to do. Note that the average RT is still planning to exterminate the aliens they trade with later, most of the time. Especially if it would be profitable to do so. At the same time, one might shelter or sanction an alien race specifically because they produce something that the Warrant grants the Trader the right to trade in, protecting a species from the wider Imperium in order to loot and exploit its riches themselves. Still, Rogue Traders could almost said to be the Imperium's emissaries and diplomats, or at least some of the closest things it bothers to have. Rogue Traders can come from any walk of life, similar to Inquisitors, but are often naval commanders, nobles, Guard officers, powerful Administratum adepts, and on occasion an Inquisitor who loses an internecine power struggle will be 'rewarded' with a Warrant and told to retire far away from the Imperium and their conclave. Hell, the book even mentions that an Acolyte who manages to get away from their master might manage it by virtue of conniving into a Warrant of Trade. It's relatively unusual that the holder of a Warrant is the original person granted the Warrant of Trade; it's usually passed down by selection by the previous holder, or to the winner of the noble-born power-struggle over the Warrant if the prior holder should die without selecting a direct heir. Whoever actually holds the Warrant of Trade will immediately be patriarch or matriarch of their Dynasty, after all. People have killed their kin for far, far less. Rogue Traders tend to think of themselves as noble, cunning, swashbuckling heroes rather than money-grubbing murderers, and so dress the part. Tacky, flashy fashion is common among their kind, and most love to tweak authority from their safe position of equal authority and wealth. They cultivate eccentricities and personas in order to stand out, and many are obsessed with being remembered as individuals. Most fancy themselves great men or women who move history by their individual will, and the book will happily back up that impression with its fluff; I first started to dislike Rogue Traders because of how hard the book pushes them. The book is very adamant that someone who has a third of a single naval patrol is one of the mightiest peers of the Imperium and a mover and shaker of all of history. You get endless descriptions of the archetypes of Traders, from diplomats to murderers to generals to merchant-princes, all of them described in classic 40k hyperbole. It is really dull. I'd have enjoyed more stuff about how they break the social mould of the Imperium by being placed within the Imperium as a class of people rather than more about how every last one is the greatest master and commander and the richest space king ever. *Especially* when the mechanics don't back that up in the slightest. One interesting bit is that the Warrant is almost never a free ride. There is usually a duty attached to your new right to plunder and conquer. You may be ordered to tithe soldiers from your colonies to defend the sector. You may have an obligation to provide funds or build ships and shipyards for the Navy. Your Warrant may ostensibly be granted with the assumption you will gather resources and win a conflict the Imperium wants won on the periphery, with the implication that you are not free to loot and pillage as much as you wish until you first triumph. To this end, the Imperium often gifts Traders with fine companions and high officers who also report to someone else on the glorious progress of the Dynasty's business. In other words, your party members are as likely to be reporting to the Ecclesiarchy, Inquisition, Guard, or Navy as to be your best friends. Generally, this won't get in the way, and most of them will really want you to succeed; you can't provide the Imperium its due if you're all dead, nor can any of you grift it to become richer than 10 emperors. Traders are also much weaker than the Imperial Navy, if push comes to shove; either you have a small enough fleet to hide from them and operate in secret, in which case all you can amount to is a regional nuisance, or you're the kind of hyper-rich Trader who can field a grand squadron of Cruisers...only to find the Navy has Battleships, and that such a fleet is the kind of thing an actual Navy Task Force can find. And deal with. A Rogue Trader has *considerable* legal leeway. They would have to do something as insane as actually challenge the Imperial Navy to combat, attempt to steal a Battleship, turn VERY OBVIOUSLY to Chaos, etc before the Imperium really turned on them. Open, explicit rebellion is one of the only ways to have your Warrant revoked, rather than simply suffering punitive action (and possibly punitive action that sees your Warrant given to your successor). Amusingly, one of the most likely means to deal with a Rogue Rogue Trader is sending a newly appointed Rogue Trader to go take possession of the renegade's Dynasty in the name of the Imperium, which would certainly make for a fine campaign seed. As long as you stay small enough that no-one *really* important notices you and tries to stomp you out, but get big enough to defend what you've taken, a Rogue Trader Dynasty can produce more wealth and grant its members greater freedom and less actual strict responsibility than any other high position in the Imperium of Man. Go forth and steal from all of space, and don't forget to wear a really tacky hat while you do it. Next: The Koronus Expanse
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Apr 17, 2018 21:29
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Dawgstar posted:Is the theory a Light Cruiser in RT can mount a lance supposed to make up for the fact they're not that much better than frigates? The main thing is a CL has twice the hull points of a Frigate. And once you get the rules for better Broadside guns, the Broadside is *way* better than an individual Battery. The Mars Pattern Broadside in the main book is laughably bad, but the Sunsear Broadside version has half again the Strength of a Sunsear Battery, for instance, for only a modest increase in power. Also, due to Errata, you need a CL or better to mount the multi-shot Lance Batteries. Once you get to Battlefleet Koronus, too, CLs and up can mount actual intentional planetary bombardment weaponry (which is also very nasty in ship combat, if short-ranged). CLs basically get awesome once you're past the core book, and they're still GOOD in the core book, just not quite as impressive as you'd hope compared to a Frigate. E: This is also BFG accurate: The Dauntless is one of the actual stars of the Imperial Navy.
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Apr 17, 2018 21:33
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Y'know what showed a lack of thinking? Tekumel and Glorantha.
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Apr 17, 2018 21:35
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Mors Rattus posted:Y'know what showed a lack of thinking? Tekumel and Glorantha. Que? Also nobody ever remembers that Heroquest even exists as a concept. It is so good for DM's like me who want to tell stories to their friends and not get bogged down in dice.
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Apr 17, 2018 21:56
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Josef bugman posted:Que? https://forums.somethingawful.com/newreply.php?action=newreply&postid=483249880#post483247692
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Apr 17, 2018 21:59
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So, Battlefleet Gothic also lets ships of any size try and board ships of any other size, but it abstracts your Boarding Value by your current Hull Points, meaning larger ships have to be on their last legs not to get a significant bonus against them. Boarding in that is just an automatic Critical Hit, which is really good and a great way for races good at Boarding to just delete Escorts.
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Apr 17, 2018 22:46
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Mors Rattus posted:Y'know what showed a lack of thinking? Tekumel and Glorantha.
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Apr 17, 2018 23:11
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I was thinking recently of how one might as well throw out the fighter class. Not many characters in pulp fantasy that don't know how to fight. Just let every class be fight-worthy, and avoid the trap of an archetype that only comes into its own when there are fights around.
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Apr 17, 2018 23:42
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I was thinking recently of how one might as well throw out the fighter class. Not many characters in pulp fantasy that don't know how to fight. Just let every class be fight-worthy, and avoid the trap of an archetype that only comes into its own when there are fights around. I rather liked how Kevin Crawford threw out the Rogue class for Spears of the Dawn and just made it so that the Warrior class relied on both combat skill and other mundane skills.
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Apr 18, 2018 00:19
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