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 Part 14: MegaBusiness 101  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9gK2fOq4MY The chapter on Megacorporations is pretty boring. In part because about a fifth of it is explaining basic concepts about corporations. The main problem, though, is that it’s telling the attentive reader little that is new information. A good reader will already know that corporations are able to bend governments to their will and are almost countries in their own right, but they don’t yet have the ability to just ignore the law. They already know that Cyberpunk corporations are closely tied to organized crime and have black ops ninja teams and even armies. They know that the corporations control the downtown areas of major cities and their surrounding suburbs and let everything else fall about. While all the information here is in one place, most of it doesn’t add to the setting. There are a few details that are new. While corporations now have armies, they are not big enough to challenge large nations. While the governments of the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe are okay with Megacorps doing a lot, they draw the line at waging open warfare on their soil. Consequently, the three Corporate Wars have either been fought under proxy flags or in weaker countries that have even less ability to stop. The U.S., Japan, and Eurosphere also aren’t cool with police officers getting killed by corporations, which happened after one corporate exec was caught being a sex pest. Now there’s a complicated extraction process for when an exec does something dumb like that again. There are of course some predictions of how corporations evolve for our 2020 counter. Some our pretty prescient, particularly about Mediacorps. Entertainment companies have been heavily consolidated, resulting in not just a homogenized product for the public, but the limited news voices gives mediacorps a lot of sway in politics. Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 posted:While no major government is yet directly controlled by a mediacorporation, most socioanalysts suspect that it is only a matter of time.  There are other predictions that didn’t quite pan out. Instead of corporations preferring temp employees and exploiting at-will employment laws, Cyberpunk corps have went the other way and lock employees in with life long contracts. Since hiring away talent is no longer an option, “Corporate Headhunting” has taken on a very literal meaning. There’s a history of how illicit corporate practices developed, and the short of it is “It’s Japan’s fault.” Because using organized crime and conspiracies to get an edge in business is only something that can be invented by moon language speakers. Who ever heard of the Sicilian Mafia doing legitimate business?  Is that a Comptroller? HE’S GOT A GUN! *bang!* *bang!* Well that was mostly a waste of time. The rest of the section is devoted to portfolios of the major corporations in Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 and what they do. They actually vary in size and prominence quite a bit, and some of them seem to be written from the idea that players would run them. I don’t know if that was the intent, but even when I was young that was where I thought they intended. There’s some useless details, like the exact number of AV-4s a company has available, or what specific cities they have offices in. We get the name of their largest shareholder, but little about them (if anything) They’re not listed in any particular order either. Eurobusiness Machines Corporation (EBM) is a computer and electronics manufacturer. While nothing they produce is extraordinary, as a company they have been absolutely ruthless in absorbing competitors. The major stockholder, Dr. Kurt Muller, is described as a master corporate raider who orchestrated the biggest free market hostile takeover in the nineties. Zetatech is a manufacturer of cyberdecks and other specialized computers. They’re a small but fast growing company in Silicon Valley that’s being eyed by other businesses. Zetatech is one of the companies that feels like it was meant to be something players could run as key officers or it’s sole covert ops teams. Bob Rosemont is the majority owner of Zetatech, and while I suspect he’s might be a Steve Jobs analogue, there’s no detail about him to say. Network News 54 is a wavelength monopolizer and is more like a WGN than a CNN. They have offices in every U.S., but nothing outside of it. The major stockholder is Michelle Dryer. Orbital Air has an effective monopoly on travel between Earth and the various orbital platforms, be they small LEO shacks or the Lagrange habitats. It’s resources are devoted to maintaining that monopoly. Orbital Air was involved in the First Corporate War. Their major stockholder is Antoine DuBois. Microtech manufactures mainframes. “They are to the 2000s what Cray was to the 1980’s and 90’s, but on a larger scale.” Mircrotech is the company building the big computer cores that Netrunners gently caress with. Microtech is focusing its resources on defending against takeover. Their major stockholder is Stephen Lew and family. Biotechnica is a very important company despite it’s small size. It invented CHOOH2 just as the fuel crisis hit. It is incredibly wealthy thanks to sales of the license, and it is now working on the next big biotechnical breakthrough. It’s major stockholder is Nicolo Loggagia. Infocomp is a think tank, providing scientific, technical, and personal data from researchers and Microtech mainframes. It’s also the smallest company with a profile, less than 10,000 employees. The majority stockholder is Robert D Alvarez. Merril, Asukaga, & Finch is an exclusive investment and brokerage company. A lot of Eurodollars move through their hands, which presumably would make them a juicy target for Netrunners. Howard Merrill is the majority stockholder. I wanted to see if that was a real person at Merrill Lynch, but it turns out Howard Merrill is a pretty common name, so I didn’t look too hard. World New Service (WNS) is a mix of AP and a freelance news gatherer that sells stories to the highest bidder. Its major stockholder is Mahmet al Hamedi, who lives in Riyadh despite it presumably getting nuked. Petrochem was once just an oil company, but they were one of the early adopters of CHOOH2. Today, they’re one of the largest Agricorp in the U.S. and largest producer of CHOOH2. Petrochem has the largest remaining oil reserves. It devotes a ton of resources to protecting both, and it was involved in the Second Corporate War. Petrochem’s major stockholder is Ellen Trieste, CEO IIIINN SPAAAACE! I’ve already explained what Trauma Team International does. Even this section keeps it short. Its major stockholder is Carrie Lachannan. WorldSat Communications Network has a monopoly on large scale satellite communications and transmissions, and has put a lot of resources into making sure they don’t get disrupted. Raymond Rousseau is the major stockholder. This section saves the most prominent corporations for last. Arasaka provides corporate security, police, and “specialists” for hire. It then uses this security to obtain insider information and acquire more power. It has 100,000 troops, tied for largest of any corporation. Arasaka embodies every dumb caricature and fear of Japanese corporate culture from the eighties. While this is getting into spoilers of Corporate Sourcebook 1, all I’ll say further is that Saburo Arasaka, the major stockholder, is a WWII veteran. Yup. Arasaka’s main rival and military equal is Militech. Militech manufactures military weapons and equipment of every grade, from personal arms to tanks. They also provide mercenary services across the globe. Militech’s major stockholder is General Donald Lundee, USMC (retired). Amusingly, the Militech profile puts its equipment before the description, unlike the other profiles, and I can’t tell if that is intentional or not. Next: Who wants a random encounter table? 2020/2020 Count: 10 SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Mar 24, 2019 |
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Mar 24, 2019 02:00
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I like the idea of variation in competence across multiple subsystems, and I especially like the idea of somehow having them all in play simultaneously, but none of the GMs I've played with have been particularly good at keeping multiple plates spinning. 'Everyone has their time to shine' is good practice, but I have more experiences where that's turned into most of the party sitting on their thumbs while the rogue or decker has monopolized the GM's attention for half an hour.
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Mar 24, 2019 02:04
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Mors Rattus posted:IMO this is anothe area where the Supernal Ability is rearing its ugly head, because it mechanically incentivizes Solars to go all loving in on a single ability, which exacerbates the specialization issue and the issue of only one person being relevant to a situation. Yeah, I really don't like how Supernal was implemented, I wish it had been A) more modest, maybe like a +1 or+2 on the Essence cap and B) not restricted to caste abilities, which would give you more room to explore concepts that weren't so tightly tied to caste. As it is, there are some abilities that if you want to Supernal you have to play a certain Solar caste, even with their expanded purviews. Martial Arts and Dawn is the most glaring offender, but there are others.
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Mar 24, 2019 02:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I really don't like how Supernal was implemented, I wish it had been A) more modest, maybe like a +1 or+2 on the Essence cap and B) not restricted to caste abilities, which would give you more room to explore concepts that weren't so tightly tied to caste. As it is, there are some abilities that if you want to Supernal you have to play a certain Solar caste, even with their expanded purviews. Martial Arts and Dawn is the most glaring offender, but there are others. Yes! The coolest and most useful tricks tend to be essence 3 anyway. Yeah the capstones are really fancy, but the good stuff is at 3. I definitely agree that being able to supernal any caste or favoured ability would be way better. One game ended up getting houseruled because we had 3 Zeniths because they were the only ones that got the abilities they wanted as supernals so the Athletics brawly man got switched Dawn anima abilities and so on.
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Mar 24, 2019 02:18
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Joe Slowboat posted:For the record, they were I believe talking about Second Edition, which had a significantly higher floor for 'doesn't die instantly in any combat' because of a meaningfully different system, meaningfully different incapacitated/dead rules. This is, I think, confusing the conversation somewhat. BEcause some of us will go "oh man this blew goats in 2E and holy poo poo did it ruin my attempts at enjoying the game." and people will furiously try to defend 3E for not having that exact same thing. Or someone will comment on not liking a thing in games in general, and someone will furiously defend 3E for not having that thing. Joe Slowboat posted:Also, a general question for the thread, and I really don't mean this as a gotcha: In a game with involved subsystems (Ex3 obviously has a bunch, but let's just say there's enough there to be crunchy at combat, social maneuvering, and crafting, as three avenues for player skill) and point-buy characters, do you consider it possible to make a game that is well-constructed and won't lead to players being sidelined or unhappy in that way? Well. I think the first step is to make sure that everyone has some default combat and non-combat competences and cannot pile everything into one or the other, because those tend to be the two big splits. Things are either in Combat Mode or Peace Mode. Then you run into the part where Peace Mode can be a lot of different things(and so can combat, in a way, if the game is badly constructed some enemies can be completely immune to certain tricks and thus lock players who focus on those tricks out of participating...). Like is it a social situation, an investigation situation, a stealth situation, etc. Part of the solution is having a flexible GM who's willing to accept non-standard and creative skill use to keep everyone participating, but I think the other part is also making sure there are plenty of skill synergies. Or maybe just some ways to bring others along. Like maybe the Sneak Guy has a feat that lets him help the rest of the party sneak, too, so he's not the only one who can go on this particular adventure while everyone else plays cards outside. I think it's entirely possible to build, but it's also really easy to gently caress up or ignore.
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Mar 24, 2019 03:08
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IshmaelZarkov posted:I don't know if there are any legal issues at play, but literally all those things you mentioned are things I'd love to have a look at if you're allowed to share. I don't think there are any legal barriers, but: 1) Enough of it is someone else's ideas that I'm not comfortable just laying it all out there. 2) Enough of it (mostly the aborted equipment chapter, which is almost entirely my own work) is just rough enough I'd rather not show it off. And I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression, but man all of the stuff I have is so early and skeletal it's just generally kind of sucky. Hey! Maybe it would've all sucked even with five years of playtesting. For example, the like four or five different attempts at a Bureaucracy/Socialize system I made would've definitely sucked because they were based on notional rules that hadn't been written until well after I left. My Craft systems probably would've been bad, but still worlds better than trying to put cookie-clicker in an RPG. We'll never really know. But I will say with conviction it would've been a lot more adventurous than "like the last edition with a modestly improved combat system and slightly better math." And yet it would've still been ultimately dampened by what they eventually settled on for Charms and motes and what-not, which was a lot less of a departure than I was expecting. (Yes, I was outlining Charms or Charm-like things without having access to the basic rules for Charms, basing tons of poo poo on conversational spit-balling sessions on Skype, because they were largely unwritten by that point. I only ever got one draft of the core rules about a year before the Kickstarter, which despite assurances of revisions and being waved off asking for said revised rules, is largely identical to what wound up getting published.) Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I really don't like how Supernal was implemented, I wish it had been A) more modest, maybe like a +1 or+2 on the Essence cap and B) not restricted to caste abilities, which would give you more room to explore concepts that weren't so tightly tied to caste. As it is, there are some abilities that if you want to Supernal you have to play a certain Solar caste, even with their expanded purviews. Martial Arts and Dawn is the most glaring offender, but there are others. Supernals seem kind of iconic of the development of the game. There was a much more free-flowing, narrative-serving idea that it grew out of, but for whatever reason they fell back on "gently caress it, just give them Essence 5 Charms." I mean, it's pretty easy to speculate why ("200+ pages of Charms" why), but man it's ultimately somehow lazy despite the hundreds and thousands of words spent telling you how to do it.
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Mar 24, 2019 03:35
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Night10194 posted:Also, a small detail I forgot to mention in the property rules in Old World Armory: They mention plenty of Adventurers can make a profitable business buying tainted or haunted property and then adventuring until it's clean, then flipping it. So you could have a campaign where you de-ghost, de-demon, and clean up old spooky manors for huge profits. Property Band of Brothers
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Mar 24, 2019 04:03
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SirPhoebos posted:
I do!
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Mar 24, 2019 04:50
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Are there build your own mega corp rules in Cyberpunk? Because that whole section seems like a waste of treesources
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Mar 24, 2019 05:05
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Barudak posted:Are there build your own mega corp rules in Cyberpunk? Because that whole section seems like a waste of treesources But so was the NASDAQ, so... Edit: "You'll need to break into Immutep Limited's laboratory on behalf of Precision Bioscience"
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Mar 24, 2019 05:09
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Random megacorps seems like a system that'd be a lot more fun if you lean into the random flavour parts, like their current marketing mascot, latest gaffe from a high-ranking executive, latest market they're trying to expand into regardless of its viability or relevance to their core competencies, and rumours about horrible illegal and immoral activities.
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Mar 24, 2019 05:48
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That Old Tree posted:Supernals seem kind of iconic of the development of the game. There was a much more free-flowing, narrative-serving idea that it grew out of, but for whatever reason they fell back on "gently caress it, just give them Essence 5 Charms." I mean, it's pretty easy to speculate why ("200+ pages of Charms" why), but man it's ultimately somehow lazy despite the hundreds and thousands of words spent telling you how to do it. Yeah, I got the impression they were done they way they were done so you could actually explore a given charm tree without having to wait forever, and so all the words they wrote can actually get used, but the impact they have on character development can't really be understated in actual play. It exacerbates the existing issues with deep trees encouraging overspecialization and the fact that the most powerful charms are at the top, so you're heavily encouraged to develop tunnel vision.
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Mar 24, 2019 06:52
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The main point is that if combat is going to be a highlight of the game - and it certainly is in Exalted - everybody should be able to participate and have fun. Just going to say this: the way magic, social, intelligence and thief stuff work, you can have every Caste be on the same general Anime Kung Fu level, have each path on that be unique like in DnD 4e or Lancer and then have them branch out into dozens of amazingly in depth out of combat niches. This isn't a is or thing.
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Mar 24, 2019 06:55
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Also yeah like in execution nobody has to be King poo poo of Stat Mountain in Exalted. You really can just be unnaturally good at a wide variety of stuff and if you want to all do that as a party I say go nuts. The main issue is that in addition to the combat focus, Exalted is a game that says clearly and directly to its audience "this is a game about being a loving anime demigod" and their immediate reaction is "so I should build an anime god that uses system mastery to become godly insanely well because the game is telling me to do that".
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Mar 24, 2019 07:04
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I've always wondered if the shitloads of Charms are a throwback to an older era where the supplement treadmill was the main business model, and if 200 pages of Charms or whatever now is a remnant of when '50 new godlike Charms of awesome power!' was a bullet point that sold splatbooks.
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Mar 24, 2019 07:11
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Night10194 posted:I've always wondered if the shitloads of Charms are a throwback to an older era where the supplement treadmill was the main business model, and if 200 pages of Charms or whatever now is a remnant of when '50 new godlike Charms of awesome power!' was a bullet point that sold splatbooks. probably both at the core, but the main reason it's in exalted is because it's like that in world of darkness, and they kept the framework for a radically different game for reasons other than game design.
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Mar 24, 2019 07:22
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Night10194 posted:I've always wondered if the shitloads of Charms are a throwback to an older era where the supplement treadmill was the main business model, and if 200 pages of Charms or whatever now is a remnant of when '50 new godlike Charms of awesome power!' was a bullet point that sold splatbooks.
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Mar 24, 2019 07:40
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Hostile V posted:Also yeah like in execution nobody has to be King poo poo of Stat Mountain in Exalted. You really can just be unnaturally good at a wide variety of stuff and if you want to all do that as a party I say go nuts. The main issue is that in addition to the combat focus, Exalted is a game that says clearly and directly to its audience "this is a game about being a loving anime demigod" and their immediate reaction is "so I should build an anime god that uses system mastery to become godly insanely well because the game is telling me to do that". It does feel like even the most innocent of players would look at that and look at their Dawn and go 'well I need to max out everything Melee' and then become an invincible sword princess that leaves others in the dust who thought 'eh, a skill of 3 and a couple of Charms in the same combat stat' would be fine.
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Mar 24, 2019 13:51
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Dawgstar posted:It does feel like even the most innocent of players would look at that and look at their Dawn and go 'well I need to max out everything Melee' and then become an invincible sword princess that leaves others in the dust who thought 'eh, a skill of 3 and a couple of Charms in the same combat stat' would be fine. Yea that's the issue. There's tons of games where yea, maybe not great game design can be overcome with just a GM saying 'look no one needs to be 'the best', make a character you'd have fun with don't worry about min/max stuff' but Exalted is such a binary 'I'm either pretty average or A GOD AMONG MEN' you very much don't need to try to break it. This is fine for most things, no one really cares if Jeff the Chef is the best crafter in the world because we all agreed Jeff the Chef was our crafter so we WANT him to be good as hell. When it's something like combat, though, you very quickly hit a point where Brawlin Marvin makes Jeff the Chef wonder why he even wasted the exp putting more than the minimum one dot in Brawl because odds are both of those guys are gonna be fighting together at some point.
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Mar 24, 2019 14:56
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Barudak posted:Are there build your own mega corp rules in Cyberpunk? Because that whole section seems like a waste of treesources Ghost Leviathan posted:Random megacorps seems like a system that'd be a lot more fun if you lean into the random flavour parts, like their current marketing mascot, latest gaffe from a high-ranking executive, latest market they're trying to expand into regardless of its viability or relevance to their core competencies, and rumours about horrible illegal and immoral activities. I wish there were random corporation tables or rules for making your own mega corp.
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Mar 24, 2019 15:31
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Exalted 3rd Edition: RULES So, before anything at all starts, the game declares three rules: 1. The Golden Rule: If you don't like a rule, change it. 2. The Orichalchum Rule: If the rules give a result that doesn't make sense for the story, ignore or change them. 3. The SToryteller's Rule: If a player is abusing the letter of the rules to gently caress up the spirit of the game or story, the ST can declare it doesn't work. Why you need three rules to cover Rule Zero, I don't know. But I guess we need them. Then we get a big system glossary. Of those, a few terms are actually notable because they are rules not noted anywhere else: Botch: a roll with no successes and at least one 1. When you botch, you will fail in such a way as to cause a dramatic complication. Double X: A result of X counts as 2 successes. For all rolls except for Decisive damage rolls, 10s count. 9s, 8s or 7s can count in some circumstances. TN: The number that you're aiming for, or target number, on dice. Almost all of the time it will be 7, so any given die has a 40% chance of at least one success. Basic dicepools are as they have ever been - add some stats together, roll that many dice. Difficulty is how many successes you need to succeed on the roll, with Difficulty 1 being stuff that a mortal would find challenging but an Exalt can do fairly easily, like picking a lock or performing an appendectomy. Yes, those are their examples. Difficulty 2 would be something challenging or under duress, like doing either of those things in the dark, in the middle of a storm. Difficulty 3 is stuff that's hard even for Exalts, such as grabbing a gem out of a mass of snakes without getting bit or taming a man-eating, Wyld-tainted horse. Difficulty 4 is doing those under duress, such as while in the middle of a forest fire. Difficulty 5 is things that are nearly impossible even for heroes, such as reading a letter in total darkness by feeling the texture of the ink or safely landing in a hay cart from hundreds of feet up or running for three days straight. If, for some reason, a difficulty is reduced to 0 for a task, treat it as difficulty 1 but you can't botch. Most often this will happen because a low-Defense enemy suffers penalties to their Defense. Because this is Exalted, stunts are a thing. In every edition they've existed, and have been somewhat misguided. They did their best here to fix some of the issues, but...well. To qualify as a stunt: 1. Your action must have a cooler description than 'I attack the guy' or similar. 2. Your action must not be boring. This is primarily meant, we are told, to stop repetition of the same stunt over and over, but also disqualifies any stunt so long and overwrought that it bores the table. The game does note, however, that the average player can and should stunt every action, and that STs should be generous with what counts. Stunts come in 1, 2 or 3 point varieties. 1-Point Stunts give +2 dice to the roll. If the stunt is instead based around a static value, like describing how you block a slash to stunt your Defense value, then it instead gets +1. You should generally be able to get a 1-point stunt on every action. I play mostly online and in the few games I've been in, it's been a standard rule to just allow people to assume they get a 1-point stunt if they put in any effort whatsoever. 2-Point Stunts are less common, and should be given out for stuff that is memorable as a highlight of the scene. These gives +2 dice and +1 automatic success, or raise static values by 2. Also, the PC gains 1 Willpower, to a cap of their rating. The game suggests that a player will get 2-3 of these per session. For online play, I've found it easiest to say that if the majority of the players agree it's one, it is one. This keeps things flowing even in asynchronous play where the GM may not be always presnet. 3-Point Stunts are rare and meant to be very memorable, the highlight of an entire session. These give +2 dice and +2 automatic successes, or raise static values by 3. Also, the character gains 2 Willpower, which can go over their rating. As these are meant to be rare, even in online play I've usually seen them as left entirely to the GM to upgrade 2-point stunts to 3 if they feel it appropriate. The game does at least note that the ST is encouraged not to gently caress over players who go for a risky-seeming stunt, such as hurling themselves off a building to grab a flying foe, and fail the roll. They should not be punished for reckless heroism, and should always at least get a chance to save themselves from a fuckup because they tried something cool but didn't pull it off. Bonuses and penalties! Most of these are obvious, but it should be noted that dicepools and static values cannot be reduced below 0 by penalties, and bonuses from charms have some special limits that won't be explained until the Charm chapter. The game gives examples of penalties in various circumstances, but not bonuses. Fortunately, most things that give bonuses will just straight up tell you how much bonus thy give, but still, I'd think examples would be good. Extended actions are those where what matters is how fast you do a thing rather than whether you succeed. These are done as a series of normal rolls. However, there are three additional factors: goal number, interval and terminus. The goal number is how many successes you will need to gather over the entire thing. If you're making difficulty 2 rolls, however, only the successes that hit or exceed that 2-success count are used - your first success on the roll doesn't go towards your goal number, because each roll needs 2 successes to be successful per the Difficulty rules. A botch on any roll in the action ruins the entire thing and you have to start over. The interval is how long each roll takes, which could be anything from one turn to one week or more, depending on what is being attempted. Lastly, the terminus is the limit on how many rolls you can make. If you don't hit your goal number in that many rolls, you fail the action. Not all extended rolls will have a terminus, but most will. Opposed actions are simpler - you roll against someone else, and whoever gets more successes wins. In a tie, the winner is whoever has the best stunt. (Which against NPCs will exclusively be a PC, I believe, so that's nice. I don't think NPCs can stunt.) Typically, on your turn, you can only do one action. Reflexive actions, however, can happen at any time, automatically, without taking up your action for the round or it needing to be your turn. For example, rolling to spot someone hiding is a reflexive action, taking no special time or effort on the part of the PC, as is rolling Resistance to fight off disease. Movement is the most common reflexive action in the system. Next time: Combat.
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Mar 24, 2019 15:50
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Oh boy. Stunting. What's our panel of judges say your mechanical bonus should be for your anime finisher? Is a terrible mechanic.
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Mar 24, 2019 15:58
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On Supernal, I'm going to comment that I've seen more people saying "dang, I really wish Lunars had an equivalent to Supernal" than I've seen "gee, I'm so glad Lunars don't get Supernal!". For what that's worth. (Arguably, Lunars do have an equivalent to Supernal and it's "turn into a rhinoceros".) On combat siloing, I think some of that would be a good idea. But I don't think the problem is really that the Dawn is stronger than everybody else — I've never seen that happen. What I've seen more often is that instead of: Dawn >> immeasurable gap >> Other Solars >> Mortals you get Dawn >> Other Solars >> immeasurable gap >> That One Solar Who Only Bought Medicine >> Mortals The problem isn't the one person who bought all combat Charms; it's that one person didn't and they can't contribute, or that letting them come up with clever non-rolled ways to contribute breaks your intended encounter balance. Generally speaking, a combat Excellency and a couple of Charms make you feel like you're a contributing member of the fight even if you aren't a monster. If everybody was required to know at least a bit of kung fu, you'd avoid most of the problems you have.
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Mar 24, 2019 16:30
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I think that would require Exalted to admit that it's generally going to be about stuff that includes some kung-fu, which it's loathe to do despite the fact that in practice that's how it works.
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Mar 24, 2019 16:32
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I really loathe Exalted stunting. Both because of the "DM, judge how your PC did for every action", my inability to come up with new ideas at time warring with my inability to not push for the extra dice and being just left sputtering and awkward, the even more bizarre example of DMs stunting for their own NPCs and saying how cool they are, and finally, that you do it before rolling so there's a decent chance you describe something cool and it doesn't happen. I like describing cool stuff my PCs do in combat, just after my roll so I know if it's worth my time. That said, it from what I hear beats 2e, AKA "everyone stunts as hard as they can, describing as cool as they are, so that they get mote regen and don't die, but can't possibly hit the other person barring freak occurance." So you have two people describing how cool they are and then failing to do anything, but as soon as one person fails to impress the DM, who is usually one of the two people doing this, they're screwed. I've seen that go on for two hours at one point between a single PC and the DM.
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Mar 24, 2019 16:47
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Like when I run Double Cross people just make up their cool combos and what they look like because that's the game, making ridiculous anime combos and flavoring your character is what you're here for. It doesn't need mechanical incentive. People come up with 'cool poo poo my PC does' just fine without needing a panel of judges. E: Also, to add on to that, part of why I hate rules like Stunting or 'roleplaying EXP' is I don't like adjudicating them as the GM. I'm not fond of telling one of my players 'your writing didn't live up to all expectations, here's a mechanical penalty or a bonus denied'. And shopping it out to the general agreement of the group is going to slow the game down and still have similar problems. I'd rather just stick to normal rules and let fiction just be its own reward. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Mar 24, 2019 |
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Mar 24, 2019 16:53
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Stunting, like the Great Curse, is one of those things that made sense in its era and is now kind of extraneous because people are accustomed to doing that kind of thing without having to be led by the nose. (There used to be a fairly sizable contingent of people, and probably still are, who really dislike any kind of personality mechanics, and who wanted to explain that actually, their Solar was definitely immune to hubris and would be the one to Fix Everything. Making the personality mechanic an out-of-character curse is kind of a middle ground to avoid annoying anybody too much. Honestly, the version of Limit Break in Exalted versus World of Darkness is probably the most elegant, which is "once your Limit hits 10, you can't spend XP until you've made a really bad decision."
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Mar 24, 2019 17:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:One of my biggest issues with Exalted 3e is that they really, really needed to put combat and non-combat options into different silos. I have no idea why they siloed mundane vs. solar charms instead; one of the biggest issues is balancing combat when somebody can just sink everything into Linguistics, Integrity, and Socialize while somebody else is rocking a magic superpowered deathsword that creates miniature volcanoes and a ton of Melee and Resistance charms.
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Mar 24, 2019 17:31
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Mors Rattus posted:Basic dicepools are as they have ever been - add some stats together, roll that many dice. Difficulty is how many successes you need to succeed on the roll, with Difficulty 1 being stuff that a mortal would find challenging but an Exalt can do fairly easily, like picking a lock or performing an appendectomy. Yes, those are their examples. Difficulty 2 would be something challenging or under duress, like doing either of those things in the dark, in the middle of a storm. Difficulty 3 is stuff that's hard even for Exalts, such as grabbing a gem out of a mass of snakes without getting bit or taming a man-eating, Wyld-tainted horse. Difficulty 4 is doing those under duress, such as while in the middle of a forest fire. Difficulty 5 is things that are nearly impossible even for heroes, such as reading a letter in total darkness by feeling the texture of the ink or safely landing in a hay cart from hundreds of feet up or running for three days straight. The examples are awful and I hate them. Like ok, difficulty 1 you can extrapolate to a wider selection of things and difficulty 2 being "difficulty 1, but there's something distracting you" is easy enough and then difficulty 3 is "grab a gem from a mass of snakes without getting bit" and I have no idea how to extrapolate that to other things at all. Stunting is something I'm still really bad at, it's a neat idea but the execution is rough. For starters a 1 Point Stunt gives you 2 die? Brilliant, great. Just call them Minor/Major/Defining Stunts. It's not hard to remember a basic one gives you 2 die (or+1 point to a static value), but it's still irritates me. Most player's instinct is to go "ok, so I don't know if this roll is going to hit, let alone do any damage, so, uh, I throw a huge haymaker at the guy's head?" level stuff which is obviously never going to get you a 2 point stunt and it took me a long time cos I'm stupid to learn how to get away from that without going too far in the other direction and ending up with a level of description that makes make my 10ft tall 5 Strength demigod that can outpull a T-Rex look like a chump when he doesn't instantly annihilate a regular soldier with whatever I described. Took a long time to get to "I crack him across the jaw with a haymaker and as he's reeling I kick him in the chest, sending him crashing through the window behind him." and then if I miss or don't do any damage that's fine because it all happened, I just didn't get any advantage (withering) from it for whatever reason. It's definitely a skill you have to learn and it's not easy to get to "the thing you say always happens, it just doesn't net you mechanical advantage in terms of the combat" style of descriptions. I keep saying it, Gm advice and more examples of things would help a lot, both with adjudicating and the sort of descriptions you come up with. Halloween Jack posted:It's hilarious to me that almost nothing White Wolf has ever done is better-designed from a mechanical standpoint than Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game. This is hosed up and also extremely true.
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Mar 24, 2019 17:33
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Rand Brittain posted:Honestly, the version of Limit Break in Exalted versus World of Darkness is probably the most elegant, which is "once your Limit hits 10, you can't spend XP until you've made a really bad decision." I support this rule wholeheartedly, because it would let me pretend my terrible decision making was because of the rule instead of a natural thing I would be doing all the time anyways.
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Mar 24, 2019 17:57
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Mors Rattus posted:Difficulty 5 is things that are nearly impossible even for heroes, such as reading a letter in total darkness by feeling the texture of the ink or safely landing in a hay cart from hundreds of feet up or running for three days straight. The Assassin's Creed drop is considered to be a Difficulty 5 action? Jeez. That makes the Exalted look super weak all of a sudden.
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Mar 24, 2019 18:04
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SirPhoebos posted:I wish there were random corporation tables or rules for making your own mega corp. https://store.steampowered.com/app/822990/Spinnortality__cyberpunk_management_sim/
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Mar 24, 2019 18:04
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Sage Genesis posted:The Assassin's Creed drop is considered to be a Difficulty 5 action? Jeez. That makes the Exalted look super weak all of a sudden. really? that's almost a standard action hero drop. Now Literally falling from Heaven and surviving like Aleph in Shin Megami Tensei 2 seems worthy of a Difficulty 5
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Mar 24, 2019 18:12
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Exalted 3rd Edition: How Am Fight Okay, so. The combat section doesn't actually explain how fights start for some time but I'm rearranging it so I can explain a fight in the order it actually happens. Fights begin with a Join Battle roll, which determines your starting Initiative. This is an Awareness roll, but you add 3 to the number of successes you get. If someone joins a fight midway through, they roll Join Battle to determine their Initiative on the round they come in. Characters act in Initiative order, so someone with 7 Initiative goes before someone with 4. In theory, actions happen on ticks, starting at the highest Initiative rating and then going down by 1 per tick, with everyone acting on the appropriate tick. In practice, that part only matters for special effects which care about what tick they happen on. However, Initiative does not remain static. The purpse of Withering Attacks is to gain Initiative and lower the Initiative of opponents. When you make a Withering ATtack on someone, you make a Dex+<appropriate combat ability> roll, modified by weapon accuracy and any other modifiers against their Defense. If you miss, nothing happens. If you hit, you determine your raw damage, which is calculated based on your Strength, your weapon and any extra successes after you got enough to hit the guy in the attack roll. Some weapons, mostly stuff like crossbows or firewands (read: flamethrower pistols) leave out Strength from their damage. You then take your raw damage and reduce it by the target's soak, which is based on their Stamina and any armor or natural bonuses. You cannot have your damage reduced below your weapon's Overwhelming rating, however. Then you roll that many dice, and unlike with Decisive Attacks, you do get Double 10s. For every success, you gain 1 Initiative and the target loses 1 Initiative. Fictionally, these attacks do not deal lasting damage, usually taking the form of glancing blows or the opponent desperately defending but getting pushed into bad positions. Your character is still trying to kill them, even though you know you won't do any permanent damage out of character. Decisive Attacks are attacks that attempt to land actual damage. Again, you start with Dexterity+<relevant combat ability>, but your weapon's stats have no bearing on your roll whatsoever. If you miss and your Initiative is 10 or less, you lose 2 Initiative; if you had more than 10, you lose 3 Initiative. If you hit, your damage pool is your Initiative, and does not get Double 10s. If your target has Hardness greater than or equal to your damage pool, you do no damage, period. Otherwise, you roll your pool and deal your successes in damage, which will generally be Bashing or Lethal based on what weapon you're using. Either way, after you hit, your Initiative value resets to 3. So as you can see, the entire combat minigame is trying to build up your Initiative high enough to do some real damage, reset to base 3 Initiative, and continue until the enemy either surrenders or dies. Unlike all other traits, Initiative can be sent into the negative numbers, and there is no cap on how high it can get or how low. If a character's Initiative drops to 0 or below, they are in Initiative Crash. While Crashed, a character's Hardness is reduced to 0 and cannot be raised by any effect that does not explicitly state it works in Crash (such as the Twilight anima power). While Crashed, a character cannot attempt Decisive Attacks at all, or use any Charms with the Perilous keyword. Withering Attacks can still be used on a Crashed character, driving their Initiative further and further down. However, if the ST decides that the Crashed character has no chance of recovery at all and is merely serving as a punching dummy to gain Initiative, the ST may declare them defeated the next time they get hit by anything. If a character spends 3 consecutive turns in Crash, their Initiative resets to 3 at the start of their next turn. If someone enters Initiative Crash as the result of their own actions, such as by doing something that costs Initiative to attempt, they immediately lose 5 Initiative on top of whatever their action cost them. When your attack sends someone into Initiative Crash, you get an Initiative Break bonus, immediately gaining +5 Initiative. You cannot gain this bonus from an enemy in the round they recover from Crash or the round after they do so. If you sent yourself into Initiative Crash, the Initiative Break bonus goes to whoever most directly provoked your action, as determined by the ST. If you, while Crashed, are able to Crash the person that Crashed you, you instantly return to base Initiative unless this would be lower than where you are after the attack, then make A Join Battle roll, adding the result to your Initiative. You then get to immediately take a new turn when your Initiative comes up, as if you had not acted this round. However, if you use this turn to attack, you can only attack the person you Crashed; this is called Initiative Shift. If you Crashed yourself, you cannot get an Initiative Shift. Defense is actually two traits - Parry and Evasion. Parry is based on your Dex and the most appropriate of Brawl, MArtial Arts or Melee; if you're using a ranged weapon, you can't parry. Evasion is based on Dex and Dodge. Weapons usually provide a bonus to Parry, while armor often penalizes Evasion. You use the higher of your two values as your Defense, which is the difficulty of any attack against you. However, there is a way to get past high Defense even if you can't roll well - every time a character is attacked, they suffer a -1 cumulative penalty to their Defense until their next turn. Also, certain attacks may be unblockable, in whcih case, you can't use Parry against them, or undodgeable, in which case you can't use Evasion. If an attack is both, it is a difficulty zero roll to hit with it. Also, side note - if somehow you gain Initiative before your turn in a round, and it would raise your Initiative past the tick that the combat is currently on, you get to act immediately and take your turn. Gaining Initiative can never cause you to lose your turn. So they did think of that. Also, you may choose to delay your action to any later tick, which may be a useful strategy if you are aiming for a Clash. More on that later. However, each time you do, you get -2 Initiative. On your turn, you can only take one action, normally, unless you flurry. A flurry allows you to take two actions, as long as they are different kinds of action, but you get a -3 penalty to both and -1 Defense until your next turn. What actions can you do in combat? 1. Attack. Both Withering and Decisive Attacks count as Attacks. 2. Aim. You declare who you are aiming at. If you attack them next turn, you get +3 to your roll, as long as they remain within your range and out of full cover. You must make an Aim action if attacking from Medium or greater range, even with magical assistance, and you get no bonus to the attack roll - you simply can make one. You only get the bonus if you spend an additional turn aiming. Aim cannot be placed in a flurry, perod. 3. Defend Other. You protect an ally within Close Range, allowing them to use your Parry against attacks until your next turn. If an attack gets past your Parry, the attacker may choose either to hit you or to keep going with however many threshold successes they had to attack their original target, who may defend normally. If the attack was Decisive, the attacker also gets a penalty to their damage roll. 4/ Draw/Ready Weapon. You draw a weapon and get -1 Defense until your next turn. However, unless ambushed, characters are assumed to start combat with the weapon of their choice already ready. Also, natural weapons such as fists or claws never need to be readied. 5. Full Defense. You get +2 Defense until your next turn, but lose 1 Initiative. This cannot be flurried with anything except social influence actions, and cannot be used in Initiative Crash. 6. Miscellaneous Action. Anything that isn't the above. Ranges! All range in Exalted is abstract. The ranged are: Close, which is close enough to hit in melee. When in Close Range of a foe, you must make a Disengage action if you want to move away from them. Short Range, which is too far to hit in melee but close enough to reach with a brief sprint. Medium Range is a fair distance, and is about as far as most thrown weapons and weaker archery weapons can hit. It is far enough to prevent non-shouted communication, and at this range, ranged attacks must have an Aim action made before they can hit at all, as noted above. Long Range is very far, and is typically only useful for longbows and other sniping weapons. Communication is impossible without signalling devices, magic, or enthusiastic miming. As above, aiming is required for any ranged attack to hit at all. Extreme Range is essentially the hrozion. Combat and communication are generally impossible barring extremely specialized magic, and even then, aiming is still required. Movement in combat can only be done once per round, barring things that make specific exception to this such as Initiative Shift. The possible movement actions are: 1. Move. A character can move a single range band towards any single character or landmark present in the battle as a reflexive action. 2. Rush. You can only do this towards a foe within Short Range, but can do so even after a reflexive Move. A Rush is your action for the turn, and is a contested Dex+Athletics roll between you and your foe. If you succeed, as soon as your opponent moves at least one Range Band, you immediately and reflexively move one Range Band towards them, maintaining relative distance. (You still need to be physically able to do the thing - you can't Rush a bird that flies away unless you also can fly.) 3. Disengage. This is a combat action that must be taken if you wish to move away from Close Range with foes, which cannot be done with the normal reflexive Move. This is a Dodge roll opposed by an Athletics roll from any foe that wants to stop you. If you beat all of them, you move to Short Range, and will reflexively retreat one further band away from any of those foes if they move towards you before your next turn. You lose 2 Initiative, even if you fail to Disengage. 4. Rise From Prone. You stand up, and it's a combat action. It is not rolled unless a foe is at Close Range, in which case it's a Dodge check to stand up. 4. Take Cover. This is a combat action where you duck behind an object, making a Dodge roll against an ST-set difficulty. Cover may be light, heavy or full. Light cover is a doorway or waist-high wall, something that covers a significant part of your body but not all of it. It gives +1 Defense. Heavy Cover covers most of your body, except maybe part of your head or an arm, such as an arrow slit or an extremely large tree. It gives +2 Defense. Full Cover covers everything. It prevents all ranged attacks. Foes at Close Range get the same cover benefit as whoever they are attacking or being attacked by, as the cover works just as well for both of them. The ST may rule that someone who takes movement actions to get past cover can force the cover to no longer apply. 5. Withdraw. You attempt to escape the field completely as an extended Athletics roll, aiming for 10 total successes with an interval of 1 round. You can only do this if you are at no less than Medium Range from all foes, and doing so causes you to move one range band away from them and to lose 10 Initiative per round, even if this puts you in the negatives. Success on the extended roll moves you another range band away from all foes. Once you are at Extreme Range from all foes, you leave the battle entirely and cannot be caught. Next time: Terrain, Gambits and Grappling
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Mar 24, 2019 18:43
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Hundreds of feet is I think significantly higher than most action hero drops? That's like a skyscraper or the actual top of a cathedral, not your average action drop of 20-50 feet. It's not a great example (also Exalted heroes can pretty easily pull off difficulty 5 with a little investment, 5 is what a 5-5 optimized mortal is going to find dicey).
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Mar 24, 2019 18:44
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Very early on stunts were just a flat "be more interesting than 'I attack' and get +2 dice", I think with some discussion of maybe a Willpower or two per scene based on relevant Intimacies. But I guess that wasn't complicated and judgy enough.
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Mar 24, 2019 19:35
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that's so much better than what got printed. I need to remember to houserule that if I ever run Exalted3. which is not nearly as unlikely as the corebook makes it look.
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Mar 24, 2019 19:36
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That Old Tree posted:Very early on stunts were just a flat "be more interesting than 'I attack' and get +2 dice", I think with some discussion of maybe a Willpower or two per scene based on relevant Intimacies. But I guess that wasn't complicated and judgy enough. It gives the GM power over how the fiction goes when they get to judge if it pleases them enough for rewards. Some sorts really love the idea of GM as position of authority, even though it's a terrible way to think of it.
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Mar 24, 2019 19:49
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Night10194 posted:It gives the GM power over how the fiction goes when they get to judge if it pleases them enough for rewards. Some sorts really love the idea of GM as position of authority, even though it's a terrible way to think of it. Obviously that will happen no matter what with certain GMs, and honestly graded stunts aren't, like, a major effrontery though they may make it easier to be a dick, but three largely similar grades is just so complicated for so little gain.
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Mar 24, 2019 20:11
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That Old Tree posted:Obviously that will happen no matter what with certain GMs, and honestly graded stunts aren't, like, a major effrontery though they may make it easier to be a dick, but three largely similar grades is just so complicated for so little gain. Yeah, stunting partly just pisses me off because I used to do freeform RP on MUDs and I remember vividly being told like 'You need several paragraph long poses for every action' instead of just, say, letting two characters have a conversation. It reminds me of that kind of stuff. Everything has to be a big production all the time. And like you say, it slows the game down for no actual gain.
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Mar 24, 2019 20:31
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