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It's an interesting coincidence that each post you've made from the expanded list has one skin I'm super into and cool with and another I'm pretty ??? about. Thank you for continuing to post these, btw.
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Nov 3, 2019 02:23
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Leraika posted:It's an interesting coincidence that each post you've made from the expanded list has one skin I'm super into and cool with and another I'm pretty ??? about. I'm genuinely uncertain whether I'm enthused or concerned about both the Cuckoo and the Unicorn - which was super appealing, and which was ??? ? If you don't mind elaborating.
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Nov 3, 2019 02:40
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Joe Slowboat posted:I'm genuinely uncertain whether I'm enthused or concerned about both the Cuckoo and the Unicorn - which was super appealing, and which was ??? ? If you don't mind elaborating. Unicorn was the appealing and I was kind of unsure about Cuckoo. I like the idea of playing a character with very fierce beliefs that are almost absolutely going to get them in quite a lot of trouble, and I like the support for other players angle. Cuckoo didn't really gel for me, I guess? e: I'm also glad the unicorn can be about what it's about and also not be weird about virginity yes
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Nov 3, 2019 02:57
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Leraika posted:Unicorn was the appealing and I was kind of unsure about Cuckoo. I like the idea of playing a character with very fierce beliefs that are almost absolutely going to get them in quite a lot of trouble, and I like the support for other players angle. Cuckoo didn't really gel for me, I guess? Yeah that sex move change was pretty big, sometimes you gotta know when to fold 'em when it comes to 'technically this fits the lore but there's no way to implement it without being really horrible'. Cuckoo is definitely the Skin that least gels as a 'monster' to me. Like the original one's Move names make me think it might have actually started as some kind of changeling. The Skin definitely functions cohesively, but it kind of feels like they came up with the mechanics and then tried to build around that. Feinne fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Nov 3, 2019 |
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Nov 3, 2019 04:06
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I always get a little weirded out about games where you absolutely have to be a teen, but I think that's just because I didn't have a good time at all in those years. I guess I just feel I can't convincingly act like a teen when I want to separate myself from it all. Feel bad about being knee-jerk angry at this game before though, it seems like it does its best to simulate the whole young adult novel genre thing it's got going on here.
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Nov 3, 2019 04:49
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The only skin I remember from Second Skins is the Wyrm. So far I’m thinking that’s because all of the other skins are kind of ???. I guess most of the good material was taken
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Nov 3, 2019 05:03
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SunAndSpring posted:I always get a little weirded out about games where you absolutely have to be a teen, but I think that's just because I didn't have a good time at all in those years. I guess I just feel I can't convincingly act like a teen when I want to separate myself from it all. Feel bad about being knee-jerk angry at this game before though, it seems like it does its best to simulate the whole young adult novel genre thing it's got going on here. There is a pretty decent section in the last chapters on how to adapt the game for adult characters, sadly way too much of the adult world still kind of works like high school after all, and not nearly enough grown adults have the Growing Up Moves. I will also say while this version de-emphasizes such, the game can absolutely work if the player characters are generally on the same side united against external threats with the internal tensions on simmer rather than boil most of the time. The Small Towns provided generally provide enough hooks that in practice I'm pretty sure you'd kind of end up there with most groups if you used them, especially since this version's extremely de-emphasized combat mechanics make it less interesting for people who just want an excuse to do a bunch of PvP. That also matches the structure of a lot of the source material, honestly, because it's always more fun to watch people who don't necessarily like each other have to cooperate than to just watch them gently caress each other up and the story's over. jakodee posted:The only skin I remember from Second Skins is the Wyrm. So far I’m thinking that’s because all of the other skins are kind of ???. I guess most of the good material was taken The Selkie's pretty interesting mechanically (and also a free download one, so it's technically sort of part of the normal bonus skins) but has some minor yikes as to what it's 'about', the Neighbor is the Nega-Mortal, and The Heir is mechanically well executed but boy are you playing as the Yikesest person. Feinne fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Nov 3, 2019 |
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Nov 3, 2019 05:05
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Feinne posted:I will also say while this version de-emphasizes such, the game can absolutely work if the player characters are generally on the same side united against external threats with the internal tensions on simmer rather than boil most of the time. The Small Towns provided generally provide enough hooks that in practice I'm pretty sure you'd kind of end up there with most groups if you used them, especially since this version's extremely de-emphasized combat mechanics make it less interesting for people who just want an excuse to do a bunch of PvP. That also matches the structure of a lot of the source material, honestly, because it's always more fun to watch people who don't necessarily like each other have to cooperate than to just watch them gently caress each other up and the story's over. I'm not sure about that. One of the principals to the MC is specifically to set them against one another by using NPCs with differing motives and relationships. The Chosen is unusual because it has you create an NPC that everyone teams up against - that's not the default in Monsterhearts. And even with less moves for violence, there's still PvP. The Queen who uses their social power to dominate and humiliate you, the Cuckoo who pretends to be you and does what they can to ruin your reputation, the Witch who steals tokens and hexes you, the Unicorn who steps in and uses their power of Prophecies to try to make you fail at something they think you shouldn't be doing - they're all engaging in PvP without being violent. And the moves encourage this, until the PCs gain access to the Growing Up moves
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Nov 3, 2019 05:48
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Heliotrope posted:I'm not sure about that. One of the principals to the MC is specifically to set them against one another by using NPCs with differing motives and relationships. The Chosen is unusual because it has you create an NPC that everyone teams up against - that's not the default in Monsterhearts. And even with less moves for violence, there's still PvP. The Queen who uses their social power to dominate and humiliate you, the Cuckoo who pretends to be you and does what they can to ruin your reputation, the Witch who steals tokens and hexes you, the Unicorn who steps in and uses their power of Prophecies to try to make you fail at something they think you shouldn't be doing - they're all engaging in PvP without being violent. And the moves encourage this, until the PCs gain access to the Growing Up moves Yeah I think my terminology was just a bit indistinct, it's just somewhat harder for a session to turn into the last act of Hamlet (mechanically). There are plenty of Moves that will consistently be used for PvP, it'll just usually be more social PvP unless one of you is the Werewolf.
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Nov 3, 2019 16:24
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SunAndSpring posted:I always get a little weirded out about games where you absolutely have to be a teen, but I think that's just because I didn't have a good time at all in those years. I guess I just feel I can't convincingly act like a teen when I want to separate myself from it all. Feel bad about being knee-jerk angry at this game before though, it seems like it does its best to simulate the whole young adult novel genre thing it's got going on here. Almost universally the games are actually based on an adult's view of being a teen, and probably a heavily filtered one - the same way Little Fears was clearly about adult perceptions of and fears for children.
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Nov 3, 2019 18:42
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Monsterhearts 2: The Heir More Monsterhearts, one of these Second Skins was always going to be on its own and it might as well be the one that takes up the most pages, The Heir. The Heir: quote:Your family has strong traditions. You’ve heard stories about your late aunts and uncles: they were like you and your siblings. You all have little gifts. Maybe your parents even have a speech about it, saying that if one’s inheritance isn’t appreciated, it should be seized instead by someone more fit for success in the Real World. The Heir shares some DNA with The Serpentine, in that your family is a major part of things. You’re the heir of a family with seven children (and, well, think of the general symbolism involved, the whole seventh son thing). While that was about being valued only for how your actions reclaim what your family has lost, this is about family that meets none of the needs family is supposed to. It’s about abusive parents making their children compete for what little affection they dole out and playing obvious favorites, except there’s also dark magic involved too. The Heir’s stat spreads are Volatile 2/Dark 1 (violent person who craves secrets) or Cold 2/Volatile 1 (calculating person who will time their strikes). The original Heir was Volatile/Dark. So, before we get to Moves, The Heir has a really complicated character creation process compared to everyone else. The Skin is more like a booklet than a sheet, because each of the name options they give then has a list of names you need to choose from for your Siblings as well. You need to give all six of them names and ages, they’re actually very important mechanically. You start with the Moves Old Family Friend and Inheritance of the Eldest, and choose one more. An Old Family Friend: You do not interact with the normal mechanics for escaping death. When you die, the literal Grim Reaper shows up for you. But, as long as you still have alive siblings, you can instead have him take one of them instead. You also choose one of the following materials: Oxhorn, Applewood, Obsidian. If you’re killed with that, welp, you’re dead and your oldest sibling inherits anything you had. You’re also dead if there’s no other siblings to take the death for you. You are explicitly forbidden to take the Ghoul’s Short Rest for the Wicked. This core mechanic is unchanged over the versions. Inheritance of the Eldest: Your siblings each have a Birthright (we’ll cover those later). Should they die, that Birthright is now yours. The means don’t matter, it can be an accident, it can be your death transferred by An Old Family Friend, or you can just shank them. Very flavorful, and unchanged from the previous. You need to balance the fact that it’s useful for your siblings to still be alive with the fact that you will get more powerful as they die. Family Portrait: When you show a sibling how dangerous you are to remind them who’s in charge, choose one: Gain a String on them, or take one Forward to confronting non-siblings. The game encourages you to continue the cycles of abuse your parents are inflicting on you by bullying your siblings into compliance. This has actually been reworded a bit since the first edition, which only required you to show them who was in charge. There are lots of ways of doing that and they didn’t have to be as negative as this. This definitely refines the flavor. Firstborn: When you get someone to attend to your needs, like combing your hair or getting you a glass of water, take a String on them. This is really loving strong! Getting Strings for innocuous requests is huge and as long as you can justify that something you spent a String on someone to tempt them to do was ‘attending to your needs’ you get to refund that String. This is unchanged. Or Else: Spend a String on a blood sibling, then flashback to you telling them what to do in the situation at hand. If it’s something a kid could reasonably do, they’re doing it. If it’s not, or something that would leave them worse off than the worst they would imagine you’d do to them, they’re not. As long as you’re smart about it, this makes your siblings VERY useful in that they’re NPCs you don’t even need to worry about having to worry about what they’ll want when you ask them to do things. Also unchanged. Let’s go to the Birthrights. Pluralize: If a Condition you’re handing out could apply to two people present, give it to both of them. Great when Shutting People Down (or responding to failed attempts at such), amazing with other Moves that throw around Conditions from other Skins. Take the Ghost’s Unresolved Trauma and Projected Blame, then whenever someone brings up the sibling that died for you to give you this Birthright you can give someone else who knows the story Traumatized with you, then Blame everyone around for what happened! Puppets: Siblings that you specify move their bodies exactly as you move until you let them stop. This is pretty powerful, but remember that your sibling can’t actually risk hurting YOU with this, because you’ll just send Death at them instead. It’s great for you if you’ve got it, though. You’re All the Same: You can spend Strings on siblings interchangeably. Super useful, since you don’t have to worry about maintaining Strings on all of them. And you can have the sibling that still likes you get you coffee every morning, then use the Strings generated by Firstborn on the people who think you’re a monster to manipulate them with Or Else! Echo in Here: Spend a String on a sibling to have them parrot back something you told them to remember. An interesting one, with lots of tricky uses. Like making someone respond in a specific way after a specific question, or say admit to something they didn’t do because you made them say it. There’s less awful things to do with it but let’s be real this is not a Skin about doing things that are not awful. An Inclusive Family: Characters with the Like a Sibling to Me Condition count as your siblings. So, inflict that Condition with a Move then add to the list of people you can bully. And, uh, that also probably means you can send Death at them. I’d let Main Characters avoid death as normal in that case, because it’s explicitly you who can’t. Fortunately there is no special Move for inflicting this, or it might be even ruder. But, well, stay tuned… Brief Candles: Mark experience when you kill someone. One of the more explicitly violent things in the game. This is a really, really violent Skin. Your Backstory is lovely. You’ve taken revenge on someone, give them two Strings. You’re also afraid of someone. Give them two Strings. You don’t specifically start with any Strings on your siblings, you should probably get to that. You don’t have any special Advances, and your Gang is your Cousins. Here’s your Sex Move: quote:After sex with someone, tell them about the things that are stressing you out. If they don’t offer to help with at least one of those things, give them a Condition. Yes, this can mark someone as Like a Sibling to You, meaning they literally count as one if you’ve got that Birthright. And I think I need an extra shower just thinking about that lovely conversation. This has changed substantially, the original one had you telling them about your secret weakness or a peaceful time you shared with a sibling at which point they would tell you about their relationship with death. That’s more flavorful but has zero mechanical anything, which is probably why they changed it. As for the Darkest Self: quote:Treason. You’ve just this instant put the pieces together, and not a moment too soon. Those who’ve feigned kindness to you didn’t count on your survivor’s instinct. Quickly, cleverly, before those false friends can mount their defenses, you must strike them down unerringly. You escape your Darkest Self when your paranoia is revealed to be unfounded, or when you push away those who care about you the most. A paranoid rampage is pretty much the only way this could be, and is unchanged between versions. This is a really well thought-through Skin but I kinda feel like it’d be toxic as gently caress to actually be at the table with it. Next time, the last two Skins: The Neighbor and The Selkie.
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Nov 3, 2019 23:42
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They really should have canonised the Dad.
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Nov 4, 2019 00:52
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Feinne posted:Let’s go to the Birthrights. These were a bit different mechanically in 1e. Most of them had two separate rules, one for how your NPC sibling used it and one for how you used it. That's been removed, along with Echo in Here requiring a Dark roll with a 7-9 meaning it was your voice that came out, not theirs. Feinne posted:An Inclusive Family: Characters with the Like a Sibling to Me Condition count as your siblings. So, inflict that Condition with a Move then add to the list of people you can bully. And, uh, that also probably means you can send Death at them. I’d let Main Characters avoid death as normal in that case, because it’s explicitly you who can’t. Fortunately there is no special Move for inflicting this, or it might be even ruder. But, well, stay tuned… In 1e this condition was called Like a Brother or Like a Sister - but it explicitly noted you could put either on any person and it was more about how you viewed them and how your relationship with your brothers might be different then your relationship with your sisters. Also it did say in the Under the Skin advice booklet that PCs used the rules for avoiding death if they were affected by An Old Family Friend.
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Nov 4, 2019 01:08
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 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century Mercury: We've Got Heat Colonizing Mercury was not an obvious choice, what with it being right next to the sun and all. Terraforming was out of the question- giving it an atmosphere would just trap heat- so instead almost all development has been underground. Most of the people live inside huge warrens, which are described as miles-wide corridors laid out in a criss-cross patterns. There are also underground spacedocks which ships enter through giant doors; these are pretty important because Mercury is actually a common stopover for ships travelling long distances. Sometimes the planet you wanna go to is just plain on the other side of the sun, after all. Through all this it manages a population of 20 million, which is actually on the low side of the Inner Worlds. As mentioned before there are a few different groups of Mercurians. Miners are the largest demographic, living in the warrens and working the planet’s abundant mineral resources (half the planet is made of iron.) They sometimes get irritable when their warrens are facing the sun (the heat can still be felt deep underground), but they claim to be used to it. The Musicians live underground and off planet, and do most of the non-physical labor- running shops, business, etc. The name comes from the fact that a lot of Mercury’s surface features are named after old Earth composers. The Desert Dancers, meanwhile, live in giant track cities that roam along the surface. Along the roads are a bunch of solar collectors, and the track cities are giant mobile arcologies that were set up to help maintain the solar arrays and scout mineral locations. The cities move such that they always stay on the cool side of Mercury- prolonged exposure to the sun and cosmic radiation would likely kill the inhabitants. (They don’t give any hard numbers, but it’d be a good story hook- a city gets sabotaged and you have to get it moving again, etc.) There are also roving mining machines on the surface, not using the tracks but being operated from the underground city of Caloris. For all the planet’s mineral wealth, however, Mercury’s big asset is, as mentioned before, its proximity to the sun. Solar collectors in orbit and on the surface collect the energy and beam it to relays across the system- this is very unscientific but may also be a nod to the original comics, where the Han used “broadcast power” for everything. While the planetside solar collectors are useful, the real money is in the Mariposas. Early colonists captured asteroids, plated them with metal and solar panels, and put them in orbit. There are about 500 of these things, and most of them are owned by the Sun Kings, the aristocrats of Mercury. The most powerful of the Sun Kings are the Gavilan family, who live on the orbital colony of Helio. The Sun Kings live like the aristocrats of Old Earth, with a mix of classical styles, from Arabic to baroque influences. The Gavilans in particular have a medieval outlook, with all sorts of ranks of nobility. So yeah these are your opulent greedy bastards, a classic space opera trope. On paper, Mercury is a democracy. It’s basically a democratic union of the Sun Kings, Miners, Desert Dancers, and Musicians, but in practice, the Sun Kings, and particularly the Gavilans have most of the real power. This has kept up because so far they aren’t ruling with an iron fist, but the lower classes are starting to organize. The Sun Kings have historically been friendly with RAM, even using Martian aid to put down some early uprisings. As of late, though, the growing power of the Miners, Musicians, and Desert Dancers has created a rift. It also helps them that the Mariposas have the potential to be made into planet-busting weapons (though the exact nature is left vague) and turned on Mars. The Mercurians are also aiming for control of all space within “immediate range of the sun”, because of the value of the sunward passage. So as presented Mercury has a few conflicts brewing- their status in the setting’s major conflict is ambivalent, as they’re more interested in their own agenda. The Sun Kings are good potential enemies in themselves, and the Mariposas seem like fun adventuring locales. Next, cue up your “Best Hits of the 80s” mixes because We’re Heading for Venus
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Nov 4, 2019 07:45
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As an aside, the whole plot of Countdown to Doomsday was that RAM was working with one of the Sun Kings to turn his Mariposa station into a giant orbital laser to use on Earth. Like most good RPGs, the game ends with your team blowing up the Doomsday Laser (and the upper decks of Mariposa Three.)
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Nov 4, 2019 16:12
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You can't very well have a countdown to doomsday without A: A doomsday and B: A countdown the PCs avert at the last moment, so that all stands to reason.
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Nov 4, 2019 16:16
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Monsterhearts 2: The Neighbor and The Selkie Our final two Skins from Second Skins are in this update. The Neighbor: quote:Sometimes when you watch scary movies you wonder if monsters and creatures and things from beyond the grave are really real. It freaks you out pretty bad. But then you just snuggle down onto the couch with all your friends and know that everything is going to be alright. The Neighbor joins the Mortal in being explicitly just a normal person. But unlike the Mortal, you’re not a normal person who is pulled into the supernatural after falling in love with an effervescent zombie. You’re half overly nosy neighbor and half Xander, honestly. You are the person who gets the funny syphilis, the person who gets spooked, the person love never seems to find due to comic mishap. The Neighbor is an almost slapstick Skin, and that is kind of amazing given how serious the tone of some of these Skins is. Your stat options are Hot 2/Volatile 1 (sweetheart with your heart on their sleeve who’s always losing their bank card) and Volatile 2/Cold 1 (always running from something, usually because you said something to deserve it). The original Neighbor was Hot/Volatile. Choose three Moves from the list. In general these Moves involve a lot of communicating with the other players what’s going on, because they’ll be prompted to do things, make choices, and just in general should know what awkward poo poo your Moves will generate. Mixed Messages: When you’re alone with someone, decide if you’re attracted to them. If you are, tell them why you can’t be together and roll to Shut Them Down with +1 to the roll. IF you aren’t, tell them all the things they’ve got going for them so they won’t feel bad and roll to Turn Them On with +1 to the roll. This is unchanged from the first version, and is a great example of the slapstick way these Moves work. Two Eyes: When you take your glasses off, your Hot increases to 3. But you absolutely need your glasses to see, so subtract 2 from any roll where vision would matter. If you were the sort of person who’d take advantage of this by getting contacts, you wouldn’t be The Neighbor (though that’s not in the rules, strictly speaking). This used to be +1 Hot without your glasses but -1 to the relevant rolls, but that was with the previous single Hot/Volatile build. Since you can not be inherently Hot now, it needs to just set you to max Hot to really sell the ‘feel’ they’re going for. Lucky I Guess: When you remain oblivious to troubling or supernatural occurrences, take one Forward. Just Mister Magoo your way through poo poo, possibly literally if you took Two Eyes. Consistent ability to add one to rolls is actually really powerful, especially since it makes it way easier to run away after you’ve stumbled into what should be an obviously haunted house or something. Unchanged from the previous version. All the Wrong Places: When you help someone you’re sweet on look for love elsewhere, choose one: they take one Forward to realizing that love, or you both gain Strings on each other. More slapstick romantic comedy stuff. Unchanged. Precarious: Offer someone a String on you in exchange for a favour, gift, or second chance. So, you kind of get the option to go Strings negative on someone to get the manipulative benefit of spending a String on them. That’s pretty cool, I guess. The original version was a bit different, in that it was reordered. If someone gave you a gift or second chance, they got a String on you. I like the new one a lot better, since it’s something you seek out. Spooked: When you run into someone’s arms, they choose one: you mark experience, or they become their Darkest Self. Slapstick horror stuff, straight up, people can basically jump scare you if they want to. Super love it. There used to be NPC rules that let them make a Hard Move (the old equivalent of a Reaction), that’s no longer here and that’s probably good. Self-Deprecating: When you talk poo poo about yourself to someone, they choose: argue and give you a String, or let it slide and Shut You Down. This is an interesting Move, make them give you a String or risk a Condition. Again the first version had an NPC rule that let them make a Reaction, which isn’t the case anymore. Home Life: When a monster sees what a normal life you have, they choose: they gain the Condition Monstrous, you gain the Condition Delicious, you take one Forward to making them feel human. This is super fun and again generates some interesting choices. Conditions are very double-edged, after all. It’s unchanged from the original. Nap Fan: As soon as you fall asleep somewhere, choose two for the MC to detail when you wake: Something was left for you, Someone’s there, Someone’s been trying to contact you, Something’s been broken, You had a nice dream. This is pretty great, and is a decent mechanism to drive some drama as well. The original had a few more things you could pick, something being canceled and something having happened at home. They probably didn’t need to be there. There was a Move in the original that was removed, Last One Picked. If someone special overlooked you, you could either give them a Condition or take a String on them. I kind of like the idea of this, but the feel of the actual effects doesn’t quite fit. It probably should have been take a String or they give you a Condition, or something. But honestly it probably is fine not existing at all. Just roleplay out the chain of events and so some normal Moves, it’s fine. Your Backstory is pretty funny. You live next to someone, and your bedroom windows face each other. You leave your blinds up. Each of you gain 2 Strings on the other. You made out with someone a while ago. Gain a String on them and give them 2 on you. The original was slightly different. You had two choices as to your backstory with your neighbor. One was what was presented, the other was that you watch them through your blinds and they’ve noticed, so you exchange a single String. Probably fine to just have the one. You don’t have any weird Advances and your Gang is Lots of Exes. Your Sex Move is appropriately awkward: quote:When you have sex with someone, tell them something you don’t want them to know. This is changed, actually, you used to be able to scream out someone’s name during sex and gain a String on them. It did not say it had to be the person in question. Which is also awkward, but I like this one more. Your Darkest Self is super fun: quote:You feel... you feel like a monster. What kind of monster do you feel like? A werewolf, a vampire, a ghost, a queen... it can be anything you can think of. Tell the MC, and they’ll hand you that Skin or the closest thing So yeah, you just go full melodrama and take on the role of an actual monster in spite of being a normal-rear end human. I really like this, just tilt out acting like you’re a werewolf or whatever when you’re just kinda mussed. To me I think it’d be just as important to, no matter how seriously you’re taking it, have all the horrible things that would happen as a result of an actual Monster’s Darkest Self just end up as something super embarrassing for you. The Selkie: quote:The weight and crash of the water was your first home. You were born beneath the waves, with an outer pelt you can remove. When you wear it you look just like a seal. And when you take it off, you feel raw and beautiful. The Selkie is, first and foremost, exactly what it is. You are a seal who can turn into a person by taking off your pelt. You are also a confused and homesick foreigner, one whom can be exploited by those who know your weakness. Someone who’s got your pelt holds over you your ability to return home, it’s almost like it’s a metaphor for the ability of people to be held hostage by those who control their identity documents or something. Your stat choices are Hot 2/Dark 1 (enchanting outsider with secrets) or Cold 2/ Dark 1 (introspective stranger who doesn’t put up with anyone’s poo poo). Cold/Dark is the original spread. You start with the Moves Outer Skin and Keep Away, and one more. Outer Skin: Wear your pelt to look like a seal, breathe underwater, and swim very fast. You are from the Deep Kingdom, and can return there if you have your pelt. If you do, you can never return and must create a new character. Keep Away: People can steal your pelt, but it can’t be destroyed. When you pursue a task the person who currently holds it asks of you, add 1 to rolls. If the person doesn’t give you your pelt back after you finish their task, gain a String on them and add 1 to rolls against them until they give you a new task. The bonus to rolls against them until they give you a new task is new to this version. This is very flavorful to the whole idea of the Selkie, both actual Selkies and the sort of archetype they’re representing. It’s actually pretty powerful in some regards to have someone else have your pelt, since you’re adding one to a lot of rolls. Use that bonus in-between tasks to twist whatever they’re up to around such that you’re the one who really benefits if you can. Body of Water: When you go a day without submerging yourself in water, take one Harm. If you submerge yourself in water and can relax, remove one Harm and a Condition. While this is a bit dangerous, this also makes you super durable given it breaks the rather slow healing rate over your knee. There’s a fun synergy with the Ghost’s move to take on the Harm of other people, if you’re feeling like these horrible landwalkers deserve it. Catch of the Day: Whenever you don’t understand what’s going on or what someone means and it gets you into trouble or leads you to make unwise choices, mark experience. This encourages you to go full Starfire, and if you do it right this could be some much-needed comic relief. Siren Song: When you’re soaking wet, you can sing a haunting song. Those who can hear you give you their full attention, and you choose one additional effect on them: They stumble entranced toward you (but stop before it would inflict harm on them), or they connect with the song’s emotions and start crying. This is pretty drat powerful, you can defuse a lot of situations for one because there’s no rolling here. It’s just a thing you do. The original version made you roll with Cold, could inflict the Dazed Condition, and could actually potentially cause them to suffer Harm before it broke if you rolled well. I kind of think the new one is way more powerful despite that, because it just happens. Ocean’s Breath: When you feel really homesick, choose one for the MC to detail: The ocean brings forth something that it thinks will make you feel better, or the ocean takes away something that it thinks is bothering you. The ocean is not a human, it does not understand the world of humans, and there is a good chance this will cause some serious and unexplainable damage in the progress. Super fun move, don’t lie and say you’ve never wanted to narrate a school bully being eaten by a kraken. You used to have to roll with Cold, and the damage would happen on a 7-9. Now you don’t have to roll, but it’s probably always coming with some consequences. I like the new version more, it feels more right. There was a Move called Salt in the first version that is no longer around. When you cried into water, you could roll Dark and think of someone you want to see. On any hit they’d show up, on a 7-9 they’d have the Drained Condition and bring trouble with them when they did. Most Skins lost their Moves that made other people do things, so losing this makes sense. In your Backstory, you watched someone swimming and gain a String on them. You also start the game with someone having stolen your pelt, and having figured out how important it is to you. They said they’ll give it back if you do something for them. Each of you gain a String on each other. You have a ready-made conflict either with another player or an NPC, this is pretty great. Your Advance are normal, your Gang are Strange Fishermen. Your Sex Move is as follows: quote:When you have sex with someone, it counts as submerging yourself in water. Since all oceans tell you their secrets, gain a String on someone else they’ve had sex with. It’s definitely super interesting. For one, you get to heal a Harm and remove a Condition if you’ve got Body of Water. You also get some interesting leverage on someone totally unrelated. Now for your Darkest Self: quote:People have mistreated you and made you an outcast here. It’s time to show them how it feels to be lost at sea, to be apart from the things you have loved, to have parts of your self stolen from you. So you will flood the Earth. You will destroy what they cherish. And you will take their pelts. You escape your Darkest Self when this place reminds you of home, or when you recognize what you came here for. I like this, we circle back around to the point of the Selkie quite nicely. We’ve got some more book left for next time, on making the game our own and taking inspiration. After that, I’ll probably do an update on character builds to do silly poo poo.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:27
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I think it'd be funny if The Selkie was in a game and the whole pelt thing just never played out. Like, everyone either just gives the obviously distraught weirdo back their weird fur thing or everyone asks them for really petty stuff like getting to copy their homework or buying them lunch.
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Nov 5, 2019 08:46
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Probably for the best that the book skirts around the real social basis/'lesson' of selkie myths: they're basically about rape and marital abandonment. Fisher finds beautiful woman with seal pelt, fisher steals the pelt and forces the woman to marry him on threat of destroying her pelt, and that fisher had best keep a drat close eye on the pelt or that treacherous seal-wife (a common nickname for selkies in folklore) will steal her pelt back and escape to the sea never to be seen again.
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Nov 5, 2019 13:31
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Dark Heresy 2nd Edition Unpublished Beta Post 4: Subtlety and Influence Dark Heresy 2e's new mechanic, Subtlety, and the new stat Influence are easily recognizable; at least, Influence is. Influence is Profit Factor/Renown/whatever they're calling your 'slowly goes up or down base level of resources' stat that's been in basically every game since Rogue Trader. However, Influence is an individual stat rather than a group stat, and it's also rolled for individually at character creation. It's also integrated much better than usual, in that it's absolutely open to be used like any other characteristic; you might not have great Fellowship on your Noble but if you have high Influence, you might be able to bull your way through things with your skull-covered rolodex and your holy, gold-plated checkbook filled with ink squeezed from the tears of heretics or whatever it is they use for paper money in the Imperium. Influence also has another nice bit to it: You need it to get items and you can certainly use it to help your investigations, but you can also just burn influence, losing d5% of it permanently, in order to immediately get something done. You also lose 1 Influence if you mess up an Influence test by more DoF than your Fellowship Bonus, so even if you're playing a character who relies on their rep, their Fellowship is still important. A little weirder is that you lose 1 Influence per year you do no work for the Inquisition, but I can't imagine that would come up in most campaigns outside of serious, extreme long-term medical care or an enforced or agreed upon timeskip, so it seems odd to punish players for that. You also gain or lose Influence by doing things for people. Used your master's authority to divert a Guard regiment from its previous mission, which caused the sector to lose an Agri-World to Orks? -4 Influence. Got into a gunfight with the cops while actually being identified? -1 Influence. Missed a bolter shot and blew up a reliquary? -3. In general, either failing missions or being too much of a Standard Fluff Inquisitor guy is going to gently caress your ability to convince people to work with you. At the same time, actually saving lives, protecting people, earning favors, succeeding at missions, and managing to publicize your achievements gets you Influence. You cannot buy it with EXP like a normal stat, either. I like the idea of being able to sacrifice a small portion of it permanently to make absolutely sure you get what you need, right now. Especially when you pair it with being able to gain it by succeeding; it's a reasonable way to get a 'I'm staking my career on this!' moment. This is all meant to interact with Subtlety, which is meant to push the game a little more towards spy-game stuff and to make you think twice before telling anyone who you really work for or bringing out big guns. In theory, it's meant to be a constant companion to Influence, especially as you can reduce your Subtlety to invoke the Inquisition and use your master's Influence stat in place of yours. Which is also meant to involve your Inquisitor more directly in the game; as actual Acolytes you have some ability to throw their weight around. The issue is that while Subtlety has a solid number assigned to it (you start with 50 per mission and it goes up or down; higher, you're more hidden, lower, you're running around with big Is on your pauldrons and accompanied by swarms of cherubs saying INQUISITORIAL ACOLYTES COMING THROUGH, STAND BACK, WE TAKE LARGE STEPS) outside of a few Talents and the aforementioned 'lose 2 Subtlety to use your master's Influence' ability Subtlety is entirely at the GM's discretion. I'm pretty sure you can immediately see the problem here. The GM basically just decides whether what you did is worth +d5 or d10 Subtlety, or -d5 or d10. Also, Subtlety interacts with Influence gains and losses. Any time you gain or lose Influence for your deeds, you roll against Subtlety. If you 'fail', you gain or lose the full amount. If you succeed, you subtract 1 from the change to your Influence stat per 2 DoS on the roll. So if I was on an op where I waxed a popular local politician who was talking about redistributing some of the Imperial Tithe, I'd lose 3 Influence or something since this would piss people off. But say I'm being really subtle, and have a 70 Subtlety score; I roll against that and get a 30, and now I don't lose any Influence at all because there's nothing to even hint I did it. At GM's discretion, this can be waived if the Acolytes can be easily linked to the event; so if their master knows they took out a Greater Demon before it could be summoned, they'll still gain Influence, because that was the mission he assigned. At the same time, their Subtlety might shield them from losing it for doing awful things to make that happen. By the flip side, highly obvious Imperial agents doing good deeds is good PR and you'll gain fully for doing it. But again, where your Subtlety score ends up is entirely up to the GM. Engage in combat? GM decides if you lose it. Tried to cover your actions? GM decides if you gain it. Also, aside from that stuff about Influence, Subtlety's actual mechanical effects are mostly undefined and it is purely narrative, despite having a full point score and Talents that can relate directly to its numerical value. It also affects tests, but again, this is purely up to the GM and varies from mission to mission and situation to situation. And since your score starts at the middle every mission, you don't really choose your approach and then work from there so much as the GM gets to direct where you end up. Also, players aren't actually told their current Subtlety score after a mission starts, and have to make attempts to suss out how well or poorly they're hiding their actions, which interacts poorly with a meta-stat that again, you have actual character resources to interact with (Talents can, say, trade Influence to increase Subtlety if you're skilled at cover-ups). So it's nebulous already, and hugely GM directed, and the GM doesn't even tell you what's up with it and is supposed to subtly hint at it by how people react to the Acolytes until they actively try to find out if they're under investigation or have been 'made'. Well look here, we've found our interesting-in-theory-but-extremely-half-baked mechanic for DH2e. Also note: This and Influence are the main parts of this book that survived initial playtesting and got ported into the final product. I don't know why, but every single FFG 40kRP game has one of these mechanics in it somewhere. Something that sounds exciting on its face (the idea of having to manage how much you're a spy versus an enforcer and how much you rely on yourself or call in backup or whatever would introduce interesting gameplay and decisions to playing an intelligence cell) but that is woefully underdeveloped to the point of just being a handwave. It's a shame, too. Influence is a good implementation of the sorts of mechanics they've played around with since Profit Factor, but Subtlety is so underdeveloped it might as well not be a mechanic, especially with how completely and totally it remains up to the GM. At a certain point, if I have a stat the PCs mostly can't see, that is entirely at my discretion, and whose effects are entirely up to me, why even have the stat? At that point you don't need a number, you're just doing the things GMs have done for ages in traditional GM-and-PC style adventuring games. Where the GM just spot-modifies rolls and things based on circumstance and their own judgement. That's not really a mechanic in and of itself. Which is sad, because having benefits for going quiet vs. overt would have been a nice way to introduce more decisions for players to make and a good way to codify their 'style' and their interactions with their master and the wider organization. Next Time: Wizbiz
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Nov 5, 2019 18:09
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Night10194 posted:A whole bunch o' stuff about Subtlety BRB, running off to the game design thread to talk about mashing up half these subtlety rules, the shadowplayer/angst mechanic from Wraith, and the setting from 2E Demon. (Note: I am going to do no such thing, but it's a fun thought)
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Nov 6, 2019 02:53
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The sad part is that Subtlety would be a really good thing to have in this game. Like Squad/Solo Mode, it's a really thematic thing to put rules to. A player of mine suggested a better way to do it would've been to just let players declare initially if they're loud or quiet, then have them have to do gameplay challenges to switch between stances (If you went in quiet, maybe you didn't arrange for weapons, armor, or backup on station in case of emergency and have to work on those when things go sideways, or if you went in loud maybe you have to back off and then come back with a coverup), with the two stances helping determine how much you affect your reputation and what you have an easier time asking for. One other little detail I genuinely like is that your master has Influence and their Influence goes up and down as you do missions. If you gently caress up badly enough and are linked to your Inquisitor, you can, in fact, seriously damage their career. Which opens a lot of neat avenues for story developments! Influence and Subtlety are definitely things that would add to Dark Heresy with sufficient development, and I do like the attempts to link you more strongly and mechanically to your master. It's a good route to open up more interaction with a team's Inquisitor and the larger organization. Also there's a nice implication that Influence reflects how people can't really arrest or directly punish you (potentially), but they can sure as hell find ways to make life difficult for you and your master if you have a bad rep. Your career matters, even with your seemingly infinite authority as the Inquisition. So much of DH2e feels like I keep repeating 'this was on the right track'. It had a lot of promise, even with some seriously messy bits like the implementation of AP and the original damage system rework.
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Nov 6, 2019 03:01
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Dark Heresy 2nd Edition Unpublished Beta Post 5: Special Characters So, I should cover Inquisitors as well as Psykers here, since they're the two sorts of character you get by taking an "Elite" advance tree. You can also be an Untouchable, someone who projects a soulless field of psychic blanking. Being an Untouchable is simple: You're extremely powerful against psykers (and speccing into it will also let you cover your allies against them), at the cost of making everyone withing WPB meters of you deeply uncomfortable. It really sucks to be an Untouchable, but then anything to do with Psy in 40k is loving miserable from a fluff perspective compared to magic in Fantasy anyway. Being an Inquisitor is actually mechanically interesting, especially as you're intended to actually make an Inquisitor for the group. Inquisitors' special advance tree requires you to have a 75+ Influence; you have to have had a hell of a career for your boss to consider making you an Inquisitor. The game warns that promoting a single PC to Inquisitor will change the group dynamic significantly, which is a bit of an understatement with the overblown authority 40k Inquisitors technically have. I'm always a little leery of a direct PC superior officer after reading horror stories on FFG's old forums about what people did with the PC Commissar class in Only War ("What do you mean it's bad play to shoot my teammates for not doing what I said? It's fluff accurate!") but it would probably work out fine for most reasonable groups. What's actually cool is the stuff being an Inquisitor gets you; the ability tree they get does a good job of getting across their intended flavor without making them too crazy. The very first thing they have to buy is Shared Destiny, letting them spend their own Fate to bestow Fate Points on an ally. They can get the ability to spend Fate to completely no-sell Corruption and Insanity gains. They can gain the ability to spend Fate to automatically roll a 01 on a skill or stat test instead of just reroll it (this is their capstone). They can spend Fate to immediately gain a lead in their case. They can buy a single Talent that takes every Rank 1 (untrained) skill they have to Rank 2, and then another that takes any Rank 2 (Trained) skill to Rank 3. They can also mess around with Subtlety but eh. Still, a PC Inquisitor quickly becomes knowledgeable in just about everything (at least a little) regardless of their actual class, and all the extra ways to use Fate for themselves and others mean their abilities are impressive, but limited in how often they can use them. It's a good implementation; they're still human and can still get shot in the head no matter how much horseshit they spew about their indomitable wills, and they're much more reliant on their Warbands and Acolytes than their propaganda likes to admit, but they're widely skilled and just a little luckier than normal in ways that can make a big difference. Being a Psyker is no longer a character class of itself. Any character can, plot permitting, buy the Psyker advance and unlock psychic powers. Unless you started out with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica Background, though, a new Psyker is unsanctioned and gains 10+d10 Corruption (remember, that stuff is really bad). Still, all you need is a 40 WP and 300 EXP and your Guardsman or underhiver ganger or whatever can suddenly start manifesting psy powers. You could also just choose the Mystic Role, which makes your PC start with Psyker so you don't have to work your gaining wizard powers into the game. Gaining Psyker doesn't have a Talent Tree attached to it; instead you just gain Psy Rating 1. And the ability to up your Psy Rating for 250xcurrent level EXP. Similar to how Psy has worked since Black Crusade; gaining Psy Rating is a huge resource sink but has big benefits. The big difference is that Psy is notably less powerful in this version of the game. Psykers have always been vastly more powerful than WHFRP2e mages ever were, but also much more likely to gently caress up and kill the party/themselves. The chances of them loving up went down as time went on and the Psy system moved away from casting dice to a WP check (and it was really, unacceptably high in the old casting dice system in DH1e), and the chances of them using their powers successfully skyrocketed. After all, you used to get a bonus to the Manifest test for every point of Psy Rating you had, and abilities like Pushing (intentionally causing a miscast to boost your Psy Rating) counted for increasing your casting chance. Similarly, Psykers were able to use powers Fettered, lowering their effectiveness to completely remove their miscast chance. They can't do that in the playtest version of DH2e. You can still choose to cast spells at less Psy than you have, but doing that is how you raise your chance of casting the spell. Pushing actually lowers your odds of getting the spell off, now. When you cast a spell, you pick an effective Psy Rating. If it's lower than your actual Psy Rating, you get +10 to the casting check per point you downgraded your spell. If it's higher, you get -10 per point, and can only go up to Psy+2. Normally, you trigger a miscast when you roll doubles on the d100 for casting. If you Pushed, you trigger a miscast if you don't roll doubles. Psy Phenomena/Perils of the Warp have also been changed significantly; they're now 2-30+ tables where you roll 2d10 and add the effective Psy Rating of your power to that to get what happened. Each magic school now has its own miscast table, so you'll see Biomancy powers triggering weird body warping and hormonal surges, Diviners going mad from their visions, Pyromancers catching on fire, etc etc. Psy also no longer outdistances physical weapons on damage at high levels the way it used to. Battle-psyker powers are still pretty powerful (you can effectively get a much faster firing meltagun or a very powerful grenade launcher out of Pyromancy and that's not nothing). It isn't made clear if the Manifesting Time in AP for the battle-powers is how much time minimum making such an attack makes (and thus, if you have an RoA spell that costs 3 AP to cast, you get 3 shots minimum and 1 more if you spend another point) or if you have to spend additional AP to get your extra shots in; playtesting document, that kind of thing would probably have been clarified in a final release. Still, Psy is less able to give you 80 bajillion super attacks per turn the way it could in stuff like Black Crusade. Psykers in this document are more focused on utility, though they can still vaporize a guy with force lightning. Also notable is that you no longer need high Psy Rating to learn new powers, but you do need high stats. Most pre-reqs for Talents, Powers, etc seem to be higher, since players have much more room to increase their stats in this version of the game (You can buy +5 to a stat per overall experience rank you are, and there are 10 ranks, so PCs can get up to +50 in a stat, a significant chance from the norm). Note that would not carry over to the final version of the product. I really think the change to how Psy Rating worked was a good one. The change to manifesting powers actually did carry over into the final product, and it was a needed nerf to Psykers. Not only could their abilities be crazy as hell, but they almost never failed to cast their spells anymore from Black Crusade onwards. Plus, when Psy Rating not only raised the overall effectiveness of your spells but also increased your cast chance, it was doing too much. The new system here is a good step towards trying to rein in Psykers from running away with the game. Also, removing the ability to cast Fettered spells means there's no more 'costless' magic. I still think 40k's general Perils table doesn't really strike the right balance as a miscast table, and balancing truly tremendous power with the chance to make the game worse for everyone is its own issue, but this is a place where not only did they make some needed changes, but those changes actually stuck through to the final product. Next Time: Dudes to Shoot
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Nov 6, 2019 17:13
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Night10194 posted:I'm always a little leery of a direct PC superior officer after reading horror stories on FFG's old forums about what people did with the PC Commissar class in Only War ("What do you mean it's bad play to shoot my teammates for not doing what I said? It's fluff accurate!") but it would probably work out fine for most reasonable groups. Do any of these stories end with the rest of the PC's deciding to frag the commisar? Also fluff accurate.
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Nov 6, 2019 20:42
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Deptfordx posted:Do any of these stories end with the rest of the PC's deciding to frag the commisar? Also fluff accurate. Cain was such a good Commissar in part because he realized he was surrounded by violence, and that the sanctioned violence he could inflict could be drowned in that unsanctioned and ever-present violence around him no matter what his big hat said. Amusingly, the Commissar isn't even very good in OW. Their abilities kind of suck next to the normal Sergeant. About the only really useful thing the Commissar can do is try to counter Fear tests a little more easily. And yes, some of them did, which would indicate a point where the group has descended into PVP, which is not normally the intent in 40kRP. In its defense, everywhere the games talk about situations where one PC is technically 'in charge' they say to handle it with care, make sure everyone still gets a say in things, and keep players from bullying one another. This has been consistent from the Rogue Trader all the way to the DH2e Inquisitor advance, so any blame is really on individual groups; FFG tried to handle that kind of thing properly. E: On this subject a lot of it is a personal distaste for situations where one player has sanctioned authority over the others, because as a GM I am very eager to avoid serious player vs. player conflict due to a very bad experience years ago where I basically killed a long-running campaign everyone had been enjoying by allowing a situation like that to get out of hand. So take my commentary on those sorts of subjects with a grain of salt and the acknowledgement that it really is mostly a personal distaste, not a universal problem for groups. I just see it having the potential for being more of a problem in a hugely authoritarian setting like 40k that is so eager to make 'blam' the punchline, which can mess up player expectations. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Nov 6, 2019 |
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Nov 6, 2019 20:53
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Dark Heresy 2nd Edition Unpublished beta Post 6: Bad Guys One of the really interesting bits of the AP system was that they were going to make mook enemies move less than actual characters. The original playtest document had 'minion' enemies only gain 3 AP a turn, instead of 4. Minions AND Elites (Elites being standard, work-exactly-like-a-PC foes) could be killed instantly by a single Fury. Enemies who were Elite or more could Fury you right back, inflicting those nasty Critical wounds in the messed up damage system. Master enemies could have stats over 100, but Unnatural Stats as they'd existed before were out. However, they still made the exact same goddamn mistake they made with them in the first place. Let's take a look at something that would normally have had Unnatural Stats, a Plaguebearer of Nurgle. Instead of granting it Unnatural Strength and Toughness, they merely gave it 82% Toughness and 71% Strength. Oh, and 49 Agility. And 61% WS. It's also Daemonic, so it gets another 2 DR against anything that isn't Holy or a Psy power. What's the issue here? Well, the thing still has goddamn insane stats. The general theme of a lot of enemies in 40kRP is that humans are the absolute bottom of the setting's totem pole. Unenhanced humans are absolute poo poo in Warhammer 40k. They're not better than any other major species at anything. They're physically weak, slow, poor shots, poor fighters, and very fragile. An Eldar might be fragile, but they're faster and better shots. A Marine is bigger than you and stronger than you. Daemons are beyond you. And in 40k, unlike in Fantasy, these have always been treated as unbridgable gulfs of ability. Just look at that lone mook demon, standing there with stats that would take a human thousands of EXP to equal. Your theoretical maximum being much higher in this version of the game seems to have led the designers to make most monsters have much, much higher base stats and chances to act than in the original Dark Heresy. I know, I've been over Unnaturals a lot. They hosed this system hard, but they didn't exist for no reason. There was, for whatever reason, a conscious effort to significantly narrow the range of stats in the original Dark Heresy. The designers wanted a 50+ to be a big deal, and they still wanted to show off the massive power differences at the heart of 40k. They were a bad idea, but the 'try to control the base to-hit and stats of the monsters' part of the idea wasn't a mistake. The mistake was having so much variance in a bunch of static modifiers that inflated a lot of the game's numbers past where a system built on the bones of WHFRP2e could take it. If, instead of a monster having a 40% stat and doubling their 'stat bonus', you just give them an 80%? You're actually making them more powerful. Similar for why making Unnaturals additive instead of multiplicative didn't really fix the issues they posed to the system. If you keep the numbers where they were with Unnaturals, you haven't actually changed anything. And in making everything's base chances so high, you effectively make the PCs worse. Which is a problem when you're trying to make a higher power version of your original system! It doesn't matter that you started players at 25+randomization in stats, or gave them higher theoretical caps, or whatever, when you're handing a basic Eldar Pathfinder a 74% BS. Hell, an Eldar Guardian (Remember: These guys are bakers given a rifle and some mesh armor) has most of their combat stats near 60. Many, many enemies in the playtest document have similarly inflated stats, all across their profiles. It doesn't matter that they dropped Unnaturals; most enemies are still running around with the numbers they would have had with one, plus a higher base chance to succeed at their actions. This is a place where a development I'd normally celebrate (dropping the Unnatural rule entirely) is completely irrelevant, because after doing it, they still did the same drat thing. Yes, I know it's fluff-accurate. Everyone's fluff in 40k is so insanely overblown that yes, it's 'accurate' for an Eldar sniper to never, ever miss. It's also pretty lovely for a game. Especially one where the PCs are expected to take this stuff on, and especially one that tries to say the PCs are reasonably high power individuals. Even completely basic Minion enemies often have stats in the mid-high fifties. Lowly 'fleshbent' mutant cultists have 60% BSes. It's just nuts! It's like the goddamn hyper-terrorist stats in AdEva all over again. The issue is that the writers are balancing for the PCs at mid-high levels. PCs' higher theoretical caps are balancing these enemies, compared to normal DH, but those will take a party a long, long time to reach. PCs with thousands of EXP can deal, but PCs who haven't yet earned those thousands are left with enemy mooks with stats that exceed end-game player characters in the original system. It's simply overtuned. But again, playtest document, this is something that could have been fixed with feedback and time. As an added note to get across how long you'd have to play to match enemies, you're meant to earn 400 EXP a session. A PC who rolled as well as possible for BS and who was playing a fast-advancing Warrior would need to spend 700 EXP, and wouldn't be able to do that immediately since you can only buy 1 advance per stat per rank, to match a basic mutant cultist's skill with a rifle. They'd need to be at 2500 EXP spent to be Rank 3 to do this. That should be the perspective you view the enemy stats by: The best possible PC marksman, in the best possible situation, would take many sessions of play to equal these guys, who are meant to be lovely mooks! Aside from the borked base statistics, there's an interesting attempt to use the AP system to give enemies more special powers and tactical abilities rather than just high damage weapons and lots of attacks. Social enemies get abilities to debuff PCs or buff their allies. Some monsters will mutate and change in combat. Some can mark you and set you up for allies (which PC Warriors can do, too!). The AP system and the new attempts at more interesting creature design opened up a lot of possibilities, the crazy base stats just mess everything up. This, at least, measurably changed between playtest documents and the final product: FFG did cut back on the inflated enemy base-stats quite a bit. So that got fixed up. Albeit they did that while putting Unnaturals back in, but whatever, they were going back to how things were. I do appreciate trying to remove Unnaturals, really, I do. And the designers of 40kRP have always faced the challenge of how much greater the disparities in power are in 40k compared to Fantasy. So it's not an easy question to resolve. But the way they tried to do it in this original document was very wrong-headed and accidentally just made things exactly as they were with the original Unnaturals, but now with a huge percentage chance to hit you in the first place. Add that to the messed up damage system, and combat was still a wreck for much the same reasons it was in the original system. While I appreciate the attempts to address combat issues, none of them really reckoned with a simple question: How often do you intend for people to lose their characters, and why? 40kRP has always had a reputation as hyper-lethal. It's combat has always struggled with being a form of rocket tag. But the rest of the system is built with the implicit assumption that PCs are actually pretty likely to survive. Fate Points, the very long-term nature of EXP advancement, the creeping Corruption and Insanity counters that are supposed to be slowly bringing you closer to doom, the complex character creation system...all these things point to PCs surviving long-term. But then combat has that reputation, and the weapons and things in the setting are so powerful, that it always seems to come back to rocket-tag and dodge-tanking. Fire is something you can either totally ignore, or it vaporizes you in a couple hits. The hyper-lethality and the whole 'humans are the absolute lowest power level of the main species' stuff have always been at odds with other parts of the game's design, though some of this is because the original was conceived as primarily a horror game. Still, the reason players have always built around masses of high damage weapons and trying to go first and smash the enemy is that that's just how the system shakes out. Redoing the damage system in a way that doesn't actually address the issues of durability and doesn't really examine the assumptions of PC death or survival wasn't going to go anywhere, much as I'm glad they were willing to consider altering the damage system entirely. Giving enemies impossibly high stats and high damage weapons and stuff would just have led to the gameplay being similar, with a different coat of paint, without actually asking why it went that way. Which you can tell they were trying not to do! All the attempts to tamp down on heavy weapons and super high damage stuff in this book shows that the designers were trying to step away from the binary rocket tag system they'd accidentally built out of a pile of d10+34 Pen16 Hellblades or whatever. But without really sitting down and asking 'are PCs meant to be able to take a hit and survive' and stuff like that, combat was doomed to probably go the same way it always did. This area needed a lot more work. Next Time: The Sum Of The Changes
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Nov 6, 2019 23:13
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Feinne posted:Experience makes you more powerful. You gain experience in three ways: Fail a roll (roll 6 or less), when a Move tells you that you do, or when someone spends a String to tempt you and you accept. Five experience let you take one of your Skin’s advancements. Each Skin’s got its own advancement options, some of them are a bit different and we’ll look at those when we get there (as well as how advancement changed in general). This is a bit different than the previous version, where you had two highlighted stats each session and got to gain experience every time you rolled against those. It generally makes experience gain slower and also encourages you to try things you might fail at. A bit disappointed about the change to experience on highlighted stats but I understand why. The marriage of mechanic and theme was frankly brilliant. Thanks for writing up the second edition changes Feinne.
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Nov 6, 2019 23:59
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Night10194 posted:Amusingly, the Commissar isn't even very good in OW. Their abilities kind of suck next to the normal Sergeant. About the only really useful thing the Commissar can do is try to counter Fear tests a little more easily. The Commissar was alright, they could pull their weight in combat with some advances. Mostly in melee. The real reason why you want one though is their rank. Even a junior commissar is multiple steps above a sergeant in rank, which gives them a huge and very important boost to requisition rolls. If you wanted the cool toys, you wanted a Commissar to ensure you succeeded on the rolls for that power sword.
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Nov 7, 2019 09:43
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My rant for Dark Heresy-flavored games is stop giving people heavy weapons. Autocannons or lascannon trivializing your DH encounters? Yeah, no poo poo, you gave a crew-served anti-vehicle weapon to an Acolyte that can single-man it without any drawbacks. Of course it outputs a lot of damage! Giving you scribes and Guardsmen access to plasma - rare, expensive, hard to maintain - and melta weapons is similarly terrible idea. It also does not work well with secret-squirrel stuff, since plasma involvement signals that something big is afoot. Make peace with the fact that your dudes shouldn't get anything heavier than heavy stubber or a missile launcher. Make them actually cumbersome to use. Don't make the lasgun useless. JcDent fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Nov 7, 2019 |
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Nov 7, 2019 11:44
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They do try to do that in this playtest document before backing off of that in the final product to go back to normal OW-style 'everyone has an autocannon or whatever or they can barely fight'. The original playtest stuff had a consistent goal of making heavy weapons less universally useful and limiting their availability and necessity. It was just undone for the final product. E: The thing is, in the original system? Of course you want a heavy weapon. It's easy to get a Talent that lets you fire them like a rifle, they're not that hard to get hold of, and they simply do more damage and fire faster. Hence lots of characters in Black Crusade fluffing a multilaser as some kind of super-rifle instead of a vehicle autocannon, because the rules permitted it and it was a very attractive weapon that didn't take much investment to pour loads of damage downrange. Meanwhile, in OW, if you were actually using your lasgun you had good chances of bouncing off most enemies, and every serious combat class had a better weapon anyway, so the only person using their lasgun was usually the medic and they'd only do it until they got something better, too. The system simply made it necessary to constantly use heavy and exotic weapons. The biggest thing in this first attempt at 2e is that you cannot get a Talent that immediately removes the need to brace weapons. You can get one that makes it take less AP, but it doesn't eliminate the need to do it. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Nov 7, 2019 |
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Nov 7, 2019 13:41
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Night10194 posted:Of course you want a heavy weapon. It's easy to get a Talent that lets you fire them like a rifle, they're not that hard to get hold of There's your problem right there. That will be $200.
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Nov 7, 2019 15:15
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Hell, you could get a cybernetic that removed the need to brace heavy weapons. What I'm saying here is that Black Crusade is great.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:00
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Dark Heresy 2nd Edition Unpublished Beta Post 7: Wrapping Up So, it should be pretty clear by this point that this document isn't some secret 'Dark Heresy had a perfected form that got buried in the name of backwards compatibility' savior of the line. It had its problems. The new damage system was a poor compromise, and new subsystems like AP needed a lot more refinement and work. Subtlety needed more definition. Enemy stats needed a balancing pass and a lot of work. EXP costs and 'rank' would probably have needed some adjustment. The thing is, that's not a bad place for a draft document that you're exposing to public playtesting to be in! All of these issues were fixable problems, and considering the level of rework the team was willing to consider in this first document, I think things could have gone in a very positive direction. Which gets to why I wanted to cover this. I talked a lot in the 40kRP reviews about the system's holes and flaws, and it's easy to mistaken that for saying FFG has poor game designers. I don't think that's the case, and I think this document is proof of it. It's also just interesting to talk about a road not taken, especially because we can go into the reasons it might not have been taken; this is a neat little bit of RPG history about a game-line that really was pretty significant and successful. 40kRP did good for itself for its run; the books were lavishly well produced and illustrated, a lot of the fluff writing was genuinely good by the standards of the setting, and while the system had a lot of issues it worked well enough to be mostly playable. I mean, I only got sick of its issues what, 5 games into the line? And there's the whole history of the line being developed by someone else, with a troubled and long development history, which saddled FFG with a base system they weren't especially fond of but pretty much had to keep using. DH2e represented a chance to maybe redo some of the glaring flaws in 40kRP, and the fact that every serious flaw (armor being useless, heavy weapons being overvalued, psy being too powerful, characters being too easily siloed into single roles or unable to contribute outside of narrow specialties, character costs creating strong incentive to hyper-specialize) received some attention is actual vindication that the designers knew these were problems and were actively trying to solve them. Inertia is a powerful force. Especially when you have a reasonably successful RPG line that also has early 2010s GW breathing down your neck. You have to remember that all of this took place while GW was in kind of a rough spot; 2013-2014 were not a good time for them. There are also other historical reasons FFG might have been gunshy about changing too much in one of their games; the overall issues that WHFRP3e faced meant that FFG had actually experienced a serious backlash for diverging too much from what came before. A company that actually directly got hit with that stuff would have reason to be wary about it, especially when they were producing a game for a company they were having a rough time with. Also, I was on the playtest forums at the time all this came out, and it's hard to overstate how angry the fanbase was about this document. I think it's mostly full of steps in the right direction and represents the level of rework that would be necessary to produce a much better 40kRP product, but at the time, the public they exposed this to was livid. There was an awful lot of outcry about 'but I can't use all my other books with the new game!' (despite actually doing cross-play always being a pain in the rear end in 40kRP; they've never been as compatible as they say they are), complaints about how hard it was to one-shot people, and general outcry that anything had changed significantly. If you're facing an overwhelmingly negative reaction from a committed fanbase that is probably going to buy your product, what do you do? Because let's all be honest with ourselves here. Here in F&F, we talk about rules. A lot. But you know what? Rules-quality is not the main thing that moves products in this industry. Having good rules is definitely a bonus, but attractive art, good writing, an evocative or popular setting, good advertising, an active player base so people can find games to play in; all of these things move copies. And if you produce 'better' rules that make a more playable game, but your audience wanted something else, you can still run into trouble. FFG had a template their fans were saying they wanted, and that would take less effort and less risk to produce. So they went back to that template and produced a quick 'Only War but in the Inquisition' edition change with some minor tweaks, instead of continuing to refine the changes this document contained. I get it. I don't bear them any ill will for it. There are a lot of good reasons it happened. At the same time, if I was going to try to make a 40kRP that I actually wanted to play again, I'd start from this document and work on hacking it together from there. It needs a lot of work, but it's full of decent first steps and moves in good directions, even if it has a few missteps. For a playtest draft, that's not a bad place to be in! I especially like the changes to the skill system and think the compromise solution on EXP costs could have worked; there's simply no way to port the original Career system from 1e and 2e WHFRP into 40k. It doesn't work with the fluff; characters in 40k don't really change jobs, for one, and it would be near impossible to cover everything from 'feudal world knight given a laser cannon' to 'hypertech scribe from a rare paradise' to 'literally lives in a hollow world turned into a cathedral, full of skulls, and is a terrifying battle-nun' with the same kind of system. The old Career system is for a much more grounded setting, so it was inevitable they'd move towards a broader EXP system; reducing how much you get kicked in the junk for buying something that's expensive for you to buy is probably the best route to keeping that from hyper-specializing every PC. One of the saddest things to me is seeing the old Availability rules come back. Availability has always sucked, damnit. Yes, I know, Very Rare is -30 to your acquisition test to get the item; why not just do what the playtest document did and make Availability -30 instead of bothering with putting words that mean the same thing, but require you to look them up on a table? The return of Unnatural Stats, which I consider one of the original sins that doomed 40kRP (but existed for understandable reasons) also saddens me, even if the original playtest didn't really break the spirit of why they messed up game balance. Still, I think the designers deserve credit for having made the attempt, even if backlash and a dozen other understandable reasons made them back off from it. There's no saying there would have been a much improved 40kRP at the end of this, but it was a step in the right direction. FFG's story with 40kRP is the story of a decent company doing their best with a difficult license, producing games that weren't mechanically great, but that had a lot to be proud of. That they also made at least one genuine attempt to fix the mechanical side of things is only further to their credit. Even if it didn't work out. The End
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Nov 7, 2019 16:18
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Now that I think about it, I wonder what an FFG 40k RPG using what is now the Genesys system would look like. Not just any kind of hack or anything and more like the Star Wars RPG. Because the latter is surprisingly good based on my play experience.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:22
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Cooked Auto posted:Now that I think about it, I wonder what an FFG 40k RPG using what is now the Genesys system would look like. Not just any kind of hack or anything and more like the Star Wars RPG. Because the latter is surprisingly good based on my play experience. This is pretty much exactly what I mean when I say FFG has a definite style that they were never actually allowed to apply to their 40k work. Their Star Wars game is, by all accounts, pretty good! But they were stuck with what they started with, and even their attempts to fix that within the bounds of a d100 percentile system got shouted down pretty quick. Which is a big part of the tragedy of the whole thing to me.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:24
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Yeah I probably should've added the clause that they were free of the baggage of the previous edition(s) and the d100 system. But yeah, I remember that outcry against it and also remembering how sad it just felt. It kinda cemented my outlook that 40k nerds are, somewhat ironically, afraid of change. Then 8th ed rolled around and that became even more apparent. Shame it just took a couple of extra years for GW to get a hang of the whole Warhammer RPG thing after that.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:29
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The weirdest thing to me has always been the outcry about backwards compatibility, when the original systems aren't really compatible with each other. You can't exactly drop a Deathwatch PC into an Only War game, not just from the power disparity but because there's a bunch of systems and backing mechanics that simply don't work and the entire skill system has changed anyway.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:39
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I mean, compatibility was the biggest selling point of a years-long D20 boom, when all the while it was total bullshit.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:43
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40k rpg is in this weird place right now where everyone who still plays it is familiar with all the nooks and crannies of the systems and can make the different games work together. I think part of the reason W&G failed is that their target audience has so much inertia with this weight of d100 stuff.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:43
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Also one of the main reasons you can make them work together is that they're all very 'loose'. Since everything is going to be rocket tag anyway, and everything still focuses on very high damage and the general trend in stats and stuff has been upwards, it's sort of hard to gently caress it up badly enough to make it work 'worse' when you throw an OW PC into Black Crusade or whatever. An OW Guardsman is a high damage glass cannon the same way a BC Renegade is, after all. It's similar to how the Librarian is blatantly, incredibly the most powerful overall class in Deathwatch...but you wouldn't notice, because everyone in Deathwatch is already insanely powerful to the point that the Librarian's insane strength is kind of gilding the lily. Same for the Techmarine. Sure, they're awesome. But when even your Tactical Marine is blowing up battle tanks with a frag grenade you sorta don't notice.
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Nov 7, 2019 16:48
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