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Personally I admire the ability of a clever player to rules-lawyer and interpret a situation or the definition of a skill in such a way as to allow them to consistently roll against their best skill, but if it's an especially "generous" interpretation they better have a good argument or story and really sell that poo poo to pay for it. After all, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" is a well-established tendency of people in real life. All part of the fun to me and one of the main reasons to play an RPG instead of a boardgame or videogame.
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Jul 19, 2021 20:59
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Halloween Jack posted:If one can design a fun tactical subsystem for "hit people with weapons until they die " one can surely do the same for "escape from this collapsing building" or "stop this plane from crashing" I've said before, part of the issue is that the combat systems we are used to are not actually modelling combat. They are modelling video game combats where you have special moves and poo poo. So I can use sweeping strike or stunning strike depending on the tactical situation, or I can go into my Solid Turtle Stance. That's how it works in RPGs because that's how it works in video games. That's absolutely not how it works in a real fight. 99%+ of us have not been in a real fight with weapons, but we've all been in arguments and negotiations, nearly every day. You can design any number of things this way, but the issue is getting players on board. In this system for escaping burning buildings, you can use your Spinning Fire-Toss to move 1 adjacent square of fire 3 squares, or you can use your Tumbling Stair technique to descend one level through a burning staircase without catching fire. You can't just keep doing that, though - it's an encounter power! Next time you encounter a burning staircase you'll have to do something else. In this system for debating, you can use your Steely Stare power to increase their credence to your argument by 6 points, or you can attempt to lower their composure with your Dismissive Laughter power. But then someone goes and minmaxes and tries to win every argument by just laughing for 5 minutes straight and then making one good point at the end, not because it's the most effective, but just because they think it'd be fun. Basically, every abstraction that would stretch the bounds of credibility in a tactical combat system is something that video games have already inured us to. They don't chafe anymore, the grooves have worn smooth. With non-combat stuff you're having to carve new grooves. Doubly so for experienced roleplayers who think they already know how debating is supposed to work in an RPG.
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Jul 19, 2021 21:10
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Jimbozig posted:In this system for escaping burning buildings, you can use your Spinning Fire-Toss to move 1 adjacent square of fire 3 squares, or you can use your Tumbling Stair technique to descend one level through a burning staircase without catching fire. You can't just keep doing that, though - it's an encounter power! Next time you encounter a burning staircase you'll have to do something else. You've only just described it and I'm on board as hell with this system. Can there also be telenovela-style firefighter melodrama between rescuing NPCs from burning buildings which then feeds into the tactical grid combat, so that I get +2 to my morale roll because I know my rival is watching and I would die rather than have him see me too afraid to run into a burning room?
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Jul 19, 2021 21:57
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MonsieurChoc posted:I need more weird and cool rpgs to impulse purchase and then enver manage to play. https://stardrift-design.itch.io/crescentmoon was my last impulse buy.
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Jul 19, 2021 22:01
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Jimbozig posted:99%+ of us have not been in a real fight with weapons
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Jul 19, 2021 22:19
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Are there any fun RPGs themed around heavy metal or really deep into its aesthetics? Like campy over-the-top brutality, wild psychedelia, heavy occult influence, beer and drugs, etc? I borrowed a copy of Mork Borg but haven't really got to reading it yet. Like I know Dying Earth is kind of in that vibe, but is there something that really aims at going over the top? Something that feels like a real love letter to the genre? edit: Was Necronautilus good? It looks badass Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 22:53
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moths posted:It'd be like if Howard had hamfisted some lovely digs at Calvin Coolidge supporters and talkies into Conan.
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Jul 19, 2021 23:00
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Are there any fun RPGs themed around heavy metal or really deep into its aesthetics? Like campy over-the-top brutality, wild psychedelia, heavy occult influence, beer and drugs, etc? I borrowed a copy of Mork Borg but haven't really got to reading it yet. Like I know Dying Earth is kind of in that vibe, but is there something that really aims at going over the top? Something that feels like a real love letter to the genre? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/huntersbooks/gods-of-metal-ragnarock https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/swen/metal-heroes-and-the-fate-of-rock-a-rock-comedy-gamebook
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Jul 19, 2021 23:01
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MonsieurChoc posted:I need more weird and cool rpgs to impulse purchase and then enver manage to play. Let me tell you the good word about Gubat Banwa, the extremely Filipino game of tactical combat and downtime drama. It has about 300 classes and one of them is an archer who rides a flying swordfish. Another is a gun wizard. Another is a sipa player, who puts their angry ball game skills to use in fights. It's amazing.
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Jul 19, 2021 23:34
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Megazver posted:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/huntersbooks/gods-of-metal-ragnarock Ok. These are awesome. Particularly the Gods of Metal Ragnarock.
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Jul 19, 2021 23:41
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potatocubed posted:Let me tell you the good word about Gubat Banwa, the extremely Filipino game of tactical combat and downtime drama. It has about 300 classes and one of them is an archer who rides a flying swordfish. Another is a gun wizard. Another is a sipa player, who puts their angry ball game skills to use in fights. It's amazing. This sounds absolutely amazing. Can't wait to read this tonight.
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Jul 20, 2021 00:44
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CitizenKeen posted:This sounds absolutely amazing. Can't wait to read this tonight. Agreed, I am all over this.
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Jul 20, 2021 00:47
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Gubat Banwa is also, like, explicitly critical about violence as a solution to your problems and the fact that you're exceedingly good at weaponizing a variety of crafts (metalworking, cooking) and spiritual activities (fortune-telling, exorcism) for violent ends. One of my favorite ones is the one for the Pirate whose class I forget but the gist is you're a raiding pirate and your character prompt for why they use violence is "you were a pirate for a reason, and lately that reason is just worn way too thin to justify hurting people, what is it". There's also the mounted crocodile cavalier that fights atop their mighty crocosteed and harangues enemies with polearms whose prompt is "you raised a loving crocodile as a riding mount, you know why the gently caress you're violent and don't need a reason".
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Jul 20, 2021 01:09
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potatocubed posted:Let me tell you the good word about Gubat Banwa, the extremely Filipino game of tactical combat and downtime drama. It has about 300 classes and one of them is an archer who rides a flying swordfish. Another is a gun wizard. Another is a sipa player, who puts their angry ball game skills to use in fights. It's amazing. welp, I'm sold.
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Jul 20, 2021 01:57
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I'm convinced that mörk borg content creators don't get the tone of the game at all. See also Troika!, whose third party creators saw a book with a coherent weird science-fantasy vibe and took "weird" to mean "MS Paint up some low-effort monkey cheese and slap it up on itch."
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Jul 20, 2021 03:23
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The YouTube series Ena is a bit on the random side, but it does have some coherency behind it that I think lends itself well to Troika. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juBv2XWnwt8
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Jul 20, 2021 04:36
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potatocubed posted:Let me tell you the good word about Gubat Banwa, the extremely Filipino game of tactical combat and downtime drama. It has about 300 classes and one of them is an archer who rides a flying swordfish. Another is a gun wizard. Another is a sipa player, who puts their angry ball game skills to use in fights. It's amazing. Thank you again. I have been beating a drum for months begging for good tactical RPGs that are written by one person (or a very small team). This is a joy beyond my wildest imagination.
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Jul 20, 2021 17:03
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KingKalamari posted:For Alien: The Stress mechanic where players accumulate stress dice, which are rolled alongside their regular dice for skill rolls and allow the chance for extra chances at success but also also open up the increasing possibility of causing the players to fly into a Panic when a 1 is rolled on them, very accurately captures the feeling of rising tension and anxiety within the films themselves. The game also uses asymmetrical mechanics for human and xenomorph NPCs, which makes the xenomorphs feel like a much more powerful and alien presence. It also includes a very well designed "stealth phase", where the players are exploring an area while potentially being stalked by hostiles (Who are controlled by the GM and have their own, separate mechanics for this phase of play), which really captures the paranoia from the scenes in the first movie where the crew is trying to find the xenomorph.
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Jul 20, 2021 17:54
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Instead of further derailing F&F thread with another digression from the current topic, I'll ask here - can anyone recommend a Western RPG, fantasy or otherwise, that isn't a colonialist mess? Despite lacking a single creative bone in my body I'm back on my old poo poo of "thinking about a fantasy Western for potential game writing" but decoupling it from the colonial narratives that traditional Westerns put forth is... difficult. Writing from the perspective of people being invaded/settled, but still hard to work with that. So I'm looking to see if anything even exists out there that doesn't take the usual Manifest Destiny tack. My familiarity with Western RPGs through actual play pretty much begins and ends with playtesting Abaddon's GUN, GMing Dogs in the Vineyard (not a traditional Western by any means, but probably my favorite still even with controversy, and the seed for "can I write something better"), some engagement with Malifaux which sidesteps the colonial thing entirely with its setting, and owning copies of Aces and Eights, old Deadlands, and GURPS Old West that I've read to varying degrees. Media outside RPGs I've got a wider selection to pull from, but I'm interested in what already exists in our hobby. I'm sure there's some smaller indie games I've never even heard of. Happy to talk about what little exists for my own project if it helps contextualize things, but it'll be a while until I have the chance to dig up my old notes vs just working from memory. SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 21:38
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SkyeAuroline posted:Instead of further derailing F&F thread with another digression from the current topic, I'll ask here - can anyone recommend a Western RPG, fantasy or otherwise, that isn't a colonialist mess? Despite lacking a single creative bone in my body I'm back on my old poo poo of "thinking about a fantasy Western for potential game writing" but decoupling it from the colonial narratives that traditional Westerns put forth is... difficult. Writing from the perspective of people being invaded/settled, but still hard to work with that. So I'm looking to see if anything even exists out there that doesn't take the usual Manifest Destiny tack. You could maybe try Coriolis. It's a space western that describes itself as "Arabian Nights in space".
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Jul 20, 2021 23:07
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SkyeAuroline posted:Instead of further derailing F&F thread with another digression from the current topic, I'll ask here - can anyone recommend a Western RPG, fantasy or otherwise, that isn't a colonialist mess? I don't know because I haven't read it -- it might not even be available yet, I haven't checked -- but I'm going to assume that Chris Spivey's RPG Haunted West does pretty well on that score.
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Jul 21, 2021 00:08
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potatocubed posted:I don't know because I haven't read it -- it might not even be available yet, I haven't checked -- but I'm going to assume that Chris Spivey's RPG Haunted West does pretty well on that score. Yeah, it's not out yet, but it's getting close. Mr. Spivey was just recently on Twitter bemoaning the daunting work he'd given himself trying to make the game, and the looming shadow of his immediately preceding big hit Harlem Unbound setting the stakes even higher.
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Jul 21, 2021 00:16
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Yeah, 'difficult second album' syndrome all the way through I guess. I've got faith in him, though.
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Jul 21, 2021 00:20
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SkyeAuroline posted:Instead of further derailing F&F thread with another digression from the current topic, I'll ask here - can anyone recommend a Western RPG, fantasy or otherwise, that isn't a colonialist mess? Despite lacking a single creative bone in my body I'm back on my old poo poo of "thinking about a fantasy Western for potential game writing" but decoupling it from the colonial narratives that traditional Westerns put forth is... difficult. Writing from the perspective of people being invaded/settled, but still hard to work with that. So I'm looking to see if anything even exists out there that doesn't take the usual Manifest Destiny tack.
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Jul 21, 2021 00:22
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SkyeAuroline posted:can anyone recommend a Western RPG, fantasy or otherwise, that isn't a colonialist mess? It's a post-apocalyptic western that, by nature of the setting, avoids the genre's issues with indigenous people. It also gives violence a lot of weight because you can kill simply by aiming a loaded gun at anyone and pulling the trigger, but bullets are somewhat rare and also serve as the source of your class's strong abilities. Violence can explode at any time, but killing tends to make you weaker and more vulnerable. It's a really different kind of approach that's pretty interesting. (Disclosure: I have a supplement in the bundle, TXN SOULS, with 10 NPC types.) But I'd also echo Splicer's question: Splicer posted:I think the question is what do you want to from a western? If you take the colonialism/manifest destiny out of westerns what's left? Not a hypothetical question.
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Jul 21, 2021 00:44
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Splicer posted:I think the question is what do you want to from a western? If you take the colonialism/manifest destiny out of westerns what's left? Not a hypothetical question. It's less about taking it out and more about not embracing it as a positive thing the way most Westerns do. Dust Witches started off with the idea of playing as the people resisting settlement but even then my earliest drafts (and the only ones to come anywhere near a workable idea) had issues. Laying it out, the goal was essentially to "fix" Dogs in the Vineyard by taking its gameplay loop and repurposing it with a less broken system for a West explicitly decoupled from the real one; no more "Mormon sex police" (which was never what DitV was anyway but it's the only thing anyone wants to call it), no more "the native people just happened to all leave when we arrived and come back after we settled", no implicitly justifying settlement with civilization and faith. Drafts of the "intent" for design ended up taking that loop and pushing it outside of the original "travel between towns, solve problems" into more explicit anti-imperialist design; the PCs were people from the West explicitly out to keep their communities safe from threats mundane and supernatural, including the eastern Authority's reach. I never actually figured out how to do that and translating much of any of it into mechanical design was where the project stalled. Just never had any ideas for how to write it beyond sweeping pitches for the game. I stopped writing it before COVID hit, and since I left the community I was doing all my writing in early last year I haven't really touched it at all (I also lost the best excerpts of fluff writing and most notes...), but I've kept my preoccupation with eventually writing some form of explicitly anti-imperialist/anti-authority RPG (a field that's in dire lack of games right now; Spire, Misspent Youth, now Hard Wired Island if you ignore the Dreamer campaign pitch, and that pretty much taps out all of the ones worth the paper they're printed on) and it's been resurfacing recently so I've considered revisiting it. So what's left without embracing the colonialism and manifest destiny, while still following the narrative beats of Westerns? Depends if you take the revisionist angle or play it straight - I'm tired of subversions, so "you're good people, not necessarily heroes, traveling the frontier and setting things right where there's no other recourse". Which... is something like 80% of RPGs, possibly minus the "frontier" bit. So that's not very helpful. But like I said, this all originally stems from "fixing" Dogs in the Vineyard, where the loop is almost exactly that; "you're nominally good people traveling the home of the Faith, setting right what's gone wrong before it all blows up". So I guess that's all I was looking for - writing those traveling heroes in a setting that fits the genre's trappings without oops! embracing genocide of natives and theft of land as a required part of the entertainment. (I'm about ready to give up on trying to write the explicitly anti-Authority parts and just "don't depict them positively and leave reactions to player choice", but I'm also well aware of cases like PATROL where not actively writing in "Rhodesiaboos gently caress off" wasn't sufficiently overt to get them to gently caress off. Not taking a side in writing may as well be an endorsement.) The only ways around it I've really seen used are just saying "oh it's Fresh Unspoiled Land with No Natives to Care About" which is just the Manifest Destiny angle all over again, except this time it's right. I get the feeling this has turned into unhelpful rambling at this point. tldr "what I'm after": magic cowboy knights errant protecting their homes without inadvertently writing in deeply morally compromised takes as part of the setting. "erase all of the morally complicated parts of the genre" feels like a copout. there must be another way.
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Jul 21, 2021 01:09
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You are barely surviving in the post apocalypse and an alien invader who may be responsible for said apocalypse is going into overdrive to attempt to stamp you out of existence.
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Jul 21, 2021 01:25
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I think what most people really want out of a western-themed thing is to gun-sling, talk in a drawl, stare down an outlaw, rob a train, protect a prospecting claim, and get deputized.
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Jul 21, 2021 01:38
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Splicer posted:I think the question is what do you want to from a western? If you take the colonialism/manifest destiny out of westerns what's left? Not a hypothetical question. A game where you intentionally took out all the bad stuff so you could play without it, like a textbook that says "Some poo poo happened in the South in the 1860s, but let's focus on how great the textiles coming out of there were, right?" Not just a copout, an actually abhorrent thing.
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Jul 21, 2021 01:40
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Leperflesh posted:I think what most people really want out of a western-themed thing is to gun-sling, talk in a drawl, stare down an outlaw, rob a train, protect a prospecting claim, and get deputized. The western genre should be beyond ideological differences 
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Jul 21, 2021 01:53
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Westerns celebrate the imposition of (some kind of) order over chaotic lawlessness. Unfortunately, much of what the genre understands to be "chaotic lawlessness" is cultures that nobody bothered to understand. If you excise that element, you can have a kickass guilt-free western like Star Wars Ep IV or 80% of first edition Necromunda.
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Jul 21, 2021 02:00
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Yeah going Sci-Fi with it is probably the best way to do Western stuff if you don't want to directly tackle the problematic aspects of the genre
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Jul 21, 2021 02:09
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I'm gonna cut completely against the grain here and recommend looking at Boot Hill, one of the old versions (I asked some friends who have been looking at it recently and they recommended 2e or 3e, with 3e being d20 based and having a Luck stat over 2e's d% system). It is likely pretty loving full of colonialist racism (the only reason I'm applying a modifier here is I haven't read it myself much), but these older versions specifically look at setting up the campaign sandbox and methods of play in the way you want as simple, specific mechanics among the squabbling colonial factions. So you can get a lot of grist and a workable easy DIY framework from Boot Hill, then mill it into the specifically anti-colonialist version you'd like.
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Jul 21, 2021 02:21
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I still want to do a game inspired by Steel Ball Run one of these days.
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Jul 21, 2021 03:22
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Firefly did a pretty clever thing in filling the role of "savages" with hyper-aggressive non- agency-having failed experiment subjects. I'd argue that's a better route than sentient-but-always-Evil fantasy races, or any of the other analogies for indigenous people. The genre requires a hostile faction that can't be reasoned with and only understands violence, and it's good that we've seen a shift away from colonialism's "people who used to live here" to brainwashed fanatics or robots programmed for war crime. 40k's Orks are refreshing in that fighting is a joyful experiences in their culture, and brings them meaning and satisfaction.
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Jul 21, 2021 04:05
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Leperflesh posted:I think what most people really want out of a western-themed thing is to gun-sling, talk in a drawl, stare down an outlaw, rob a train, protect a prospecting claim, and get deputized. Oh, oh, Final Bid! How did I forget about Final Bid?
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Jul 21, 2021 05:29
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It seems like there is no way out. If you make the "savages" actually inhuman and without agency, you have basically just made a game that says "what if the colonizers were right?" If you make the land truly empty, same thing. "Manifest destiny but correct." If you just make a game that is real and honest about what went on, it will upset a lot of people that you are playing if not explicitly racist characters, then at best ones who are directly contributing towards explicitly racist goals. If you make a game about playing as the indigenous people resisting the colonizers, that could be fantastic, and it could be in the old west, but I don't know if it would actually be properly "a western." You can ignore it all and just have a game of rootin tootin pistols at dawn yeehaw, but that approach has already been called "abhorrent" in this thread. It really seems like a "pick your poison" type of situation. You won't get everyone on board no matter what you do. If you're playing cowboys, then either you're playing as colonizers who bear some complicity in atrocity or you're playing a game that erases atrocity to some extent.
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Jul 21, 2021 06:15
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I think I may have posted this elsewhere, but to me the defining feature of Westerns isn't that a land is being colonised but that a land is rough and unsettled, and law comes from the barrel of a gun. Maybe the answer is to have that breakdown of law and order come from some other source instead. There's a reason why post-apocalypse games often feel Wild-West-y, after all.Jimbozig posted:If you make the land truly empty, same thing. "Manifest destiny but correct." I feel the blow is softened here if there's a really good reason why the land is truly empty. Like, maybe it's a place of no honour where no great deed is commemorated, but people back home sure will pay through the nose for those pretty glowing rocks you sometimes find there. At that point it becomes a story about manifest destiniers setting themselves up to get hosed in the rear end by karma.
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Jul 21, 2021 07:25
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Whybird posted:I think I may have posted this elsewhere, but to me the defining feature of Westerns isn't that a land is being colonised but that a land is rough and unsettled, and law comes from the barrel of a gun. Maybe the answer is to have that breakdown of law and order come from some other source instead. There's a reason why post-apocalypse games often feel Wild-West-y, after all. I'm getting an early Arthuriana vibe from this part. The Roman Empire has collapsed, telling the provinces to look to their defences. Vortigern has invited the Saxons over to settle as mercenaries... which hasn't stopped the raids. And now some nobody has ended up with a sword, which is no basis for a system of elective government. quote:I feel the blow is softened here if there's a really good reason why the land is truly empty. Genuine Terra Nulla has been rare for good reason, but the Falkland Islands qualified. And Antarctica arguably still does. It's just hard to have NPCs in Antarctica
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Jul 21, 2021 07:46
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neonchameleon posted:Genuine Terra Nulla has been rare for good reason, but the Falkland Islands qualified. And Antarctica arguably still does. It's just hard to have NPCs in Antarctica Yeah, definitely, you need to come up with some plot reason why it's that way (I had no idea that Terra Nulla was a term but I like it!) and why, if it's so awful, people want to colonise it, but "a new discovery has made a previously worthless natural resource valuable" or "a new discovery has made a previously inhospitable land settleable" feel like they could work. I think also thematically removing the nature of the land being colonised from actual historical atrocities helps: "we discovered how to cross the ocean and now we're colonising a big continent to the west of the Old World with tobacco, cotton and sugar, but it's somehow uninhabited" feels worse than "we discovered how to cast long-range teleport spells reliably and now we're colonising a ruined underground city the size of a country filled with valuable mana deposits" even though they're both likely to lead to the kind of rooting, tooting and shooting that you're after.
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Jul 21, 2021 08:30
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