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Vadun posted:Sprawlrunner, in Savage Worlds works great. I like it too because Savage Worlds is good, but I wish they hadn't done the same old song and dance of giving trolls an intelligence penalty.
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Sep 21, 2021 15:47
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Mirage posted:Serious answer: Another vote for Hard Wired Island, it's fantastic. I'm still surprised at the near-complete absence of Resistance hacks. There's Facade & Facade Transfusion, and... that's about it. "Spire does Shadowrun" would do fantastic in the current market where none of the Shadowrun knockoffs really scratch the itch, and the system fits well for keeping Shadowrun's character archetypes relatively balanced. After all, it manages with the wide spread the system already has.
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Sep 21, 2021 16:07
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SkyeAuroline posted:I'm still surprised at the near-complete absence of Resistance hacks. There's Facade & Facade Transfusion, and... that's about it. "Spire does Shadowrun" would do fantastic in the current market where none of the Shadowrun knockoffs really scratch the itch, and the system fits well for keeping Shadowrun's character archetypes relatively balanced. After all, it manages with the wide spread the system already has. I don't know. I feel like most of it would transition over well, but I'd have trouble thinking of a full list of domains without it feeling forced. It's mostly Decking I feel wouldn't work with them now that I think about it. Roll decking and uh... corporate since this is a corporate server? That would be practically every roll.
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Sep 21, 2021 18:52
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Shadows of the Beanstalk is really, really good cyberpunk, if you like Genesys. If you don't, then you won't. And it's a little more cyberchrome than cyberpunk. HWI is, as stated, rock solid. Infinity 2d20 has great computer hacking and social hacking (it's all "network") rules, and is a rock solid system, though its universe goes beyond our solar system which is not usually what people want from a cyberpunk game. But it plays cyberpunk through and through. SkyeAuroline posted:I'm still surprised at the near-complete absence of Resistance hacks. There's Facade & Facade Transfusion, and... that's about it. "Spire does Shadowrun" would do fantastic in the current market where none of the Shadowrun knockoffs really scratch the itch, and the system fits well for keeping Shadowrun's character archetypes relatively balanced. After all, it manages with the wide spread the system already has. I share the befuddlement of the lack of resistance hacks. My suspicion is that the domains and so forth make it this weird hardest combination of PbtA and Blades. It's just as much work to make a Resistance hack as a Blades hack, but you can't phone it in - a good Resistance hack requires an understanding of genre like a good PbtA hack. Vadun posted:I don't know. I feel like most of it would transition over well, but I'd have trouble thinking of a full list of domains without it feeling forced. Make the internet its own domain, so the question isn't the domain, but what you're trying to do - hackers become good by focusing on the verb. And, like all true cyberpunk, everybody can hack in one or two ways, by being good at the verb instead of the domain. Here's the domains I came up with for my Resistance cyberpunk hack, Emerald City Blues. quote:AUTHORITY. The Cops, both those invested with power by the government and the private police forces with even greater reach. Those with the Authority Domain are versed in the hierarchies of the police, the military, private contract security forces, and the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the government and the courts. CitizenKeen fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Sep 21, 2021 |
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Sep 21, 2021 19:08
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There's ascendancy as well, though I haven't read it. https://ironsparksyris.itch.io/ascendancy-beta
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Sep 21, 2021 19:52
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I'll throw in a recommendation for Technoir, if you like "sleazy Raymond Chandler detective stories but with cyborgs" in your cyberpunk.
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Sep 21, 2021 20:55
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Question: I'm not entirely sure if this is the best space for it, but I am looking for playtesters for a solitaire board game I've written up. I've got the entire thing ready to Print'n'play or playtest via Vassal but I basically need someone who's not me to take a look at what I've created before I go 100% ham with it. Now I know that there are more dedicated spaces like on Boardgamegeek or the TradGameDesigners forum, but I've gotten precariously little feedback on those over a timeslot of several years and I'd rather ask here for help than anywhere else. The game in question is a solitaire strategy game called "Rise and Decline of a Galactic Imperium", inspired by GMTs "The Hunters" solitaire wargaming series, but other than the most basic strokes, there's little similarity. Think of it as a 70s style SSI boardgame. Tha explains alot of the small interlocking bits. The game can be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oOP8ZA8mPa7BcuavmO-xPegLLCWvMosG?usp=sharing. Any takers?
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Sep 21, 2021 22:48
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hyphz posted:Johnny Badhair there, I think he was one of the rarer cards in the expansion.. That was certainly my impression from other game reports, there were certain cards you just had to have 5 to have a viable competitive deck (we just never got that competitive in our own play). I recall Whirlpool of Blood was another of those. My issue, and I assume a fairly common one for CCGs, is the huge piles of duplicate cards you end up with as you try to sift through and find the rares you don't have. Can't even imagine how many Thorns of the Lotus I have... Do I just throw those away? Wallpaper my office with them? It's not like any other Shadowfist player won't have 100 of them as well.
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Sep 22, 2021 00:13
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Random packs stocked with duplicate commons is the worst card game publishing model, except for all the other ones ever tried.
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Sep 22, 2021 01:26
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Honestly the recent version of Cyberpunk is way cleaner and simpler than all previous versions.
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Sep 22, 2021 03:41
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CitizenKeen posted:Random packs stocked with duplicate commons is the worst card game publishing model, except for all the other ones ever tried. The living card game model, or other "we just sell you the whole game and maybe some expansions" is pretty cool. Though those also usually aren't games with deckbuilding, well except deckbuilders, but that usually doesn't scratch the same itch for folks.
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Sep 22, 2021 09:41
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The Keyforge model is interesting but the other day I looked it up and apparently the algorithm was down so they couldn't make any more decks.
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Sep 22, 2021 10:02
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So, Meguey and Vincent Baker's new game, Under Hollow Hills just dropped to backers. And it has a rather unusual rule. Inside the "communication and consent" section, which normally deals with the X-Card, is a rule stating: Players may fudge dice rolls. When asked about this on Discord, the response was (paraphrased): It's to deal with the situation where something you'd X-card is going to happen, but your PC has the chance to stop it if a roll succeeds. If you X-card before the roll, it breaks up play and might not even be necessary. If you X-card after failing the roll, ditto, plus the situation has to be retconned. This bit's a quote: "What [you] really need is just to roll a hit and it's no big deal." Does this seem reasonable in the light of the more collaborative narrative style? Or does it - as some commented - conflict with the rule that "if failure wouldn't be interesting don't roll the dice"?
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Sep 22, 2021 11:12
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I've always thought that an "X-card" was for signaling to the group that they're in personally uncomfortable territory that needs to be backed-away from (to phrase it very broadly), and in that context I wouldn't think that dice-rolling would be relevant at all.
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Sep 22, 2021 11:19
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I think it's fine, it sounds somewhat close to what most people I play with have held, which is that sometimes you realize it shouldn't have been a roll but only after you rolled. Player comfort is more important than following the rules super strict, and this is one consequence of that.
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Sep 22, 2021 11:23
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In every game I've played and ran the X-Card is the "We're touching someting that's traumatic / unwanted in my game time can we roll back to a point where this wouldn't have happened?" and then there's the fade to black card that's just "This is touching on my discomfort zone, can we just move on?"
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Sep 22, 2021 11:42
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Mr.Misfit posted:The game in question is a solitaire strategy game called "Rise and Decline of a Galactic Imperium", inspired by GMTs "The Hunters" solitaire wargaming series, but other than the Quoting so I can take a look later, though I don’t know that I’ll have enough time anytime soon. I would also suggest crossposting to the solo rpg thread, unless I’m misunderstanding & just need to wake up.
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Sep 22, 2021 11:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've always thought that an "X-card" was for signaling to the group that they're in personally uncomfortable territory that needs to be backed-away from (to phrase it very broadly), and in that context I wouldn't think that dice-rolling would be relevant at all. I think the logic was that, for example, a player might hate the idea of a child being harmed in an RPG but be absolutely fine with rescuing a child from harm, which might involve rolling.
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Sep 22, 2021 11:49
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Gut feeling: I'd probably rather go with a rule where you can auto-succeed at a task, but it costs you a setback elsewhere. You save the child no questions asked but by the same token the villain escapes this time, equally no questions asked. Is it unfair to the party to have a plan go wrong because one player has a thing about one element? Probably a little. Does it give the GM too much leverage to make the party fail at something at-will? Might do. But do tough choice situations like that come up all the time in fiction and do the heroes in stories suffer setbacks for the sake of their morals? Absolutely. And work the rest out in your group if you keep having the first two issues. And yeah I always understood X-card situations to be like "we can't even bring this up in the abstract" and neither the player fudge rule nor mine seem to cover that, and in fact make the situations potentially worse because insensitive groups can now point to the rule and say with that rule we don't need anything like an X-card. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 12:31
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CitizenKeen posted:Make the internet its own domain, so the question isn't the domain, but what you're trying to do - hackers become good by focusing on the verb. And, like all true cyberpunk, everybody can hack in one or two ways, by being good at the verb instead of the domain. Here's the domains I came up with for my Resistance cyberpunk hack, Emerald City Blues.
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Sep 22, 2021 12:58
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hyphz posted:So, Meguey and Vincent Baker's new game, Under Hollow Hills just dropped to backers. And it has a rather unusual rule. I've seen similar sentiments in discussions of safety tools, around how they shouldn't always be negations of content. Sometimes it's okay to say e.g. 'I'll accept this abusive man in the storyline, but he has to die in the end' and the X-card doesn't really handle that very well. Players being able to specifically pull out a W when they need one, does.
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Sep 22, 2021 13:25
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hyphz posted:So, Meguey and Vincent Baker's new game, Under Hollow Hills just dropped to backers. And it has a rather unusual rule. The vibe this gives me is that it allows the player to use the X-card to indicate that the consequences of a failed roll are uncomfortable for them above and beyond just the standard consequences of failure, maybe as an emergent thing -- "hey, I didn't realize this before I rolled, but I honestly can't deal with (bad thing) happening, so can we make it not happen?" That strikes me as a reasonable tool if it's being used in good faith. I think my first instinct as a GM would be to say "okay, so, what consequence can we have here that isn't going to hit a nerve?," but if the easiest option is to just let the character succeed instead, why not? Creating a story and experience that's fun for everyone is the most important thing, not the sanctity of a single die roll. (The obvious caveat, of course, is good faith: that the person using the X-card isn't doing it on every roll because they can't deal with their character ever failing, or doing it specifically to screw with another player, or whatever. Those sorts of situations would clearly force OOC conversation, and probably some questions about whether the player is comfortable in a roleplaying setup involving randomness at all.)
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Sep 22, 2021 13:34
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I think the Bakers have missed the point on the X-Card thing. Firstly, if a situation has come up where if a dice roll fails a thing which would be OOC traumatising to you would happen, and you stay quiet about it and fudge the roll rather than X-Carding, then you have given no signal that you have a problem with that content - and if everyone else was keen on it, there's every chance you will get more. Sure, you stopped the harm to the child this time - but since you didn't say anything and the other players seem to enjoy the situation, what's stopping the ref setting up further instances of harm happening to the child - some of which you can't intervene on? Secondly, it doesn't work in a situation where your PC is not the person who is in a position to stop the unacceptable thing from happening - after all, if "harm to children" would cross a line for you, it doesn't matter if your PC is not there and never witnesses the harm happening, because you the player are still sat there listening to the account of it occurring. If a roll needs to be fudged to prevent content which would be traumatising to you from going into effect, but you aren't making the roll, you need some way of communicating that. If only there were some sort of convenient card based system which could perform that function! Thirdly, not all groups are working in a format which permits fudging to begin with. If you are playing online on a Discord server with a dice bot, you can't fudge the roll in a way which won't be visible to other people. At which point you may as well just say "I'm fudging this" and you're back to a mechanic functionally equivalent to an X-Card. Fourthly, encouraging players to fudge rolls kicks the problem down the road. If there are situations which you positively do not want to be subject to random chance, it will be better for everyone if you actually discuss that and your group explores ways in which those situations don't have to be subject to chance. If it's a thing like "I really don't want that content", then the content can be pulled; if it's a thing like "I really dislike the idea that an unlucky roll might kill my character", maybe it's time to explore diceless systems or less lethal systems. I will say that I can see a small use for this in a situation where a player really would have their day ruined if they failed a particular roll, but for whatever reason they do not feel able or ready to discuss the reasons why with the group. But I feel like that is a situation of false safety which is setting people up for bad experiences later on down the line. A crucial plank of the X-Card thing is that you can use it to flag content but you never, ever have to explain your reasons for doing so if you don't want to. If you are playing a game and on the one hand there is a certain category of content which you positively do not want to encounter, but at the same time you don't ever want to say to the group explicitly "I don't want us to run into that", even on a "tapping the X-Card and not explaining why" level, then this feels like a problem which genuinely cannot be resolved without you a) deciding that potentially encountering that content is a risk you are willing to take (in which case is it actually that much of a problem to you?) or b) deciding that you don't have the baseline level of trust with this group necessary to actually play a game with them. It's substituting out a mechanic which, though it is not perfect and does have its edge cases, has actually helped a lot of people and has been useful in a wide variety of circumstances, and replacing it with a mechanic which to my eyes won't work as well, is useful under more narrow circumstances, and crucially is based on withholding information from other people - in other words, it is a mechanic based on reducing trust, not in increasing trust (which I think the X-Card does). That's not great. The comment about the X-Card breaking up the flow of play is especially troubling because it seems like it's coming from a design mindset that an interruption to the flow of play is more of a problem than potentially pressing on with content which needs X-Carding. Frankly, I think this is muddle-headed thinking: it's far better for the flow of play for X-Card content to get flagged as it comes up so that it can be nipped in the bud, rather than for a player to fudge one roll, two rolls, a dozen rolls as that potential time bomb keeps tick tick ticka tick ticking, and as the content which they have a potential problem with potentially becomes more and more central to the game until when they finally X-Card it's become so thematically central that it's near-impossible to excise it without abandoning the present scenario altogether. Warthur fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 13:42
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Warthur posted:I think the Bakers have missed the point on the X-Card thing.
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Sep 22, 2021 14:01
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it sounds like an awful idea to me. it's just an inverted version of "trying to fix player misbehavior with in-game penalties" -- you are using a fundamentally inappropriate tool, something at the wrong level of abstraction, to try and solve a problem that really just requires communication and trust if something happens in my game that hurts one of my players emotionally or otherwise violates the social contract, i want it to not be in my game any more, not to compromise around it or sweep it under the rug. the player shouldn't be put on the spot to justify their discomfort, or have to immediately halt play and shut everything down if they don't want to, but if they're so uncomfortable that they can't raise the issue at all and need a plausibly deniable way to shut things down that looks like an accident, to completely obviate the need for communication? that's a problem in and of itself, not a solution. and i definitely don't want to do it in a way that undermines the rigor of the game qua game, which is a much less important issue but still something i value! Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 15:02
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Yeah, I'm going to just second what everyone else said. If this was a supplement to the X-card and it clearly stated that it was intended to be used in situation where failing would gently caress someone up far more than is healthy for a game, it'd be fine. As-is, it's a way to solve a problem that isn't the actual problem and kind of encourages people to not actually play the game.
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Sep 22, 2021 15:23
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Thirding the "sounds like a bad idea" thing, it's an attempt to solve out-of-game issues that you should be talking about with in-game mechanics, something that just never works. Make everyone fill out a checklist before the game of stuff they're not okay with and steer clear of it altogether, or talk to your players.
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Sep 22, 2021 15:35
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Sorta reminds of these pissant bullshit I saw on Reddit a while ago: Obviously it's intended to be the opposite of said pissant bullshit, but it's definitely sharing a root issue, which is that the X-Card is and should be 100% separate from the rules. There shouldn't be negative or positive rule aspects associated with it, it shouldn't be connected to the rules in any way, the last loving thing it needs is game theory.
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Sep 22, 2021 16:57
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This is a time where maybe Ron Edwards' Big Model theory is useful. Everything that happens in play is part of a social contract. Using something as ephemeral as a die roll to regulate the overarching social contract (which includes things like "we didn't come here to be genuinely terrified") is frankly demented.
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Sep 22, 2021 17:09
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Gamifying boundaries because having an adult conversation is too difficult I guess.
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Sep 22, 2021 17:46
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Yeah, I'm going to just second what everyone else said. If this was a supplement to the X-card and it clearly stated that it was intended to be used in situation where failing would gently caress someone up far more than is healthy for a game, it'd be fine. As-is, it's a way to solve a problem that isn't the actual problem and kind of encourages people to not actually play the game. The same section does cover the X-Card as well and agreement in advance on controversial things. It's probably worth mentioning that Under Hollow Hills is a fantasy and largely positive game, and so situations like that should not come up regularly. The actual example given was of a child being caught in a giant spider's web in a fairytale realm and a PC attempting to free them, which fits perfectly with the typical tone of those stories if they succeed, but not if the child ends up being eaten by the spider.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:06
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I mean, the whole point of the X-Card is that it's an out-of-game, out-of-band process where a player slams the brakes on a situation that the player is finding uncomfortable. Making you pay an in-game penalty to use it misses the point of it completely.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:21
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This discussion is getting a bit muddled, so let's take a look at the actual text - given that safety tools are meant to be widespread, and all of these have appeared elsewhere, I don't feel it's inappropriate to share them directly for the purposes of discussion.   The "dice fudging" bit is one sentence right at the very end, which cements its place as a thing you use when nothing else quite fits your purposes. The "... and it's no big deal" part of hyphz's quote is something we should keep forefront here. They're not calling for replacing the use of another safety or communication tool, they're saying, "When the failure of the roll would create the personally upsetting situation, just fudge it." That seems perfectly reasonable in the context of the rest of the text.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:45
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Well I'm gonna go ahead and say I get what they're getting at but I have also definitely played with people who would have taken "situation develops in a way you don't like" to include things like "the party is failing this fight or negotiation" and who would have definitely rolled and fudged 100% of the time because the games actual rules fail to state any time where you can't, and I'm missing some safeguards. The best safeguard is obviously not playing with those people, but sometimes you're at a con or something and you don't know the group, and it happens that that's also where you need the communication tools the most.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:21
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Having some kind of way to be able to cut off an emergent or surprising-perhaps-even-to-you level of 'wow, if I fail it's actually going to be super bad and perhaps ruin my entire flavor,' seems good - I'm not sure if "fudge the die roll is a way to do it." Having some kind of situation where you can say "Wow, I blew that roll. Can I take a hit and still protect the captured innocent, free the victim, not get out-argued by the Confederate, etc?" and have it be part of the game flow seems valuable. There is a point where a lot of this is engineering around anxiety, which is diverse and highly variable, however.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:36
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Nessus posted:Having some kind of way to be able to cut off an emergent or surprising-perhaps-even-to-you level of 'wow, if I fail it's actually going to be super bad and perhaps ruin my entire flavor,' seems good - I'm not sure if "fudge the die roll is a way to do it." Having some kind of situation where you can say "Wow, I blew that roll. Can I take a hit and still protect the captured innocent, free the victim, not get out-argued by the Confederate, etc?" and have it be part of the game flow seems valuable. This is a PbtA game so you could technically fudge your roll onto a "success with a cost".
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Sep 22, 2021 21:37
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I think in context it's better and worse than I was expecting. It's better in the sense that it is one tool at the end of a conga line of other tools, all of which are both better explained and would actually be better for this purpose. It's worse in the sense that the idea of fudging your roles is just kind of thrown out there in an offhand way. There is no explanation given as to why you would want to do this. There is no exploration of what situation might make this a more appropriate thing to do than literally any other technique discussed above it. There is no discussion of when it might be actively unhelpful to use the technique. It's just tossed out there on a whim, no depth or detailed thought in evidence behind it, just a declaration that "eh, if you wanna cheat then you get to cheat". Last thought. The section is about "consent and communication". Fudging your dice involves communicating false information (you are claiming to have rolled something you did not), and acting without the consent of the other participants in the game in order to give yourself a success (or success with consequences, or hell, even a failure) that the dice didn''t give you. When it comes to red lines - stuff which would outright make me unhappy and ruin my fun - "I don't want to play with people who I can't trust to be honest with me during gameplay" feels both eminently reasonable and understandable, and something quite likely to come up. If someone has trust issues and actively does not want to play in a game where people lie to each other in this fashion, with the game system's explicit permission, then these consent and communication rules create a barrier to that person participating in any game using them, and it is a barrier which is completely unnecessary, because there are far better tools presented. My inclination is to regard it as a momentary brainfart on the part of the Bakers and ignore it.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:46
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I think writing it into the rules inherently means everyone who agreed to play this game (and read the rules) has consented to that rule. Or should challenge it during session zero, I suppose. I agree completely that it would be very good if the game had actually explained why this might be a tool someone would want to use; but the whole quoted section is very short, it doesn't explain why you'd want to use other external consent tools or what those might be either, so in that sense it's merely similarly vague.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:53
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Anyone remember this occult modern day MMO from 2012?  Funcom has granted a player group the rights to build a tabletop roleplaying game based on the Secret World IP and the kickstarter is slated for next year. Might be good. If its handled by a passionate group of people who know what they are doing. https://massivelyop.com/2021/09/21/funcom-gave-a-player-group-its-blessing-to-build-a-secret-world-ttrpg/ And another thing I'm really excited for is the Blade Runner rpg. Yes you heard that right, Free League, who created the Alien RPG, is set to make a Blade Runner tabletop game based on the book and the two movies. Set to release in 2022. The news story says it will focus on “investigative gameplay” when you play as a Blade Runner, rather than simple bounty hunting.  https://www.wargamer.com/blade-runner-the-roleplaying-game/reveal
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Sep 22, 2021 21:57
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Leperflesh posted:I think writing it into the rules inherently means everyone who agreed to play this game (and read the rules) has consented to that rule. Or should challenge it during session zero, I suppose. I feel like "you can fudge any roll at any time" is one of those things which it's kind of too wide-ranging to meaningfully give consent to, especially since you don't know what's going to be at stake in the rolls in the game. Carte blanche consent for "I can do this thing whenever I like without checking in with you" doesn't work and it is dangerous to pretend it works.
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Sep 22, 2021 22:02
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