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For all that I spoke badly about CthulhuTech 2nd edition's beta, I do like how pleasant their PR person martian_bob has been in meeting concerns. I mentioned the parts about Trivia 5 and Hobby 5 mocking the players for taking them, and he replied "We're definitely not going for mockery or dismissiveness. I'll bring this up before our next editing pass for tone." Then when me and some other people raised concerns over "Seduction (Subjugation-in-the-sense-of-BDSM)" being an actual skill+specialization, he wrote "No idea why this was chosen for inclusion. You're not the only one who's concerned, we know that the eyes of the community are going to be on us especially in this area, we're making a concerted effort to stay away from the problematic depictions we had in the past." It kind of feels like they're honestly trying to be good, and that's kind of nice? MonsieurChoc posted:While that's funny, I don't think that works because at least some of those bonuses are added to the total isntead of the number of dices rolled. That actually makes it easier; because every rolled dice has to be a 1, getting +1 to total and +1d to your dice pool have the same effect on the total. Rolling fewer dice just raise the probability that they all come up 1's. LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 22:54
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Kurieg posted:He discovered Patreon, and of course went with the monthly schedule rather than the "per comic produced" Schedule. That's not very nice, but when comparing people who run bad Kickstarters to Aaron Diaz, I feel that we must remember to Diaz' credit that Diaz at least has a very consistent history of actually getting his comics out. Eventually. At a rate of less than 1/month. Often after missing several self-imposed deadlines. But at least there are actual comics you can read.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:42
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Halloween Jack posted:Another pet peeve of mine is rulesets with a difficulty chart that goes like this: One of the examples I think illustrates this the best are skills names "Mathematics". Some things would be just flat-out impossible to do who don't have the required knowledge, like doing vector calculus with only a high school education in mathematics. But to someone with a master's degree in mathematics, vector calculus is probably not all that difficult. Is vector calculus then an Impossible Mathematics test, or an Easy Mathematics test? Or is it an Easy test for the university-graduate and an Impossible test for the high-school graduate, just to make things extra difficult?
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Oct 9, 2015 20:42
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The Lone Badger posted:Railguns won't work underwater either - the slug will tear itself apart almost instantaneously. Supercavitating railgun slugs. 
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Nov 21, 2015 23:03
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gradenko_2000 posted:That's an even more obscure RPG conversion than Duckman. When I listened to the April Fools' Duckman RPG review, I thought that it was based on an entirely made-up 90's cartoon, mixing all the tropes of low-budget "underground" animation into one parody that then was the basis for an entirely fictional RPG; one of those completely forgotten shows that occasionally gets mentioned by someone who was a fan, but has otherwise been so forgotten that basically only IMDB and a fansite from the 90's remembers it exists. I only learned today that Duckman was an actual cartoon.
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Nov 22, 2015 05:09
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theironjef posted:We carry on the conversation about replacing simple terms with "round" with colorful terms like "escapade" and discuss the merits and flaws of doing so. Then questions. I think you could have devoted more time to discussing the value of language being used to create impressions and expectations, and how some terms might better encapsulate a concept than the D&D-isms. As an example, I tend to regard "DM", "GM", "Storyteller", and "Referee" to imply different things about the role; the Dungeon Master is someone who manages a dungeon, that being the entirety of the game; a Game Master is one who holds control over the game in general and absolute terms; a Storyteller is one who has the job of telling a story; and a Referee is someone whose job it is to adjudicate rules. In more detail, a term like 'Storyteller' implies that it's their job to tell a story, which sets expectations for what they and non-ST players are supposed to do. And sometimes simply using D&D terms implies the wrong things. D&D and games copying it have a history of using 'Dexterity' for the speed-agility attribute, but in modern parlance 'dexterity' is fine motor skill, while the ability to reposition one's body quickly is in the sports-medicinal world terms 'agility'. Some games blindly copy D&D (and I hate them for it), but sometimes I think there are subtler reasons for choosing one word over another than 'avoid lawsuits'. 'Stamina', 'Health', 'Constitution', and 'Endurance' all have their own connotations, and sometimes you want to avoid certain connotations in order to control player expectations.
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Dec 15, 2015 20:33
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier Part 7: "They were all written almost half a century ago, we’ve all heard them, and John Cleese is a lot funnier than you." The way you're quoting things from the book, and the way they're described, there's very little advice here, and even less analysis - just John Wick telling you how he does things, and how awesome it is when he does things, because everyone obeys the Wick and his Glare of Doom. Often combined with anecdotes that are mostly about Wick being teh best evar, and only a tenuous connection at hand. Or this: quote:One of the best games I ever ran. I'll tell you someday. No, see Wick, you're not my friend or associate. You're someone whose book I'm reading - you tell me now, instead of teasing me with wild tales. You have more than enough space in your self-published book to tell the whole loving story. Also, this: quote:Your job as a player—and my job as a GM—is to entertain the other people at the table. We do not sit down at the table to entertain ourselves. There’s a word for that and you can do it in your hotel room all by yourself. gently caress that poo poo. I'm there to have fun for my own sake only, especially at conventions where I don't know anyone. I try to make things enjoyable for everyone when I play RPGs, but I'm not going to sacrifice my own enjoyment (beyond reasonable limits) for the sake of other people's entertainment. Perhaps Wick meant some nuanced thing about not having fun in a way that makes other people have less fun if you could have had fun in a way that didn't make the other players have less fun... but then he could bloody well write so.
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Dec 24, 2015 11:38
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Doresh posted:I dunno, "flowery prose about an immortal girl drowning for 200 years" could qualify as softcore guro. That's gotta be a kink somewhere. Well, "causing suffering through insurmountable challenges" seems to be Wick's kink. :V (Also, it's total bullshit. Drowning causes death through asphyxiation, which by itself is a fairly pleasant way to go. The brain becomes starved of oxygen and unable to think coherently until is suffers massive brain death, which is basically painless. The rest of the body then dies over a fairly long period - two days - as the various cells suffer cell death. Drowning is extremely unpleasant because of the impulse to breathe combined with the build-up of carbon dioxide in the lungs, which triggers a panic attack. However, once you've breathed water, pretty much all he biological impulses that cause distress go away. In most people, this is kind of a moot point since they're dying. The character in question, though, just regenerates from the physical damage, so once her lungs are filled with water, all the pain and distress would go away. In short, the character would most probably experience 200 years of 30-second periods of wakeyness interrupted by falling unconscious, dying, and then regenerating. In other words, 200 years of uneasy sleep. Like the rat and Ed Harris in The Abyss, only more unconsciousness. The 200 years of repeated, panicked asphyxiation is based on a really weird idea wherein the lungs apparently refill with air as part of the regeneration process and the human ability to get used to strong sensory stimuli is completely ignored.)
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Dec 26, 2015 20:28
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John Wick wants to add nuance to the portrayal of race in D&D. The problem is, he doesn't want to be nuanced about it. No actual application of critical theory or analysis, just black-and-white 'no john you are the demons'. Like this without the funny: 
LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Dec 27, 2015 |
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Dec 26, 2015 22:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier Part 13 quote:Thou shall... This only works if you exclusively game with people whose responsibilities never come in the way. If people have lots of free evenings, but some work overtime based on workload demands they have no control over, it may be better to move the gaming day around than to be inflexible. quote:... only kill a character when you have a drat good reason. This really is a matter of taste. quote:... give your players something beautiful to care about with all their hearts and souls, then give them a villain who crushes it mercilessly and laughs in their faces. This is the key to all drama. And here we have the reason John Wick tells all these stories about himself being a jerk; he seems to think that pointlessly evil and mean villains are the only way to have drama. gently caress you John Wick, have you ever read/seen a romantic drama unfold? They don't need evil villains, or even villains, unless you count "misunderstandings" as a villain that mercilessly crushes someone's dreams of a relationship and laughs in their face. Lots of truly great drama is built around having people trying their best to be good coming to blows - and the drama and tragedy comes from how neither side can easily be painted at evil or even mean, precisely because neither side are petty enough to laugh in the opposition's face. Man-versus-nature stories don't have villains at all, yet make for great drama too.
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Dec 28, 2015 10:27
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theironjef posted:Here is an Afterthought for you guys, hopefully you want to discuss favorite campaign settings with us. Delta Green. It's an excellent adaptation of the Cthulhu Mythos to the 90's zeitgeist with the message that perhaps the greatest cosmic horror is the great indifference of man against man. Almost all the villains are people who want to harness the Mythos for their own petty benefits, which is a chilling thought. The writing is top-notch, with every page dripping with plot hooks one can craft an entire campaign from. It's full of NPCs that are ready to come into conflict with each other, or that the players can make come into conflict with each other for their own purposes.
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Dec 29, 2015 21:15
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 Chapter 5: Optional Rules This chapter details rules so detailed that they're not even used in the Advanced rules. There's not much meat to get into here, since there are many small rules that do very little all in all. There are:
The rest of the book is tables and gun stats. I'll go into detail about some of these though. First, Phoenix Command is one of few RPGs that actually care about which direction characters are facing. This, together with the spotting rules, makes for a game where identifying where an enemy is becomes an important part of combat. This adds a fairly novel and realistic aspect to a firefight, but at the same time the rules are very time-consuming. Counters used on the map must have distinguishable facings, and both Referee and players need to keep track of who can see what. The book seem to imply a kind of hive-mind approach where both sides can see anything seen by anyone on their side, which is convenient, but a kind of giant, gaping hole in the realism. At the same time, like many games, there are rules for spotting enemies, but not any rules for losing sight of enemies. It can be handled by the judgement of the Referee, but it means that this game with its detailed rules for spotting enemies and player facing does not itself have structured rules for hiding and setting up quick ambushes. That said, I feel the need to applaud the game for at least trying. I had some fun playing through Rainbow Six: 3 this holiday, and from my own research into room clearing and military operations, reconnaissance and spotting enemies before they spot you is extremely important, yet most games gloss over it entirely. There are practical reasons for this - Phoenix Command demonstrates that it can be a laborious process - but the failure of many games to even try is at times grating. (On that note, Phoenix Command is almost perfect as a tabletop Rainbow Six game.) The rules for hearing enemies are very realistic - everything is basically rated in dB, and you compare the volume of the sound you make against the background to determine whether you can hear it. Fairly simple, and I've run a short game using these rules; they add a tactical dimension where you can know where enemies are if they make too much noise, and sneak around and set up ambushes by carefully managing the sound you make yourself. That scene in Enemy at the Gates where Zaitsev masks his shots with artillery fire? This game has rules that let you do that. It's not always clear what kind of sound masks other sounds though, which is a let-down with these rules. There are rules for planning your actions in this game, adding the realistic delay that comes in having to think about something. I can understand why these rules are optional, since they add a whole lot of overhead (you need to keep track of what you're planning, when you started planning, how many 'actions' your plan requires, etc.) and complexity. I've been told from more seasoned PCCS veterans that these rules completely change the way the game plays and in some ways are preferable, because of the lulls in combat they create. I should note that "taking cover" and "returning fire" never use these rules, which is explicitly noted. Instead, it's for things like "moving out of cover, advancing down a corridor, opening the door, throwing a grenade in, ..." etc. A bit like the spotting rules, these are an attempt at realism that gets incredibly complex and time-consuming, yet at the same time it's interesting to see how that kind of realism actually affects a game, both from the realism-side and the game-side of things. The game has morale-rules. Morale is, again, an often forgotten element of combat in RPGs, at best relegated to a specific niche attack, whereas in the real world all attacks on an enemy wear at their morale and willingness to fight. That said, the rules in Phoenix Command aren't very good and basically never allow characters to recover morale and get back into a fight. Their realism is more guesswork than the game's usual detailed physical models. (I know this because I happen to have read several research papers by the US Army on suppressive fire, and the models the US Army produced look nothing like PCCS' rules.) The rules for knock-down add a third (fourth if you include the Morale rules) for getting enemies to stop shooting. There's killing enemies, incapaciting enemies, scaring enemies, and now simple knocking them flat on their back with the sheer momentum of being hit by a bullet. I think that last one is a bit overkill, and further not very realistic. Yes, people sometimes fall down when shot, but that has less to do with the momentum of the bullet and more to do with mental shock inducing a vasovagal syncope, or organ disruption causing momentary unconsciousness - which is already modelled by the incapacitation rules. PCCS has 8-second long combat turns (almost never used) divided into 2-second combat phases, which are divided into 0.5-second impulses, which themselves are divided into 0.1-second Master Phasing Counts. The MPCs are not particularly egregious; they're provided as a tool to resolve what happens when two multiple things happen in the same Impulse and you need to know, truly, what happened first. For example, bullets have a Time of Flight (TOF) value that tell you how long they take to reach their target, in MPCs. If you get hit by a bullet the same MCP you fire a weapon, you take either a -10 or -20 penalty, depending on whether you make your Knockout roll. However, at short ranges many guns have TOF 0, just raising once more the question of what happens when two characters shoot each other at the same time. Additionally, there are no rules explaining what happens if the TOF is so large a target can move back into cover before it hits - does the bullet curve after them? So, Phoenix Command. A revolutionary and unique game full of novel ideas that even 30 years later still haven't been copied. It is a complex game, make no mistake, but at the same time a lot of its reputation comes more from being poorly laid out and edited than actual complexity. It has lots of flaws, but at the same time I think its unique ideas and willingness to take the extra step to be a realistic game is admirable. There's a lot to be learned here, both good and bad. Table Count: 36 (+10) 80's Action Film Dialogue Count: 29 (+4) "My loyal troop! You came back to save me!" - Captain Stora "Actually sir, we came back for your gun..." Gill the Treacherous
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Dec 31, 2015 19:34
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Doresh posted:I wonder how things would've went if it was released in modern day, when writers have figured how to edit and properly convey their system. Not to toot my own horn too much but... I'm working on a retroclone. If I'm lucky I might be able to tell you the answer to that within a year or two. : D
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Dec 31, 2015 20:52
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PurpleXVI posted:Here are all the animals they left out of the core. In total, they seem to be: Bears, Sharks, Dolphins, Rats, Mice, Squirrels, Rabbits, Bats, Horses, Cows, Deer, Goats, Gazelles, Seals, Raccoons, Mongeese and Hyenas. And probably a few variants of those here and there. As usual, we get some weird drat design decisions all over the place, usually tied in no apparent way to what the actual animals are like or what human stereotypes of them are. It's a design decision that seems to be borne entirely from the idea that the fursonas need to have their own mechanical niches, even when that makes no sense. Like the medic-lizards and techie-raccoons from the core book. Together with the D&D-isms that occur from time to time, I suspect it has to do with a very game-balance-over-fluff mindset. PurpleXVI posted:So there's a bit on rats and mice. The rats are dull, the mice were created by the rats for the purpose of slave labour, and the remainder of Vector society didn't do anything because if they liberated them, suddenly they'd have to take care of them for a while. Where's all the profit-motivated corporate charity and benevolence? All of the "logical" behavior that somehow ties profit to doing good and noble things for everyone? My question is, why? Why would people-in-rat-fursuits want to make people-in-mice-fursuits to be their slaves?
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Jan 2, 2016 18:30
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Rand Brittain posted:He did write the majority of Mage 20, though. And it flavoured it with that particular Brucato flavour. So prepare for pages of some guy ranting at you about Abrahamic religions and appropriating trans-people so he can gush about magical hermaphrodites. And don't you dare eat pizza at the RPG table. That's the blackest sin there is to Brucato.
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Jan 3, 2016 22:29
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Rand Brittain posted:I could forgive the ranting with a sad shake of the head, I guess. What really bugs me about M20 is that it's a celebration of my least favorite flavor of Mage—all navel-gazing and none of the philosophical respectability. It also gives the Traditions a thorough greywashing when they really needed a whitewashing, to the point that the Crafts all get together and make their own Traditions with blackjack and hookers because the existing one was so full of itself. The game and a lot of its adherents claim it's 2e/Revised-agnostic in the sense that it's 2e-centric with notes on how to implement changes from Revised edition, but it really just pays lip service to Revised edition while being entirely 2e in tone. I'm not planning to start a 2e/Revised flamewar here, but I think it's reasonable to claim that when a game has such a divided fanbase, claiming to be impartial while at the same time neglecting Revised is a pretty bad attitude. Among the greater faults Brucato makes in M20 is to completely steamroll the concept of a Paradigm. Several examples will involve characters using magick that is out-of-paradigm to them; the one that most readily comes to mind in the Virtual Adept casting spells with Kung Fu and dropping acid when the entire point of Virtual Adepts is that they believe the universe is a computer they can reprogram. There's also the occasionally hilarious "Focus" each splat is given, which is related to how the cast magick, and for the Virtual Adepts include "androgynous clothing" and "manga-inspired hairstyles". Count Chocula posted:I dunno if that's a dealbreaker, since both Grant Morrison and Alan Moore think that and they write awesome stuff. Is he talking about Chaos Magick/PopMagick? 'Cause that's all over oMage - did it come out before or after Invisibles? They're very similar. I love oMage, though. I re-read the passage I was referring to and it's not actually about the Mystic Hermaphrodite archetype as much as it is about Brucato betraying his biases about trans people. He steps in the salad when talking about Verbena hierarchies: M20 posted:Two leaders (taking priest and priestess roles although both might be male, female, or transgender) govern the larger covens And later he drops this line: M20 posted:And between the old associations of mystic power and the new freedom to transcend gender roles without getting burnt at the stake for it, the idea of gender identity is more fluid – and more magickal – than ever before. Especially in queer, polyamorous, transhumanist, neotribal, and psychedelic cultures, it’s often more unusual to be conventionally “straight” than it is to hold, embrace, and enjoy the hell out of an identity outside the traditional polarities. Quite a lot of trans people - me included - take umbrage at any claim or implication that we're not male-or-female-(circle-one), and several other trans people I've talked with, like me, are offended by the appropriation of trans identities as something "magickal" rather than something mundane and normal. That he writes this betrays an ignorance and/or lack of regard for the disenfranchised minority he tries to score brownie points with by including in his book. (Also the claim that transhumanist circles are more trans than not. :V ) I'd be tempted to write a review of M20 here - and there are some hillarious gems in it, like how picking up 6 Paradox permanently turns you into a ticking timebomb - but it would be a mean-spirited hate-reading, so I'm not sure whether it would be fair to do so...
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Jan 4, 2016 11:30
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Count Chocula posted:Letting a Virtual Adept channel Neo from The Matrix makes perfect sense, especially in a game that shared DNA with The Invisibles and other inspirations for that movie. Does Brucato take a Chaos Magick 'whatever works' view? Even without that acid still fits the paradigm, since tons and tons of computer guys like Steve Jobs and the EFF founder took it. My objections are less about people doing magick through Kung Fu and dropping acid than it is "these people who believe that all magick is computer programming do magick through Kung Fu and dropping a acid." Especially when the primary distinguishing feature between the character splats is how they do magick. On the topic of anything goes, anything goes except non-conventional religious belief. Nothing is true, everything is permitted... except genuine religious belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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Jan 4, 2016 14:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:As someone who thinks RoleMaster is really quite the elegant system (once I wrapped my head around it), I got a real kick out of your Phoenix Command write-up. Thanks! ^_^ gradenko_2000 posted:You mentioned using PCCS for its hyper-realistic depiction of firearms combat, but to not use the character generation rules. How would you do this? I know that RoleMaster, like Sword's Path Glory, was one of those add-on rules supplement things where you were supposed to "convert" your D&D character's stats into its own numerical scale and work from there, but I get the impression that even if you did the same direct assignment of stats to characters (Richard Marcinko should be ~this~ strong and fast), you're still going to run into the issue of your derived stats shifting around with every move you make. You mean other than creating a system from the bottom-up and calling it a retroclone? In general, I'd simply say to use the approximately correct derived stats for your game. The only stats that really matter in combat are Maximum Speed, GCSL, ISF, and KV. (And Health, which you should never use.) Most games have a movement stat corresponding to a number of yards/meters per turn that can substitute for MS, for example. gradenko_2000 posted:You mentioned things like pistols being insufficiently covered by Table 3B, and the M16 not actually being represented on any table despite being a critical weapon. Did you or someone else ever come up with a rectification for this? That's the Basic rules. The Advanced rules (which are more detailed yet also clearer) have, IIRC, the full range of values to use. It's just a sign of extremely bad design that the Basic rules don't include the tabulated values corresponding to the stats of several of the weapons you're expected to use.
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Jan 4, 2016 20:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:One more follow-up: what are your thoughts/opinions on the Hand to Hand module of PCCS, or is it mostly just the Firearms module that you've studied? If it's PCCS-related, and I've been able to get my hands on it, I have studied it! The Hand-to-Hand module is about as much complexity as one could expect from the Firearms Combat System, but there's a lot of potential extra complexity in anticipating enemy moves (since you can/need to allocate blocks to enemy strikes) and trying to find a strategy that'll work against a foe. I've not played/analysed it enough to really know what it plays like in practice, but it's certainly unique. It could very easily be converted to another system, even, since all melee weapons use the D&D-style XdY+Z for how deep into a target they penetrate. It may not translate perfectly, but, say, Call of Cthulhu's melee weapons list translates fairly well. My quick analysis is that it may be really fun for duels or short fights against two opponents, but it lacks some tactical depth because there's just not that many options, and because of the decision-making, table-checking, and multiplication you have to do, it'll quickly bog down with any appreciable number of opponents.
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Jan 5, 2016 04:59
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