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Sometimes I wonder how well things like Tomb of Horrors and WLD would work in Dungeon World, where there's less statblocks to get in the way. Does this make me a bad person?
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Feb 13, 2014 01:14
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Those crit charts are like Dark Heresy's, except with all the fun and  sucked out of them.
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Feb 14, 2014 07:39
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All this talk about World of Darkness makes me sad upon remembering how wonky that Nasuverse RPG reviewed in a prior F&F incarnation was. It's a universe that's like World of Darkness, except less angsty (sorta) and more explosive. And it has everything from street-level humans trying to survive vampiric predators to an imminent not-too-far-future invasion by living avatars of the other systems in Sol getting ready to fulfill an ancient contract and scrub the Earth clean. On that note, I have this urge to review one of the incarnations of Hunter. I don't care much for World of Darkness, but I LOVE Hunter.
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Mar 6, 2014 23:20
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MonsieurChoc posted:I played in a Street Fighter game set in the 1920s. It was pretty awesome, with cheesy world martial arts tournament set in Tibet and evil martial artists trying to use Easter Island for evil. By the end my character had his own submarine, which he had stolen from the japanese mafia. So basically you managed to recreate the 1st, 2nd, and 7th arcs of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by half-accident? 
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Mar 8, 2014 06:16
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 Single-post: SEID IHR DAS ESSEN, NEIN, WER SIND DER JAGERRRR Titan World is a hack for Apocalypse World based on the anime Attack on Titan. I recommend reading that link as Evil Mastermind explains the basics of Apocalypse World quite nicely there, although this is even simpler than base Apocalypse World. If this review seems a bit Spartan, it's because the manual has no artwork whatsoever. Very no-frills. Warning: If you've never, ever seen Attack on Titan, there's some spoilers below in the playbook segment. It's notable for being: A) Rules-light even by the standards of Apocalypse World hacks. B) Absurdly lethal to its PCs. Like, XCOM-level casualty rates. Apocalypse World has the harm clock, Dungeon World has HP, but at least early on Titan World has you either winning or dying en masse. It's true to the source material, at least! So what exactly *is* the premise here? I'll let the manual itself explain: quote:Long ago, the world belonged to humans. Those days vanished, however, when the Titans came. Cheery, yes? Next, the manual lists the stats, and what playbook (read: class) they go with. They are: -Agility (Used for getting where you need to go, when you need to be there, flitting around Titans and reaching spots for an advantageous attack. It is the primary stat for the Natural playbook.) -Execution (Used to when you make a killing blow on Titans. Or humans. You never know! Primary stat for the Warrior playbook.) -Awareness (Your tactical acumen and ability to analyze a situation. Primary stat for the Tactician playbook.) -Discipline (Keeping your own poo poo and that of your teammates together when said poo poo has hit the fan. Primary stat for the Leader playbook.) -Rage (Sheer hatred of the Titans and all-around anger-mismanagement. Used for breaking out of hopeless situations through sheer gumption. Primary stat for the Shifter playbook.) Next is a list of selectable first and last names for characters. You don't get a last name to start with---the odds are against your first character surviving your first sortie. Now for the basic moves. As per usual Apocalypse World rules, a 10+ means you do what you set out to do and maybe a little more, a 7-9 means you pull it off with a hitch, and a 6- indicates you flat-out don't do it, or worse if indicated: -Avoid Harm (Agility) - You either escape from danger, make it out of the frying pan and into the fire, or you're plain out in danger. -Get Into Position (Agility) - You use your 3D manuevering gear (basically a sort of grappling-hook-jetpack thing) and get in a position to strike at a Titan's weakspot. Optimally, you get into a position where you have a clear shot at the Titan, but if you flub, you get there but get spotted/run low on gas or blades/have a pants-soiling close call. -Strike to Kill (Execution) - You close in for a strike on the Titan's weakpoint, burning an accumulated Advantage (gained from Get Into Position) in the process. You either pull it off with flawless grace, or you do it but put yourself in a vulnerable spot/have an unnervingly close call/run low on blades or gas. -Hand to Hand (Execution) - For when you fight humans. On a perfect hit, you trounce your opponent, on a near-miss they either manage to limp away or you take -1 ongoing to Execution. -Assess the Situation (Awareness) - You ask your GM/MC some useful questions about the situation. How well you roll determines how many questions you can ask. -Keep Your Cool (Discipline) - You attempt to keep your sanity intact in the middle of the horrors of the battlefield. Success means you keep calm and carry on. 7-9 means you lose hope and pick up the Panicked disadvantage. -Desperate Rescue (Discipline - You attempt to free a friend from the grip of the Titans. 10+ means you pull them to safety, 7-9 means they live and you die, 6- means you're both KIA. Grimdark, much? -Escape Death (Rage) - You attempt to fight your way out of the clutches of a Titan. On a 10+, you get out of there. On a 7-9, you either take an injury as a Disadvantage, or you've spent your fighting spirit for the moment, taking -1 Ongoing to rage until you have a minute to rest. On a 6-, you're giant chow. Nasty. Luck - You get Luck points over time in this hack, and spending them lets you upgrade a 7-9 you rolled to a 12, or any roll your friends make to a 7. Next, the manual discusses Advantages and Disadvantages. Advantages are a sort of fiction-currency that you can spend to either make a sucky roll not suck or make a good roll great, or burn them to execute certain Moves. Disadvantages are ammo for the MC to use on making your life difficult. Disadvantages can be used to either make your shiny 10+ roll a less-good 7-9 roll, or to introduce a new complication to the scene. Now's a bit of terminology: Rolling +Stat means rolling 2d6 and then adding the relevant stat number. +Forward means that the next time you make a roll relevant to whatever you're +Forwarding, you modify the dieroll by that amount. +Ongoing means that until the given condition ends, you take this modifier to the relevant rolls. Curiously not mentioned is +Hold, which is 'currency' of sorts generated by certain moves that you can burn 1-for-1 to get nifty effects. Now for character classes/playbooks! -The Rookie: Everyone starts as one of these. You get +2/+1/+1/0/-1 to assign to whatever stats you see fit, a pair of special blades capable of getting through the Titan's thick skin, your 3D manuevering gear, and one piece of specialist equipment (spare blades, spare gas for the 3DMG, a rifle useful for poking out Titan's eyes, a torch for night ops, or a flare gun with colored smoke rounds). A character can carry three pieces of equipment without suffering the Encumbered Disadvantage, and a pair of blades and a 3DMG are one item each. A pack horse can carry four pieces. You do not get any moves besides the basic ones mentioned above. You start at level 0, and do not even get the honor of having a last name for your character. The only way to get better and be recognized is to distinguish yourself, and the only way to distinguish yourself is to survive. -The Natural: An ace 3DMG pilot who can weave circles around Titans, and serves as the team's scout. Their moves allow them to stay one step ahead of Titans, recon unknown terrain, use their speed to get past otherwise daunting swarms of Titans, use their Agility to Strike to Kill instead of the Execution stat, use their nimbleness to counterattack Titans, and use parkour to get to the high ground without the use of their 3DMG. -The Warrior: Natural born giantkillers. They can slay Titans without having to make a prep manuever first, save allies by attacking the Titans instead of trying to pull out the ally, coerce reluctant/stubborn people into doing what needs doing with threats of violence, and literally beat useful lessons into allies. -The Tactician: The brains of the team. Skilled in making sure everyone is put where they'll do the most damage. They can devise plans to get a task done with the greatest efficiency, spot moments of opportunity for offense or defense, hobknob through the chain of command to get something they need, get added info from Assess the Situation, get bonuses from coordinating with sister teams, and devise ambushes to give teammates Advantages. -The Leader: The heart of the team, able to stand firm where others falter. He's better at Desperate Rescue moves than the rest of the team (He WILL save them, no matter the cost), deliver motivating speeches, give first aid to injured teammates, use his reputation with the command staff to request necessary favors, get bonuses from synchronized attacks, and help shake terrified teammates out of their stupor. -The Shifter: A riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a giant humanoid shell of flesh and rage the size of an office building, the Shifter is notable because they have the ability to turn into Titans themselves while retaining their humanity. This can go wrong, through---uncontrollable berserk fits, incomplete transformations, and transforming so dramatically that every Titan in the tri-county area wants to come check it out. Plus sides: Ignoring getting Titan-punched in the faces, punching other Titans in the face, and epic feats of strength. A Shifter will likely need to rest and take a breather after one of his episodes, though. A Shifter's improvements include specialized Titanform bodies (armored/regeneration/highly agile/huge even by Titan standards), the ability to generate a steam cloud to cover your movements/scare off smaller Titans when you revert back to a puny human, an ear-splitting roar that can either scare off or aggro Titans (depending on your luck), and becoming too angry to kill. Now for the more metagame-centric section. The goal in Apocalypse World games is not to try and kill the players, even despite Titan World's mortifying casualty rate: The goal is to make things INTERESTING. The goal isn't to see whether players succeed or fail, it's to see how they react to situations. GM Agenda posted: Show the best and the worst of the world. GM Principles posted: Begin and end with the fiction. Player Principles posted:Read this to the players at the And now, GM moves. -Reveal a New Complication - An added variable makes the situation much more dangerous than before. -Inflict/Exploit a Disadvantage - Hamstring a character on some level, making it harder for them to react effectively. -Damage Their Equipment: poo poo breaks. poo poo ESPECIALLY breaks when it's most inconvenient. Ain't Murphy's Law wonderful? -Separate Them From Their Allies: Teamwork is one of the few advantages humans have against the Titans. If you're caught soloing a Titan, you're either a fool, desperate, or very very brave. -Throw Them Into the Jaws of Death: The most harrowing move available to the GM, this is when a Titan has a PC a step away from death. Ironically, this will likely only result in mass casualties to an all-Rookie team, as veteran characters have many options for survival. That much said, by all means, do kill the rookies. Kill ALL the rookies.  A small sidebar explains the details of Titans, or at least the basic details---half the point of Apocalypse World games is crafting the canon a step at a time with player help. Titans regenerate blows to anything but a hit to the back of the neck, which is their weak point. Large amounts of smaller trauma elsewhere COULD kill them, but it's most efficient to slow them down with a blow elsewhere on their bodies and then land a killing strike to their neck. At least, that's for NORMAL Titans. Then we have Advanced Titans. Some unusual Titans move differently or wildly, are much larger than the norm, have either incredible regenerative powers or metal-hard skin, or perhaps most alarmingly, can THINK, just like a human. Last page. The manual explains the difference between Temporary or Persistent Advantages or Disadvantages, the specifics of the "Low on Gas/Blades" disadvantages, and lists credits for Attack on Titan and the Apocalypse World system, as well as an ApocWorld hack and entirely other TTRPG that Titan World borrows some mechanics from (Monster of the Week, FATE Core). Aaand that's it! Told you it was minimal! I think Titan World's a really good way to introduce people to ApocWorld games, myself. It's simple and takes next-to-no time to get started, and since starting PCs are totally green recruits with no preexisting ties, you don't have to worry about ApocWorld's confusing History system. Hope this was a good writeup for you! The smallish size of Titan World doesn't lend itself well to a chapter-by-chapter writeup, so I did it all in one lump sum. InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 08:06
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ProfessorProf posted:TENRA BANSHO MOTHERFUCKING ZERO Oh, you jerk, you beat me to reviewing this!  Oh well. Carry on, but only under the condition that you make this review awesome. Punting posted:...Go on? Remember the hybrid mutants from System Shock 2, with the worms coiled around their brain stems? Annelidist disciplines/wormcharm lets you *voluntarily* do that and much, much weirder to yourself. Did I mention you can also make the abovementioned giant mecha out of organic parts and stuff worms into THE loving MECHA? And did I mention you can make MOTHERFUCKING KENSHIRO using TBZ's rules?
InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 11:21
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ProfessorProf posted:Contained in this game, among other things: You forgot to mention the Illuminati shrine maidens/Shinto priests that can ask the gods above to laser entire towns off the map. InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 12:24
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It's creepy even in the English version, mind, but the whole thing is supposed to be tragic and cruel. Like many things in Tenra, really. Really, I'm more concerned about the artwork indicating that the kid-piloted yoroi armors have...Squishy cockpits.  On the plus side, the book also has artwork of a woman wielding that cut-down mecha shortsword mentioned in previous updates, and she's wearing sensible, unrevealing armor! (Unless having a visible full head of hair counts, but eh, have to save weight somewhere when you're carrying that blade.) Erebro posted:Yeah. It's supposed to come off as being rather skeevy, so it's not nearly as bad as it seems from that remark. Really, all of Tenra-the-planet is like Japanese Warhammer 40K with mechs and without Chaos, so the Imperium (the Shinto Priesthood) come off as a bunch of tyrannical douchebags.. Actually, the ayakashi kinda fill the horrible-alien-demon-monsters role in the setting that Chaos fills in 40k, it's just that in they aren't quite as unified or *central* to the setting as Chaos is to 40k. Given their array of powers and mysterious nature, I suppose a campaign where it's revealed that the Shinto Priesthood and other organizations have been fighting a shadow war against a very large and very subtle unified ayakashi front is a possibility, though. InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 22:53
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Where is this director's commentary, if I may ask?
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Mar 28, 2014 00:52
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grassy gnoll posted:It was a Kickstarter exclusive, to the best of my knowledge. The TBZ storefront doesn't offer it as an option. Aaaaaaaaaaaargh. DAMMIT, why did I only back the lowest tier? (Oh right, because I was unemployed at the time. )EDIT: http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=19150 Does it come with that big bundle? InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 28, 2014 01:38
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grassy gnoll posted:It doesn't seem to say, but I bet you could get in touch with Andy and ask if you can purchase the PDF version. He goes by DiamondSutra on these here forums, though it's been a while since he was active, I believe. Works for me. Thanks!
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Mar 28, 2014 05:36
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I find TBZ's chargen to get a lot easier after you do it once or twice. The game's website has some fillable character sheets, too. That helps. EDIT: As for the doll people, PC doll people are apparently usually characterized as trying to evade their former 'owners', unless their former owner was nice enough to send them free of their own volition. So I don't know how creepy the original was but at least the English version is moving in the right direction I guess.  On the other hand I didn't pay too much attention to them because of those reasons and also because I was too busy statting up an Evangelion that could fire swarms of bees out of its nostrils. So the doll people are a moot point to me.
InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 28, 2014 06:03
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MOTHERFUCKING MIKOS WITH STARSHIPS. Welcome to TENRA BANSHO MOTHERFUCKING ZERO.
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Mar 30, 2014 18:06
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LatwPIAT posted:I saw some posts earlier in this thread talking about the horrors of Phoenix Command and Living Steel. Would there be interests in doing a commentary on Phoenix Command and its derivatives? I'm actually quite fond of the system in spite of its major flaws, so I would perhaps not mock it as relentlessly as other people might, but I imagine myself as having a fairly deep understanding of how it actually works and what absolutely hilarious interactions there are in the rules. I could write mockingly about that, at least. Totally interested in this just to see you dissect the Aliens RPG. 
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Mar 31, 2014 04:46
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My version didn't come with those chibi comics.  Was that a higher-tier Kickstarter bonus or something? I backed for $20.
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Apr 1, 2014 01:49
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grassy gnoll posted:There's at least one rules-related comic in each chapter between Basic Rules and Scenario Creation. Oh, NOW I see them. Completely skipped over that section in the full rulebook because the plaintext one had the functional bookmark/contents sidebar.
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Apr 1, 2014 02:24
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REVVIN' UP THE ENGINE LISTEN TO HER HOWLIN' ROAR METAL UNDER TENSION BEGGIN' YOU TO TOUCH AND GO HIIIGHWAAAY TOOO THEEE DANGER ZONE RIIIDE IIIINTOOOO THEEEE DANGER ZOOOOONE
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Apr 4, 2014 00:44
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ProfessorProf posted:
Imagine how BAR TABS are settled in Tenra.
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Apr 5, 2014 06:52
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The hardest part of running TBZ for my group is everyone not realizing all at once that it's supposed to be a collaborative thing as opposed to the usual 'push button, receive bacon' relationship most games set up between players and GM. I'm not sure whether the game requires waaaay more setup than my group initially realized, or whether we're playing it all a-kilter.
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Apr 8, 2014 12:24
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Wartetsubo 40k. 
InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 05:33
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Okay, I GOTTA get me Ninja Burger now. Those enemy traits had me in stitches.
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Apr 18, 2014 13:06
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