|
theironjef posted:What's the consensus on Exalted Sail charms? I guess they only abstract the concept of sail as a travel mechanic, where we're more or less talking about ship to ship combat. I dunno, I couldn't care less about trying work out broadsides or tacking into the wind or any of the arcane stuff inherent to one ship fighting another, especially since it sounds like the sort of thing that would rapidly become the DM having a long argument with the one player on the ship that makes ship rolls. I don't know about consensus, but they're typically terrible like every other "pretend there's a subsystem for it even though there isn't yet" part of the game. There are a few interesting tricks buried under a mountain of "+10 yards per second to ship's speed." Of course, the dangerous/difficult terrain, vehicle and mass combat rules were awful to begin with, so putting all that stuff on water hardly makes a difference.
|
![]() |
|
![]()
|
# ¿ Sep 1, 2024 04:03 |
|
I won't pretend that Nobilis 3E isn't still a little too whimsical for its own good, but it is definitely much more accessible. (And it's a better system, I think.) I hear Chuubo's as a project was meant to be even more "down-to-earth."
|
![]() |
|
Even the revised edition has a lot of good energy behind it. WEG just fell into the same trap so many companies do of piling on more and more fiddly bits and numbers to "fix" or "expand" options. Which can be fun, but I don't think most designers in that era put enough thought into why you should or shouldn't do such things, and that kind of approach definitely doesn't fit most expectations of Star Wars.
|
![]() |
|
It didn't just happen in the 00's, but that's when it really became A Thing, ironically growing up alongside D&D 3.x.
|
![]() |
|
PurpleXVI posted:Not sure how kosher it is to call dibs on RPG's, here, but I foolishly promised a friend that I'd review this loving thing if it got funded, once it got published, and it got funded. Oh boy. Ettin already FF'd Nymphology. You could try The Slayer's Guide to Female Gamers? Round out the "collection" for the thread. Most of his other notable stuff appears to be contributions to products that probably wouldn't put up with the poo poo he's actually famous for.
|
![]() |
|
I like the FFG 40k games well enough. I think the worst part are the weapon and critical tables, though, which is kind of a huge deal for this type of game. They're fiddly enough you can't memorize them easily unless you're a freak like me, but they're small enough that they can start to feel pretty samey after only a couple months of gaming. It's at least not a deal breaker level of problem.
|
![]() |
|
![]()
|
![]() |
|
My friends and I have gotten 10x more delight out of Synnibar than half of the other games on our shelves. We'd never in a million years finish making a single character, let alone playing it. Its raw 80's hair metal vanity project sci-fi movie style coupled with literally insane rules just make it impossible not to have fun randomly reading nearly any page.
|
![]() |
|
Night10194 posted:they probably didn't even think that was a thing that was done considering how long it took people to realize there was even a female orgasm That's probably about as historically myopic as thinking homosexuality worked pretty much the same in all cultures for all history.
|
![]() |
|
I had a whole lot of fun with CtD back in the day, but it was definitely the most "ignore that, and that, and that... you know what just loving do whatever" of the oWoD.
|
![]() |
|
I seem to recall that nMummy isn't 2E compatible because it was well on its way to completion before CCP approved that direction. Edit: In fact, it looks like Mummy came out before B&S, and since the latter was the "stealth pilot program" for the new editions, it's unfortunate but absolutely not surprising. I like the game for the most part, though I agree with most previously mentioned problems. My big complaint is that it goes hog wild on laundry lists of fiddly new bits. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Nov 15, 2014 |
![]() |
|
I'd like to get back to preserving F&Fs off-site, especially since the wiki index seems to be falling behind, but I remember maybe someone else picked up the slack while I was being a big dumb baby. Or is the index still being maintained and I'm still dumb?
|
![]() |
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:The index is not maintained. I personally went to the work of making sure my own F&Fs are up to date, but I don't know if anybody else has. There's also the offsite index created by Inklesspen, but it's based off of the wiki and isn't any more up-to-date that I'm aware of. (It's a great site, but most F&Fs are being lost like tears in the rain right now.) Yeah, part of my motivation is catching up with what's been posted lately so that it doesn't become impossible.
|
![]() |
|
I think RT was my favorite sub-line because it gave the least fucks about all the garbage that dominates every last other thing for 40k nowadays. PS There was an RPG-y game for 40k in the 90s (or late 80s?) called Inquisitor. It was still "minis" centered, but you played single action-figure scale dudes through scenarios more complex than standard wargame stuff. There might have been a GM-like role, but I don't quite recall. It was the now-typical 1-100 system at core, with crazy poo poo like space marines having 200+ Strength.
|
![]() |
|
Davin Valkri posted:Wow, he sounds like a complete passive-aggressive jerk. How was he still getting players after the earlier ones quit? RPG hobbyists have a long history of enduring the stupidest poo poo just so they can play, even if the playing ends up sucking as a direct or indirect result. And, hey, sometimes it's fun to play a certain way. Mostly I imagine it's probably the first one. pkfan2004 posted:...a bomb vest, like, he's wandering around wearing C4 strapped to his chest and a detonator all the time? I think he means like bomb disposal gear. Which fits right in to a CoC game! EDIT: Oh. Welp.
|
![]() |
|
John Wick posted:I know what you need. Oh, yes. I do. Jesus loving Christ. ![]()
|
![]() |
|
I finally got around to listening to System Mastery and I really like it. The first couple episodes were okay. Then I was totally sold on listening to every episode by the conversation in the middle of the Floating Vagabond episode about how humor is actually hard and traditional RPG system design actively fights trying to do interesting things. I like hearing my biases and opinions affirmed!
|
![]() |
|
Star Wars seems sufficiently hosed up and convoluted at this point, you can't blame someone for doing whatever they want with it. It's a black box of cultural cachet that you reach into and pull out different things. It's nearly a genre unto itself like that.
|
![]() |
|
Green Intern posted:I'd like to imagine that if the one woman did use the Villain Point, Wick would have no idea what to do because they weren't following his master plan. I think there's no corner anyone can turn to escape his master plan of "be a raging cockwad."
|
![]() |
|
I also like that flaw system better than the usual, but I don't like unbalanced XP progression in the first place, especially when it contributes to what I see as bad incentives. I don't really want to play with someone who's going to not play a character in a wheelchair, the character they presumably want to play, just because they won't get special extra numbers for doing so.
|
![]() |
|
LatwPIAT posted:You do get special extra numbers for playing a character in a wheelchair (unless your ST never puts you in a situation where being wheelchair-bound is a disadvantage, in which case sitting in a wheelchair is just flavour). I think you agree with me, but I think I might've worded myself poorly if you said this. My point there was that I ![]()
|
![]() |
|
ascendance posted:Does this thread do requests? Because someone just linked me to this: Ah, yes. Saw people on RPGnet mentioning this was coming down. Review posted:It's Desborough. It's doomed to be poo poo. I mean, look. It's a card game. Still, he put it on DriveThruRPG. He's just squatting out some upload-compliant PDF from Word or GDocs, instead of, oh, I don't know, putting his card game through real professional layout and selling it through DriveThruCards. Don't give him ducats ironically, because as evidenced by his previous "satire" card "game", Privilege Check, it's just some delusional cash-grab full of petty, stinking inside-jokes and mostly or entirely terrible art of entirely terrible things. He couldn't wait a real grown-up adult writer's amount of time to write it well and present it well, because it's already too late for most people to give a poo poo and he's losing sales by the hour as interest in GG ebbs. Shortest F&F ever. EDIT: Ah ha ha ha. Card: "Truth", effect: "Each Attacker gains +1 Bullshit." Flavor text: "Surprisingly ineffective against ideologues." The self-awareness meters are completely flat-lined. EDIT 2: quote:Gamergate the Card Game commemorates THE defining culture war of this generation - by taking the piss out of all sides. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Dec 4, 2014 |
![]() |
|
LatwPIAT posted:At the risk of shoving a foot down my mouth I don't think you did, and you outlined some of the thought process where this comes from pretty well. I certainly don't think there are actually that many Bad Opinions in gaming. I just think there's a lot of momentum behind "traditional" ways of doing things that actively trip up people who would be having a lot more fun playing and producing games that didn't bother with that poo poo. Though at least these days, there's a lot less momentum behind this stuff than there used to be.
|
![]() |
|
Evil Mastermind posted:Just to update on this: the product's been removed from DriveThru. It wasn't until I saw this Twitter conversation that I realized that the description was more than likely that "upper middle class people with blue hair buckling under crippling white guilt" referred to Fred Hicks, who is very much the type of "SJW" that Jimmy D rallies against (and who does in fact dye his hair blue). Oh poo poo, I just assumed it was some bizarre dig at SJWs being pearl-clutching grandmas (i.e., blue hairs). This is sadder.
|
![]() |
|
Why don't we move the "prove some of Des' conspiracy theories right" discussion to grogs.txt so that it can get shut down again? The Paranoia impasse from the Kickstarter thread can go there, too, and then they can both sink to the bottom of the ocean.
|
![]() |
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:NSFW, but: here you go. quote:Advantage: Frigid (women only) ![]()
|
![]() |
|
I'm taking a hiatus! I was already taking a year+ hiatus from my MERP review, which I really do intend to finish, honest. My hiatus from this hiatus is a working vacation, where I review a gift from a TG Secret Santa. No, not Warbirds. I got that this year! This game is from last year, and also it's really short so it'll be all in one post. When I received this gift, I was eager to give it a try. It's short, you pick it up pretty quickly, and it looked simple and interesting enough to blow through a couple hours here or there. I felt kind of guilty not getting around to F&Fing it, because my Santa seemed interested in what I thought of it. Embarrassingly, I can't dig up the old thread and I've forgotten who it was. ![]() ![]() I couldn't find a good picture online, so have one from my phone. This little 12-page booklet opens with a story of boredom. The author and her friends are waiting for more friends to arrive to begin an "Epic Tabletop Game Weekend", and she wants to fill the void with a non-fighty game. Unsatisfied with available options, she created Alien Summit. The core premise is this: There are four "major" races in the galaxy, and there's some problem they need resolved through a diplomatic meeting. They choose Earth as their meeting place, because it's a pre-light speed backwater that's considered neutral ground. Plus the Host, the GM, or mediator of galactic disputes, has apparently been roughing it and is already on Earth. Our first step to actually playing is for the Host to deal some cards from a normal deck. You've got your Race Card, which determines what alien race you play, and it lays face up in front of you. You also get five Quirk Cards in a private hand. If you don't like your Race Card, you can swap it with one of your Quirk Cards. If you don't like one or more of your Quirk Cards, you can discard and get dealt back up to five, once. Should your Race Card be Hearts, you're Tokwa. They're communists who live underground next to magma rivers. They've got pale skin, but are usually so covered in soot they all look the same shade of black. They worship Iffua, a mermaid who swims in molten rock and who might just be a hallucination from all the drugs they take. Sometimes, one of them takes an extra dose and becomes a Prophet. Hapnith live in bunny burrows under the roots of trees, and that's what you are if your Raced Card is Spades. They go out into the fields during the day, to do…whatever. None of any of this is very clear, which might be a good jumping off point if it didn't feel like there was a clash between "galactic confederation" and "fantasy wood nymphs." Oh, speaking of nymphs, these guys revere forest spirits. They're a democracy with an elected leader, and their society also has a separate monastic order that's respected and "given wide berth" by everyone else. The Marsec are who you represent if your Race Card is Clubs. They live in cool, wet caverns, sort of an in-between of the Tokwa and Hapnith. Also, they're just straight up hippies, only they're Space Ur-Hippies, because they're aliens like everyone else and they invented narcotics. Literally the first species to discover narcotics, as if that even really makes sense in a way that matters. They have a monarch but mostly live in anarchistic bliss because they just want to love everyone and create art (and get blitzed). Finally, if you draw Diamonds as your Race Card you're Fasinn. They're the only aliens who don't live underground. Instead, they're nomads. Sort of. They have one city where all the women live, where they raise kids and do science and stuff. The men roam outside in nomadic bands. A precise but unspecified number of men are allowed inside each night. Remember, this is one of four major alien races that make up a galaxy-spanning civilization, and not some half-baked fantasy plop. Here's how the Fasinn's description ends ![]() quote:Far outside the city, mixed nomad groups roam. When members of these groups show Each Race Card confers three "powers." The first is actually a cultural belief that just shapes your characterization. Tokwa admire strength, Hapnith think "seeing is believing", Marsec have faith that everyone is fundamentally good, and Fasinn think everyone should "stop and smell the roses" but also will do anything to anyone to get what they want. Uh, alright! The second power of the Race Card is, uh, to "play the Race Card." Ha ha. It outlines a stereotype about your alien species that others believe, and if someone invokes the stereotype, you can "play the Race Card" by calling them out on their poo poo. Doing so means they owe you a favor. You can do this twice per game. Every stereotype is formatted as "Oh, so just because I'm $species means I'll do $bad_thing to turn your kids into $stereotype." While there are some ups and downs elsewhere in this tiny game, this is definitely the lowest point. It's an awful pun and a stupid, offensive idea. ![]() The third power of your Race Card is some direct, remarkable thing that you can do with other people once per game. The preamble to this talks about it being physical, but they're all magic-y, mental powers. ![]() Each Quirk Card denotes a specific fact about your character, based on its value; face cards have four different effects, and which one you get is based on your race. Some of these seem interesting enough, like "Perfect Memory", or "Jargon", the latter of which lets you speak in a way that seems normal, but secretly communicates other ideas to selected targets. Others are not so great, even actively annoying, like "Think Time" where you have to take at least three seconds to think before saying anything, or "Cryptic Brevity" which makes it so you can only speak four words before having to wait for someone else to speak. Face cards are much more interesting, because they tell you a lot more about your character and there's a lot less "this will never come up" or "you must actively annoy everyone else." There's some theme to each kind of face card, like how Jacks are mostly you worrying about or struggling against something, while Kings say something about you that imposes on other people. These introduce some good personality conflicts into the game. If you take the Joker as your Race Card, you're a Human, probably roped into all this by the Host for some reason. At least, that's what I think the rules say. This is actually covered under Quirks, and it's conveyed in one pretty unclear sentence. No mention is made of what happens when you have face Quirk Cards. Finally, you discard down to three Quirk Cards. If you swapped out your Race Card, you can't discard your original one. Suddenly, we come to a combat system that is honestly surprisingly complex. It's also bad. Everyone starts off enumerating their Advantages, like "I have the high ground", "I will fight with religious fervor", or "My pistol has a laser sight." You act in order and number of Advantages, meaning that the more creative person just gets to do more, and do it earlier. You convert each Advantage into Actions, like the following: • Convert one Advantage to attack someone. You have to describe this in subject, verb, object fashion—"I hit Max in the shoulder"—because gently caress you, I guess. This is a bizarrely anti-creativity part of the game. Your target can burn two of their Advantage to defend, negating your attack, and further screwing them over against higher-Advantage players. • You can convert X Advantage into setting up a defense before you're attacked, where X+1 becomes the amount of Advantage someone else must burn to be able to attack you. And then you can, presumably, burn two more to negate the attack anyway. Exciting! • You can interrupt another's action by burning three Advantage. You may need to burn more to do something complex. This may seem incredibly vague, but I'm only summarizing a tiny bit. And that's the combat system! A successful attack inflicts "broken bones, humiliation, or death." There's no actual resolution mechanic here, it's just an out-of-place intiative/action point system with almost nothing at all beyond that. The final page starts off as a sort of personal-sounding "This is how I envision the game…" from the author, and then launches into some very brief, inoffensive GMing advice like "draw cards to create the Host like a player would" and "make the characters' Quirks come up in the story." Conclusion This could've been a pretty good party-game pamphlet. Instead, it's too long because the author wanted to write more than she should have. The crunchier parts of her system are the worst, and actively hinder the playing of the game. I really like the basic premise of drawing cards to outline your character, but most of them will give you useless or annoying traits. Then there's the combat "system" which barely does anything, and what it does actually do, it's bad at. The tone of the race descriptions is just plain inconsistent. The cultural broad strokes at the beginning of the book all read like slightly atypical medieval fantasy races, while the game's premise and everything else, including the species' super powers, are decidedly sci-fi. However, it's very easy to extract the good parts of the game and have fun with it. You could just read up through the Quirks section and go have a ball. That's what we did the second time we played, because "alien diplomats with randomly assigned characterizations" is a lot more interesting than "racist stereotypes" and "lovely Shadowrun action points." I think the best part of the game is getting you to try something different, and it does do that. Half a good book seems to be what you can expect out of most RPGs, even if they're only a dozen pages long. Luckily, my Santa also sent me Dungeon World! That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Dec 11, 2014 |
![]() |
|
I would like to see that.
|
![]() |
|
Lightning Lord posted:Speaking of Iron Crown Enterprises, I'm thinking of doing Shadow World for this thread. I have the 4th Edition Master Atlas, which was one of the few products released by the new ICE, funded by a bunch of angel investors and which as far as I know, is in some sort of weird limbo since 2003 after releasing a new edition of Rolemaster. It's a pretty cool science fantasy setting, but it's necessary to tease it out of the acronym heavy and weirdly named skills for everything world of the Rolemaster system. The only problem is, I have very little knowledge of Rolemaster itself, so I'm not sure I'm the best candidate for writing about a product for it. That might be an interesting angle though - what does someone not familiar with the mechanics, who only has the book because of the setting make of it? Is it worth getting for that reason? I think this might be a better approach with some of the older modules, like the 3E boxed sets. The 4E atlas is honestly not so great, because they tried to pack way too much of everything in it, and even with how lightly they tried to do them, the stats eat up a lot of boring space. The straightforward reveal of the secret history is also kind of disappointing, really downplaying the "fantasy" part of science-fantasy. Powers of Light & Dark (4E's "gods and such" book) is much better written and organized, but you'd probably want to cover an atlas of any edition first so that it would make more sense. I think they've released new stuff on DTRPG not too long ago, too, and maybe re-released older edition stuff there as well. (I'd do better checking, but I'm phone-posting.) In summary: yeah, maybe? quote:As an aside, Shadow World's creator Terry K. Amthor is a really interesting guy, one of the founders of ICE and I believe the first openly gay designer in gaming. He wrote an article called "Queer as a Three-Sided Die" for White Wolf Magazine that was sort of an opening salvo in making the hobby more inclusive. I know the name is now being used for an annual panel at GenCon about the experience of being gay in the hobby. Yeah, TKA is a really cool guy. I haven't checked in a while, but not too long ago he was still publishing his travelogue fiction for Shadow World online.
|
![]() |
|
Evil Mastermind posted:God it drives me nuts when people make RPGs based on a video game property, and spend more effort in converting every video game mechanic into rules instead of focusing on silly things like "tone". What's really striking to me is how they seem to be willing to make significant departures or speculations in a few places, but then most of the stuff is "traits are literally just Fallout's perks, but in d20." Like squeezing the time line down to just 30 years. What did that do for them other than make this cartoon apocalypse scenario even more ridiculous, plus introducing some setting contradictions? And they have the "war" line just right loving there in the intro! They were clearly willing to skirt very close to infringement, so it's kind of perplexing that they changed some of the things they did.
|
![]() |
|
I vote Nippon Tech, since that might be the most racist and awful. I'd also like to suggest, for others, that you refrain from voting for Cyberpapacy until the very end, because that seems like it should be the "play us out" bugfuck weirdness.
|
![]() |
|
Mr. Maltose posted:Pretty sure one of the class/build/archetype things in THE CYBERPAPACY is "You are a Grandpa who wakes up and is suddenly chromed up like a robocop" and why would you want to delay that wonder any longer. That's a very convincing argument and I change my vote.
|
![]() |
|
Kai Tave posted:On the other hand the WEG Star Wars d6 game was notorious for taking the stance of "you and your shitkicking PC pals are nowhere near as cool as the canon characters from the movies." It took a while for people writing RPGs based on licensed settings that hey, maybe the folks playing these want to be on par with the main characters instead of Third Background Extra From the Left. I'm not so sure it wasn't just them lacking all restraint in flinging numbers around, for no special purpose. They rarely wrote stuff where your PCs actually went up against the heavy hitters. While all the original NPCs and conflicts they did write up were still over-statted, they weren't the clown shoes bullshit of their movie character write ups. When they did have actual canon character conflict, they seemed to assume saner numbers than the ones they printed in the movie/comic sourcebooks. I mean, sure, the upshot is the same, but it doesn't seem like it was because they thought your character was supposed to suck. It was just...because. Which might be worse, I guess.
|
![]() |
|
I'm for some reason very tickled by how brain spiders get a strong reaction from you guys. Thanks again for the nifty podcast.
|
![]() |
|
That's some pretty mild stuff. I'm phone posting, but from memory I can say he's shitted up his own reddit AMA getting into a dumb fight with an unfailingly polite dude who criticized his years late Kickstarter, he gets really self righteous with his "sure you have X problem, but I've visited or lived in non-American hellholes so shut up", and his triumphant return to RPGs seems to have a constantly shifting target for what the gently caress it's actually supposed to be which seems pretty lovely to do to your KS backers.
That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Jan 24, 2015 |
![]() |
|
I think it's just a typical social trend, one we see today with MRAs or grogs or whatever, where something that's always been a problem is drawn into prominence by broader elements of the community than just "Many WoD LARPers are wannabe rapists." In some ways the 90's darksplosion did enable those particular kinds of shitlords to come out of the woodwork, but I don't think that's really any more WoD's fault than it is, say, D&D4's or Fate's for the current prominence or awareness of MRAs in the hobby. There's more of that kind of stuff going on all over. Like every other social trend, despite protestations otherwise, RPGs aren't exempt from this one either.
|
![]() |
|
Mors Rattus posted:The second D&D movie is a shockingly competent fantasy adventure, though. Yeah, by Saturday SyFy churn standards, it's actually really good. The Dragonlance cartoon movie with Kiefer Sutherland and Lucy Lawless, on the other hand, is sooooo boring.
|
![]() |
|
I remember I was in the height of my Rolemaster devotion, I loved FF, and even then I thought the major FF TRPG going around was a ridiculous mess.
|
![]() |
|
theironjef posted:
You didn't see Independence Day until after 2002?
|
![]() |
|
![]()
|
# ¿ Sep 1, 2024 04:03 |
|
You guys are a little poo poo at top-of-the-head dates anyway! ![]()
|
![]() |