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Really hoping the 70's italian mob setting can be easily reskinned to Boardwalk Empire. Also finding a way to run this type of game in Eberron 
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Apr 19, 2015 00:56
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Kai Tave posted:To add more to this that I sort of glossed over, he also trimmed down the number of "Effect stats" to four and for the one-roll version changed how they work. Instead of diamonds in an effect granting you dice to roll, since obviously that would defeat the point, diamonds in a particular Effect type grant a scaling modifier. Everyone starts with one diamond in Force, Insight, Maneuver, and Power which give you a -1 to the result of the associated effect score (i.e. if you roll a 6, 4, 1 and had a -1 in Insight then you would use the 6 for determining success and then the 4 would be used for effect, which the -1 would turn into a 3) and then as you add more diamonds the modifier goes to +0, +1, and +2 and two, three, and four diamonds respectively. Wouldn't that mess up crits though if you had two 6s? I'm interested to see how it turns out with the change, Harper is one designer I definitely trust though.
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Apr 24, 2015 14:42
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Jimbozig posted:Oh sorry, maybe I misunderstood. I thought he was changing it? Everyone in here is talking like he is changing it or has changed it. I'm getting my news from this thread instead of G+, so my apologies if I'm confused. It's been like two weeks since the kickstarter ended and you're already at "I regret this". Harper made big changes to all his games and it's never really slowed his progress, The Regiment had some pretty big changes in the last two versions and it was definitely for the better, and I for one did already find the double roll of action and effect a little iffy anyway. I'll take this over a dozen other tabletop kickstarter a that aren't even CLOSE to fulfillment promises (don't even get me started on Catacombs, which is almost 6 months late for simple loving components).
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Apr 24, 2015 15:58
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I wouldn't call "cleaning up the dice rolling on action resolution a little" fundamentally rewriting the game. Switching to a d10 dice pool and adding Robot Hitler from space and time is fundamentally rewriting the game.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:44
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Jimbozig posted:Ugh. 8 for locks? That sounds like classic bad d&d. "Oh, good job, you unlocked the door! Now roll again for the next door! Oh, too bad. Try again! Hey, great lockpicking! Only a couple more doors left! Keep on rolling..." Yes, cool narrative methods. Off the top of my head when trying to defeat locked areas: 1) pick lock 2) sweet talk the janitor to open them for you 3) blackmail the guard to "accidentally" leave a door ajar or his wife finds out about his habits 4) create a commotion/small fire so people evacuate through the door Etc etc etc to defeat the clock.
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May 7, 2015 19:36
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After seeing Last Knights, I'm actually somewhat interested in the "good guys" hack that was one of the kickstarter goals. It's actually a pretty good movie and rife with some ideas for a long term/larger scale plan with a couple different clocks leading up to a main goal. I've also realized RPG's have ruined me when I see a movie and think this.
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May 17, 2015 02:45
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QuantumNinja posted:You saw Last Knights instead of Mad Max? Mad max I will see in theaters eventually.
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May 17, 2015 19:57
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Yeah the main thing I'm interested in is the double roll/effects change if there is one.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:04
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Downloaded the new quick start and I actually don't get how effects work now, it seems like a GM arbitrary thing?
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Jun 22, 2015 14:18
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Eh, I'm not too worried with how much Harper changes things from version to version (the latest version of his ww2 PbtA game is drastically different from even last 2-3 versions), and judging by playtest feedback and G+ feedback he's really listening to fans following along. It's a stepping stone and I like the idea of effects but feel there is a more elegant way of rolling them in.
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Jun 22, 2015 20:42
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So I'm just wondering how would people here handle effects? I really like the skill resolution being tied to actual skills and not stats or specific "moves" like in other PbtA games, and I don't mind the Xd6, keep highest (because rolling more dice is fun). Using them as a baseline for success based on the number isn't terrible in my opinion (with the roll on the skill check adding to that), but it still feels kind of "meh".
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Jun 24, 2015 00:15
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I may just be a slight sadbrains but other than still trying to understand effects, I'm digging the changes all around, and really want to try running this for a group to see how this plays.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:28
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Galaga Galaxian posted:What are you having trouble understanding about effects? I'm getting that the base is 1-3 depending on the situation, modified by the character's attribute level (which is equal to the highest skill I think?), and modified by how they're tackling the situation (fine items, etc). But is the base skill roll adding to the base effect rating?
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Jun 26, 2015 20:56
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All I see from this is that with most clocks being a base of 4 segments, you would need to roll multiple times usually to convince the guard to let you pass. Unless that's a simple one-off roll and it counts towards a total clock of something else now.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:24
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Ok, I think I get it now, thanks for the explanations, I won't feel like an idiot running this now if the opportunity comes up soon.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:36
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Huh, I didn't think I would like it cut down that much but I actually do, the skills are elegant and not too specific/not too far reaching.
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Aug 5, 2015 03:04
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A question now that I've poured over v3 (which is shaping up awesome). If I'm reading it right when defending/resisting, the base is always 6 harm, and the roll reduces that. That seems like a lot to me when maybe tackling less than outright deadly dangers, since you could roll a decent 5 on a daring roll but still end up taking a massive 5 harm consequence that takes multiple downtimes to recover from (or a shitload of stress). Excited for this game to come to fruition though, and much more excited for the cyberpunk hack for it. Only thing I'd really want changed is maybe slightly more evocative advanced moves for the playbooks, but the format is designed so well I don't know where there would be room.
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Sep 9, 2015 04:35
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Stress and consequences seem way too deadly/debilitating now, and it doesn't make much sense since consequences were tied to certain stress levels, so how can you take the specific level of consequence without knowing that now? Definitely don't like that change.
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Nov 1, 2015 14:55
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homullus posted:If I had known the rules would be changing this many times and going this far from what was available in the KS, I wouldn't have backed it. Realistically, the die rolling mechanic has gotten simpler, skills got better, and overall stuff has been added (like tier, holds, turf, etc), which are good. The only thing I don't like are how stress and consequences are done now, and I have a feeling they might get changed back or cleaned up anyway.
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Nov 2, 2015 15:45
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Even when he hammers out the core rules and he's happy with them, there's still waiting for a ton of additional gang types along with their turfs, and maybe another playbook or two. The only thing that makes me sad is having to wait longer for some of the good hacks like the Cyberpunk one, because at this point anyone working on one from the stretch goals probably gave up and is waiting for him to finish the rules concretely.
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Nov 4, 2015 04:36
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Harrow posted:I just picked up the early access version on DriveThruRPG and I really like what I'm seeing, though I don't have much to base it on. I'm actually interested in your critiques, QuantumNinja, because I'm considering hacking this for use in a very different setting/time period and I'm wondering what you'd have done differently, or what previous versions did better. In a few months all the stretch goal hacks are coming out, so look for those. Some of the notable ones are cyberpunk and I think a pirate one. There's also a dungeon crawling adventuring company one but we will see how that goes.
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Jan 13, 2016 22:06
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QuantumNinja posted:I think my post summed it up: there is a ton of complexity where there could be none, and a lack of complexity where some could help. I feel like the entire core mechanic could be replaced with a pair of d8s, for example. Other examples include four tracks for health, 30 factions to keep track of as a GM (even just 1/3 would be annoying to do clocks for), a two-axis system for GMs specifying how rolls might go (fixed in previous versions!), 12 attributes (more than Shadowrun), an under-specified GM clock economy ("add some ticks, or don't, or whatever, when some rolls <5"), and flat itemization. I feel like the factions are there as a complete list, and groups can pick what they want out of it, using as many or as few as they want. This is basically the setting book as well so it makes sense. Four tracks for "health" isn't bad in my mind, as stress and harm are the ones that'll change a bit, and trauma and vice are long term and not often changing.
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Jan 14, 2016 02:07
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Yeah seeing that spelled out I'll probably change harm to something else.
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Feb 4, 2016 03:30
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Had a chance to play this online with some friends last night after we all re read the quick start rules. That being said... The whole effect system is an over complicated and finicky mess. There has to be a better way to easily determine how many ticks off a clock a skill roll results in. Maybe just having a character's attribute of the rolled skill be the base success or something, but then that seems too high, and simply rolling another dice for effect after the fact doesn't seem much better.
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Apr 7, 2016 15:43
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It's that it adds another needless die roll and is up to a lot of GM fiat. Ice claw described it well, as that nonsense happens after the roll when it should be something fiction oriented that is known beforehand and should flow much easier. I thought I was using the newer quick start rules but maybe not as I don't see the hard and fast 3 on a 6, 2 on a 4-5. Adding an effect bonus for great gear or a good advantageous position is fine, but once you start looking at the 6 different sliders (quality of item, being outmatched, other arbitrary poo poo) it's way too kludge compared to other PbtA games. That being said I love literally everything else about the system, the health rules weren't even that bad in play.
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Apr 8, 2016 14:19
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Harrow posted:The health rules make more sense when your players realize that they're supposed to be trying to strike a balance between taking harm and spending Stress to avoid it. (My players haven't quite gotten there yet--they see Stress as total anathema, but that's lead to more than one of them with a couple of level-2 harms coming out of a particularly nasty mission. Get some traumas, people, c'mon!) I like taking stress just because to clear it you need to indulge in vices in your downtime which for us from an RP perspective was super fun and REALLY fleshed out the characters as actual people with issues outside of jobs. The one cutter in the group played up being disfigured like Richard Harrow and coming to terms with that when his vice was lust, having to resort to prostitutes.
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Apr 8, 2016 16:51
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After re-reading and playing around with some ideas, here's my modification for harm: Any 1 harm boxes are cleared with 2 ticks of the harm clock, 2 harm boxes are cleared by 4 ticks of the harm clock, and 3 harm is cleared by all 8 ticks of the harm clock. This would be cumulative, since really most rolls are going to be hitting the 2 effect result if the player is lucky. This way two downtime rolls for stress and harm can reasonably get a character ready for the next job without being hosed, or one downtime roll can mitigate a good chunk of either while still allowing another action. If a player is in a bad spot they can always spend 1 coin to do a third downtime action (or more). I'm also playing with the idea that adding a trauma grants a 1 stress bonus to the track to show the players are more hardened, but that's because I tend to run my games longer term and like a more "big drat heroes of crime" game than a gritty slog through lasting injuries and likely death/insanity. I'd have to see how both homebrew rules work in the wild though.
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Apr 11, 2016 15:55
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Harrow posted:I could be mistaken, but I think level-1 harm is cleared right away when you take a Recover downtime action, no roll required. The recovery clock only comes in for level-2 and 3 harm.. This would actually solve a few issues (and letting the harm clock heal 2 harm at 4, and 3 harm at 8, instead of everything at 8) I cant find it in the actual rules but I could just be blind. Either way I'll be going with this, thanks! On an unrelated note I really hope all the stretch goals are being worked on, as I really really want to see how some of them play out, namely the cyberpunk one and the dungeon crawler one (in the hopes of it being all Darkest Dungeon).
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Apr 11, 2016 18:34
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A week ago John Harper posted on kickstarter than an update is coming soon, so maybe this week or next we might see some work on the stretch goal classes (I think 3 more), as well as some new progress update to when things are finalized or ready for the printers. Anyway, here's a big dump of the Hacks unlocked as stretch goals (I'm not including in setting ones like Ghost Lines or Blue Coats or different playsets and crews but still in the Blades setting more or less): UNLOCKED! ($21,000) Band of Blades: A complete dark fantasy hack, Band of Blades allows you to play a small band of soldiers desperately trying to shift the tide in a war against powerful sorcerer-kings and their undead minions. By Stras Acimovic. UNLOCKED! ($32,000) Moon Over Bourbon Street: A completely new setting for the game, plus new character and crew types. You are a thief in Crescent City, a bustling mélange of French colonials and planters, Spanish traders, American river men and adventurers, and Afro-Caribbean free men and slaves. Steamships traveling up and down the Mighty River disgorge a constant stream of valuable cargoes along with scoundrels and gamblers of every bent. But at night, the city turns dark indeed.... By Chris Bennett. UNLOCKED ($60,000): Blades Against Darkness. Get your dungeon-crawling fix with this total reskin and new playset for the game! You are a tomb robber — desperate for coin, driven by a thirst for knowledge, on a quest for your inscrutable deity, or, perhaps, just crazy. One way or another, you’ll take almost any job that comes your way. The Gods know there is plenty of bloody work to be had in the dark passageways below the earth. drat little is honorable. Most all of it will get you killed. But you just might make it out alive... and rich. By Dylan Green. UNLOCKED ($70,000): Sparrow's Folly. "The Central Pacific's barely built, but nonetheless shuttling folks in droves to our Great State of California, the land of goddamn milk and honey if you believe the papers. Wallowed halfway between Sacramento and the Sierras is Sparrow’s Folly, a Gold Rush shithole blessed not by lode, but by reputation. It's a haven for the forgotten, a heaven for the rich city bastards who get hard on secret sin. It ain’t on your fuckin map. It's a place where outlaws and outcasts vie for position among their own kind: highwaymen, whores, raildogs, scum. There’s a price for everything. Nobody never said it was fair.” – Ruby LaLond UNLOCKED! ($80,000) Null Vector: Four artificial intelligences secretly rule the world. You and your crew of cyber-augmented outcasts are some of the only people who know the truth. Will you oppose the invisible masters? Will you join one of the AIs, to bring its vision for humanity to life? What will you do to change the world? Null Vector is a complete reskin of the game for cyberpunk thriller action in the vein of Ghost in the Shell. UNLOCKED ($90,000) The Doomed: "Look, we don't have to worry about The Dark Avenger; he's in the morgue. The Hero Squadron just got their minds swapped by The Mystic Eye or whatever, who knows. What I'm saying is: nobody's around to stop one little bank robbing spree. We just keep it low key and it's us and our powers versus a bunch of beat cops. What could go wrong? " The Doomed takes Blades in the Dark to the worlds of superheroes. You'll be playing the small-time villains trying to make it big in a world where an alien invasion is just another Tuesday. New characters and crew types give you everything you need to play in the style of The Superior Foes of Spider-Man and the Giffen/DeMatteis Injustice League. By Sage Latorra (co-author of Dungeon World). UNLOCKED (2,000 Backers) Scum and Villainy is a complete reskin of Blades in the Dark for playing Rogues, Scoundrels, Bounty Hunters and aliens of all types looking to make a credit and keep their ship flying in a Space Opera setting. Includes new character types, crews, ships and modified basic moves that encourage blaster-shooting, hoverbike chasing and other over-the-top cinematic action. By Stras Acimovic. UNLOCKED ($115,000) Womb of Night: A black expanse stretches between the stars, whose dim light shelters the thousand colonies of humanity. Riding the star-seas between them are crews of traders, marauders, explorers and pirates - all guided by the Sisterhood, whose Navigatrix acolytes portend safe passage through the hellish storms that make up the roiling mass they call the warp-space. In Womb of Night you play brave opportunists who seek out their fortune in the void of the cosmos, preying on fat merchant ships or finding rich new worlds to exploit. Space holds riches and power beyond your dreams, if you're bold enough to take them. By Adam Koebel (co-author of Dungeon World, and GM of Swan Song. Adam knows a thing or two about tense situations in space. His primary inspirations for Womb of Night are the art of Moebius, 70s heavy metal and a heavy dose of psychedelic culture.) UNLOCKED ($120,000): Coneycatchers: It is a universal truth that mendacity and turpitude rule England, from Bankside trugging-house doxies to poor dying Queen Elizabeth. London herself is both procuress and homicide. Her markets are home to fat country rabbits with wide eyes and gold-filled purses, and her tangled alleys are home to the hard men and women with a million ways to separate the coneys from their coin. We are rufflers, whipjacks and foists, and in the service of every vice and crime we are as noble as princes. Cross us at your peril. It is a new age and we are ambitious. Coneycatchers is a reskin of the game with new character and crew types, factions, situations, and a guide for playing in Elizabethan London. By Jason Morningstar (author of Fiasco, Durance, and Night Witches). UNLOCKED! ($125,000): Throne of the Void "The forms must be obeyed." —The Great Convention The Interstellar Empire was unified less than a century ago by the first Imperator. Since then his iron fist has enforced the compact that binds the Empire together. But he ages, and his grip weakens. And now the churn of plans, schemes and politics begins. In this decadent world, inhuman nobles, merchant guilds and religious groups all aim to control the throne by any means necessary. You play a crew of Agents, serving a powerful faction of the Interstellar Empire vying against Agents of other factions ... and those of your own. You will be trying to move wheels-within-wheels as you play large-scale political and faction-based games in a deadly web of shifting alliances and rivalries. Throne of the Void is a complete stars-and-starships hack of Blades in the Dark and includes new character types, crews, factions, changed faction and downtime rules, plus galactic maps to the Empire itself. By Stras Acimovic. UNLOCKED! ($150,000) P38: Blood on the Streets. “Except for the Punic Wars, I have truly been accused of every possible thing” Giulio Andreotti, Italian prime minister, 1972-1973, and 1976-1979. Italy, the 1970s. Upstart bank robbers compete and consort with the organised crime establishment, while the public follows from the front pages of newspapers, afraid and morbidly fascinated. This, however, is only the surface. The criminal underworld traces a wide, murky network, connecting the mob, terrorism and espionage. Some want to tear down the bourgeois state and start a revolution, others are building support for an authoritarian coup. Many are just in it for profit. Everyone is involved, and no one is innocent: terrorist groups and ruling parties, idealist students and national security agents, gangsters and foreign spies. Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 00:00
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Galaga Galaxian posted:So, a playtest version of the first of the Blades in the Dark Stretch Goal hacks has seen the light of day. It was posted to the public Google+ group, so I'm gonna link it here. One part dungeon crawling, one part spaghetti western, one part alien landscapes and magic. This hack is outright awesome. If the rest of the hacks are this nice I'll be super pumped.
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Apr 18, 2016 14:22
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Yeah, this is the first PDF that shows it's pretty near completion other than some setting stuff (which this update added about 500%). There was a slight tweak I may have missed from v6 too, in that you can only start with a max of 2 dots in traits but can go up to 3 for advancements right out of the gate. Previously you couldn't go to 3 or 4 without the crew's mastery training, so that's a nice touch with advancement being on a bit more of a gradual curve until you want to hit 4 dots in a trait (which is a pretty huge end game goal/power spike anyway, rolling 4 dice for actions is almost assuredly always at least a mild success, with a lot of chances for critical successes and increased effects). I'm liking it more and more with these additions and for once the game is, in my opinion, in a fully playable state with the classes and crews completed and finalized and a good balance of how things work in the system. There's even some options for extra downtime on your own turf when starting out for the first few sessions and onward as you expand your turf, since only 2 downtime actions can be a little limiting if the players get unlucky and take some harm. I'm also excited because there's a blank playbook in here, and I might start working on a cyberpunk hack soon if I can run this and see how everything plays out.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:36
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QuantumNinja posted:If you do this, please change the health system. Honestly I don't find it so bad. Harm doesn't come up as often as stress, and even if it does there's barely any steps. Either let armor soak it (which for most characters is once or twice per session anyway), or roll to resist, which the roll resulst gives you how much stress you take instead. Sometimes (again, maybe every few sessions), you take enough stress to wipe it all out and take a permament Trauma. Bam, that's it, it's more like 2 steps. Edit: The nice thing for cyberpunk/shadowrun hacking is that the only thing that needs to be done is renaming some of the skills and some of the items, and some flavor text changes for the crews. Everything else is perfectly baked into the system as is. Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 03:14
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Ok so for harm, would you scrap it entirely and just add more stress points? Would you still let players roll to resist and instead just taking that much less stress? Edit: this doesn't leave out much steps but I would personally say stress is equal to harm one for one, with any remaining eaten as stress as far away as it is from six. You roll for resistance and each point you get on the die cancels out harm first, then stress. Say you've got a nasty 3 harm attack coming in, and on the resistance roll you get a 3. You'd avoid the 3 harm entirely and just take 3 stress (6-3). On a 5 you'd take 1 stress (6-5). On a Crit you still actually end up healing one stress. I'm not convinced it's easier though, just spit balling. Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 04:38
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Personally in my own games three harm would be like a once or twice per campaign thing, I would mostly just dish out 1 harm 75% of the time anyway, with some 2 harm threats once or twice a session. And yes, I would absolutely make the two 1 harm boxes go away automatically during downtime. I think that coupled with my edit would make for a pretty good balance, especially since taking the risk of 1 harm and -1d would be an actual solid option instead of possibly taking no harm but taking more stress if stress is getting filled up.
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Aug 16, 2016 05:13
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Email and update just sent out, seems Evil Hat will be doing the publishing, and an update on the status of book sections got updated as well. Things are coming along but the new goal for the PDF to at least be done is now December  Also half the hacks aren't even started or at only 1 dot out of 4, so that's not very encouraging either.
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Sep 9, 2016 01:53
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Nuns with Guns posted:I just went and checked the kickstarter and I see that three out of sixteen of the hacks have 3/4 dots and one of those is the neato-sounding one that's set in not-antebellum New Orleans so I'm content Yeah a few have been plugging away posting some betas of rules on the G+ page, they actually seem pretty good so far, not sure if John Harper has any quality control on them but so far so good.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:58
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QuantumNinja posted:Scum & Villany seems a bit uninspired. I wish it was more, or less, or maybe just vaguer. Blades in the Dark does a good job of establishing a setting, but I hope the other hacks don't follow that suit. Other than some of the skill names ("Doctor"? Really? Why not Medical or something), I do kind of like the hack, although the moves suffer from the same basic bonus stuff rather than narrative stuff. The added gambit thing is cool. I know it's still beta so some small tweaks may happen, which I hope adds some ships or ship options beyond just the one. It is very much a reskin, I think it's pretty vague as is (doesn't mention alien races specifically, doesn't go into the universe/sector, etc). I think it's perfectly serviceable to start a firefly game.
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Nov 20, 2016 23:22
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Update just came through, looks like backerkits and the final PDF is releasing tomorrow, a year and 2 months late but hey, it's finally here (soon) !
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Jan 29, 2017 20:23
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Backerkit emails just went out, at the end is the digital download link. It's finally here! Edit: First change I see is that the healing clock got changed from 8 segments to 4 segments, which is pretty nice. Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 22:31
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It does say depending on tone, feel free to totally mitigate any harm with resist rolls and just let the remainder be stress if you want them less beat up. The way I would play it, all harm 1 boxes go away at the beginning on downtime automatically, and only harm 2 and 3 need clocks so it isn't too terrible for players.
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Feb 9, 2017 05:24
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