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Transit explicitly uses Star Trek as inspiration but honestly that's mostly because its more based on like Consider Phlebas and that's pretty inspired by Star Trek. More importantly the players aren't playing like Sisko and Odo, they're playing the ships. I think PBTA is at most basic a great start point for a Trek game, because Trek's fundamental question of how the world works is "does this serve the fiction or not." Transporters are as good as the story demands, the holodeck malfunctions when and how its dramatic, and so on. I think you'd want to retain stats and playbooks, esp since playbooks is not the worst way to just have "the security officer," "the engineer," "the captain," "the worf," etc. Not entirely sure what stats you'd want, to some extent star trek characters are all just kind of omnicompetent but there is some difference in capabilities between e.g. bashir and o'brien. AW's stat pools seem bad because Sharp covers waaay too much of what Trek characters tend to be about, either I'd break machines and people out as different types of Sharp or I'd just remove any sort of intelligence stat entirely, similar to how all shounen combat characters have the same combat capabilities. As for session structure, Monster of the Week I'd say is the start point. Instead of it being a monster make it an "anomaly," but otherwise its largely the same basic structure. Something's wrong, it has a central cause, there's a series of steps to figuring out what the nature of the problem is, how to defeat that problem, tracking the problem down, and confronting the problem. Golden Bee posted:Apocalypse world is based around scarcity ...is it? I've tended to think of AW as a game that is much more plentiful and generous than WoD or DnD. Players are extremely powerful and my read of the rules has always been that the action is driven by the players interacting with explicit clocks, rather than the action being driven by constantly dwindling player resources.
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Oct 2, 2022 16:02
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Just forget PbtA and play Lasers & Feelings.
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Oct 2, 2022 16:40
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Honestly, making your stats in Star Trek the different departments and your playbook be your "character archetype" So, you'd have: Engineering (examining strange technology and keeping things working and not exploding) Medical (Maybe sciences? It's book learning and research and being the Smart one, who finds the clue by scanning with multiphasic whatchamacallits as opposed to engineering, described above) Security (fighting and shooting and generally using force to solve a problem) Comms (dealing with people who aren't on your crew) Command (getting the NPC crew to execute your orders without complications and helping PCs with their tasks through force of leadership) Having a 2+ in a skill means you're the ______ officer (or first officer/captain if you are the highest in Command.) Only one player in the group can have a 2+ in a particular stat. And the playbooks would be something like: The Rebel The Alien The Hotshot The Android (might be redundant with alien) Etc. So you'd have the Alien Medical officer or the Hotshot Comms officer. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could do a dual playbook deal, I suppose, but I think most of the basic moves could cover what the officers should all be able to handle.
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Oct 2, 2022 16:49
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Another way you could do it is to combine two half-playbooks together and let people make their own combos; it's one of my favourite tricks for diversifying PtbA games. I did it in Blackout where your role on the team and your social status are different things to represent class-stratified Britain in the Blitz, but there's no reason you can't have Character Archetype + Job On The Ship. Also, you could probably get away with a very minimalist set of basic moves and your Ship Job providing a lot of the 'basics' in a way that makes teamwork and being a crew central and vital to the game.
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Oct 2, 2022 16:55
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Masks style leverage mechanics would work well for the interpersonal drama between PCs a Star Trek game should have as well. I would definitely crib that.
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Oct 2, 2022 16:59
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open_sketchbook posted:Another way you could do it is to combine two half-playbooks together and let people make their own combos; it's one of my favourite tricks for diversifying PtbA games. I did it in Blackout where your role on the team and your social status are different things to represent class-stratified Britain in the Blitz, but there's no reason you can't have Character Archetype + Job On The Ship. That's actually a really good point, Bashir and Bones are very different characters, Sisko and Picard are practically foils, and so on. e: Spirit of 77 and Transit both do that
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Oct 2, 2022 17:11
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To add yet another Trek-inspired PbtA game to the pile, there's Starscape, which is currently in a playtest beta format. I haven't given it a try, but it's available for free. The focus of the game seems to be on the interpersonal interactions of the characters; I think it would work especially well for a DS9 or Babylon 5 style game. There's also Voyagers in the Dark, a streamlined FitD Trek game, but I've given that one even less of a look.
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Oct 2, 2022 19:36
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If you are okay with going for a Lower Decks vibe, it might become even easier, since players specifically wouldn’t be the officers, but still go on adventures while the ship and command structure exist in the background. You don’t get to decide what your mission on this planet is, but get to be the people that actually deal with the situation.
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Oct 3, 2022 12:49
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Tulip posted:
They say explicitly that the world of the apocalypse is lacking things. Food, kindness, dignity, gasoline. Not having enough for everybody drives the actions of the plot from the character and world perspective.
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Oct 3, 2022 17:42
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Mechanical resources are plentiful while narrative resources are limited.
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Oct 3, 2022 17:49
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"What could people want in a post-scarcity Federation" has famously been an issue for Trek writers, but the characters still want things. Gold-pressed latinum, independence, religion, to play baseball on the holodeck, Earl Grey, hot, etc. etc.
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Oct 3, 2022 17:54
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admanb posted:Mechanical resources are plentiful while narrative resources are limited. It's this. A Trek game could (and would have to) deal with it in almost the opposite way I think.
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Oct 3, 2022 17:58
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admanb posted:Mechanical resources are plentiful while narrative resources are limited. This is a really good way of putting it. Golden Bee posted:They say explicitly that the world of the apocalypse is lacking things. Food, kindness, dignity, gasoline. Not having enough for everybody drives the actions of the plot from the character and world perspective. I mean maybe this was just the consensus multiple tables I've been at have arrived at, but what we've generally done is that something is scarce if a player engages with it, otherwise there's as much as you need for whatever the current plot is. If there's a driver, getting from place to place is tense, but if there's no driver or chopper you can just do it when it makes sense. If there's an Angel, medical supplies are constantly critical, but otherwise its either 'they're there or there's a clear narrative reason why they wouldn't be' kind of thing. Again to me the contrast point is WOD games, where lack of access to willpower/vitae/mana/pyros (ok maybe not pyros) are all constantly ticking down mechanically and impelling the characters to take in-fiction actions to keep filling those up. AW characters are basically all pretty independent gods, because the fiction takes priority and we're there to see them be cool and hard and sexy more than to see them like, count up a bunch of pennies and haggle over candles and such. Anyway I'm not trying to be contrary Bee, just a little teasing out my feeligns. I think admanb really resolved it pretty well.
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Oct 3, 2022 22:57
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Every session apocalypse world characters lose one or two arbitrary units of essentials, and need to acquire some constantly. This is before you get to any specific costs, like gear downsides, needing new poo poo for your saavyhead's workshop, needing to restock medical supplies, etc etc. It's incredibly about scarcity in a way even other PBTA games usually aren't (though most good ones are aware there needs to be something that's needed and hard to get to drive drama and push play).
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Oct 3, 2022 23:37
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Tulip posted:Transit explicitly uses Star Trek as inspiration but honestly that's mostly because its more based on like Consider Phlebas and that's pretty inspired by Star Trek. More importantly the players aren't playing like Sisko and Odo, they're playing the ships. It's why I used Forged in the Dark for my TOS/TNG hack. Really leans into that episodic feel in the very nature of things, and one of the dials you can turn for downtime actions is 'just how effective are they at mitigating the effects of last episode'. If I were going to run DS9 - a frontier outpost on the fringes of 'known' space, at least as far as the current dominant culture is concerned, where scarcity is very much a problem and various characters openly conflict and disagree with each other about how to deal with the problem du jour, I'd use something closer to Apocalypse World, though I'd still need to pry off the outer coating and tinker with the basic moves and playbooks a fair bit.
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Oct 7, 2022 06:03
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Different versions of Apocalypse World emphasize and de-emphasize scarcity, and it's actually super interesting to see how it changed. 1e's barter basically just acts as coins. and scarcity is mechanically not much of a concern. Things not being available only arises from prep and GM moves. You use barter for cool kit and for influence near exclusively. 2e starts emphasizing barter more by making you spend 1-2 barter per session just to maintain your lifestyle, and offering each playbook gigs to earn more. Barter still mostly acts as coin but this emphasis of what was just a little cost note in 1e really brought these gigs and at least thinking about the living conditions of our characters to the fore for my group. Burned Over really brings scarcity to the forefront of games and, interestingly, deemphasizes the role of Barter. Barter is essentially a tracker for your quality of life - 0 means you're eating dirt, 3 means you are living in luxury. Each session the characters roll +barter to Live Day To Day, and things will be easy or hard accordingly. Holdings and followers have needs and you can only get their benefits if those needs are filled and they're not in crisis. Markets are now a whole threat type with a chapter in the book dedicated to how they'll respond to you depending on your barter. Your barter is decided by an end of session move where you describe your relationship to the people around you depending on your playbook and your barter is set accordingly. Scarcity is front and centre and it really affects how the sessions are structured (for example, the hardholder in my current game is desperately trying to rebuild trade links to his holding because they've had a run of disruptions arising both from other players attacking trade routes and from bad start of session rolls, and his holding is in crisis until he does). While this stuff could happen in 1e and 2e, it was kinda nebulous how it affected your characters, but burned over provides repeated avenues for scarcity to be concretely declared with that affecting gameplay. Macdoo fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Nov 21, 2022 |
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Nov 21, 2022 10:41
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I always kind of wanted to play as a Hardholder or Chopper but unlike the other classes it always felt like you're asked to put a lot of mental / emotional energy and identification into things you will inevitably lose. First time I read the Hardholder bit I was like "oh, a sand castle builder".
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Nov 21, 2022 18:51
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Basic Chunnel posted:I always kind of wanted to play as a Hardholder or Chopper but unlike the other classes it always felt like you're asked to put a lot of mental / emotional energy and identification into things you will inevitably lose. First time I read the Hardholder bit I was like "oh, a sand castle builder". Hardholder is quite possibly my favorite class in any RPG and the core of it, at least as I played it, is that you are defined less by what you can do (which is, frankly, quite a lot) than by your obligations and problems.
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Nov 21, 2022 19:00
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It’s good to be the king. You have all the money and NPC loyalty, the army, and can leverage those to get what you want from everyone else who chose big guns or magic powers.
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Nov 21, 2022 19:05
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Do hardholds and gangs end up getting taken away a lot in actual play? I had assumed it fell under the "don't take away the characters' cool/defining stuff" guidance in the GM section. As a GM, I certainly wouldn't burn any of that stuff down unless it was as part of a planned playbook change.
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Nov 21, 2022 21:51
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I wouldn't say they get taken away a lot but hardholds and gangs aren't just tools for their respective playbooks to use, they're their own thing and so they have their own motivations, wants and needs. They tend to cause problems for their respective playbook holders, especially newer players who might be assuming they'll always do what they're told.
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Nov 21, 2022 22:10
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Antivehicular posted:Do hardholds and gangs end up getting taken away a lot in actual play? I had assumed it fell under the "don't take away the characters' cool/defining stuff" guidance in the GM section. As a GM, I certainly wouldn't burn any of that stuff down unless it was as part of a planned playbook change. Certainly not casually, but part of playing hardholder/chopper is understanding that you have power in exchange for obligations. If you choose to just ignore your scarcities or your gang's demands (which the GM should use as part of soft/hard moves they make) then you should expect those to become an active threat. At which point it becomes a 90s romcom: you better fight for them or you're gonna lose them. Basically, sure you can take them away, but it should be something that everyone sees coming well in advance.
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Nov 21, 2022 22:14
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Basic Chunnel posted:I always kind of wanted to play as a Hardholder or Chopper but unlike the other classes it always felt like you're asked to put a lot of mental / emotional energy and identification into things you will inevitably lose. First time I read the Hardholder bit I was like "oh, a sand castle builder". In the apocalypse I think it's always worse if things stay around. In my current campaign my Harrier's best fighter Chick got executed by the hardholder early, early on. She absolutely flubs an open your brain roll right after so I show her Chick's corpse, suspended in the psychic maelstrom. Cue 10 sessions of Chick slowly waking back up, transforming and becoming the living incarnation of The Grey Wing Of Death (the Harrier's god). The harrier decides to try to seek revenge on the hardholder with Chick in tow and, it turns out, trying to use a psychic ghost thing as a superweapon is a real bad idea. It is not working out well!!
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Nov 21, 2022 22:30
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BlackIronHeart posted:I wouldn't say they get taken away a lot but hardholds and gangs aren't just tools for their respective playbooks to use, they're their own thing and so they have their own motivations, wants and needs. They tend to cause problems for their respective playbook holders, especially newer players who might be assuming they'll always do what they're told. Oh, sure, that's fair and correct. I just don't think of that as "taken away" in the sense of, like, "if you make a D&D character with a family, some GMs will immediately burn your village down to make sure you're a peripatetic adventure goon." Becoming a source of conflict and obligation still means they're in the story.
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Nov 22, 2022 00:18
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Probably going to pick up Apocalypse Keys. Went back a few pages in the thread, didn't see a mention. Anybody have thoughts and/or feelings?
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Dec 2, 2022 22:58
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CitizenKeen posted:Probably going to pick up Apocalypse Keys. Went back a few pages in the thread, didn't see a mention. Anybody have thoughts and/or feelings? A friend of mine ran a session of it and thought it was great. He's been itching to run another ever since, but he also literally wrote his undergraduate thesis on Hellboy, so ymmv.
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Dec 3, 2022 01:14
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thunderdome winner
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Was on the beta and I loved it. The design is great and the tension of any PC becoming the BBEG was fun.
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Dec 3, 2022 02:08
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Bought Apocalypse Keys last night and tore through it. Looks fantastic, though I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get it to the table for this rotation. Might be a little too much emotional intimacy for one of my group.
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Dec 3, 2022 23:05
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Antivehicular posted:Do hardholds and gangs end up getting taken away a lot in actual play? I had assumed it fell under the "don't take away the characters' cool/defining stuff" guidance in the GM section. As a GM, I certainly wouldn't burn any of that stuff down unless it was as part of a planned playbook change. Taken away? No. But dealing with the holding and/or gang getting into trouble is one of the major recurring themes/plots of any good Apocalypse World game involving them. It's not 'they get burned down' but 'the chopper's gang is continually setting things on fire, and there are regular fires that threaten the holding'. And the key thing about this is that the three playbooks that are worse at putting out these fires? The Hardholder, the Chopper, and the Gunlugger. Physical threats can be dealt with hard by the Chopper's gang or the Hardholder's defence forces. But softer social skills to deal with unrest, or bartering or discovering the underlying problems? Those aren't the forte of those Hard +2 playbooks. Despite having most physical power the Hardholder and Chopper are more dependent on the other characters to try and fix things, especially if they don't want serious bloodshed among their people.
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Dec 5, 2022 01:45
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CitizenKeen posted:Bought Apocalypse Keys last night and tore through it. Looks fantastic, though I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get it to the table for this rotation. Might be a little too much emotional intimacy for one of my group. Wait, is this out? It seems interesting but everything I find says it's up for preorder and hasn't been released yet.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:51
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Presumably the pdfs are early release for backers?
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Dec 5, 2022 23:01
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neonchameleon posted:Taken away? No. But dealing with the holding and/or gang getting into trouble is one of the major recurring themes/plots of any good Apocalypse World game involving them. It's not 'they get burned down' but 'the chopper's gang is continually setting things on fire, and there are regular fires that threaten the holding'. Right; I think I didn't really convey what I meant there. When I talk about "taken away," I mean in the classic crappy-GM move of totally writing the PCs' backstory elements and narrative hooks out because they're inconvenient -- "oh, you have a family/business/dependent? Village burnt down, they're gone now, you're free to be a murderhobo" stuff, the non-consensual change of what the player signed up to have the PC do and care about. The conflicts and responsibilities that come with gangs/hardholds/etc. is part of the player sign-on in this case, and obviously the GM can and should use it, which may result in logical narrative consequences.
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Dec 5, 2022 23:29
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Backers do have it yes, though I haven't really gotten a chance to go through it yet.
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Dec 6, 2022 00:32
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Got a wild hair up my rear end this morning to make a PBTA hack where you play the monsters in a dungeon. I don't know why, and I'm trying to talk myself out of going through the effort because I don't really have time to write an RPG right now lol. I see that there is already a Forged in the Dark hack called Wicked Ones, but it seems to focus more on the dungeon building and of course FitD is a lot crunchier and mission focused where you pick a monster race and a class etc. I was thinking something more classic PBTA spirit and free form. Is your dungeon a hole in the ground full of random monsters? An undead crypt? A mad wizard's laboratory? A xenophobic elven commune who kill all outsiders? Is today's session going to be raiding a human hamlet or focused on internal politics and drama? Are we overthrowing the Dungeon Master or just happy with their leadership? I dunno. Is this worth pursuing or has someone already done it better?
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Dec 11, 2022 19:42
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Got a wild hair up my rear end this morning to make a PBTA hack where you play the monsters in a dungeon. I don't know why, and I'm trying to talk myself out of going through the effort because I don't really have time to write an RPG right now lol. I see that there is already a Forged in the Dark hack called Wicked Ones, but it seems to focus more on the dungeon building and of course FitD is a lot crunchier and mission focused where you pick a monster race and a class etc. I was thinking something more classic PBTA spirit and free form. Is your dungeon a hole in the ground full of random monsters? An undead crypt? A mad wizard's laboratory? A xenophobic elven commune who kill all outsiders? Is today's session going to be raiding a human hamlet or focused on internal politics and drama? Are we overthrowing the Dungeon Master or just happy with their leadership?
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Dec 11, 2022 19:48
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Got a wild hair up my rear end this morning to make a PBTA hack where you play the monsters in a dungeon. I don't know why, and I'm trying to talk myself out of going through the effort because I don't really have time to write an RPG right now lol. I see that there is already a Forged in the Dark hack called Wicked Ones, but it seems to focus more on the dungeon building and of course FitD is a lot crunchier and mission focused where you pick a monster race and a class etc. I was thinking something more classic PBTA spirit and free form. Is your dungeon a hole in the ground full of random monsters? An undead crypt? A mad wizard's laboratory? A xenophobic elven commune who kill all outsiders? Is today's session going to be raiding a human hamlet or focused on internal politics and drama? Are we overthrowing the Dungeon Master or just happy with their leadership? Sometimes its worth doing something just for the exercise of doing it. I cook and run because its pleasurable to do, not because I think it'll be the best thing ever. As for comparing Wicked Ones, its less that its particularly crunchy and more that that PCs are basically all in alignment and that sessions are fairly rigidly structured. AW PCs compete with each other a lot and that's where a lot of the fun comes from, and also AW PCs are not at all symmetrically powerful while Wicked Ones PCs try to be pretty close, so you've got plenty of wiggle room for stuff like "The Dungeon Boss" as a PC class.
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Dec 11, 2022 19:53
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Tulip posted:Sometimes its worth doing something just for the exercise of doing it. I cook and run because its pleasurable to do, not because I think it'll be the best thing ever. This is a very good point, and something I was having trouble putting into words when I was chatting with some friends about my idea. You nailed the differences better than my hand-wavy "crunchy" thing. I'm torn on whether The Dungeon Boss is a playbook a la Hardholder or if it should always be an NPC by design and the players are always some flavor of minion.
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Dec 11, 2022 19:59
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Got a wild hair up my rear end this morning to make a PBTA hack where you play the monsters in a dungeon. I don't know why, and I'm trying to talk myself out of going through the effort because I don't really have time to write an RPG right now lol. I see that there is already a Forged in the Dark hack called Wicked Ones, but it seems to focus more on the dungeon building and of course FitD is a lot crunchier and mission focused where you pick a monster race and a class etc. I was thinking something more classic PBTA spirit and free form. Is your dungeon a hole in the ground full of random monsters? An undead crypt? A mad wizard's laboratory? A xenophobic elven commune who kill all outsiders? Is today's session going to be raiding a human hamlet or focused on internal politics and drama? Are we overthrowing the Dungeon Master or just happy with their leadership? I don't believe it's PbtA but The Skeletons could serve as inspiration (https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/the-skeletons) I think for what it's worth in the indie RPG space you're almost always going to be rehashing something. There's so many games out there. IMO If you think you have a cool idea you might as well go for it. Try to hash together a really simple prototype and get it in front of people. You'll know immediately if it's worth pursuing further or just sticking on itch.io as is.
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Dec 11, 2022 20:19
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Got a wild hair up my rear end this morning to make a PBTA hack where you play the monsters in a dungeon. I don't know why, and I'm trying to talk myself out of going through the effort because I don't really have time to write an RPG right now lol. I see that there is already a Forged in the Dark hack called Wicked Ones, but it seems to focus more on the dungeon building and of course FitD is a lot crunchier and mission focused where you pick a monster race and a class etc. I was thinking something more classic PBTA spirit and free form. Is your dungeon a hole in the ground full of random monsters? An undead crypt? A mad wizard's laboratory? A xenophobic elven commune who kill all outsiders? Is today's session going to be raiding a human hamlet or focused on internal politics and drama? Are we overthrowing the Dungeon Master or just happy with their leadership? I was going to suggest mining the "Number Appearing" supplement to Dungeon World for ideas, but the only reason I'm mentioning it right now is that its creator pulled it three years ago for being too racially essentialist for their liking and hasn't come back with a replacement. It might still be worth tracking down on the dark web if you're really curious. "No Country For Old Kobolds" does some interesting stuff with effectively troupe-style play in that any given mission is going to involve a squad of expendables but success improves everyone’s lot so "character progression" is still effectively a thing.
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Dec 14, 2022 16:47
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Apocalypse Keys CCYA license leads me to believe it would be okay for people to write mysteries for it, but I'm not seeing anything on itch.io. Any reason why the game wouldn't have more third party support?
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Jan 4, 2023 19:18
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