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DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Halloween Jack posted:

Anyone familiar with Barbarians of Lemuria? It was a RPGnet Darling for awhile, but I found it to be a very bare-bones game that solved the "fighter vs. wizard" issue by just pulling out all the wizard stuff. So you're just rolling to hit, or rolling to succeed at a combat stunt like flipping a table or swinging from a chandelier. (And lo and behold, when they introduced alchemists as an optional class, it got options that baseline warrior characters don't get.) It seems like it was made in a period where people wanted to do "low fantasy" but hadn't come up with mechanics to make a game interesting without feat-like abilities or magical powers.

This is fairly accurate except BoL isn't class based. If you take one of your four backgrounds in a magic thing you get to use that thing and you don't if you don't. It's major crime was just being so bare bones that everything is fairly bland.

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DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
I kickstarted the latest version of BoL, I think. Maybe I should dig it up and F&F it.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

I seem to remember a stupid D&D fact that at one point Kobolds played a game called "Skull Skull". That seems like the sort of sport that the coalition could buy into.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
If he's not going to sell it to anyone why would he care what the reviews look like?

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Erin Tarn with an overview.

Do we ever get an overview from Prosek, and if so is it hilarious or horrifying or both?

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Mors Rattus posted:

The pronoun for dragons is dre

Don't forget about dre

Because the book sure won't let you

That would imply that dragons only have one gen...

I'll, I'll just wait for the write up.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Mors Rattus posted:

Its closest relative, to my mind, is My Little Pony, but it is not actually that good at it.

I immediately guessed this after your previous descriptions.

I think that charts puts a real point on how versatile the tenses of "they" really are, since every single use of Dre is just a stupid distortion of "they".
Either everyone is a dragon, and "Dre" is completely unnecessary, or there are other sentient folk and dragons are racist.

While we're at it, how does an egg come about? Do the parents psychically combine their DNA, or do they hug it out or something?

DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jun 18, 2017

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Halloween Jack posted:

So, having listened to the review: I have never seen a game where the true nature of the setting was hidden not only from the players but the GM, that managed to carry it off well. SLA Industries, Insylum, Noumenon, Lacuna, a|state, all of them are just half-baked as a result.

This is a self evident result.
The GM has a responsibility to accurately portray the rp setting.
The rp setting is partially obscured.
Therefore, the GM will fail at one of their primary roles.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Commisioner Gordon: "That's strange. I don't remember there being a tiny snow capped mountain just next to the Wayne estate. Oh, well."

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Mors Rattus posted:

Epyllion: The Dragon is perceptive, his eyes alert as his mind. Only he discerns a difference in a mirror.

So, moves! Let's see what they actually are.

When you stand up to an older dragon (NPC), roll +Courage. On a hit, they acknowledge your worth and address your concerns. Pick one:

This is potentially fascinating because it implies that one of the primary actions in the game is sticking it to the man dre?

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Saber Lasar, yeah that sounds like a human name
- a dragon

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Night10194 posted:

Also still not seeing why they're dragons instead of people (or horses, it sounded like the MLP Adventures RPG was actually perfectly serviceable for younger, newer players from its own review)

The age category thing would be pretty hard to grasp with human characters.

I may be jaded from too much D&D, but I think that a game about Pegasus and Unicorns seems more interesting than boring old dragons.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

DalaranJ posted:

Saber Lasar, yeah that sounds like a human name
- Kevin Siembieda

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

wdarkk posted:

So out of curiosity, what is the ideal number of stats for a PbtA game in your opinion? Monsterhearts uses four, Dungeon World uses six, and Apocalypse World itself uses five.

Dungeon World only gets to use six because it's an ungodly hybrid. I think it would also be possible to do three reasonably, in a game where you can't take stat advancements at all.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Is there an actual reason that the fascists refuse to conquer a bunch of land that has basically no defense besides bringing a gun to a mech/immortal drug addict fight?

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Epyillon using the X-card is just an artifact of the game being terrible at explaining its own tone.
It's a light hearted dragon fantasy game, that explores generational conflict, also the darkness is corrupting and destroying the kingdom. No, we're not going to explain how to reconcile those together.

On a somewhat related note, things came into perspective when I learned this was written by the same people who did urban shadows.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Reflections85 posted:

Is Urban Shadows that bad?

It's tonally unbalanced since it's gimmick is "every World of Darkness game at the same time." And the system's grasp of how PBTA works was sketchy at best.

Seems like exactly the same issues as Epyllion to me.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Coalition Soldier 1: Hey, Kev, what does this place remind you of?
Coalition Soldier 2: I don't know, Bob, 1st century, maybe 2nd century Chinese?
Coalition Soldier 1: Yeah, that's what I was thinking, Han dynasty stuff. Well, the mech's here, let's go light up some bird d-bees.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Night10194 posted:

Man With Dog being a hero is universal.

This man is your friend.
He fights against skaven.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Good discussion. Now I want a Tenchi Mayo rpg about strip mall karate gyms that are secretly ancient masters.

So I guess what I'm saying is I want a Ranma 1/2 RPG. Preferably one not saddled with a garbage system like BESM.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Covok posted:

http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/asimo/teenagers-from-outer-space/

There ya go. Ursei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, etc. Just refluff it. And it's rules lite.

And it's written by Mike Pondsmith. Beauty.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Mors Rattus posted:

In fairness, Blades in the Dark lets you take stress to get bonuses, too, but it does it...actually well?

Stress is a pool, not an attribute. You never resolve a roll against stress.

In Numenera your pools ARE attributes. This is the kind of thing that's so dumb you should try it out for one round of play testing and then trash it, but here it is in the successor of a popular? completed game.

E: Surely, Monte Cook has written a design blog on this bizarre decision. I'd love to read it.

DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Sep 18, 2017

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
I would be interested in shelling out some to get Invisible Sun for a DM. But I need a promise that they are willing to both do a full F&F of it, and a YouTube unboxing video where they explain in detail why each of the components is dumb.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Also the cleric's minor is an encounter level resource, which isn't a thing spells can be in 5e and that's a pretty big deal.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Starfinger,
Is it the game? The game with the Midas Touch?

Oh, I'm looking forward to this. I will not be surprised if
A) It's better than D&D 5th because there's an actual paid design team
or B) It's just Pathfinder with a bunch of technological stat porn stapled on

or C) Somehow both A and B at the same time.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
So Starfinger themes are intended to ape 4e D&D themes except they can't be interesting because the interesting part was the powers, and Starfinger doesn't have those, right?

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
It's a joke about Steam being dumb, people.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

[*]Healer: Fairly self-explanatory. Lets you heal people in combat by spending RP, take on their damage, sense others' conditions, vampire-drain people's lifeforce by spending RP, etc. Spells mostly center around removing conditions and afflictions.

What does a healing spell look like? Or maybe I should wait for, shudder, the spell lists.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
The Starfinger Society is some sort of adventures guild carry over from Pathfinder, I assume. And not just an aping of Traveler's Aid Society?

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Alien Rope Burn posted:



This looked cool and then I realized "Hey, wait, they can't hit a guy ten feet away?"

AC's too high. Verisimilitude.

Anyway, my misgivings that Starfinger might possibly be tainted by Traveller in some way are proven false by this skill list. I don't even know what I'd have to roll on Profession to act as butler to richer space ship patrons than me.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It does raise of the question of "but what I rob the shop?" :raise:


To an extent, yeah. We'll have an absolutely essential stat-boosting kit later on and it's good to have it just readily available, but at the same time it doesn't actually say "by the way, this is very important", it just puts it there in the section and trusts players to find it and use it. So it's good that it's more clear than Pathfinder, it still isn't completely clear and can be missed by novice players fairly easy. It also raises the question of "if you're expecting PCs to have these ability score boosters, why isn't that just baked into the leveling system?"

Fundamentally the issue is that they just assumed they should keep the treasure system even though it makes no sense for an 'in space' game. So instead they desperately have to staunch the hemorrhaging of giving the players so much money and nothing gameable to spend it. Can't have them spend it on something fun like a spaceship, that would ruin all the GMs planning.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Halloween Jack posted:

Plus, as expected, equipment is a big part of your character in a game where every 5th level Fighter is almost identical.

If I remember right--and possibly just due to odd phrasing--swords in Brown Box D&D are different from other magic weapons. First, in that they're the only ones that have intelligence and alignment and can grant special powers. But also in that while an Axe +2 gives a bonus to hit and damage, a Sword +2 only gives a bonus to damage if it has a bonus against a specific creature type (like a Sword +1, +3 vs Undead gives +3 to hit and +3 damage against undead, but just +1 to hit against everything else).

This was most likely intentional because of Elric.

My favorite thing about sword ego's is that their number one goal tends to be to prevent their users from finding a better weapon.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

I don't know anything about this specific game but one could roll up a token economy resolution like Hillfolk with PBTA.
If you choose to fail take one token, if you want full success pay a token, otherwise you get a compromised success.

[quote="“Halloween Jack”" post="“477090230”"]
Oh, the intelligence and special powers are certainly intentional, it’s the bit about the damage bonus that seems odd. And even though it’s ripped off from Elric, I kinda wish D&D had kept this cult of the magic sword as part of its core conceits—it’s one of the few things that feels like part of a unique D&D theme, and not just a random element from some pulp series tossed in for fun.
[/quote]

:agreed:

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

gradenko_2000 posted:

3e/Pathfinder is a perfectly playable game, and a lot of what we've come to regard as "broken" doesn't even really "break" until at least level 5 and up.

We tend to look down on it because our standards are better than "literally isn't offensive and the rules are not beyond human ken", but for a lot of people, that's more than good enough for them.

Also a lot of the design problems with game systems aren't exposed to the players at all until they suddenly explode. So GMs (should) naturally have a more pronounced sense of what good design looks like and players don't really have to care.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Starfinger Core Rules Part #12: "We’re tweaking the rules around gear and economics and magic. We want to make it a little less bookkeeping and a little more 'sense of wonder.'"
(Credit: James L. Sutter, Starfinger Creative Director, Geek & Sundry Interview)

No, they don't, they don't care one whit. This is the first of these quotes that has actually made me angry.


Alien Rope Burn posted:

[*]Spell Chips: So, these spell functions that cast spells through spell gems. It's notable that non-spellcasters can't use spell gems, but computers can. So if you're a engineer and you want to cast a spell, you get a computer to do it for you. Sure. Makes sense.

They've mastered quantum computing, but they're still stuck with linear fighting.

It's gonna be a real messy Butlerian jihad.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I recently discovered the Primitive Technology youtube channel, so I gotta ask: besides Wurm, are there any other games with a pre-Bronze Age setting?

Are there even any Bronze Age games? The only one that springs to mind is Hillfolk.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Vehicle Chases

So, chase rules.

I don't have a copy of those rules anymore, but this really just sounds like a pathflanderization of d20 Modern chase rules.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
Okay wait, does Paizo microbrew their own IPA? Or do they just sell t-shirts for a fictional IPA?
I'm not sure which would be weirder.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
[quote="“theironjef”" post="“477350207”"]
It’s been a few years, but we now have official art of Helga the Punch Witch, our character created in Witch Girls Adventures: Director’s Cit, along with Synnibarr adventurer and real balloon enthusiast Captain Chester Balloonman:



We commissioned the pieces because we’ll be playing them as D&D characters in an upcoming Twitch thing for the One Shot network.
[/quote]

Is his scarf feeding ammo to his hand crossbow?

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DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.
I am really looking forward to a pathfinder adventure set on the sun.

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