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That Old Tree posted:One of the great things about the following books in this series is that a good chunk of them were just rules kludges and errata to fix the system so that it would work at the rapidly increasing power levels and also could faithfully include stats for the powers they had not planned for. The game was written either without awareness or without foresight, which I guess is true-to-source. After the line was cancelled, the one of the supplement writers went on record as saying they knew the system was busted from the ground up and had to write like it wasn't.
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Mar 1, 2016 20:23
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theironjef posted:Time for some of that Afterthought, people. This is the one where we answer the real question, the question that's only been answered by every roleplaying game ever made: What is a roleplaying game? The one instance of giving the GM XP I've seen that makes sense is in Double Cross, where XP is given to players rather than characters because losing a character is basically inevitable. New characters get however much extra XP the player has, so replacement characters are just as powerful as the character that just died or went crazy. The GM also gets XP so they can keep up if someone else takes over as GM. It''s really just codifying what most groups do anyway, but it's good to see it spelled out. Of course, the idea that anyone will ever volunteer to take over as GM to give the regular one a break is just adorable, but at least it makes sense.
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Mar 8, 2016 19:40
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Because nerds can't just let a thing be earnest. Gritty realism = maturity, and we gotta show everyone that roleplaying brightly-colored schoolgirls can be mature. There's probably a lot of masculinity poo poo to unpack in there too, but people here get real weird and lovely when you bring that up.
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Mar 8, 2016 22:44
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Doresh posted:Does ""magical girls team up with tokusatsu heroes (because what else are magical boys gonna look like) to fight a bastardized Cthulhu mythos" sound earnest enough? I'm still working on it. As long as you don't include a sanity system of any sort, you're off to a good start.
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Mar 8, 2016 23:10
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Hunt11 posted:The concept of San could work if it is more like a stress meter. As in spend too long fighting off evil without having a chance to hang out with your friends or go watch a movie or whatever and you start to burn out. A stress meter is a sanity system. Don't.
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Mar 9, 2016 01:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Book of Iron Might, by Mike "The Squeakiest of Farts" Mearls It's funny how all of this pearl-clutching about a buff person doing something cool sometimes comes from the guy who made Iron Heroes, a version of d&d3 where there's a bunch of new martial classes about doing Cool But Different Martial Things while the casters are fiddly and GMs are warned against allowing them.
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Mar 17, 2016 18:57
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The issue with M20 isn't in the content (mostly) but the presentation. Mage always had the idea that paradigms are false constructs, but the idea of going beyond your paradigm to achieve enlightenment was seen as a goal and a measure of power. Brucato's presentation of the idea in M20 is way more smug about the whole thing.In the old games, Paradigms and foci were used as tools, and even if two people use the same spell mechanically, there was a world of difference in how they were explained in the narrative. M20 has the same idea for mechanics, but Brucato presents paradigms as a crutch instead of a worldview. There's this ongoing tone where the Traditions and Technocracy are old stuffy idiots with outdated ideas of how reality works, while the new focus on the more fringe groups and their "anything goes" near-lack-of paradigm is shown in a positive light while short-cutting the entire path to enlightenment. It's the gently caress You Dad version of a game that was pretty gently caress You Dad from start, as written by the guy with a naked fairy airbrushed on his van that thinks he's still down with the kids.
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Mar 28, 2016 03:11
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Hostile V posted:Wait so what exactly is WHAM? It's everything she wants, and everything she needs.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:59
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Rand Brittain posted:White Wolf failing to curate this stuff twenty years ago is pretty much why Mage fandom turned into a roiling pit of flames—they basically taught people to play several different mutually exclusion games that all had the same name, catered to all those groups at different times, and then started playing favorites, resulting in an explosion. Kind of like... The Ascension War! oh shiiiiiit
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Mar 31, 2016 01:53
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Remember when Pinocchio pandered to vore fetishists back in 1883? Is there nothing they won't corrupt?
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Apr 9, 2016 00:58
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Crasical posted:Car Wars functions fine as a tabletop strategy game, where players get handed a car and let loose on the highway or arena, but I don't think it works as a role-playing game. That's because Car Wars is a tabletop strategy game, and not a role-playing game. Battletech also has rules for pilot advancement but nobody seems to confuse it for an RPG.
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Apr 11, 2016 02:43
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That sounds like poo poo in the hands of Wick, but also makes me realize that a Calculords RPG could be rad.
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Apr 12, 2016 23:23
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Hostile V posted:I was sold at "fling cat at enemy's face". Yes. "I can't die until I track down the motherfucker that killed my family."
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Apr 17, 2016 16:46
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For some reason I don't agree that a setting where finding love means you can't die and the stunt examples specifically highlight using actual shenanigans in combat is "grimdark."
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Apr 18, 2016 02:27
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Nifara posted:Talents start off as marital or magic (as per your levels), and after level 10 can be social. Please tell us about the marital talents.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:40
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Mors Rattus posted:I think it's meant to be more... As you raise your dagger and prepare to slay the evil baron, he struggles fruitlessly against the ropes tying him to the chair. Your arm plunges down but before your helpless foe's heart is pierced by steel, you're both thrown across the room as a huge dragon breaks through the wall! The dragon bellows "STOP TRYING TO CIRCUMVENT THE GAME'S CENTRAL CONCEIT, YOU rear end in a top hat" before taking to the skies once more. You watch as the dragon uses smoke to spell "JESUS CHRIST YOU loving NERDS" in the sky, and when you turn back to the room the baron has vanished.
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Apr 21, 2016 19:04
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I would love a standalone game for the Sidereals. The idea of fate-bending kung fu bureaucrats is too good to get tied down to Exalted's bad rules and other setting shenanigans.
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Apr 23, 2016 02:42
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 This is basically the Pathfinder origin story in five words.
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May 27, 2016 18:54
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I Am Just a Box posted:I've been thinking for a bit that the Awakening and Forsaken posts have been short on summarizing and suffered for it, but at this point I'm starting to wonder how much detail you can go into before you're just kind of transcribing the book into the thread. Is it just me? It's not just you.
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Jun 3, 2016 06:43
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Libertad! posted:Personally speaking, 13th Age would be a better intro than D&D were it not for the fact that Pathfinder and 5E are the Pepsi and Coke of tabletop RPGs. I can imagine explaining to total newcomers how 13th Age is a mashup of 3rd and 4th Edition and being asked "why don't we play D&D first?" A lot of 13th Age's selling points were pointed towards people experienced with said Editions than total newbies, so trying to get its appeal to unfamiliar folks would need different explanations. I don't think a total newcomer is going to ask the one person with experience why they're playing the game the experienced person knows. I also don't know why your answer as the experienced player would include edition comparisons or why it would be anything other than "trust me, this is easier."
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Jun 6, 2016 04:11
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Like some kind of book about breeds of animals... that change... yeah, it could work!
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Jun 10, 2016 04:52
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Mors Rattus posted:
A strong typo, or an unflattering description of logistics workers?
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Jun 11, 2016 17:06
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GURPS didn't stop making setting books, they just stop making softcovers of them when e23 took off. Age of Gold and Solar Patrol are real cool.
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Jun 17, 2016 06:25
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David Pulver wrote the 2nd and 3rd edition BESM corebooks, so it's not exactly out of left field.
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Jul 5, 2016 03:57
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Because it's satisfying to see results that are beyond the maximum die value and a lot of people don't really give a poo poo about predictable bell curves or whatever.
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Sep 5, 2016 15:50
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The game being discussed Cryptomancer, not L5R.
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Sep 7, 2016 23:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Cyberpunk in a swimming pool. yo I love seapunk
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Sep 15, 2016 03:41
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jfc I know WW/OP books are long-winded as hell but that doesn't mean every review has to be.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:55
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Nessus posted:And in Wraith, of course, how can it get worse? You're already a spooky ghost! You'd think that, but
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Oct 22, 2016 04:36
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That's actually a really good sign that you should either trim it down or break it into two posts.
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Oct 29, 2016 17:46
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Nah, dude just has a real weird bug up his rear end about intentionally swingy dice and will never shut the gently caress up about it.
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Dec 16, 2016 08:20
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Zomborgon posted:I just remembered I found a Hunter: the Reckoning core book lying around, no idea what the difference is from Hunter: the Vigil. Maybe I'll take a look at it. Basically everything.
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Dec 20, 2016 03:52
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Rank 5 powers in Reckoning were also mathematically impossible to get, and required GM fiat (and a derangement, I think?) to get something kind of cool.
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Dec 20, 2016 05:57
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Hunters had three virtue tracks: Mercy, Vision, and Zeal. All went from 0 to 10. Buying a power used up points on the appropriate track, so you could only ever buy 10 points worth of powers for any one virtue. You also needed the previous power for a creed to get the next one. That means if you bought all Defender powers, which use the Zeal track, you could get the first four since the costs add up to 10. On the other hand, if you took the first three Defender powers and the first Avenger power (also Zeal), you could never buy the fourth Defender power because 1+2+3+1=7, leaving you with only three of the four Zeal points you'd need to get the fourth Defender power. Since buying the first four powers for a single creed used all of your points in that virtue track, the game explicitly said you couldn't fit that 5th power in the same way, and the GM would have to come up with some way to decide whether you can get it or not.
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Dec 20, 2016 07:01
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Simian_Prime posted:At this point it's only fun for gawking at, and even that's starting to wear thin. "Oh look, on page XX the author compares CPS workers to the alt-right." *yawn* "starting to"
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Jan 17, 2017 00:50
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Doresh posted:From what I've heard, the explosion rules are just nuts, having you figure out how often the explosion waves or something bounce around and stuff. The old rules for a grenade in a small room were called the Chunky Salsa rules.
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Feb 4, 2017 23:53
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LordAbaddon posted:What? That seems super dumb. What could possibly be gained by removing technology that the real world currently possesses from a supposedly near-future (ostensibly) cyberpunk setting? Dollars from old men that hate change, mostly.
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Feb 5, 2017 05:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Does Polaris actually have some kind of empire development system or something? We're a dozen posts into this review and I'm still not convinced this game even has a game.
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Mar 13, 2017 19:12
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My favorite thing about Invisible Sun is still the sample character "searching for the secret (and possibly forbidden) number between 12 and 13" because jesus gently caress, Monte, pretending fractions don't exist is not a great way to convince me you've put a lot of thought into this.
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Mar 20, 2017 15:51
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Kurieg posted:He does realize that removing it from Inklesspen's website doesn't magically remove it from SA right? There's a surprising number of people that work in IT but have no idea how the internet works.
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May 23, 2017 18:02
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