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This is the chat thread for the month of January, which is a whole week underway but whatever. What has everyone been working on lately? Systems? Homebrews? Adventures?
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Jan 8, 2016 10:58
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I wrote "now" instead of "not". The shame, it is overpowering.
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Jan 8, 2016 10:58
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I've been trying to write a tactical miniatures game after laughing at how Games Workshop's new "start collecting sets" are the same price as the old battle-forces were ten years ago. It's meant to be quick to play and have a maximum army size of one of those sets, so people who still want to give GW money for some reason could play straight away. I'm not quite sure how granular I want it to be at the moment - I'm not trying to rewrite Infinity, and I want to keep the stat-lines simple so you don't have to look up lots of tables and it can be presented on nice cards. But the small army sizes mean not having a lot to do means the game's going to be pretty boring beyond "push models forwards". My only idea I've had that I really like is incorporating suppression and pinning into the normal damage rules, ala Mantic's Warpath, so shots that miss still contribute to your efforts.
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Jan 8, 2016 14:37
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I'm working on getting my crap together to run a Star Wars game using Roll20. It's been a while since I ran a non-PBP game and I want to try and get back into the swing of things. And on the side I've been working on a magic system for Fate that covers how things work in a setting that I tool around with from time to time. I want to use a smaller, separate stress track that players can damage to get power from the surrounding area, hopefully leading to magical shenanigans. Alternatively it could cause bad things to happen, Dark Sun-style.
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Jan 8, 2016 16:06
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The main thing I've been working on is getting back into the swing of my Torg review for F&F.
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Jan 8, 2016 17:19
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Anyone running Savage Worlds these days? I forgot how much I enjoy this system. I'm starting up a new game using it pretty soon and I'm remembering how good it is at having lightweight tactical combat with a really simple dice mechanic and having a really fast pace. It's cool stuff. It is, however, crunchier than I remember, but that's probably because I'd only run Pathfinder and 4e before running my last Savage Worlds game, and now I'm just coming off of 13th Age and Dungeon World.
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Jan 8, 2016 18:35
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I am prodding at a vaguely Mass Effect inspired hack for Strike! called Zero Point, mostly because I was inspired to do the following as a skill trick and have sort of vaguely half-committed myself to building the rest of a setting around it. Upper Left Blue: When you appeal to someone’s better nature, you can always convince them to do the right thing.
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Jan 8, 2016 20:20
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I'm working on a game I'm currently calling Badass Kung-Fu Demigods....a little bit of PDQ, a bit of Savage Worlds and a fair amount of inspiration from Exalted. I've made several personal game systems and this one has by far been the easiest and fastest to create. The only real problem is I've got no chance to playtest it.
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Jan 9, 2016 07:28
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January!  STRIKE THE EARTH
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Jan 14, 2016 06:15
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Is there somewhere people put together VASSAL/TTS games? I just got them both and it'd be neat to try out. Edit: Im an idiot, there's a recruitment thread. Thought it was just RPGs but it's not
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Jan 14, 2016 09:24
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I'm endlessly writing and scrapping elements of a conspiracy for a Shadowun game. Is there a fancy term for this?
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Jan 14, 2016 23:33
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Zephirum posted:I'm endlessly writing and scrapping elements of a conspiracy for a Shadowun game. Is there a fancy term for this? If you are writing a conspiracy have you considered taking a look at the conspiracy pyramid section in Nights Black Agents?
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Jan 15, 2016 03:02
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I'm on my fourth unfinished Stars Without Number sector in the last couple of years. At this point I should probably combine them all together into one complete sandbox, convert some of the material from the Traveller Bundles of Holding I just bought and try and run something on here.
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Jan 15, 2016 03:21
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ThreeStep posted:I'm on my fourth unfinished Stars Without Number sector in the last couple of years. At this point I should probably combine them all together into one complete sandbox, convert some of the material from the Traveller Bundles of Holding I just bought and try and run something on here. Do it. 
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Jan 15, 2016 04:21
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I'm currently trying to herd my loving sheep together so we can start an Icons campaign, but one of them refuses to see other player and since our other guy is in Panama for January I can't really start with only 1 guy. I swear, the worst part about being the designated GM is having to organize things. I'm this close to calling it quits and just roam the clubs around Madrid, looking for games to play. But in my experience, rp clubs gather the worst of the hobby and I just never seem to find a decent group. I guess it can't be worst than my experiences in my home country anyway. A couple of friends and I have also talked about building a setting collaboratively, and I was thinking about using Drive documents and Obsidian Portal for organization. Any other tools we could use to help the process out?
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Jan 15, 2016 10:25
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Hugoon Chavez posted:I'm this close to calling it quits and just roam the clubs around Madrid, looking for games to play. But in my experience, rp clubs gather the worst of the hobby and I just never seem to find a decent group. Well dude socializing is about mixing with the right and the wrong people.
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Jan 15, 2016 17:29
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I want to do a game where my players are part of a group teleported to an alien world along with a bunch of other people by an alien race and forced to survive. What system do you recommend for both them and stating alien wildlife? I was thinking GURPS.
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Jan 18, 2016 17:09
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Really besides the weekly D&D game with Spiteski and the others, my mind drifts through dozens of potential projects, although my current main one is putting together a setting based on this map I found a while ago; As is pretty obvious there's a lot of Lovecraft here, although I'd be mixing in stuff from other writers and sources, as well as have quite a bit of D&D mixed in, since I'd probably use D&D or one of it's OSR derivatives as the system
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Jan 19, 2016 04:12
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Isn't that where a lot of Lord Dunsany's stories take place?
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Jan 19, 2016 04:23
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Lightning Lord posted:Isn't that where a lot of Lord Dunsany's stories take place? Guy who made the map deliberately named it after Dunsany's work since he wanted a Dreamlands setting without having to be 100% beholden to Lovecraft's version(that and so he could call it something besides the Dreamlands), he hasn't gotten around to fleshing out his version so I'm using it for my own purposes
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Jan 19, 2016 04:33
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Is there a modeling thread? I need help finding models for my ridiculous designs.
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Jan 19, 2016 05:23
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Mycroft Holmes posted:I want to do a game where my players are part of a group teleported to an alien world along with a bunch of other people by an alien race and forced to survive. What system do you recommend for both them and stating alien wildlife? I was thinking GURPS. Honestly take a look at Mutant Year Zero. Has rules for a a post apocalyptic world hex crawl and building up your scavenger base/civilization. Even if you run GURPS you can port plenty of stuff. For what you are doing ehh maybe GURPS War Against the Chtoor, Biotech, Reign of Steel. If you are an rear end in a top hat, add stuff from GURPS Madlands
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Jan 19, 2016 10:27
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drrockso20 posted:Guy who made the map deliberately named it after Dunsany's work since he wanted a Dreamlands setting without having to be 100% beholden to Lovecraft's version(that and so he could call it something besides the Dreamlands), he hasn't gotten around to fleshing out his version so I'm using it for my own purposes Looks like the Southwestern coast predominantly drew its place names from Dunsany. Yann and Sarnath most notably.
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Jan 19, 2016 11:31
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Hmm. Had the errant idea; could I run a low powered hex crawl/civ building game in the Rifts universe with Mutant Year Zero? A village (Arc) of wilderness scouts and such with the occasional Dragon, Juicer, techno-wizard available as PC. With Coalition vs Tolkeen war in the background.
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Jan 20, 2016 13:14
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Got into a talk with a friend today that spurred some questions; does anyone have good examples of non-American RPGs that strongly show their cultural roots? I thought about Tenra Bansho Zero immediately, but that's more of a genre emulation so it's hard to pick out what's specific to the genre and what comes from a broader worldview. Ideally, I'm looking for a fairly "generic" game like a D&D-like or an apocalyptic roleplaying game - a genre of roleplaying that's also popular in America, but interpreted through a different cultural lens. Specifically ideas of health/injury/recovery, and how the "well being" of characters is handled.
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Jan 26, 2016 03:20
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In Brazil there's only Tormenta I can recall and honestly I don't think the recovery rules on it are that different from the ones on D&D. Although the d20 version and the subsequent ones did use some insanity points regarding adventuring inside the infernal lovecraftian hellscape that names the setting.
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Jan 26, 2016 03:44
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Sixto Lezcano posted:Got into a talk with a friend today that spurred some questions; does anyone have good examples of non-American RPGs that strongly show their cultural roots? I thought about Tenra Bansho Zero immediately, but that's more of a genre emulation so it's hard to pick out what's specific to the genre and what comes from a broader worldview. Ideally, I'm looking for a fairly "generic" game like a D&D-like or an apocalyptic roleplaying game - a genre of roleplaying that's also popular in America, but interpreted through a different cultural lens. Specifically ideas of health/injury/recovery, and how the "well being" of characters is handled. I dunno about cultural roots, but Ryuutama instantly comes to mind as an interesting take on many D&D notions, and definitely has its own ideas about how to model injury and general well-being.
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Jan 26, 2016 03:46
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I've been working on a really ambitious campaign idea. Essentially, all the player characters would be members of the Varangian Guard right around 1000 AD (when the Guard still consisted almost exclusively of Norsemen), in direct service to Basileus (Eastern Roman Emperor) Basil II "the Purple-Born" of Makedon. The Varangian Guard started as a band of primarily East Norse mercenaries employed by Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev: they demanded that he "show [them] the way to the Greeks" when he failed to pay them, and as part of a package deal (including the Emperor's sister's hand in marriage and having his people convert to Christianity), he donated them to the Basileus' service. They formed a crack heavy infantry troop within the "Hetaireia", the portion of the Roman army consisting of foreigners. Impressed by their prowess and the seriousness with which they upheld their oaths of service, the Basileus made them his personal bodyguard. They'd march alongside him in processions and stand very close to his throne, and they also performed unsavory acts such as torture or mutilation when it was required. The most famous Varangian was Harald Sigurdrsson "the Hard-Ruler", who became King of Norway and died at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. At one point, it was so common for Scandinavian men to join the Guard, one medieval Swedish law forbade anyone from inheriting while they were in "Greece" (as the Norse referred to the ERE). Varangians were very well paid and loyal to a fault, and according to some accounts they were afforded the special privilege of pillaging the Imperial palace upon the death of the Basileus (though this is somewhat implausible). The players would be hand-picked from among the ranks of the Guard. They'd be the Basileus' personal thugs and enforcers, specially commissioned to root out treason, heresy, and of course magical threats within the Empire. They might have subtle magical abilities of their own or even adhere to the faith of their ancestors, faults the Basileus would overlook in exchange for their service. "Scandinavian barbarians hunting down the enemies of Christendom in Greece, Anatolia, and beyond" sounded like a campaign hook that would essentially write itself. Unfortunately it's requiring a ton of research, because I really want to do justice to the idea and initially didn't know a whole lot about the ERE or about medieval Norse or Greek culture, religion, or history. I've been reading every book I can get my hands on concerning the Varangians or the ERE in general, because with my luck there will be some goon who wrote his Ph.D. in Byzantine studies among the players and I'll feel like an idiot if I mangle some important detail. It's also requiring a ton of preparation, because I really do not want to be caught with my pants down deciding what to do next or have to procrastinate on writing updates because work/life/etc. For the system, I was planning to use Legend d20, a system that (as far as I can tell) started as an exceedingly complicated set of D&D 3.5 house rules written by people who liked 4th edition in spirit, if not in practice. It allows for a huge amount of customizability and seems to have been written in a way that made it easy to playtest, so while it's easy to put together cool character concepts, it's hard to create lovely or overpowered ones. The power level is fairly high and seems to be directly inspired by wuxia films. Unfortunately, interest in it seems to have petered out over the years due to slow Kickstarter rewards and the departure of its lead designer, so it's hard to find examples of it in play. Even more unfortunately, the book is awash with information that isn't always well laid out (it would really benefit from a system reference document), so I might have to write a summary/review of it before. Learning a foreign (historical) campaign setting and a totally new system sounds like too harsh a demand to make of any group of players. Or I might just talk myself out of it and convince myself this is a stupid idea Aschlafly fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jan 26, 2016 |
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Jan 26, 2016 04:00
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I was thinking of running my current campaign (medieval fantasy Spanish Civil War) in Legend before I threw up my hands and said, "gently caress it, I'll just do 4e." I would play the gently caress out of a Varangian Guard game using that system.
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Jan 26, 2016 05:40
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Why not run it in GURPS? GURPS books are chock-full of historical information that's relevant to running games in that period (customs, exact levels of technology, economics etc). GURPS has a terrible rep for being overcomplicated but honestly it doesn't need to be - by the sounds of it you're already set on doing the hard part of running GURPS which is actually deciding on the campaign you want to run and hashing out the details.
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Jan 26, 2016 14:38
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Sounds good, but I know literally nothing about GURPS, and I've kind of gotten married to the system idea. I'd certainly be interested in checking out relevant GURPS books, though.
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Jan 26, 2016 20:59
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Are there Osprey books on the Varangian Guard? Check those out for ideas.
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Jan 26, 2016 21:06
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There's one! It was very helpful and one of the first things I took a look at. The author mentions that the Varangians demanded that Vladimir "show [them] the way to the Greeks", which is what got me wondering whether the original Varangians were Rus (who were, whatever their origins, by that time completely Slavic in culture) or whether they were culturally Norse. This led me to Blöndal and Benedikz' "The Varangians of Byzantium", which was likewise an indispensable resource: Blöndal was, in his day, a rather unique individual, an Icelander who specialized in Byzantine studies but, unlike pretty much every other Byzantinist at the time, could read Old Norse. This also helped me narrow down the time period, since around 1066 the Guard enjoyed an influx of Anglo-Saxon volunteers, and at some point the Guard began to consist primarily of English speakers: for maximum Norseness, the campaign would therefore have to be set sometime between 989 and 1066.
Aschlafly fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jan 26, 2016 |
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Jan 26, 2016 21:29
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Guys, it is so unfair there's no grogstxt with the thread I just found. So unfair.
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Jan 27, 2016 04:57
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dwarf74 posted:Guys, it is so unfair there's no grogstxt with the thread I just found. So unfair. You could try posting it in the GW thread, they love the whole  thing.
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Jan 27, 2016 05:57
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I am reading the next two books for my podcast at once because one of them is freaking huge. Plus slowly assembling a complete Sentinels of the Multiverse set and getting ready to run some 7e Gamma World for fun.
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Jan 27, 2016 07:21
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Sixto Lezcano posted:Got into a talk with a friend today that spurred some questions; does anyone have good examples of non-American RPGs that strongly show their cultural roots? I thought about Tenra Bansho Zero immediately, but that's more of a genre emulation so it's hard to pick out what's specific to the genre and what comes from a broader worldview. Ideally, I'm looking for a fairly "generic" game like a D&D-like or an apocalyptic roleplaying game - a genre of roleplaying that's also popular in America, but interpreted through a different cultural lens. Specifically ideas of health/injury/recovery, and how the "well being" of characters is handled. The Witness came out on PS4 yesterday, just in time for me to steal as much from it as I can for the minotaur maze adventure I'm starting to run this Saturday.
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Jan 27, 2016 12:34
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Anyone familiar with Lamentations of the Flame Princess? we're starting a hybrid campaign in it + some homebrew rules and I was just wondering what the highlights of the system are. Any combat quirks to know about? I've played most other systems.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:14
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:In Brazil there's only Tormenta I can recall and honestly I don't think the recovery rules on it are that different from the ones on D&D. Although the d20 version and the subsequent ones did use some insanity points regarding adventuring inside the infernal lovecraftian hellscape that names the setting. I recall hearing about this game from some Brazilian buddies over on another message board. It was notable for being one of the only d20 campaign settings which had anime-style artwork. From what I heard it had some cool ideas, so it's sad we never saw an English translation.
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Jan 28, 2016 00:27
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Razzled posted:Anyone familiar with Lamentations of the Flame Princess? we're starting a hybrid campaign in it + some homebrew rules and I was just wondering what the highlights of the system are. Any combat quirks to know about? It's BX with Cannibal Corpse album cover art. Even fans of the game admit the true meat is in the adventures.
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Jan 28, 2016 03:08
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