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What I really want out of a mass combat system is the ability for players to engage with different types of interesting units that you can attach personalities to, and then have that matter in battle. Like your character sheet should have a list of armies or units with tags/strengths and names, you should be able to acquire them in gameplay like you do magic items, and then the battle system is a tool for engaging with these and seeing which ones are heroes and which ones are decimated. I want my character sheet to have a box where I keep track of something like Max's bandits (100, irregular, loyalty 5) Grarg's charmed orcs (50, irregular, impetuous, loyal 8) Jirrick's mercenaries (200, regular, loyal 2) Merrin's houseguard (100, regular, loyal 5, 50 casualties, broken) Just a case of figuring out the abstraction so that the interesting bits happen at the table.
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# ? Jan 7, 2019 21:39 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 12:24 |
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Coolness Averted posted:no silly, those are rules for your troops loving you over, Lord Gorgo's undead army is immune to morale and loyalty checks. Also the treasure you looted was cursed. So what? It isn't the job of the NPC army to give victory to the PCs. They must use their own player agency to find a way out of this.
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# ? Jan 7, 2019 21:48 |
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xiw posted:What I really want out of a mass combat system is the ability for players to engage with different types of interesting units that you can attach personalities to, and then have that matter in battle. I made a really lovely pokemon mass battle homebrew system on pokemon tabletop adventure on a campaign I GMed and I just used 'loyalty' as a modifier for their "morale" health bar iirc.
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# ? Jan 7, 2019 21:50 |
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I'm generally against pages of tables of results for critical hits and failures and random mishaps. They always gently caress over the PCs, and I'm rarely impressed with the writers' ability to describe gruesome deaths versus what I can come up with myself. What I'd really like are suggestions for things that can go critically bad or good in non-combat situations. It's a hell of a lot harder for me to narrate the results of someone failing a +Hot roll in Monsterhearts than to narrate someone getting their head chopped off. I did not grow up watching sitcoms, because Friday the 13 Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was in syndication.
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# ? Jan 7, 2019 21:52 |
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S.J. posted:Any good places to pick up RPG tiles/maps outside of Paizo? I have the DnD tiles already, but I don't want to give Paizo any more of my money. If you don't mind printing them out yourself, Heroic Maps makes good quality tiles that are pretty affordable.
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# ? Jan 7, 2019 22:09 |
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I'm thinking about this mass battle question. I think about how movies handle things first, because I often think of roleplaying as somewhat analogous to a semi-improvisational version of creating a movie or episodic tv show, although there are obvious differences. But it's interesting to consider the way that a (good, well-made) film or show can use stylistic choices for how a battle is presented to enhance (or, in the bad case, detract from) the story that is still primarily about the characters. Often there are also budgetary constraints, and these might be considered similar to the tabletop constraints a playing group might face. A low-budget fantasy film probably can't afford to film a set-piece battle with thousands of costumed extras, and similarly, busting out 400 minis to play out a battle may be impractical for an average RPG group, even if they regularly use maps and minis for their game. But leaving that aside, the stylistic choices are notable. Films sometimes pull out to show a big battle happening just to give a sense of scale... but the most exciting parts happen when the camera zooms in to what the main characters are doing. Which might be hewing a path through hordes of enemies three at a time, but just as often involves giving orders, inspiring speeches, engaging antagonists directly or indirectly, or suffering some form of tragic fall or another. Rarely does a film or show accurately and carefully portray the full set of battle maneuvers an army is performing, although sometimes the filmmaker attempts to give the audience a sense of an overall battle's progress by showing a flanking maneuver by several units, or a unit springing from ambush, or a flight of dragons diving on the hapless enemy troops. But sometimes all we see is what the characters experience. The men in the foxhole, with the enemy mostly off-screen or seen in small squads nearby as they engage one another; the pilot's view from her plane, with a few enemy planes in sight. Wonder woman charging the opposite trench is dramatic, but we already are assumed to know there's an entire western front and do not need to be shown the strategic situation of the allied and german troops to understand or appreciate the scene. We know her actions likely affect the battle, but she is going to try to end the war not by defeating all the troops or leading her side's army but rather by identifying and defeating the god she believes has manipulated the situation into happening. When Brad Pitt challenges the enemy champion in Troy, and then immediately defeats him through incredible martial prowess, the entire conflict is affected: when the troops clash at the walls, that's background for the actual story taking place. When the actual trojan horse is brought out, that's a squad of warriors being clever and changing the tide of the conflict. In this case the movie does still attempt to show us the overall disposition of the opposing forces, because the situation - a stalemate siege due to the city's impenetrable walls - is important to understand in order for the horse idea to make sense. Would Platoon have been better, or worse, if the film showed a map of troop dispositions in Vietnam, or tried to fill us in on the strategic situation surrounding their engagements more, or gave us scenes of commanders pushing flags around on a map and tried to make sure we knew exactly where they were and what other units were doing? The movie is about the hellish war, the crimes and psychological trauma everyone is witnessing and taking part in and being subjected to, and ultimately the futility and stupidity of the entire affair; the combat scenes are scripted and filmed to support that narrative, and they do so brilliantly. So, extrapolating: what's your RPG story about? I'd hazard a guess that it's usually abut the characters' stories, their interactions, and of course some kind of adventure or campaign plot. If that plot revolves around a war, giving the players a chance to direct parts of that war at the strategic level might make sense: maybe sometimes the camera should pan back and show a map of Middle Earth that tells us where Saruman's armies are, what's assembled at Mordor, and where the Rohirrim are likely to get the most advantage with a mobile attack. Or perhaps the tactical situation of a desperate battle is important, and the camera can pan back and show the units assaulting Helm's Deep, their composition and arrangement, and give the players a chance to decide how to arrange the defenses on the wall, complete with militia units of boys and old men with bows, elven reinforcements, etc. But if your story is ultimately about the Fellowship, those types of situations needn't be especially detailed. What's important about Helm's Deep is that the defenders are hopelessly outmatched, not the exact stats of the elven archers. We do not need to play out and roll dice as the Ents assault Saruman's tower, or determine exactly how much damage the front line of orcs do to a wall by rolling handfulls of dice... these battles' outcomes hinge on things that key characters do or fail to do and serve the plot. Merry and Pippin have roused the Ents to action, and as a result, Saruman's plans are foiled; it would suck if the players' success still resulted in a combat failure due to unlucky or unskilled direction of the battle itself. Gandalf arrives at dawn with the forces needed to relieve Helm's Deep just as the battle was about to be lost; who cares how many hit points of damage each rider does on its charge into the massed orcs? Well, maybe he should have a chance of failure, if that's how you want your story to progress. But if so, perhaps a lightweight structure using cards or one or two dice rolls is sufficient, rather than busting out the hex maps and unit chits. Perhaps Merry and Pippin could still die in the fighting, but you don't need to simulate the whole battle to determine that. Once Gandalf shows up with the reinforcements, though, the outcome of the battle is reversed, as surely as its outcome was already clear if he fails to show. In this kind of game, busting out the terrain and minis is expensive, time-consuming, unnecessary, and also possibly adding inappropriate kinds of risk. Maybe if your RPG is about being military commanders, and your players have fully bought into that, you want the chits and the hexes. Battletech has an RPG and three levels of tactical/strategic combat mechanisms for you to engage with, and it absolutely makes sense for your mechwarriors to hop into mechs and get onto the table for a lance-on-lance fight. Or to use the scaled-up rules for multiple lances, or the even-more-scaled-up rules for interstellar wars. Those systems (which certainly have their flaws, don't get me wrong) more or less work because the RPG itself is about the big stompy robots and their fights, far more than any other aspect of the adventuring. Running a mercenary company surely involves ensuring your forces are adequately supplied, capturing salvage, hiring techs, and trying not to get screwed by your employers, and you can roleplay that stuff too, but the story and the details at each level of combat are well integrated and complimentary. Fighting out the battles does not make for a jarring or inappropriate shift from the roleplaying and character interaction part of the game. So to make an excessively long post even longer; I'd say think about the story you want to tell, think about the systems you already have in place for telling it, and it's likely that a mass battle system developed specifically for tabletop warfare isn't the right flavor, even if you can make the numbers work. Ask your players what they want out of the game, consider scope and time and budget constraints, and ideally pick a system that already has the right amount of detail built in if you all agree you want mass battles. But, if you decide you need to add something, just make sure the flavor fits well and you don't wind up undermining your game's feel and intent by inserting scenes that detract from the scope. Think of yourself as a director and try not to spend more time on the specifics of battles and wars than the story itself calls for. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jan 7, 2019 |
# ? Jan 7, 2019 23:08 |
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I take most of my inspiration on that from playing WEG Star Wars back in the day. Character level scenes, starfighter level scenes, and cap ship level scenes are all doable, but mostly still come down to the same mechanics with the 'pc' defined as a single object on that scale. There really isn't any difference between a group vs a patrol of Stormtroopers with a speeder and a squadron of x-wings against a squadron of TIEs and a cruiser they're launching from.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 02:45 |
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The main problem the vast majority of RPGs have with mass battles is that they assume you're going to be just another loving chump-rear end in the middle of the fight instead of someone important. Those that have no mass battle mechanics end up with GMs just shoving you into a fight with twenty NPCs for them to diddle. Those WITH mass battle mechanics...typically end up just reinforcing that the PCs aren't special.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 05:15 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:The main problem the vast majority of RPGs have with mass battles is that they assume you're going to be just another loving chump-rear end in the middle of the fight instead of someone important. Those that have no mass battle mechanics end up with GMs just shoving you into a fight with twenty NPCs for them to diddle. Those WITH mass battle mechanics...typically end up just reinforcing that the PCs aren't special. Huh? I thought the whole point of most RPG mass battle mechanics were as a thing to use when your characters were leading armies. Do you have examples of what you are talking about? Most of the examples in the thread don't seem to fit with what you are saying.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 05:23 |
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You ever worry you might be a grognard? I'm on this Discord about comic books. Occasionally, they talk about role playing games. But they always say things that make me go "ugh." Like, right now there was a discussion about how much better it is to roll for stats than any other system. And I'm just trying to say that that doesn't work for any Edition after second (and arguably not even then). But once they responded to my assertion, I just didn't feel like responding. They said it's better because it's more fun and I realize that it was stupid for me to argue with them about such things and that my opinion is not the most important even if I do think I'm right. I'm just starting to worry that I'm a bit of a grognard since I'm hearing them talk about their game stuff and just thinking its badwrongfun, even if I don't feel like voicing my opinion since my opinion is no more valid than their's.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 05:41 |
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They're entitled to their wrong opinion. But it's not necessarily worth debating unless it's something they legit are interested in debating, which isn't that often on the internet. Here's something that just came to mind as I was flipping through a book that sort of system, and seeing (once again) a list of NPCs with attributes that somehow never dip below 8 or 9... why is it with RNG attribute systems that only the players have to roll? If rolling for attributes is that interesting or cool, why not make every NPC have to roll their attributes, then determine what they are? If the GM shouldn't have to bother with it, why? Granted, I can absolutely think of objections - it would take too long, it adds extra stuff to track, rolling randomly for attributes is almost always badly implemented - but if rolling 3d6 down the line is fascinating and cool and accepted as a means of generating PCs, why isn't it used for NPCs? Or monsters, for that matter?
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 06:18 |
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There is a lot of fun in random chance for some people (me). The problem is that people give a lot of leeway to tabletop RPGs because of the potential for open fun that roleplaying offers. Way moreso than a board game or many video games, where the engagement with the game's mechanics is the primary source of enjoyment. The big downfall of later D&D rules is that chargen following the die rolls is both time-consuming and also highly dependent on the stat results to be effective in any of the game mechanics, but there's a pervasive tendency to downplay or hand-waive that away because even if your character sucks, mechanically, there's always "roleplaying potential" or "GM house rules" to prop up the sagging portions of the system. I'm not sure we're in a spot where many people think critically about the mechanics of tabletop RPGs, and maybe we never will be since roleplaying will always offer a freeform escape from the rules. Still, fun is possible with or without D&D, and ideally a game would have rules, guidelines, and barriers in place to facilitate and heighten the cooperative roleplaying experience, while also making sure no one person has the potential to trample on anyone else (or their character) in the name of "fun".
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 06:35 |
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Halloween Jack posted:What I'd really like are suggestions for things that can go critically bad or good in non-combat situations. It's a hell of a lot harder for me to narrate the results of someone failing a +Hot roll in Monsterhearts than to narrate someone getting their head chopped off. I did not grow up watching sitcoms, because Friday the 13 Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was in syndication. The Millenium's End GM book did have a bunch of suggestions for how social rolls could fail, though they weren't always the best. A lot of them were "You forgot sharing a flight with this man several years ago, ruining your attempt at a disguise" or similar, and the worst ones were "you have a giant booger hanging out your nose, making it impossible to get anyone to take you seriously".
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 06:40 |
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Ah yes, the famous Quantum Booger principle.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 06:50 |
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Covok posted:You ever worry you might be a grognard? I'm on this Discord about comic books. Occasionally, they talk about role playing games. But they always say things that make me go "ugh." Like, right now there was a discussion about how much better it is to roll for stats than any other system. And I'm just trying to say that that doesn't work for any Edition after second (and arguably not even then). But once they responded to my assertion, I just didn't feel like responding. They said it's better because it's more fun and I realize that it was stupid for me to argue with them about such things and that my opinion is not the most important even if I do think I'm right. having an opinion doesn't make you a grognard
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 06:51 |
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Covok posted:I'm just starting to worry that I'm a bit of a grognard since I'm hearing them talk about their game stuff and just thinking its badwrongfun, even if I don't feel like voicing my opinion since my opinion is no more valid than their's. being a "grognard" doesn't just mean "I bitch about games/RPGs", or even that "I prefer older games/RPGs". The basis of your opinion matters, because some games (and some aspects of games) really are bad. Whether or not you're going to start poo poo-stir on a forum or a chatroom, and how you express your opinion, also matters, but that's more "being an argumentative jerk" rather than "being a grognard" if you're being abrasive about it
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 06:58 |
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Covok posted:You ever worry you might be a grognard? I'm on this Discord about comic books. Occasionally, they talk about role playing games. But they always say things that make me go "ugh." Like, right now there was a discussion about how much better it is to roll for stats than any other system. And I'm just trying to say that that doesn't work for any Edition after second (and arguably not even then). But once they responded to my assertion, I just didn't feel like responding. They said it's better because it's more fun and I realize that it was stupid for me to argue with them about such things and that my opinion is not the most important even if I do think I'm right. The problem is a lot of people are really bad about objectively evaluating RPGs and games they've played, especially in separating "Did I have fun with this game?" and "Did the system facilitate that fun?" from evaluating the system. Same thing with style, like I generally don't like ultra lethal "you roll up a shitfarmer who will die to giant rats if they're not lucky" style of game but there are systems good at creating that format, and others that are terrible at it. Some folks just wanna sit around and roll dice and make jokes about alignment grid and having a +2 against ogres. Much like the current dev team working on d&d, they don't really know or care about the math aspect. Dice are fun!
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 07:16 |
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Grognardiness also implies adhering to outdated opinions or especially outdated rules conventions that the rest of the world has moved along from. In that respect, rolling your D&D stats straight 3d6 down the list is the grognardy opinion and "if you're gonna commit to one character for months or even years, you deserve the option of a competent one" is the reasonable, modern opinion.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 07:19 |
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FMguru posted:
It had a really fun default setting though, and while I've never actually played it, it seemed like a decent enough little system
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 08:32 |
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It's completely possible to have a functional mass battle system, but you need to either have the PCs controlling a unit each in unit vs. unit combat in which case the in-fiction size of "a unit" can be whatever you like (from a swarm of hundreds of trash mobs to a single PC and anything inbetween), be so abstracted (i.e. reduced to a single skill check) that the in-fiction size of "a unit" is flat out not a question the game ever stops to ask, or zoom in on the PCs and have their actions in normal combat influence or determine the outcome of a mass battle.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 10:07 |
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Bahamut Lagoon for the SNES works along those lines: it's turn-based combat on a grid, but each unit is a squad of four. On your turn you move them as a unit, and if you attack another unit, you play out one combat turn between the squads, in the usual SNES RPG two-lines-facing-each-other way. Some units are also dragons.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 10:14 |
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's completely possible to have a functional mass battle system, but you need to either have the PCs controlling a unit each in unit vs. unit combat in which case the in-fiction size of "a unit" can be whatever you like (from a swarm of hundreds of trash mobs to a single PC and anything inbetween), be so abstracted (i.e. reduced to a single skill check) that the in-fiction size of "a unit" is flat out not a question the game ever stops to ask, or zoom in on the PCs and have their actions in normal combat influence or determine the outcome of a mass battle. I have previously in a PF game pitched it to the PCs as an endurance challenge. They got to keep fighting an enemy that would get reinforced until they tapped out, and how well they did determined how many enemies their allies didn't have to get killed by. Added some nice drama, and meant that I could use relatively low-power enemies so they started out feeling good about it, and slowly got deeply worried when they realized there was no time to rest or heal.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 11:49 |
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Coolness Averted posted:The problem is a lot of people are really bad about objectively evaluating RPGs and games they've played, especially in separating "Did I have fun with this game?" and "Did the system facilitate that fun?" from evaluating the system. you know what, Hard disagree this system has never existed.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 12:59 |
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Rolling dice to create your character is fun but dumb. The issue is that it is fun for a little bit at the beginning and if it goes poorly for some people involved, the rest of the game's fun can be constrained. Rolling a lot of dice until you get a character you are satisfied with is more fun but also still dumb, because why not just pick your stats? Answer, because rolling dice is fun. The second one is stupid, but it doesn't have the bad effects the first option has. If players want to roll dice, let them cheat, blatantly, as much as you and the players are comfortable with. Edit: poo poo, I do not care what stats my player's have as long as they are relatively fair-ish looking to the other players. My favorite array for D&D for a couple years now has been 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, because, you get all the bonus types, one average score and one minus by the 3.0+ style stats. It's pretty much giving the players a FATE style skill pyramid for stats. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jan 8, 2019 |
# ? Jan 8, 2019 14:00 |
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D&D mass combat should just devolve into an M:TG game where you and the evil commander play with decks built over the campaign (like you destroyed his evil altar so he has to remove all his skeleton cards but the time you spent doing that let him consolidate power so he has more lands, you recruited the elves so you get to add a bunch of elf commando cards to your deck, etc). Your PCs just become high-powered cards that are always in your hand (and maybe when you play them, you zoom in and play out that combat in detail).
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 14:09 |
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If any group of mine ever wants to roll their stats, I'll let them roll one array that everybody has to use. That way it can only gently caress them over as a group, not against each other. e: the guy who taught me D&D was pretty groggy in many ways, but had a surprisingly good stat rolling houserule: any score you rolled below 10 would become 10, and your highest roll would become 18. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Jan 8, 2019 |
# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:10 |
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My Lovely Horse posted:If any group of mine ever wants to roll their stats, I'll let them roll one array that everybody has to use. That way it can only gently caress them over as a group, not against each other. lol what the gently caress is the point of even rolling then? just make people do point buy instead of trying to voodoo yourself backwards into acceptable stats
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:39 |
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Elfgames posted:lol what the gently caress is the point of even rolling then? just make people do point buy instead of trying to voodoo yourself backwards into acceptable stats Dude, I agree, but some people just want to roll. There is no reason to get into an argument about it at the table. Sometimes you just need to come up with a weird Rube Goldbergesque method for rolling that gets them the rolling they want, and the characters you want them to have.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:41 |
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Last time my group rolled stats we pooled them all together then did a "draft" for the stats we wanted. It was weird.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:48 |
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remusclaw posted:Dude, I agree, but some people just want to roll. There is no reason to get into an argument about it at the table. Sometimes you just need to come up with a weird Rube Goldbergesque method for rolling that gets them the rolling they want, and the characters you want them to have. i will argue for any reason i will die on the smallest hill, also i'm sort of blessed in that my friends don't have any outside rpg knowledge so like they just do what i tell them
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:52 |
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I roll for DCC. Usually not otherwise. But really it depends on the game and what we're trying to get out of it.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:55 |
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It's okay to roll for stats if you don't really use them.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:08 |
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I like creating characters sheerly through random rolling because it's a nice improv exercise for me though I will admit there's a lot of systems I won't recommend for this.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:25 |
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The best random-roll system was Reign's, because a) it started you with average stats and build up from there instead of leaving it all to chance, b) had a smaller stat spread which reduced the swingyness, and c) it built your character's backstory as you did it by trying the stat/skill increases with life events.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:30 |
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^ Hey, great minds.remusclaw posted:Dude, I agree, but some people just want to roll. There is no reason to get into an argument about it at the table. Sometimes you just need to come up with a weird Rube Goldbergesque method for rolling that gets them the rolling they want, and the characters you want them to have. Well, Reign random chargen rolls for distribution, not for effect. Each die is worth 5 build points, and there's kind of a lifepath system where matched sets represent careers that usually include bumps to core stats, and singletons represent misadventures that usually go hard into a couple skills, with a bit of treasure as compensation for how extreme your peaks and valleys will wind up. If you rolled for distribution in D&D you could "split 25" - roll three stats, subtract each from 25 to get the other three stats, arrange as desired. (Or make three stat pairs before you roll and split 25 over each of them.) Glazius fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jan 8, 2019 |
# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:30 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:The best random-roll system was Reign's, because a) it started you with average stats and build up from there instead of leaving it all to chance, b) had a smaller stat spread which reduced the swingyness, and c) it built your character's backstory as you did it by trying the stat/skill increases with life events. The gamma world edition based off d&d 4e had a good version of 'roll for stats' too. You were guaranteed an 18 in the two stats your origin needed for rolls (or 20 if both origins uses the same). So the rest of your rolls didn't really matter, and monsters hit hard enough and were accurate enough it wasn't like the dude who insisted on rerolling till they got the perfect array was at too much of an advantage.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 18:15 |
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This should be in the OP.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 18:34 |
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Gamma World 7E was just an accomplishment all around. You had the same gameplay framework as D&D 4E, but vastly faster chargen, quicker combats due to the lack of fiddly poo poo, and an instant hook for characters by rolling up a random kind of mutant. Prior to Fiasco, it's the thing I used most often to introduce people to RPGs.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 18:34 |
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Coolness Averted posted:The gamma world edition based off d&d 4e had a good version of 'roll for stats' too. You were guaranteed an 18 in the two stats your origin needed for rolls (or 20 if both origins uses the same). So the rest of your rolls didn't really matter, and monsters hit hard enough and were accurate enough it wasn't like the dude who insisted on rerolling till they got the perfect array was at too much of an advantage. it's just pointless busy work at that point
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 18:35 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 12:24 |
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Man, how could I forget Gamma World 7e? I loved the whole combine-two-types character generation. I wish more games did stuff like that.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 18:35 |