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The issue is that character death in many games isn't a designed mechanic so much as a pile of hack job impromptu kludge fixes that have reached the untouchable status of Tradition and are now pretty much copy pasted wholesale into new games and further kludged into shape from there. There's not a lot of thought put into "what kind of game do we want to make and what mechanics will inspire that", and if there is thought put in it's after the existing cargo cult mechanics have already been set in stone.
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Jan 24, 2022 13:06
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A house rule suggested in 13th age is that only named NPCs can kill a PC. That way you don't die to bandit number 7, but can be dragged off to be killed by Ex-Prince Evilheart. This gives you the obvious out of being rescued, but you can also choose to die as part of a plot point.
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Jan 24, 2022 17:31
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PurpleXVI posted:Speaking of death and resurrection... the way I handled it last I made a homebrew was that a single character that "died" in a fight never died, they were just beaten unconscious. They'd eventually recover next time the party made camp, but pick up an "injury," some sort of temporary debilitation. If not treated, said injury eventually became a "scar," a sort of sidegrade based on their randomly rolled injury(like having a poorly-healed leg wound might make your walk an odd hobble that made you move slower but made it hard to predict so it was a permanent passive defensive buff), which it would require expensive medical care or magic to unfuck. PurpleXVI posted:I mean, you don't even need to do something directly to the players. Empire of Dust, a game I apparently never get tired of banging the drum for, had good answers for all of this more than a decade ago; PCs that go to “0 HP” (glossing over the exact combat mechanics for now) are unconscious but can be revived by teammates. If they are damaged further (or take especially nasty kinds of damage while healthy) they are “gored” and removed from the battlefield entirely in a quantum state of health; after the combat is resolved, their player decides if the PC is dead or lives on with a scar of some kind (which equates to stat damage, which isn’t necessarily a big deal due to the way characters advance). Fights end when everyone on one side is unconscious or gored. A TPK results in a roll on the consequence table, which ranges from left for dead, robbed and left for dead (with a trail to follow), taken captive, etc. I believe it might also potentially include a roll on the long-term consequence table (which also gets used when significant amounts of time pass, the party gets lost or waylaid traveling the badlands, etc) which changes the state of the game’s overall war against Sci-Fi Satan (cities change hands, important NPCs are assassinated, etc), but not necessarily to the detriment of the players. EoD is great, super fun beer-and-pretzels “let’s go fight some dudes” sci-fantasy van art game.
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Jan 24, 2022 18:07
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Look, I love EoD, but none of the art in it is good enough for a van
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Jan 24, 2022 18:23
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In a Fellowship game I ran, when one of the PCs was Taken Out, Death itself came and had a nice cozy chat (after the battle was resolved). Death helpfully offered to resolve some of the character's problems in life in exchange for their soul. If the player accepted, their character was dead-dead but the world would be a better place going forward. The player ended up not accepting Death's terms, and so their character woke up, not entirely sure if that was a hallucination.
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Jan 24, 2022 18:46
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Hey everyone, I just relaunched my crowdfunding for Ariadne and Bob a few hours ago, and we've already funded a game variant written by Vel Mini, and we're a few $$ away from a cyberpunk playset written by Ettin. The game rules, and the guest writers are going to make it even better. Help us fund even more!  I'm experimenting with having the project up on multiple platforms simultaneously so that anyone who is unhappy with Kickstarter can get it somewhere else. It's hard for me to know how many people are really boycotting Kickstarter. Kickstarter IndieGoGo Itch Unsurprisingly, all of the backers so far are on Kickstarter, since I expect they came over from the first Kickstarter that didn't make it, but I'll be interested to see where any new people go when they come onboard. If you are interested, there is no harm in backing on any of the three platforms. IndieGoGo allows for "Flexible Funding" so I can collect from them even if I only get a handful of people there, and obviously with Itch I get the money right away.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:04
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Heyyyyyyy is there a discord for the trad games goons to get together and talk about the best way to decorate their mother's basement? [JOKE] Seriously though I'm working on a TTG and would like some assistance from the other smart people who give ten bucks to lowtax.
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Jan 29, 2022 02:26
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Skunkrocker posted:Heyyyyyyy is there a discord for the trad games goons to get together and talk about the best way to decorate their mother's basement? There is a pretty large discord, although we're not tightly affiliated with SA any longer. It's open to basically anyone who wants to hang out and be part of the community - provided you abide by the rules, so try not to get into trouble on your first day there. Come on over.
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Jan 29, 2022 09:08
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I've been playing Dragon's Dogma lately and geeze, I want to sit anyone down who is making a combat based RPG with the usual d&d tropes and archetypes and make them play that game/review combat in it. Every archetype is viable, the tanks have major crowd control and either can be built for mobility or creating giant gently caress off zones any enemy who enters gets punished. Casters have to be strategic in their positioning and absolutely can outnuke other classes if they can position themselves right/have distractions but rely on other classes to set up those combos and keep them safe. Also the whole grey HP/recoverable amount could be a way of doing something surge-like without triggering verisimilitude whiners. Have every attack do a current HP and HP cap damage, current HP can be restored through healing, HP cap damage only gets removed with a long rest.
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Jan 30, 2022 08:40
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Oh right I should probably mention this here: A little while ago I published Red Rook Revolt. Red Rook Revolt is a game about anarchist revolutionaries fighting back against the invasion of their homeland, using ancient dark magic to shoot fascists and imperialists. My mechanical focus while making the game was on making a game where bonds and friendships between player characters matter, and making combat fast, fluid, and dangerous - that is, making movement important and enemies both fragile and dangerous, though overall tipped in the player's favor. The main mechanical inspiration for the combat is, of all things, the indie video game HyperLight Drifer. Anyway, if any of that sounds fun, you can find the game on DTRPG and Itch.io https://magnusth.itch.io/red-rook-revolt https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/382835/Red-Rook-Revolt
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Jan 30, 2022 16:08
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Magnusth posted:Oh right I should probably mention this here: Wow this sounds incredible thank you!
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Jan 30, 2022 19:25
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Tulip posted:Wow this sounds incredible thank you!  There's something about lefty RPGs that brings out the trolls.
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Jan 31, 2022 02:16
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Aw, people are gonna buy multiple copies of that dumb game to prove a point, aren't they?
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Jan 31, 2022 02:25
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Can’t pilot the death star. Unplayable.
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Jan 31, 2022 02:38
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Walks into a Mexican Restaurant, asks why sushi isn't on the menu.
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Jan 31, 2022 02:43
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Forming the revolutionaries for when the PCs succeed to revolution them right back. Magnusth, what’s the homeland’s setting like? Is it predefined or build as you go?
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Jan 31, 2022 03:01
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Libertad! posted:Walks into a Mexican Restaurant, asks why sushi isn't on the menu. I'd say it's more like walking into a Spanish restaurant and being pissed they don't have burritos.
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Jan 31, 2022 03:06
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Well, Brinkwood Blood of the Tyrants also has no rules for playing full vampire. With was frankly disappointing because then you can both have blood of the tyrants and drink it and eat the rich. I mean there is an option for disgruntled lesser noble, but that is not the same thing.
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Jan 31, 2022 07:55
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ninjoatse.cx posted:Forming the revolutionaries for when the PCs succeed to revolution them right back. The homeland, and the rest of the setting, are predefined. You could, in theory, run it in some other setting, but as written it's very much intended to work with the setting I made for it.
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Jan 31, 2022 13:50
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Covermeinsunshine posted:Well, Brinkwood Blood of the Tyrants also has no rules for playing full vampire. With was frankly disappointing because then you can both have blood of the tyrants and drink it and eat the rich. I mean there is an option for disgruntled lesser noble, but that is not the same thing. Vampires in Brinkwood are anyone who consumes the magic blood enough, and then if you cut yourself off you lose the powers. The blood is a literal and metaphorical representation of inordinate wealth. Being a full-blown vampire in Brinkwood would be like rolling up a filthy rich king and expecting 100,000,000.00 starting gold pieces.
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Jan 31, 2022 15:09
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Nuns with Guns posted:Vampires in Brinkwood are anyone who consumes the magic blood enough, and then if you cut yourself off you lose the powers. The blood is a literal and metaphorical representation of inordinate wealth. Being a full-blown vampire in Brinkwood would be like rolling up a filthy rich king and expecting 100,000,000.00 starting gold pieces. There is huge difference between top and bottom feeders in that system but yeah. Anyway related to above posts this game also does not provide the rules for playing operatives of the regime unless you already fallen out with it.
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Jan 31, 2022 15:33
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"this is why our dumb racist superhero game that's only on the list because a) it's new, and b) spamming purchases by morons who don't play RPGs is in the top ten instead of your game"
sasha_d3ath fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 31, 2022 |
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Jan 31, 2022 16:25
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I always laugh when I get another Ed Greenwood red text. Thanks Trad Games.
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Feb 2, 2022 02:39
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Arivia posted:I always laugh when I get another Ed Greenwood red text. Thanks Trad Games. You're really invested in the Forgotten Realms, and I respect that. 
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Feb 2, 2022 03:13
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I hope someone gets me one for Dragonlance someday.
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Feb 2, 2022 04:05
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Arivia posted:I always laugh when I get another Ed Greenwood red text. Thanks Trad Games. At least someone is remembering these realms
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Feb 2, 2022 15:05
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im gonna get into blood bowl just so I can make a boston team
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Feb 2, 2022 20:51
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Libertad! posted:I hope someone gets me one for Dragonlance someday. Be careful what you wish for.
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Feb 2, 2022 20:55
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John Romero posted:im gonna get into blood bowl just so I can make a boston team Orcs, but racist
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Feb 3, 2022 04:06
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sexpig by night posted:Orcs, but racist So Bostonians
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Feb 3, 2022 04:25
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Feb 3, 2022 04:29
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lmao
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Feb 3, 2022 04:36
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Tulip posted:lmao House elves love being slaves! It's fine! they don't know any other life
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Feb 3, 2022 04:40
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John Romero posted:im gonna get into blood bowl just so I can make a boston team Back in college we would play the Blood Bowl PC game at work and one guy playing elves had named his quarterback Tom Bradafell and succeeded in making him just as insufferable as his namesake. I played skaven and eventually my only mission became to injure Tom Bradafell beyond repair. Winning the game wasn't a concern, I just wanted blood.
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Feb 3, 2022 05:54
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Serf posted:Back in college we would play the Blood Bowl PC game at work and one guy playing elves had named his quarterback Tom Bradafell and succeeded in making him just as insufferable as his namesake. I played skaven and eventually my only mission became to injure Tom Bradafell beyond repair. Winning the game wasn't a concern, I just wanted blood.
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Feb 3, 2022 06:00
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on the topic of death and failure in TRPGs, I've been playing a lot of Arkham Knight lately and something that game does is that sometimes, if you go on a mission and fail, you don't get a Game Over (though this does happen a lot in the main plot for somewhat obvious reasons), but the game just carries on with the villain escaping and you still have to catch him and maybe the next attempt to catch him is more difficult and the game autosaves as soon as you fail the mission so you can't go back and retry in some ways this is annoying because if you're not too up to snuff on the mechanics it can feel like you were cheated out of a win just because you were forced to get it right the first time without any practice but in some ways it's also a very effective gut punch in that having to live with your failure is more resonant than getting to try again, or having death be the end state I guess this might not be a particularly new insight but it's been stuck in my head for a while and I wanted to share
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Feb 3, 2022 06:42
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Steamforged Games just put up a blog post discussing the new mechanics they've added to 5e for the official Dark Souls RPG. Let's take a look, shall we?SFG posted:Over many months and conversations that went well into the night, we cut 5e to ribbons before reanimating it by the bonfire. SFG posted:Position goes up gradually, as you increase in level, but it’s always finite, and generated randomly at the start of a battle. Addition 2: Bloodied. It's just the concept of triggering changes in enemies when they're at half health. This already exists. Next. Addition 3: Magic. They're replacing the 5e Vancian system, where you have limited number of spell slots filled with spells that can only be cast a certain number of times. The new system gives you a certain number of "slots" to fill with the spells you know, each of which can only be cast a certain number of times. As you can see, it's not Vancian at all! Addition 4: Death. As you'd expect, if you hit 0 HP (sorry, Position) you die and respawn at a bonfire. You lose souls, and there's talk of a mechanic where you lose parts of your character's identity and become hollow - which could be cool, but there's no details given on how it works. SFG posted:And a quick note: if, during a combat, half of your party dies, then the whole party fails. And wakes up, at a bonfire, soulless and needing to start all over again… SFG posted:Good luck out there. You’re going to need it.
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Feb 3, 2022 07:02
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ah, the 13th amendment
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Feb 3, 2022 07:03
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BinaryDoubts posted:Steamforged Games just put up a blog post discussing the new mechanics they've added to 5e for the official Dark Souls RPG. Let's take a look, shall we? quote:Addition 4: Death. As you'd expect, if you hit 0 HP (sorry, Position) you die and respawn at a bonfire. You lose souls, and there's talk of a mechanic where you lose parts of your character's identity and become hollow - which could be cool, but there's no details given on how it works.
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Feb 3, 2022 08:09
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Don’t forget that “you’re not the only ones with Position..” and that the bloodied bonus for enemies is described as being greater than that for PCs. Definitely fully aware of the massively different significance of enemies spending HP as opposed to PCs, and of the dissonance involved in it being beneficial for bosses to bloody themselves. Yet more evidence that the RPG industry and market no longer give a poo poo about design.
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Feb 3, 2022 12:26
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