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fozzy fosbourne posted:Ars Magica sort of formalizes this with troupe play; players don’t have a 1-1 relationship with characters, and this facilitates switching the storyteller (GM) role around as an option (but it’s not required). I have never played it so I could be mistaken about details. Honestly I think moving away from troupe style dming was one of the biggest mistakes of Ars5. The game is very crunch intensive and having one DM for everything is a quick road to burnout, and it's intended to be more of a medieval wizard soap opera where you bounce around different characters and subplots and only occasionally have a 'main plot' session anyway. The idea was generally that the 'main' gm would run the main plot, and everyone else would rotate around running plotlines for the various story hooks that the characters and covenant took.
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Jan 5, 2021 01:28
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Of their output I've only played Clank and Clank in Space, which are deck building board games. The former is interesting but suffers from a lot of bad balance and under-tested elements. The design definitely improved with the latter but it's heavily random.
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Apr 24, 2021 20:31
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If you want to run something with initiative order combat over forum games, that's doable but you have to edit the rules slightly such that turns just alternate between PCs and enemies, with the players acting in whatever order is most advantageous. The big problem with async is that people are bad about not participating because there's not really any consistent pressure to do so. I've had my best success with it when I have all the players on discord and can PM them reminders to post, but it's still just not that great of a system most of the time.
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Apr 26, 2021 17:56
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How appropriate non-standard species characters are varies wildly by setting and campaign tone, and there's not really any problem with putting forward guidelines about what those expectations are up front. I've at various times run games where human (or close equivalents) is the only available species, where humans are strongly preferred, where I am ambivalent about player species, and where non-standard species are encouraged, depending on the kind of world I was building and story I intended to tell.
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May 2, 2021 06:47
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Yawgmoth posted:No you pretty much nailed it. OSR on the whole is very much "I have heard stories about Tomb of Horrors at cons in the 80s and have generalized these into an assertion that all TTRPGs should be like that." Yeah, that's that major reason I was quite upset about Dungeon Crawl Classics, which in no way actually emulates classic dungeon crawls. It emulates stdh stories about Gygax modules and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay games. I was drawn in by some interesting class design but alarm bells started going off in my head when it had a six paragraph screed about why 'the funnel' is actually a cool thing that stops roll players in their tracks.
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May 25, 2021 02:28
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You've mentioned Ars Magica, but it playing with the magic system isn't your thing, the supplements have extensive rules for participating in a court (intrigue, feasts, courtly love, ect), running a business or managing a feudal demense, or developing as an academic or artist.
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Jun 1, 2021 16:37
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I'm the guy who obsessively checks population numbers and economic and government minutae when writing up a setting, then never really has any of it come into play as anything but basic backdrop.
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Jun 5, 2021 04:43
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That's more or less the actual explanation. At the end of the war against chaos, Urox crushed Wakboth under a cube of Law.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:22
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Age of Sigmar was mostly contentious because it's so different from old Fantasy, which a lot of people liked. It's def a cool setting in itself and I've heard good things about the RPG.
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Jun 30, 2021 17:08
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Megazver posted:They're still actually playing D&D It's pretty substantially scripted in advance
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Jul 10, 2021 22:09
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Jul 12, 2021 17:07
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Epi Lepi posted:I have an unrelated to CR question: Honestly depending on the tone you're going for, maybe Slasher Flick, using like, a T-Rex as the slasher and lesser predators as minions.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:47
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I've had to marshal my players a bit more lately but we've managed to mostly keep it going, though with more skip weeks than normal.
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Jul 14, 2021 05:09
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sexpig by night posted:is there a runetera sourcebook, fanmade or otherwise? I don't really play LoL so I don't know much but it seems to be a mashup of magi-tek/steampunk stuff and traditional fantasy stuff, could be a neat setting but I have no idea what I'd do with it. How is it used in the moba? Apparently yes
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Jul 15, 2021 23:12
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Also there's an optional rule in the 3.5 dm guide for removing autohit/automiss from combat rolls iirc.
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Jul 16, 2021 22:22
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Does anyone know of any particularly good npc generation tables? Like "roll 3 physical traits, roll 4 personality trait, roll 2 backstory prompts" type thing?
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Jul 21, 2021 22:34
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Angrymog posted:Persons of Interest for Stars Without Number - easily adaptable to other genres. Thanks for all the suggestions, this one is particularly good!
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Jul 22, 2021 18:31
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Iirc legend of the five rings wrote up like five different eras you can play in, depending on where in the metaplot you want to be, and has sections of "this is what canonically happens next, or you can do your own thing".
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Jul 24, 2021 15:35
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Coolness Averted posted:Wasn't that later though? Like after the major eras had played out. So originally you hewed to the lore, but later on they were open to personal games playing in alternate histories. I only knew like 2 people really into L5R and they were very into the lore, so I'm sure hearing how things worked/playing once with them certainly colored my perception. Possibly! This is half remembered from books I used playing in a campaign like 10 years ago.
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Jul 24, 2021 17:16
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The tone of most good published paranoia stuff is somewhere in the vacinity of Brazil: it's a horror story with a surreal, absurdist tone. Most people who talk about it act like it's monkeycheese simulator 2000. See also the difference in how Warhammer Fastasy role play actually plays and how internet commentators think it plays.
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Jul 27, 2021 19:17
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Yeah shadowrunners are expected to not only pretty frequently kill cops, but also do so with the understanding that nobody except other cops are likely to be upset about this at all.
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Jul 27, 2021 20:57
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The biggest problem Ive had with fate accelerated is players can usually concoct some explanation for why they always get to use their best approach for most tasks and so their character tend to act like weird cartoon characters who are obsessed with doing everything flashily or forcefully or quickly or whatever.
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Aug 5, 2021 22:01
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The Dresden Files start off as just basic pulpy noir with wizards, but after a few books the main character starts Goku-ing out of control and they quickly start sucking terribly. The Dresden Files fate game can't actually handle those power levels for poo poo, but it's fine if everyone is playing a noir-y hedge wizard.
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Aug 6, 2021 00:39
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Nehru the Damaja posted:For what it's worth, what's worth playing in urban fantasy out there? I keep wanting to play something in the genre and the closest I got was two sessions of Changeling before covid killed everything. I have some Vampire 5e books but it seems like a lot to learn before I even try to sell people on it. Well, I'm running a game of Strike set in Ravnica, using the D&D 5e sourcebook for it among other things, but it's 'urban very high fantasy'. I really like Esoterrorists for kinda urban fantasy/horror neonoir stuff.
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Aug 6, 2021 01:43
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Unknown Armies is really cool but it lends itself to a very particular style of game, and it's a heavy and unhappy, if hopeful, one. You play Unknown Armies if you want to play Unknown Armies, not if you want to just play urban fantasy in general.
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Aug 6, 2021 05:04
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100YrsofAttitude posted:So how many games do people participate in at a time? Is it kosher to do more than one or is that just trying to spin too many plates at a time? I can really only GM one game that requires meaningful prep at a time, which is most of them. I usually can play in 1-2 while GMing my own, but beyond that I feel like I have too many commitments on that front.
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Aug 9, 2021 21:02
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Really, a SCP game that emulates the direction of the site for the last like 5 years would basically just be Esoterrorists. It's moved away from monsters and to some extent horror in general towards in-depth narrative investigation of unsettling weird things.
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Aug 10, 2021 18:21
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Note: Dungeon Crawl Classics does not actually emulate classic dungeon crawls. It emulates something much closer to horror stories about Gygax modules with a side of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
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Aug 13, 2021 03:53
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dwarf74 posted:That's really mostly the level 0 funnels. Which are still a good time for a crowd that appreciates that kind of high mortality fantasy meat-grinder. But it's really not what the game is about. Yeah I agree that it has some interesting rules and does it's own thing, but the name remains a misnomer even then; the magic item and magic corruption rules still scream warhammer fantasy.
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Aug 13, 2021 04:32
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Rockman Reserve posted:Is there a good RPG system that doesn't get too mechanically bogged down but also occasionally interacts with facing? It was mentioned above as one of the possible modules to bolt onto 5E that they scrapped but the Dark Souls board game's boss encounters have kinda broken my brain in terms of cool encounter design and I'm trying to figure out a way to make that work in a full RPG. Iron Kingdoms has it as a holdover from the wargame it's based on but doesn't do a tremendous amount with it other than shields, backstabs, and some large monster attack arcs
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Aug 16, 2021 19:40
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CitizenKeen posted:My Google-fu is weak. What are Dominions Clowns? Someone made a mod for a nation of clown for the grog-y multiplayer map game about warring gods, Dominions.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:30
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I don't think there's anything super wrong with having factions of Faustian bargain demons, tartatarian jailer/torturer demons, and debacuhed psycho demons all at odds with one another really.
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Aug 19, 2021 17:08
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MadScientistWorking posted:This is the book with the really creepy you must worship gygax and pay homage to him screed right at the start right? It's more of a "it's role-playing not roll-playing!!!" screed in defense of the funnel and randomly rolled characters.
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Aug 24, 2021 14:30
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Can anyone think of any cool RPGs or supplements (or maybe other things?) about being a magic-user and establishing your own Wizard Tower/Sanctum/Worshop? Ironsworn just had a cool 3rd-party supplement put out to that effect and I'm thinking of giving it a go but also looking for some additional inspiration material perhaps. It lists Ars Magica as primary inspiration but I'm wondering if there is anything else cool/good out there. The ars magica covenants book is literally entirely this.
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Aug 30, 2021 19:27
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Fill Baptismal posted:Would any of you all have any recommendations for a pretty noob friendly detective/possibly horror-ish setting/system to run? Couple of friends and I have been tossing around the idea, but none of us have ever done a tabletop RPG before. Ideally something that is relatively mechanically simple and won’t require buying a ton of stuff to start. Esoterrorists. Trail of Cthulhu is also good and is basically a crunchy version of the same system. Gumshoe system games are the only ones I've ever seen that properly handle the actual mystery part.
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Sep 9, 2021 14:06
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Yeah the basic idea in gumshoe is the players always find the core cannot-be-missed-or-the-mystery-doesn't-work clues, but they have limited resources that they can expend to discover extra clues that help them analyze the core clue, or figure out how the core clues fit together.
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Sep 9, 2021 15:56
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Splicer posted:We should do a compare and contrast between this "recommend me an RPG" discussion and the one two weeks ago It was how specific the request was, op.
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Sep 10, 2021 16:05
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Coolness Averted posted:At the point where D&D already has classes that trade combat utility for non combat utility And in fact has since the earliest editions lol.
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Sep 11, 2021 02:02
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Antivehicular posted:I think that may be because "The Game" is a diegetic term in the Highlander universe, iirc? So there's a lowercase-g game (the CCG) emulating the in-universe capital-G Game (immortals beheading each other). Nope, it's called 'the Gathering', like juggalos.
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Sep 17, 2021 03:06
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SpaceDrake posted:So like, what even is a good cyberpunk system at this point, one that isn't slow as heck to run and has actual playtested rules This depends a lot on what you want from a cyberpunk game.
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Sep 21, 2021 06:10
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