since it pushes further against the idea that there is a real difference between the larger studios and professionalism. With the exception of Wizards, pretty much everyone is operating at the "hobbyist" level, but tons of beautiful books are getting produced, either way. People just aren't making money from that.
I think the key insight is that the industry has shrunk and there is once again only one company that wouldn't be viewed as "hobbyist" involved.
Man, I'd make the exact opposite argument, that the industry has actually expanded, but that its mostly small companies now with only a few full time employees rather than large companies putting out title after title.
I feel like this will be the continued trend for roleplaying. With the internet and our ability to talk to others in the hobby easily, more and more people who used to just play the big names like D&D and WoD are now able to make a game in their spare time and publish it as a PDF with little to no cost to them. Hell, I've got a game I found from 4chan on my computer about being lesbian race car drivers. And it's not half bad.
But as far as spatbooks, I'd like to think those are going back to their original designs, to act as expansions to the game to enhance the game. The WotC used them as quick cash-in devices and more companies followed suit because they didn't know better. The only reason that MHR fell was because the spatbooks didn't come out faster then the players themselves could create content. Look at the Lost File of Marvel! and how many fan-made datafiles where there (and that list hasn't been updated since August of 2012...) The Events were too linear compared to say the Eberron Campaign Guides and you could play an Event in the course of a day. Not enough content was made by MWP to sustain it, monetary-wise, because the players could and did create the missing content themselves easily. The worst part is that now that it's not officially being published, it's thought to be "dead" which keeps new players from playing and creating the new content still.
God I wish MWP had made a Rogues Gallery book. So many hero files, so few villains.
And then they put their money on Civil War! Hero vs Hero AND one of the worst Big Dumb Plot Crossovers ever.
as someone who will likely play Exalted 3 i think it will be neat but i am always looking for easier ways to do things, and if Ex3 is the same hot mess Ex2 was then it won't get no love from me
I think [FFG's SW] has the annoying advantage/disadvantage dice results which are supposed to mean something cool or shitty happens outside of the mechanics of what you're doing, which rapidly becomes tedious, but aside from that I enjoyed it.
You don't have to narrate every result, just the ones that are interesting. Like if you get Success with a little Threat, that's the normal result. You succeed at whatever you were doing, but it was a bit draining or stressful.
Failure with Triumph? Cool, how did that go down? A whole butt load of Threat? Two Triumphs - and a Despair?! Don't let it bog you down - come up with something cinematic and keep it rolling.
since it pushes further against the idea that there is a real difference between the larger studios and professionalism. With the exception of Wizards, pretty much everyone is operating at the "hobbyist" level, but tons of beautiful books are getting produced, either way. People just aren't making money from that.
I think the key insight is that the industry has shrunk and there is once again only one company that wouldn't be viewed as "hobbyist" involved.
Man, I'd make the exact opposite argument, that the industry has actually expanded, but that its mostly small companies now with only a few full time employees rather than large companies putting out title after title.
I feel like this will be the continued trend for roleplaying. With the internet and our ability to talk to others in the hobby easily, more and more people who used to just play the big names like D&D and WoD are now able to make a game in their spare time and publish it as a PDF with little to no cost to them. Hell, I've got a game I found from 4chan on my computer about being lesbian race car drivers. And it's not half bad.
But as far as spatbooks, I'd like to think those are going back to their original designs, to act as expansions to the game to enhance the game. The WotC used them as quick cash-in devices and more companies followed suit because they didn't know better. The only reason that MHR fell was because the spatbooks didn't come out faster then the players themselves could create content. Look at the Lost File of Marvel! and how many fan-made datafiles where there (and that list hasn't been updated since August of 2012...) The Events were too linear compared to say the Eberron Campaign Guides and you could play an Event in the course of a day. Not enough content was made by MWP to sustain it, monetary-wise, because the players could and did create the missing content themselves easily. The worst part is that now that it's not officially being published, it's thought to be "dead" which keeps new players from playing and creating the new content still.
God I wish MWP had made a Rogues Gallery book. So many hero files, so few villains.
And then they put their money on Civil War! Hero vs Hero AND one of the worst Big Dumb Plot Crossovers ever.
Such a great game, so much potential wasted.
I wished that they had done a Watcher's Guide for balancing fights and how to create challenges. The biggest problem I've had with running MHR is that fights are either too easy or too hard. Maybe that's something the players will have to put together.
as someone who will likely play Exalted 3 i think it will be neat but i am always looking for easier ways to do things, and if Ex3 is the same hot mess Ex2 was then it won't get no love from me
like a scrub in TLC's song
We're already looking at the likely cut and trying to figure out what we're going to need to trim and truss.
One of the things my alternate GM said was that Clevinger's Fate/Robo hack is neat and all, but it obviates the hardest part of the whole thing, which is designing good stunts for Exalted. There are probably 50 or so stunts that should be outlined as the basics of superpowered wuxia and Exalted-style sorcery in order to facilitate a a quicker dive into the game. But that's 50 stunts for virtually any kind of character you want to play. Versus 200 for each type of Exalt. This is a significant savings in both GM time and costs.
Most of our 200+ XP characters converted into 10 stunts. So on average from 30 to 10. In retrospect we'd probably have been better off aiming at 5, but hindsight is 20/20.
Since I started thinking about compels as affecting the wider narrative rather than the PCs immediate situation, I find interesting compels much easier.
I buy just about anything Glorantha related and probably will as long as I live and can afford to. For me it's something that goes above and beyond the gaming aspect.
As to other games, I'm trying to limit myself to buying one system at a time. Right now that's The One Ring, as I can devour anything Middle Earth even if I'm not currently playing a game. The more fluff a game has the better.
Are you playing The One Ring? I have it, and want to play it after I've played lots more 13th Age and Dungeon World.
We ran a campaign with Jacob in The One Ring if you have any questions.
Me and Jake talked about it a fair bit. Just curious to hear more opinions
Did you enjoy it? You seem to prefer the Mage/Shadowrun kind of thing more.
I need to preface this with saying that I'm not a huge fan of Tolkien. I've read him, I enjoy much of what I read but I lack the urge to revisit the Lord of the Rings once a decade. So I lacked a certain squee that traveling the world of Middle Earth gave the others. But Jacob and the rules seem to do a pretty good job of emphasizing the sense of travel that the books had. Also at providing a degree of scope. The adventure felt big. We did heroic things in that mold. The shadow rules seemed like an excellent way for dealing with the degree of corruption and despair that his characters can sometimes be prone to. I think the system is great. And I have a deep and old school love of various fantasy things. Just not particularly Tolkien. I had a lot of fun despite Tolkien not being my jam. I think the system is nice, and I suspect it's something you'd really enjoy.
I am obsessed with Tolkien...
I also participated in Jake's One Ring game and absolutely love the system. I am also a huge Tolkien fan, The Hobbit was my favorite book when I was 8-9 years old. The travel rules, the way low-level magic is weaved into the cultures and the various virtues/rewards all feel perfect for the setting. My only gripe is the narrow focus on cultures, as my dream game in the setting would be to run a Tolkienesque take on Arthurian legend (basically do a generational campaign set during the non-canonical last resurgence of the North Kingdom of Arthedain).
In the case of licensed properties like 40k or Star Wars it doesn't make sense not to publish more material and maximize the usage of the licenses that you paid for. In the case of the more established RPGs like D&D or WoD, it makes sense to publish more materials because you have a larger audience already who are more willing to commit to purchasing more books to supplement the game they've been enjoying for some time, and also because the bigger RPGs are brands unto themselves that, again, lead to publishers utilizing the brand to earn more money.
I don't know if supplements make companies "a ton" of money, but it definitely is more profitable for them to put out more books than just do a couple and call it good.
I suppose what I should have asked was: do these supplements sell enough to keep shareholders/stakeholders happy? MHR didn't. I thought Hasbro was underwhelmed by the performance of 4E, but perhaps I'm misremembering. Time will tell with EOTE and its kin. I will grant you that "didn't perform to expectations" is different than "not profitable".
Both MHR and 4e suffered from bad management, but different kinds.
RPG companies being mismanaged is the rule, not the exception.
In the case of licensed properties like 40k or Star Wars it doesn't make sense not to publish more material and maximize the usage of the licenses that you paid for. In the case of the more established RPGs like D&D or WoD, it makes sense to publish more materials because you have a larger audience already who are more willing to commit to purchasing more books to supplement the game they've been enjoying for some time, and also because the bigger RPGs are brands unto themselves that, again, lead to publishers utilizing the brand to earn more money.
I don't know if supplements make companies "a ton" of money, but it definitely is more profitable for them to put out more books than just do a couple and call it good.
I suppose what I should have asked was: do these supplements sell enough to keep shareholders/stakeholders happy? MHR didn't. I thought Hasbro was underwhelmed by the performance of 4E, but perhaps I'm misremembering. Time will tell with EOTE and its kin. I will grant you that "didn't perform to expectations" is different than "not profitable".
Both MHR and 4e suffered from bad management, but different kinds.
RPG companies being mismanaged is the rule, not the exception.
I wouldn't say that. Pelgrane Press and Fantasy Flight Games seem to have level heads on their shoulders right now. I think because of the size of the industry, when a company makes a mistake, it's perceived as larger then they really are.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
In the case of licensed properties like 40k or Star Wars it doesn't make sense not to publish more material and maximize the usage of the licenses that you paid for. In the case of the more established RPGs like D&D or WoD, it makes sense to publish more materials because you have a larger audience already who are more willing to commit to purchasing more books to supplement the game they've been enjoying for some time, and also because the bigger RPGs are brands unto themselves that, again, lead to publishers utilizing the brand to earn more money.
I don't know if supplements make companies "a ton" of money, but it definitely is more profitable for them to put out more books than just do a couple and call it good.
I suppose what I should have asked was: do these supplements sell enough to keep shareholders/stakeholders happy? MHR didn't. I thought Hasbro was underwhelmed by the performance of 4E, but perhaps I'm misremembering. Time will tell with EOTE and its kin. I will grant you that "didn't perform to expectations" is different than "not profitable".
Both MHR and 4e suffered from bad management, but different kinds.
RPG companies being mismanaged is the rule, not the exception.
I wouldn't say that. Pelgrane Press and Fantasy Flight Games seem to have level heads on their shoulders right now. I think because of the size of the industry, when a company makes a mistake, it's perceived as larger then they really are.
FFG has its head on its shoulders because they're a successful board game company. They know how to bring a product to market and have the capital to support multiple licenses across multiple lines.
Pelgrane just seems like an awesome company, like many of the other smaller studios putting out (in my opinion) the best games right now.
I think the relevant examples for this discussion are TSR, Wizards, and GW. All of them showed fantastically bad management at work, most often when business people tried to monetize the hobby (see: the 80s for TSR; 4E for Wizards; GW going public). This doesn't include all of the other companies who just ran out of steam, too (White Wolf, FASA/Wizkids).
I think Pelgrane Press and Cubicle Seven are making great games. I'm not sure they're running the business side of things well. For example, I pre-ordered 13th Age books from Pelgrane months ago and would love to know the progress, but there's no information anywhere.
Or Cubicle 7 published huge amounts of errata for The One Ring, and have now redone the two core books as one re-edited, redesigned single book.
Great designs, but not sure about the business side of things.
Wizards "failed" with 4e because they gave their higher-ups at Hasbro unrealistic profit expectations for the brand and also licensed the brand to companies that did dick-all with them (see: Atari).
All the insider stuff I heard was that 4e made plenty of money.
As a game, I think all those splatbooks were a big problem. Too many options. And in my own game, I didn't allow anything apart from the PHBs and the '.... Power' books.
But, for example, the Dark Sun sourcebooks were some of the best worldbooks I have ever read.
4e did great, it's just that Hasbro expected impossible returns on the D&D brand so when the unrealistic expectations weren't met they had to start a new edition.
The best books of 4e were the final few books released. They had found a perfect balance between fluff and splat but it was too late.
Insider was a bunch of promises that were never delivered upon.
Ah yes, I forgot about that. And the MM1 maths being rubbish.
Those were big mistakes. But I think overall, 4e did well financially. I think the sudden advent of 5e made people believe otherwise.
Several of the 4e books made the NYT best seller list. The big problem the D&D brand has is that the licensing revenue from PC games doesn't go to WotC or get counted toward their revenue. That tends to skew the expectations and reality of the numbers. And using MWP as an example is pretty terrible. MHRs suffered from two pretty important factors. First it was under the production of MWP who are nice people but absolute fuckups even by the standards of the industry, and they partnered with Marvel. It's Marvel's licensing fees tend to be pretty high. It's possible MWP worked out a sweetheart deal but it's more likely they had to hit expectations that they couldn't meet. You can look at Green Ronin who hold the DC license and have for quite a while. DC Adventures hasn't lit the world on fire but seems to do well enough to keep DC from pulling the license.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
edited February 2015
Finally got Stay On Target, and it continues FFG's fine tradition in their SW game books of creating supplements that result in me coming up with at least three characters I want to play while reading. God dammit.
Hey, I'm the one who preaches against the evils of FATE. Get that amateur hour out of here.
/sarcasm
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited February 2015
So both of my Shadowrun games are beginning next month and I sorted out my players. I managed to get 3 women and 2 men in both, which is really great because nearly everyone is reasonably new to roleplaying or hasn't played Shadowrun ever before. It's pretty great as well because I often rant/talk about getting women into games online (on Penny-Arcade for example) very often, so it's fantastic to actually put the effort in to backing up my rhetoric in real life with the games that I run. And again, I am introducing at least five different people who are all entirely new to roleplaying as well!
Now I just have to be able to master the Shadowrun rules in time! Still a couple of weeks yet! I tell you what though, there is a pretty big leap between the 2nd edition Shadowrun I ran numerous years ago now and all this fancy futurized AR and wireless shit. Back in my day you needed to wade knee deep through corpses, some of them your friends, just to jack into a node manually with wires and shit like that....
Friday should be the last session in my first Edge of the Empire story arc. I'm crazy excited and I've briefly given them hints, NPCs, and locations that will all tie in heavily to arcs 2 and 3 if we keep going.
I also managed to convert the setting of Disney's Talespin into Star Wars and slip in into the game without my player's realizing it.
4e did great, it's just that Hasbro expected impossible returns on the D&D brand so when the unrealistic expectations weren't met they had to start a new edition.
The best books of 4e were the final few books released. They had found a perfect balance between fluff and splat but it was too late.
5th edition is doing very well also from all accounts, but the real issue on why RPGs have difficulty growing as fast as the interest and player base is the DM factor. I have seen this already, in a place where I can get 10 people who want to play DnD trivially and 10 across two games of Shadowrun, there are many more who I know want to play but can't. RPGs are failing to convert players into running games, which is why the growth despite interest is not going up fast. Getting people to DM is very challenging, but it's not like nobody wants to do it: It's just many people are entirely afraid of getting started in the first place. Angrydm put it well when he wrote that it is about converting people into "Older Cousins" who can teach the game and nobody has really given good tools.
Take 5e, if you're an entirely new DM just trying to work out what to do from Hoard of the Dragon Queen you might be entirely fucked. It puts essential information in another book you need to read out, contradicts itself and if you have the "recommended" 4PCs there is an encounter with a pair of rat swarms that might be obscenely lethal only a handful of encounters in. The dreadful and entirely luck - as in if you send a player to a new character sheet or not - half-dragon fight, the hilarious "four assassins" error and so forth. It doesn't provide a lot of guidance for a new DM to easily run it: It's aimed and written for people with 18 years of experience who can spot, change and get past this stuff easily.
That's a huge problem! I honestly can't think of many good adventures that are aimed solely at new DMs, because word counts are tight and nobody wants to spend the time detailing "common sense" things, like "What is this monster supposed to do in this encounter?" for new DMs. How do they describe things? Advice on talking about this monster in combat and to give illustrative examples of how to narrate combat to something other than "I hit and you miss" etc etc.
Running a game is difficult but rewarding, but nobody really seems to be bothering to make it genuinely easy to pick up and actually run. Wizards attempted this in a way with things like the red box, but even then it didn't work well at all. Things as basic as "How do you roleplay NPCs" are locked away in books they don't bother releasing until three months after the core players book or it is buried under piles and piles of other rules (Specifically thinking of Shadowrun here, which has good, but not fantastic, guidance and is damn near impenetrable in places for a new Gamemaster).
Like when I said "Hey would anyone like to learn how to DM" I expected like 2 people. I got nearly 14 people. Something tells me there is more than enough interest, but where our problem is in converting that interest into actual DMs. A process that would start by having very new DM friendly scenarios, adventures and similar written with detail designed to get people into things. This is where the work needs to be done and when I see books that shove stats into another book entirely, I just despair.
I'm a long time GM, and the two 5e campaigns I've run/am running are almost entirely seat-of-my-pants because I cannot find simple, need-to-know things like encounter design guidelines. Surely, I'm not the only one that doesn't want to run Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
I've been wrestling with doing a YouTube channel that focused on Roleplaying, DMing, and stuff for months now. I just need to get off my ass and do it one day because of the reason Aegeris just said. There are so many interested in the hobby but information is so spread out it's hard to get good answers.
The Dungeon World writers talk about the DM problem a lot, and how different games should have different DM approaches. In the book they go into a lot of detail on how to run DW.
The Dungeon World writers talk about the DM problem a lot, and how different games should have different DM approaches. In the book they go into a lot of detail on how to run DW.
I wish there were more games like that.
I love AW and its variants for that. Running AW, DW, and MH is just super, super easy and fun.
4e did great, it's just that Hasbro expected impossible returns on the D&D brand so when the unrealistic expectations weren't met they had to start a new edition.
The best books of 4e were the final few books released. They had found a perfect balance between fluff and splat but it was too late.
5th edition is doing very well also from all accounts, but the real issue on why RPGs have difficulty growing as fast as the interest and player base is the DM factor. I have seen this already, in a place where I can get 10 people who want to play DnD trivially and 10 across two games of Shadowrun, there are many more who I know want to play but can't. RPGs are failing to convert players into running games, which is why the growth despite interest is not going up fast. Getting people to DM is very challenging, but it's not like nobody wants to do it: It's just many people are entirely afraid of getting started in the first place. Angrydm put it well when he wrote that it is about converting people into "Older Cousins" who can teach the game and nobody has really given good tools.
Take 5e, if you're an entirely new DM just trying to work out what to do from Hoard of the Dragon Queen you might be entirely fucked. It puts essential information in another book you need to read out, contradicts itself and if you have the "recommended" 4PCs there is an encounter with a pair of rat swarms that might be obscenely lethal only a handful of encounters in. The dreadful and entirely luck - as in if you send a player to a new character sheet or not - half-dragon fight, the hilarious "four assassins" error and so forth. It doesn't provide a lot of guidance for a new DM to easily run it: It's aimed and written for people with 18 years of experience who can spot, change and get past this stuff easily.
That's a huge problem! I honestly can't think of many good adventures that are aimed solely at new DMs, because word counts are tight and nobody wants to spend the time detailing "common sense" things, like "What is this monster supposed to do in this encounter?" for new DMs. How do they describe things? Advice on talking about this monster in combat and to give illustrative examples of how to narrate combat to something other than "I hit and you miss" etc etc.
Running a game is difficult but rewarding, but nobody really seems to be bothering to make it genuinely easy to pick up and actually run. Wizards attempted this in a way with things like the red box, but even then it didn't work well at all. Things as basic as "How do you roleplay NPCs" are locked away in books they don't bother releasing until three months after the core players book or it is buried under piles and piles of other rules (Specifically thinking of Shadowrun here, which has good, but not fantastic, guidance and is damn near impenetrable in places for a new Gamemaster).
Like when I said "Hey would anyone like to learn how to DM" I expected like 2 people. I got nearly 14 people. Something tells me there is more than enough interest, but where our problem is in converting that interest into actual DMs. A process that would start by having very new DM friendly scenarios, adventures and similar written with detail designed to get people into things. This is where the work needs to be done and when I see books that shove stats into another book entirely, I just despair.
*nods sagely*
Another difficulty is that crunchier games like D&D and Shadowrun often require a massive investment of time to create your own adventures. So you're asking people to spend a considerable amount of money on something that they have to kind of puzzle out. While modules should be the obvious and easy answer to this problem, they are not for the reasons you outlined above. One of the legacies that needs to die is the 3-book core model. Put all of the roleplaying stuff in the PHB and combine the MM and the DMG into one book (and charge more for each).
Friday should be the last session in my first Edge of the Empire story arc. I'm crazy excited and I've briefly given them hints, NPCs, and locations that will all tie in heavily to arcs 2 and 3 if we keep going.
I also managed to convert the setting of Disney's Talespin into Star Wars and slip in into the game without my player's realizing it.
I introduced the antagonist of my first EotE story arc early; he was the bad guy in the story mission, an up-and-coming Black Sun dude that was gunning for a Vigo spot not due to ability, but heredity (son of an existing Vigo). The party was contacted by a rival of his, given key information, and sent to spoil the deal / steal the loot. They went one farther, maimed him horribly then locked him in a crate and dumped the guy out in the middle of nowhere to die. He was dubbed "Vigo Soon-to-be-dead" by the party, and promptly forgotten.
So of course, the main antagonist was born. He was kicked out of Black Sun for incompetence, but daddy financed a Nebulon-B Frigate for this guy's revenge quest. He made some shady deals to get some experimental tech, including the foremost Ithorian cyberneticist (to restore his body), prototype shield generators (to protect his ship), and a crew of slicers. Then he set himself up as an information broker, and tried to wreck the party's shit at every opportunity.
They couldn't attack him head on, of course - he was on the biggest ship I had stats for, and as menacing as their light freighter-cum-gunboat was, it wouldn't last long against a few turbolaser batteries. So the party started making contacts and brokering deals.
They got in good with his father's rival, another Black Sun Vigo.
They had done some smuggling on the side for the Empire (long story short, I was running with the idea that Vader wanted to overthrow the Emperor and was building up a small army of Force users to oppose him), so an ISB Agent owned them a few favors.
The Rebellion had contracted the party for some gun running, so they had contacts within the Alliance military.
And finally, they were selling all the junk they accumulated to a pirate group, who was more than happy to help the party if it kept a steady stream of cheap goods flowing.
Lots of moving parts, right? Well, all the party members had hidden goals to advance their Motivation or reduce their Obligation. The bounty hunter's little sister was a burgeoning Force user (and Sith, little did she know). The slicer was selling information to the Empire about all their activities. The wookiee was helping to fund the Rebellion. The doctor desperately wanted to get his hands on that Ithorian's cybernetic research and use it for her own ends. The protocol droid was running a trade empire with the pirates as a proxy partner, etc, etc. So everybody had a stake in every step.
When Age of Rebellion came out, I figured that would be a great time to encourage the party to take down their nemesis and side with one faction or another. Most of them had been super friendly with their ISB buddy, so I figured that they'd end up siding with the Empire and end up helping Vader overthrow the Emperor. Boy, was I wrong.
I introduced a planet with some heavy anti-space weaponry; big ion cannons, like those on Hoth in Ep5. The party saw their chance, and called in all their chips. I decided this would be an awesome RP opportunity, and gave them competing victory conditions: the Rebels wanted the ISB Agent and the frigate, the Empire wanted the Rebel and pirate fleets destroyed, the pirates wanted the frigate for themselves and the Black Sun Vigo dead, and Black Sun wanted the ISB Agent and the pirate fleet destroyed.
Then the players sided with the Rebellion. They told the pirate fleet and the Empire to show up at the same time, both of which were to engage the frigate and the other fleet. They cashed in their Black Sun chips for a wetwork team to capture an ion cannon. And then told the Rebellion to come in to mop up after the pirates and Empire had exhausted each other.
With the plan in place, we played it out. And went almost flawlessly. The wetwork team captured the ion cannon (...with a minor setback of accidentally destroying an orphanarium and veterans of popular wars hospital) and disabled the frigate, the pirate and Imperial fleets destroyed each other fighting over the frigate, the ISB Agent's interdictor was crippled by the party, and the Rebel fleet showed up to clean up the mess. And along the way, the bounty hunter destroyed records of her Force-using sister, the slicer sold out the ISB Agent to his loyalist rival for even more money, the wookiee helped the Rebellion, they captured the ithorian, and executed their rival.
Pretty epic, even if I subsequently had a party of Rebel Scum (ugh).
I start the game with the setup that an Archeologist and his partner hire a crew consisting of a Scoundrel and a Body Guard to help on a expedition to find an ancient Crystal Nexu statue. The partner betrays everyone and the group is trapped in a pit when a Trandoshan captures them and takes them to Tattoonie and Teemo. They find out that while the Archeologist had purchased the gear and crew, his partner had gotten the loan for the ship from Teemo; and Teemo wanted his money back.
The party is motivated as such. They all want the traitor. The Twilek Scoundrel is looking for a way to take down her Slaver Brother. And the Body Guard is actually a Rebel Spy who took the job when her cover on the Wheel was about to be blown and she needed to disappear.
They steal a droid and a ship and take off to Ryloth. Scoundrel meets some resistance type Twileks and makes some contacts. He gives her some info about ships that work for her brother. While they are helping the Twileks deal with a Teemo’s men they get a message to meet someone on the Wheel spacestation.
They meet a Black Sun boss who promises to help them track the traitor and pay them well if the Archeologist uses his skills and retrieves a datacron for her. It’s at a mining colony, where the drillers broke into an ancient temple. Traps were set off, but it should be safe now. They agree, get the datacron, and return to the Wheel only to find the Black Sun base bombed out.
Archeologist does some research and discovers the Datacron and Nexu are linked, but needs to get to a book at the Aldaraanian Royal Library. But they don’t allow just anyone in there. The Rebel’s old cell leader is willing to help if they first help him out. The Empire is currently enslaving a planet populated by a Duros offshoot. Think Duros with Koi like color patterns and heavily influenced by feudal Japanese styling. They rescue a political leader, get her the Aldaraan, and get access to the library. They find out the Nexu and Datacron are keys that unlock a star map at another temple. That map has hyperspace coordinates to a giant Rakaata warship supposedly full of plunder.
The group is captured by the Chiss where he explains he was pulling a lot of the strings but wasn’t able to find the temple location. So he captured them. They agree to work together because the group was pacified when the Chiss put the traitor into a holding cell and they want a cut of the money. They go to the temple and unlock the map. The Chiss leaves the party with a group of his men who are supposed to take them back to Aldaraan and their ship. Instead the group wants to cash in the bounty. The R2 unit they stole on the first adventure reveals itself to be a combat monster with duel blaster pistols concealed in its chest. The party kills the guards, grabs a copy of the map, and take the landing shuttle.
A really bad astrogation roll has the shuttle they are in drop out of hyperspace early and I introduce the Talespin like setting earlier than expected. They sell the shuttle, book passage to Alderaan with a smuggler, and have to fight pirates on the way out. Also while there the Scoundrel finds out one of her brothers slave ships was there and is heading towards the Japanese Duros planet.
Finally the group gets to Aldaraan and puts in the Rakataan hyperdrive coordinates. The big showdown happens Friday.
Damn, that was longer than I meant it to be.
My planned second arc will deal more with the slave ring and the third would be way more Rebel influenced. Act 3 is iffy, but since I have 1 Rebel already and the Archeologist is starting to lean heavily that way I should be okay.
ManOHokutoKnight of the Bloody FistRegistered Userregular
edited February 2015
I've had this sininster urge to make my own rules lite superhero RPG for a while now and last night I wrote down some ideas. my inspirations are 13th age and the TSR marvel stuff. Does anyone have any experience making their own game? This is just for personal use I don't want to publish it or anything.
Core Mechanic: 1D20 + modifiers VS challenge number or opposing D20 rolled by GM.
Character Creation: determine power level of PCs, 15 25 or 35 Character points to spend on attributes and powers.
Physical Attributes
Fighting= melee combat modifier and 1st half of initiative.
Agility = ranged combat modifier and 2nd half of initiative.
Strength = melee\thrown damage modifier
Endurance = physical toughness
saving throw = strength + endurance multiplied by two
Mental Attributes
Reason = using or inventing/maintaining technology and general intelligence.
Intuition = deductive skill and perception roll modifier.
Psyche = resistance to interrogation and mind control.
Resources = material wealth and available resources
Attribute ranks range from -2 to +7 baseline is 0
Origins; altered human = +1 to two physical attributes or +1 to two mental attributes
mutant = +1 physical or mental attribute +1 to single power rank
alien = +2 to single power rank or +1 to two power ranks
construct = immune to mental attacks and poison\disease
expert = double background points
Power Types; passive = requires no roll to use and is often a direct result of character attributes for example a high strength score means super strength.
active = requires a roll to activate and or use, common active powers include turning your body to steel and casting spells.
combo = only requires a roll in certain circumstances but otherwise function like passive powers
for example using super hearing to zero in on a specific source or using telepathy on an unwilling target.
Posts
God I wish MWP had made a Rogues Gallery book. So many hero files, so few villains.
And then they put their money on Civil War! Hero vs Hero AND one of the worst Big Dumb Plot Crossovers ever.
Such a great game, so much potential wasted.
like a scrub in TLC's song
Failure with Triumph? Cool, how did that go down? A whole butt load of Threat? Two Triumphs - and a Despair?! Don't let it bog you down - come up with something cinematic and keep it rolling.
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I wished that they had done a Watcher's Guide for balancing fights and how to create challenges. The biggest problem I've had with running MHR is that fights are either too easy or too hard. Maybe that's something the players will have to put together.
One of the things my alternate GM said was that Clevinger's Fate/Robo hack is neat and all, but it obviates the hardest part of the whole thing, which is designing good stunts for Exalted. There are probably 50 or so stunts that should be outlined as the basics of superpowered wuxia and Exalted-style sorcery in order to facilitate a a quicker dive into the game. But that's 50 stunts for virtually any kind of character you want to play. Versus 200 for each type of Exalt. This is a significant savings in both GM time and costs.
Most of our 200+ XP characters converted into 10 stunts. So on average from 30 to 10. In retrospect we'd probably have been better off aiming at 5, but hindsight is 20/20.
I also participated in Jake's One Ring game and absolutely love the system. I am also a huge Tolkien fan, The Hobbit was my favorite book when I was 8-9 years old. The travel rules, the way low-level magic is weaved into the cultures and the various virtues/rewards all feel perfect for the setting. My only gripe is the narrow focus on cultures, as my dream game in the setting would be to run a Tolkienesque take on Arthurian legend (basically do a generational campaign set during the non-canonical last resurgence of the North Kingdom of Arthedain).
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
RPG companies being mismanaged is the rule, not the exception.
I wouldn't say that. Pelgrane Press and Fantasy Flight Games seem to have level heads on their shoulders right now. I think because of the size of the industry, when a company makes a mistake, it's perceived as larger then they really are.
FFG has its head on its shoulders because they're a successful board game company. They know how to bring a product to market and have the capital to support multiple licenses across multiple lines.
Pelgrane just seems like an awesome company, like many of the other smaller studios putting out (in my opinion) the best games right now.
I think the relevant examples for this discussion are TSR, Wizards, and GW. All of them showed fantastically bad management at work, most often when business people tried to monetize the hobby (see: the 80s for TSR; 4E for Wizards; GW going public). This doesn't include all of the other companies who just ran out of steam, too (White Wolf, FASA/Wizkids).
Or Cubicle 7 published huge amounts of errata for The One Ring, and have now redone the two core books as one re-edited, redesigned single book.
Great designs, but not sure about the business side of things.
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As a game, I think all those splatbooks were a big problem. Too many options. And in my own game, I didn't allow anything apart from the PHBs and the '.... Power' books.
But, for example, the Dark Sun sourcebooks were some of the best worldbooks I have ever read.
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Ah yes, I forgot about that. And the MM1 maths being rubbish.
Those were big mistakes. But I think overall, 4e did well financially. I think the sudden advent of 5e made people believe otherwise.
The best books of 4e were the final few books released. They had found a perfect balance between fluff and splat but it was too late.
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Several of the 4e books made the NYT best seller list. The big problem the D&D brand has is that the licensing revenue from PC games doesn't go to WotC or get counted toward their revenue. That tends to skew the expectations and reality of the numbers. And using MWP as an example is pretty terrible. MHRs suffered from two pretty important factors. First it was under the production of MWP who are nice people but absolute fuckups even by the standards of the industry, and they partnered with Marvel. It's Marvel's licensing fees tend to be pretty high. It's possible MWP worked out a sweetheart deal but it's more likely they had to hit expectations that they couldn't meet. You can look at Green Ronin who hold the DC license and have for quite a while. DC Adventures hasn't lit the world on fire but seems to do well enough to keep DC from pulling the license.
I wasn't ranting
don't be a jerk, dude
wasn't even commenting on what you said just the article posted by someone else
not even vehemently, just saying my view. I even caveated it as "yes if you only care about Exalted as a setting then FATE could do it"
I have no beef with FATE, it's a well made game, I just don't enjoy it and don't think it really serves Exalted well
it was everyone else who then started going on about how Ex3 was clearly going to suck
Why even have a thread if you can't comment on stuff
Okay whatever man
/sarcasm
Now I just have to be able to master the Shadowrun rules in time! Still a couple of weeks yet! I tell you what though, there is a pretty big leap between the 2nd edition Shadowrun I ran numerous years ago now and all this fancy futurized AR and wireless shit. Back in my day you needed to wade knee deep through corpses, some of them your friends, just to jack into a node manually with wires and shit like that....
I also managed to convert the setting of Disney's Talespin into Star Wars and slip in into the game without my player's realizing it.
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5th edition is doing very well also from all accounts, but the real issue on why RPGs have difficulty growing as fast as the interest and player base is the DM factor. I have seen this already, in a place where I can get 10 people who want to play DnD trivially and 10 across two games of Shadowrun, there are many more who I know want to play but can't. RPGs are failing to convert players into running games, which is why the growth despite interest is not going up fast. Getting people to DM is very challenging, but it's not like nobody wants to do it: It's just many people are entirely afraid of getting started in the first place. Angrydm put it well when he wrote that it is about converting people into "Older Cousins" who can teach the game and nobody has really given good tools.
Take 5e, if you're an entirely new DM just trying to work out what to do from Hoard of the Dragon Queen you might be entirely fucked. It puts essential information in another book you need to read out, contradicts itself and if you have the "recommended" 4PCs there is an encounter with a pair of rat swarms that might be obscenely lethal only a handful of encounters in. The dreadful and entirely luck - as in if you send a player to a new character sheet or not - half-dragon fight, the hilarious "four assassins" error and so forth. It doesn't provide a lot of guidance for a new DM to easily run it: It's aimed and written for people with 18 years of experience who can spot, change and get past this stuff easily.
That's a huge problem! I honestly can't think of many good adventures that are aimed solely at new DMs, because word counts are tight and nobody wants to spend the time detailing "common sense" things, like "What is this monster supposed to do in this encounter?" for new DMs. How do they describe things? Advice on talking about this monster in combat and to give illustrative examples of how to narrate combat to something other than "I hit and you miss" etc etc.
Running a game is difficult but rewarding, but nobody really seems to be bothering to make it genuinely easy to pick up and actually run. Wizards attempted this in a way with things like the red box, but even then it didn't work well at all. Things as basic as "How do you roleplay NPCs" are locked away in books they don't bother releasing until three months after the core players book or it is buried under piles and piles of other rules (Specifically thinking of Shadowrun here, which has good, but not fantastic, guidance and is damn near impenetrable in places for a new Gamemaster).
Like when I said "Hey would anyone like to learn how to DM" I expected like 2 people. I got nearly 14 people. Something tells me there is more than enough interest, but where our problem is in converting that interest into actual DMs. A process that would start by having very new DM friendly scenarios, adventures and similar written with detail designed to get people into things. This is where the work needs to be done and when I see books that shove stats into another book entirely, I just despair.
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I wish there were more games like that.
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it's adam koebel of Dungeon World co-writership and Stephen Lumpkin of Rollplay R&D
*nods sagely*
Another difficulty is that crunchier games like D&D and Shadowrun often require a massive investment of time to create your own adventures. So you're asking people to spend a considerable amount of money on something that they have to kind of puzzle out. While modules should be the obvious and easy answer to this problem, they are not for the reasons you outlined above. One of the legacies that needs to die is the 3-book core model. Put all of the roleplaying stuff in the PHB and combine the MM and the DMG into one book (and charge more for each).
So of course, the main antagonist was born. He was kicked out of Black Sun for incompetence, but daddy financed a Nebulon-B Frigate for this guy's revenge quest. He made some shady deals to get some experimental tech, including the foremost Ithorian cyberneticist (to restore his body), prototype shield generators (to protect his ship), and a crew of slicers. Then he set himself up as an information broker, and tried to wreck the party's shit at every opportunity.
They couldn't attack him head on, of course - he was on the biggest ship I had stats for, and as menacing as their light freighter-cum-gunboat was, it wouldn't last long against a few turbolaser batteries. So the party started making contacts and brokering deals.
They got in good with his father's rival, another Black Sun Vigo.
They had done some smuggling on the side for the Empire (long story short, I was running with the idea that Vader wanted to overthrow the Emperor and was building up a small army of Force users to oppose him), so an ISB Agent owned them a few favors.
The Rebellion had contracted the party for some gun running, so they had contacts within the Alliance military.
And finally, they were selling all the junk they accumulated to a pirate group, who was more than happy to help the party if it kept a steady stream of cheap goods flowing.
Lots of moving parts, right? Well, all the party members had hidden goals to advance their Motivation or reduce their Obligation. The bounty hunter's little sister was a burgeoning Force user (and Sith, little did she know). The slicer was selling information to the Empire about all their activities. The wookiee was helping to fund the Rebellion. The doctor desperately wanted to get his hands on that Ithorian's cybernetic research and use it for her own ends. The protocol droid was running a trade empire with the pirates as a proxy partner, etc, etc. So everybody had a stake in every step.
When Age of Rebellion came out, I figured that would be a great time to encourage the party to take down their nemesis and side with one faction or another. Most of them had been super friendly with their ISB buddy, so I figured that they'd end up siding with the Empire and end up helping Vader overthrow the Emperor. Boy, was I wrong.
I introduced a planet with some heavy anti-space weaponry; big ion cannons, like those on Hoth in Ep5. The party saw their chance, and called in all their chips. I decided this would be an awesome RP opportunity, and gave them competing victory conditions: the Rebels wanted the ISB Agent and the frigate, the Empire wanted the Rebel and pirate fleets destroyed, the pirates wanted the frigate for themselves and the Black Sun Vigo dead, and Black Sun wanted the ISB Agent and the pirate fleet destroyed.
Then the players sided with the Rebellion. They told the pirate fleet and the Empire to show up at the same time, both of which were to engage the frigate and the other fleet. They cashed in their Black Sun chips for a wetwork team to capture an ion cannon. And then told the Rebellion to come in to mop up after the pirates and Empire had exhausted each other.
With the plan in place, we played it out. And went almost flawlessly. The wetwork team captured the ion cannon (...with a minor setback of accidentally destroying an orphanarium and veterans of popular wars hospital) and disabled the frigate, the pirate and Imperial fleets destroyed each other fighting over the frigate, the ISB Agent's interdictor was crippled by the party, and the Rebel fleet showed up to clean up the mess. And along the way, the bounty hunter destroyed records of her Force-using sister, the slicer sold out the ISB Agent to his loyalist rival for even more money, the wookiee helped the Rebellion, they captured the ithorian, and executed their rival.
Pretty epic, even if I subsequently had a party of Rebel Scum (ugh).
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I start the game with the setup that an Archeologist and his partner hire a crew consisting of a Scoundrel and a Body Guard to help on a expedition to find an ancient Crystal Nexu statue. The partner betrays everyone and the group is trapped in a pit when a Trandoshan captures them and takes them to Tattoonie and Teemo. They find out that while the Archeologist had purchased the gear and crew, his partner had gotten the loan for the ship from Teemo; and Teemo wanted his money back.
The party is motivated as such. They all want the traitor. The Twilek Scoundrel is looking for a way to take down her Slaver Brother. And the Body Guard is actually a Rebel Spy who took the job when her cover on the Wheel was about to be blown and she needed to disappear.
They steal a droid and a ship and take off to Ryloth. Scoundrel meets some resistance type Twileks and makes some contacts. He gives her some info about ships that work for her brother. While they are helping the Twileks deal with a Teemo’s men they get a message to meet someone on the Wheel spacestation.
They meet a Black Sun boss who promises to help them track the traitor and pay them well if the Archeologist uses his skills and retrieves a datacron for her. It’s at a mining colony, where the drillers broke into an ancient temple. Traps were set off, but it should be safe now. They agree, get the datacron, and return to the Wheel only to find the Black Sun base bombed out.
Archeologist does some research and discovers the Datacron and Nexu are linked, but needs to get to a book at the Aldaraanian Royal Library. But they don’t allow just anyone in there. The Rebel’s old cell leader is willing to help if they first help him out. The Empire is currently enslaving a planet populated by a Duros offshoot. Think Duros with Koi like color patterns and heavily influenced by feudal Japanese styling. They rescue a political leader, get her the Aldaraan, and get access to the library. They find out the Nexu and Datacron are keys that unlock a star map at another temple. That map has hyperspace coordinates to a giant Rakaata warship supposedly full of plunder.
The group is captured by the Chiss where he explains he was pulling a lot of the strings but wasn’t able to find the temple location. So he captured them. They agree to work together because the group was pacified when the Chiss put the traitor into a holding cell and they want a cut of the money. They go to the temple and unlock the map. The Chiss leaves the party with a group of his men who are supposed to take them back to Aldaraan and their ship. Instead the group wants to cash in the bounty. The R2 unit they stole on the first adventure reveals itself to be a combat monster with duel blaster pistols concealed in its chest. The party kills the guards, grabs a copy of the map, and take the landing shuttle.
A really bad astrogation roll has the shuttle they are in drop out of hyperspace early and I introduce the Talespin like setting earlier than expected. They sell the shuttle, book passage to Alderaan with a smuggler, and have to fight pirates on the way out. Also while there the Scoundrel finds out one of her brothers slave ships was there and is heading towards the Japanese Duros planet.
Finally the group gets to Aldaraan and puts in the Rakataan hyperdrive coordinates. The big showdown happens Friday.
Damn, that was longer than I meant it to be.
My planned second arc will deal more with the slave ring and the third would be way more Rebel influenced. Act 3 is iffy, but since I have 1 Rebel already and the Archeologist is starting to lean heavily that way I should be okay.
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Character Creation: determine power level of PCs, 15 25 or 35 Character points to spend on attributes and powers.
Physical Attributes
Fighting= melee combat modifier and 1st half of initiative.
Agility = ranged combat modifier and 2nd half of initiative.
Strength = melee\thrown damage modifier
Endurance = physical toughness
saving throw = strength + endurance multiplied by two
Mental Attributes
Reason = using or inventing/maintaining technology and general intelligence.
Intuition = deductive skill and perception roll modifier.
Psyche = resistance to interrogation and mind control.
Resources = material wealth and available resources
Attribute ranks range from -2 to +7 baseline is 0
Origins; altered human = +1 to two physical attributes or +1 to two mental attributes
mutant = +1 physical or mental attribute +1 to single power rank
alien = +2 to single power rank or +1 to two power ranks
construct = immune to mental attacks and poison\disease
expert = double background points
Power Types; passive = requires no roll to use and is often a direct result of character attributes for example a high strength score means super strength.
active = requires a roll to activate and or use, common active powers include turning your body to steel and casting spells.
combo = only requires a roll in certain circumstances but otherwise function like passive powers
for example using super hearing to zero in on a specific source or using telepathy on an unwilling target.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.