gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
I find that part of running a comedy game is that you have to let the players "in" on some of the jokes. I've run two games in my comedy 13th age game. The first fell kind of flat, the party just going along out of politeness as players, because I was expecting them to be...heroic. But its a comedy game, of course they're all deadbeat losers with magic items. They're the straight men; the world itself is the comedy.
So this game I introduced our BBEG, the most obviously evil man possible. His picture in roll20 is Fu Manchu. He has long black fingernails and an exaggerated spindly manner. He cackles at weird times and talks in a sibilant lisp. He is the amalgamation of every bad 80s and 90s fantasy super villain ever - like if Sarumon and Skeletor raised a kid.
Naturally, nobody but the PCs can tell that this cackling madman is evil. Laughing because the players just gave him a magic artifact of plot significance? "He's just really happy about his work." Cackling while he plots the doom of all around him? "He thinks of others before himself!"
But of course, a villain like that needs a foil as well, so the Superior of the Great College is now the Most Enlightened Guy ever. His icon is Dr Strange, he speaks like Bob Ross, and he shows great humility in the face of his own power. His goal is the betterment of mankind, the protection of the Empire, and the self-actualization of all those under his care.
The players all immediately hated the enlightened and compassionate Superior and vastly preferred dealing with the blatant villain.
A piece written by Cheryl Platz, an improv performer and Ma1nfram3 the Elven Decker's actress on HyperRPG on Wednesday nights.
Why Improv?
Let’s get this straight: you don’t need an improv education to play RPGs, and there’s no “right” way to play RPGs. One of the first things I tell my students in beginning improv classes is that we have all been improvising since the moment we learned to listen and speak. An improv education simply teaches you how to channel those instincts into more controlled manifestations towards specific goals – whether that goal is to appear confident, to touch an audience member emotionally, or to tell a compelling story.
In particular, experience with improvisation can help roleplaying game sessions feel “tighter” and less wandering once you have an understanding of basic story structure. You can learn more tools to differentiate your characters and tools for adding to or resolving conflicts in the scope of a story. As a GM, you can learn more about creating compelling environments and how to choose “offers” for your players that elicit strong responses. And as most improv students become better listeners, your campaigns can only be helped when folks at the table become more active listeners, capable of responding in the moment rather than thinking about their next moves during the action.
Got a question regarding exploring the wilderness. So I've got some relatively detailed maps for the wilderness that my players can choose to strike off into, and inside the wilderness is a bunch of fun stuff they can bumble into, some of it for quests, some of it is just a cave or dungeon sitting their that tells it's own self contained story.
Do I show the whole map with everything revealed and use a hex/travel system and let the players move overland and reveal encounters as they approach them or is there a better system for it?
I think you ask them if they have found or bought a map and, if yes, they get to see a whole map of the area they're travelling through.
As they are proceeding you start showing portions and reveal that some things in the real environment aren't lining up with things that are on the map because it is too old/poorly done/the cartographers were just making things up.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Got a question regarding exploring the wilderness. So I've got some relatively detailed maps for the wilderness that my players can choose to strike off into, and inside the wilderness is a bunch of fun stuff they can bumble into, some of it for quests, some of it is just a cave or dungeon sitting their that tells it's own self contained story.
Do I show the whole map with everything revealed and use a hex/travel system and let the players move overland and reveal encounters as they approach them or is there a better system for it?
How wilderness is it, actually? Chico's right that if they've got a map you should give them at least some of the details, but if we're talking something trackless, you probably want to make them really work for it.
What kind of capabilities for getting around / looking around have they got?
There are cities and a road system that dots the coast, but where the players start is a mountain range so they have a rough idea that there are towns in the area. As well as a rough map showing the location of towns as well as a river that flows to a capital city they can follow.
Just trying to figure out how to get them to explore stuff as their is a bunch of shit they can bump into
There are cities and a road system that dots the coast, but where the players start is a mountain range so they have a rough idea that there are towns in the area. As well as a rough map showing the location of towns as well as a river that flows to a capital city they can follow.
Just trying to figure out how to get them to explore stuff as their is a bunch of shit they can bump into
Give them a list of things they need to recover from destinations in the area. Player/Character curiosity should take care of the rest.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
If you want to make it really easy just break down the wilderness into legs
so you are on a journey to the small township of Porttownplace, it will take three generic legs. Three chances to roll dice for encounters, three increments of consuming resources, three explicit parts of the journey. Far away places have more legs and more chances for hobgoblins to ruin their day, less legs for places rather close by. Sometimes making things more abstract helps with the verisimilitude of the game instead of breaking out the hexes and maps
Deciding on a system to run my game in; I've pretty much narrowed it down to 13th Age or D&D 5e, but am having a hard time picking between them.
Some of my considerations about the game:
- Definitely want a fantasy setting, though not opposed to "technology as magic" vis-a-vis Numenera
- I think I want to have an "important items" subtheme; my time playing WoW of late and the current plot line of one of the webcomics I follow has me keen on setpiece items for PCs
- Want interesting mechanics that lean on theater of the mind over tactical warfare; not that I don't want combat or to avoid numbers, but that we should be able to handle conflict resolution narratively alongside dice rolls, only using minis loosely to help frame actions around the map
For 13th Age, I love the Icons, One Unique Thing, and Backgrounds, as well as the high action combat style and healing mechanics, and the "items matter" theme more or less baked in...but have only ever played one shots so am unclear how well the rules support strongly narrative play in the long term. Also the combat rules are extensive and I worry this will make player grok levels difficult, especially as they level up.
5e on the other hand has a wonderfully simple ruleset while still offering some really dynamic play; Advantage/Disadvantage is an excellent "impediment" mechanism instead of tracking 10 different status effects and adjusting combat math all the time, and the use of saves for practically everything makes outcomes dramatic. The downside is that characters tend to be incredibly squishy in my experience, and it's much more difficult to have "fail forward" play without as many player hooks. For being so light on mechanical detail, it's also weirdly specific about things like spell ranges and speed, which makes the theater of the mind combat hard to reconcile.
Yea, I'm not really sure in what ways 13th Age combat rules are more extensive than in 5th. Just the fact that 13th Age is actually built to not use a grid eliminates a huge amount of that sort of nit picky tactical stuff. As for leveling up, if you want anybody to play spell casters I think 13th Age's casters are way more manageable than most of 5ths. There are less spells, they all can be effectively used at higher levels (so you never NEED to abandon a favorite spell) and the usage limit option is a bit more flexible.
As for long form narrative play over single session play, I actually think 13th Age groans a little bit in single shots to really make use of the Icon rolls, especially if folks get lucky. In a campaign it is far easier to bank those 5's or 6's or use them in a way that would be irrelevant in a single sessions but work great in a campaign.
Really my one concern with 13th Age is if you have a fighter-y type player who really likes crunch they're going to have a hard time finding things to occupy them. The game really needs a complex martial character class.
If you want to make it really easy just break down the wilderness into legs
so you are on a journey to the small township of Porttownplace, it will take three generic legs. Three chances to roll dice for encounters, three increments of consuming resources, three explicit parts of the journey. Far away places have more legs and more chances for hobgoblins to ruin their day, less legs for places rather close by. Sometimes making things more abstract helps with the verisimilitude of the game instead of breaking out the hexes and maps
Speaking of, how do people like to handle this in DW? For longer journeys it seems like it is still one roll, but that feels wrong for a long journey to possibly only have one encounter that you did/did not get the drop on.
Yea, I'm not really sure in what ways 13th Age combat rules are more extensive than in 5th. Just the fact that 13th Age is actually built to not use a grid eliminates a huge amount of that sort of nit picky tactical stuff. As for leveling up, if you want anybody to play spell casters I think 13th Age's casters are way more manageable than most of 5ths. There are less spells, they all can be effectively used at higher levels (so you never NEED to abandon a favorite spell) and the usage limit option is a bit more flexible.
As for long form narrative play over single session play, I actually think 13th Age groans a little bit in single shots to really make use of the Icon rolls, especially if folks get lucky. In a campaign it is far easier to bank those 5's or 6's or use them in a way that would be irrelevant in a single sessions but work great in a campaign.
Really my one concern with 13th Age is if you have a fighter-y type player who really likes crunch they're going to have a hard time finding things to occupy them. The game really needs a complex martial character class.
Hm, I never parsed the icon rolls as doing anything but being narrative meat for a single session - this is an interesting twist I hadn't considered, being able to bank and cash in favor as it suits you.
As for combat complexity I was more concerned about the seemingly endless layers of modifiers and effects on spells or actions, but I forgot about the fact that you just make your spells more potent rather than just piling more and more things into your spellbook.
So it definitely sounds like 13th Age is the winner here. Maybe I'll even hack it to work with Advantage/Disadvantage and almost have my cake and eat it too.
Yea, I'm not really sure in what ways 13th Age combat rules are more extensive than in 5th. Just the fact that 13th Age is actually built to not use a grid eliminates a huge amount of that sort of nit picky tactical stuff. As for leveling up, if you want anybody to play spell casters I think 13th Age's casters are way more manageable than most of 5ths. There are less spells, they all can be effectively used at higher levels (so you never NEED to abandon a favorite spell) and the usage limit option is a bit more flexible.
As for long form narrative play over single session play, I actually think 13th Age groans a little bit in single shots to really make use of the Icon rolls, especially if folks get lucky. In a campaign it is far easier to bank those 5's or 6's or use them in a way that would be irrelevant in a single sessions but work great in a campaign.
Really my one concern with 13th Age is if you have a fighter-y type player who really likes crunch they're going to have a hard time finding things to occupy them. The game really needs a complex martial character class.
Hm, I never parsed the icon rolls as doing anything but being narrative meat for a single session - this is an interesting twist I hadn't considered, being able to bank and cash in favor as it suits you.
As for combat complexity I was more concerned about the seemingly endless layers of modifiers and effects on spells or actions, but I forgot about the fact that you just make your spells more potent rather than just piling more and more things into your spellbook.
So it definitely sounds like 13th Age is the winner here. Maybe I'll even hack it to work with Advantage/Disadvantage and almost have my cake and eat it too.
@Grunt's Ghosts worked out a system for icon rolls that generated tokens you give to players and that they choose to spend, and justify why it narratively makes sense. YMMV depending on your players going along with that.
Even in a more general sense though I'd use those rolls to further the relationship of the Icon and the player in some way. "I've got the layout of that keep you need to break into but next time you're in Axis I'll need a favor." "Your lost sibling was seen a month ago in Horizon, thought you'd like to know." "The Priestess wanted you to have this jar of holy water. Say hello to the Count for her."
All of those grow into much more than one off things in a campaign while also involving the player more. Is the player willing to commit to a blank favor for this Icon? What might the Icon want in Axis? Do you actually care about that throw away line in your backstory or not? Are they willingly there? Is the Priestess implying something about the Count? Is this a test of you from her or friendly chatter?
None of those have wrong answers but asking the question in the context of a campaign makes the answers interesting beyond the immediate situation and is more interesting (to me) than "Wow, a six! I love magic items!"
If you want to make it really easy just break down the wilderness into legs
so you are on a journey to the small township of Porttownplace, it will take three generic legs. Three chances to roll dice for encounters, three increments of consuming resources, three explicit parts of the journey. Far away places have more legs and more chances for hobgoblins to ruin their day, less legs for places rather close by. Sometimes making things more abstract helps with the verisimilitude of the game instead of breaking out the hexes and maps
Speaking of, how do people like to handle this in DW? For longer journeys it seems like it is still one roll, but that feels wrong for a long journey to possibly only have one encounter that you did/did not get the drop on.
In an Apocalypse World I ran, there was a Driver and lots of moving around between settlements. If I had something meaningful for them to encounter, I'd just do it ("Doing a move when the players look to you for what's next"). So maybe they got attacked by the nomad warband, or they had to convince their passenger to help them. If nothing noteworthy would get in the way, they just went to their destination, with maybe a Do Something Under Fire move if the travel was time-sensitive.
But if you want to focus on travelling and random encounters in the wilds in your DW campaign, you should look at The Perilous Wilds.
If you want to make it really easy just break down the wilderness into legs
so you are on a journey to the small township of Porttownplace, it will take three generic legs. Three chances to roll dice for encounters, three increments of consuming resources, three explicit parts of the journey. Far away places have more legs and more chances for hobgoblins to ruin their day, less legs for places rather close by. Sometimes making things more abstract helps with the verisimilitude of the game instead of breaking out the hexes and maps
Speaking of, how do people like to handle this in DW? For longer journeys it seems like it is still one roll, but that feels wrong for a long journey to possibly only have one encounter that you did/did not get the drop on.
In an Apocalypse World I ran, there was a Driver and lots of moving around between settlements. If I had something meaningful for them to encounter, I'd just do it ("Doing a move when the players look to you for what's next"). So maybe they got attacked by the nomad warband, or they had to convince their passenger to help them. If nothing noteworthy would get in the way, they just went to their destination, with maybe a Do Something Under Fire move if the travel was time-sensitive.
But if you want to focus on travelling and random encounters in the wilds in your DW campaign, you should look at The Perilous Wilds.
Thanks! It's not been a major problem so much as we have begun thinking "for our campaign...do we need this system? Is it increasing the world/fun for us?"
If you want to make it really easy just break down the wilderness into legs
so you are on a journey to the small township of Porttownplace, it will take three generic legs. Three chances to roll dice for encounters, three increments of consuming resources, three explicit parts of the journey. Far away places have more legs and more chances for hobgoblins to ruin their day, less legs for places rather close by. Sometimes making things more abstract helps with the verisimilitude of the game instead of breaking out the hexes and maps
Speaking of, how do people like to handle this in DW? For longer journeys it seems like it is still one roll, but that feels wrong for a long journey to possibly only have one encounter that you did/did not get the drop on.
In an Apocalypse World I ran, there was a Driver and lots of moving around between settlements. If I had something meaningful for them to encounter, I'd just do it ("Doing a move when the players look to you for what's next"). So maybe they got attacked by the nomad warband, or they had to convince their passenger to help them. If nothing noteworthy would get in the way, they just went to their destination, with maybe a Do Something Under Fire move if the travel was time-sensitive.
But if you want to focus on travelling and random encounters in the wilds in your DW campaign, you should look at The Perilous Wilds.
Thanks! It's not been a major problem so much as we have begun thinking "for our campaign...do we need this system? Is it increasing the world/fun for us?"
Oh yeah, I totally get you here. The AW campaign I talked about, that was 8 sessions. Not a long campaign by any means, and very short compared to this platonical image of the years-long epic ADnD campaign. I love PbtA, but I am not sure it is a good system for this kind of long-form campaign.
So this is a little last minute for sure but having scheduled a dnd session during what I now realize is Halloween weekend, I feel like I gotta bring that spooky heat
Anyone done a good haunted house encounter before? Or have links to some stuff I can read
So on HyperRPG, there's a Corporate Warfare Metagame for Shadowrun where Channel subscribers can join one of the Corps (go Ares, woo!) and Corps gain AP throughout the week that they can use to gain market share, attack each other, or spend market share to influence the game. Half the Subscribers don't join a Corp (SINless)
Seattle's Governor was just forced to resign as his involvement with the Humanis Policlub came to light. HyperRPG is holding an election now, and Subscribers are welcome to throw their hat into the race for the Governor's Seat!
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
This week's comedy game of 13th age is brought to you by "Encounter the GM thought would be easy and fast that nearly TPKs the party, Alex."
I had a fungal-infected kraken-like creature that sat underneath a bridge over lava in the underdark and smacked people around with tentacles nearly wipe the party. By itself. After the bard managed an amazing roll to kill all of the mooks in a single sonic blast of pure rock on the first round.
So, tried out Widow's Walk this weekend. It was hilarious. Went from super tense horror exploration to Drama Kid slapfight/Looney Tunes cartoon over the course of a round.
Don't read if you want to go into the new haunts blind.
We pulled the event where everyone but the Haunt Revealer was struggling actors in a shitty horror movie. The Haunt Revealer was the director surrounded by PAs and he was 1000% done with our shit. The Objective was to jack the director's vision and make it back to the Theater to act it before everyone else. It was a little hard to understand what supposed to happen, so almost everyone kind of wandered around aimlessly. I cottoned to the idea fairly quickly though and managed to swipe the idea. That's when everyone realized what the real game was and began dogging me on my way to the theater as I blew through the stash of items I'd managed to build up before the haunt.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to fight everyone off due to the law of averages, so I booked all way the down to the basement (Which had been unexplored to that point) hoping to force everyone to spread out. It worked, but not before the director got their vision back and beat everyone back to the theater. Guess it's back to youtube for my drugged out horror movie actress. (I would contend that I had the victory cause we didn't do the defense rules right, and the combat rules as a whole for the haunt were vague, but it was all in fun so I wasn't gonna flip the table over it)
Matev on
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Hail Hydra
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Played a game of eldritch horror using the forsaken lore expansion and I agree with people who say it basically completes the base game
Just the increased number of research and encounter cards are fantastic because they make it infinitely less likely you'll ever see the same card twice in one game and that is so good for keeping the game interesting and fun
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Oh yeah I finally got the chance to play widow's walk the other night!
it was Saw. Our haunt was basically the second Saw movie. Old cassette tape with a spooky voice on it that wants to play a game because we don't appreciate our lives, obstacles being beaten etc. It was wild.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Oh yeah I finally got the chance to play widow's walk the other night!
it was Saw. Our haunt was basically the second Saw movie. Old cassette tape with a spooky voice on it that wants to play a game because we don't appreciate our lives, obstacles being beaten etc. It was wild.
Was this one of the new scenarios? Because there was a Saw styled one in the original I was very fond of as well.
This game, you guys. This game. Such amazing tension for such a simple mechanic.
Protip: The best way to get players paranoid about shit is to take one player aside and talk to them a bit before having them pull, then take another player aside before having them make a pull...
At one point half of the players were out in the woods and two of them stayed behind in the cabin, and there was like 15 minutes there where it was just one of the two in the cabin making a pull, and then the other one making a pull, back and forth, back and forth...
And nobody who was in the woods ever found out what all of that was about until the very end of the game. It. Was. Glorious.
(As per horror film rules, only one of them survived.)
Oh yeah I finally got the chance to play widow's walk the other night!
it was Saw. Our haunt was basically the second Saw movie. Old cassette tape with a spooky voice on it that wants to play a game because we don't appreciate our lives, obstacles being beaten etc. It was wild.
Was this one of the new scenarios? Because there was a Saw styled one in the original I was very fond of as well.
I... Think so. Pretty sure. Like 95% sure.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Oh yeah I finally got the chance to play widow's walk the other night!
it was Saw. Our haunt was basically the second Saw movie. Old cassette tape with a spooky voice on it that wants to play a game because we don't appreciate our lives, obstacles being beaten etc. It was wild.
Was this one of the new scenarios? Because there was a Saw styled one in the original I was very fond of as well.
I... Think so. Pretty sure. Like 95% sure.
Slightly more spoilers
The original flavor one is a hidden traitor scenario where everyone has bomb collar sort of things. You need to find keys to get the bomb collars off before they explode, which involve doing dangerous things like climbing the tower or performing self surgery. The traitor can either actively try to murder you, or try to steal all of the keys, potentially under the guise of helping.
Somehow went my whole life without playing King of Tokyo. Got a couple games in last night. Pretty okay game! It's fun to roll big chunky dice and screw over your friends.
I managed to win one game without ever setting foot in Tokyo. Got a combo of cards going with "points for hoarding energy," "points for buying stuff," and "ability to buy any card when it is first revealed." I like to imagine King Kong sitting just outside the city limits, sucking on a power transformer like a Capri Sun straw, frantically ordering things from the Home Shopping Network until all the other monsters give up and go home.
Somehow went my whole life without playing King of Tokyo. Got a couple games in last night. Pretty okay game! It's fun to roll big chunky dice and screw over your friends.
I managed to win one game without ever setting foot in Tokyo. Got a combo of cards going with "points for hoarding energy," "points for buying stuff," and "ability to buy any card when it is first revealed." I like to imagine King Kong sitting just outside the city limits, sucking on a power transformer like a Capri Sun straw, frantically ordering things from the Home Shopping Network until all the other monsters give up and go home.
I super highly recommend getting the Power Up expansion, if you're digging on the base game
It's what gives each character a personalized upgrade path (evolutions) and I consider it effectively necessary for continued enjoyment of the game (which like, I've had it for a long while now and play it pretty often at parties)
Also, I find it fascinating seeing how people naturally tend to gravitate towards the characters that will synergize with their strategies, even without knowing what the evolutions are
Every time I see a new player's eyes light up at the sight of Panda Kai I know exactly what I am getting into that evening
Posts
So this game I introduced our BBEG, the most obviously evil man possible. His picture in roll20 is Fu Manchu. He has long black fingernails and an exaggerated spindly manner. He cackles at weird times and talks in a sibilant lisp. He is the amalgamation of every bad 80s and 90s fantasy super villain ever - like if Sarumon and Skeletor raised a kid.
Naturally, nobody but the PCs can tell that this cackling madman is evil. Laughing because the players just gave him a magic artifact of plot significance? "He's just really happy about his work." Cackling while he plots the doom of all around him? "He thinks of others before himself!"
But of course, a villain like that needs a foil as well, so the Superior of the Great College is now the Most Enlightened Guy ever. His icon is Dr Strange, he speaks like Bob Ross, and he shows great humility in the face of his own power. His goal is the betterment of mankind, the protection of the Empire, and the self-actualization of all those under his care.
The players all immediately hated the enlightened and compassionate Superior and vastly preferred dealing with the blatant villain.
Mission accomplished.
A piece written by Cheryl Platz, an improv performer and Ma1nfram3 the Elven Decker's actress on HyperRPG on Wednesday nights.
Do I show the whole map with everything revealed and use a hex/travel system and let the players move overland and reveal encounters as they approach them or is there a better system for it?
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
As they are proceeding you start showing portions and reveal that some things in the real environment aren't lining up with things that are on the map because it is too old/poorly done/the cartographers were just making things up.
How wilderness is it, actually? Chico's right that if they've got a map you should give them at least some of the details, but if we're talking something trackless, you probably want to make them really work for it.
What kind of capabilities for getting around / looking around have they got?
Just trying to figure out how to get them to explore stuff as their is a bunch of shit they can bump into
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
Give them a list of things they need to recover from destinations in the area. Player/Character curiosity should take care of the rest.
so you are on a journey to the small township of Porttownplace, it will take three generic legs. Three chances to roll dice for encounters, three increments of consuming resources, three explicit parts of the journey. Far away places have more legs and more chances for hobgoblins to ruin their day, less legs for places rather close by. Sometimes making things more abstract helps with the verisimilitude of the game instead of breaking out the hexes and maps
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
I recommend everyone snag Chronicles of Darkness, Vampire the Requiem 2nd edition, and Demon the Descent. You can't beat those prices.
Some of my considerations about the game:
- Definitely want a fantasy setting, though not opposed to "technology as magic" vis-a-vis Numenera
- I think I want to have an "important items" subtheme; my time playing WoW of late and the current plot line of one of the webcomics I follow has me keen on setpiece items for PCs
- Want interesting mechanics that lean on theater of the mind over tactical warfare; not that I don't want combat or to avoid numbers, but that we should be able to handle conflict resolution narratively alongside dice rolls, only using minis loosely to help frame actions around the map
For 13th Age, I love the Icons, One Unique Thing, and Backgrounds, as well as the high action combat style and healing mechanics, and the "items matter" theme more or less baked in...but have only ever played one shots so am unclear how well the rules support strongly narrative play in the long term. Also the combat rules are extensive and I worry this will make player grok levels difficult, especially as they level up.
5e on the other hand has a wonderfully simple ruleset while still offering some really dynamic play; Advantage/Disadvantage is an excellent "impediment" mechanism instead of tracking 10 different status effects and adjusting combat math all the time, and the use of saves for practically everything makes outcomes dramatic. The downside is that characters tend to be incredibly squishy in my experience, and it's much more difficult to have "fail forward" play without as many player hooks. For being so light on mechanical detail, it's also weirdly specific about things like spell ranges and speed, which makes the theater of the mind combat hard to reconcile.
I just don't knooooooow.
A list of things, should you be of the gifting persuasion
As for long form narrative play over single session play, I actually think 13th Age groans a little bit in single shots to really make use of the Icon rolls, especially if folks get lucky. In a campaign it is far easier to bank those 5's or 6's or use them in a way that would be irrelevant in a single sessions but work great in a campaign.
Really my one concern with 13th Age is if you have a fighter-y type player who really likes crunch they're going to have a hard time finding things to occupy them. The game really needs a complex martial character class.
Speaking of, how do people like to handle this in DW? For longer journeys it seems like it is still one roll, but that feels wrong for a long journey to possibly only have one encounter that you did/did not get the drop on.
Hm, I never parsed the icon rolls as doing anything but being narrative meat for a single session - this is an interesting twist I hadn't considered, being able to bank and cash in favor as it suits you.
As for combat complexity I was more concerned about the seemingly endless layers of modifiers and effects on spells or actions, but I forgot about the fact that you just make your spells more potent rather than just piling more and more things into your spellbook.
So it definitely sounds like 13th Age is the winner here. Maybe I'll even hack it to work with Advantage/Disadvantage and almost have my cake and eat it too.
A list of things, should you be of the gifting persuasion
@Grunt's Ghosts worked out a system for icon rolls that generated tokens you give to players and that they choose to spend, and justify why it narratively makes sense. YMMV depending on your players going along with that.
Even in a more general sense though I'd use those rolls to further the relationship of the Icon and the player in some way. "I've got the layout of that keep you need to break into but next time you're in Axis I'll need a favor." "Your lost sibling was seen a month ago in Horizon, thought you'd like to know." "The Priestess wanted you to have this jar of holy water. Say hello to the Count for her."
All of those grow into much more than one off things in a campaign while also involving the player more. Is the player willing to commit to a blank favor for this Icon? What might the Icon want in Axis? Do you actually care about that throw away line in your backstory or not? Are they willingly there? Is the Priestess implying something about the Count? Is this a test of you from her or friendly chatter?
None of those have wrong answers but asking the question in the context of a campaign makes the answers interesting beyond the immediate situation and is more interesting (to me) than "Wow, a six! I love magic items!"
In an Apocalypse World I ran, there was a Driver and lots of moving around between settlements. If I had something meaningful for them to encounter, I'd just do it ("Doing a move when the players look to you for what's next"). So maybe they got attacked by the nomad warband, or they had to convince their passenger to help them. If nothing noteworthy would get in the way, they just went to their destination, with maybe a Do Something Under Fire move if the travel was time-sensitive.
But if you want to focus on travelling and random encounters in the wilds in your DW campaign, you should look at The Perilous Wilds.
Thanks! It's not been a major problem so much as we have begun thinking "for our campaign...do we need this system? Is it increasing the world/fun for us?"
Hey y'all check dis out. Seems like a fairly simple plan for making a pretty decent gaming table
!!!
@pimento
Oh yeah, I totally get you here. The AW campaign I talked about, that was 8 sessions. Not a long campaign by any means, and very short compared to this platonical image of the years-long epic ADnD campaign. I love PbtA, but I am not sure it is a good system for this kind of long-form campaign.
Anyone done a good haunted house encounter before? Or have links to some stuff I can read
DO THIS.
Seattle's Governor was just forced to resign as his involvement with the Humanis Policlub came to light. HyperRPG is holding an election now, and Subscribers are welcome to throw their hat into the race for the Governor's Seat!
one is literally Event Horizon
same ship and everything, and it's gonna play out the same way
it is the Wrong Choice, and as such, they will have to pick it
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I had a fungal-infected kraken-like creature that sat underneath a bridge over lava in the underdark and smacked people around with tentacles nearly wipe the party. By itself. After the bard managed an amazing roll to kill all of the mooks in a single sonic blast of pure rock on the first round.
Don't read if you want to go into the new haunts blind.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to fight everyone off due to the law of averages, so I booked all way the down to the basement (Which had been unexplored to that point) hoping to force everyone to spread out. It worked, but not before the director got their vision back and beat everyone back to the theater. Guess it's back to youtube for my drugged out horror movie actress. (I would contend that I had the victory cause we didn't do the defense rules right, and the combat rules as a whole for the haunt were vague, but it was all in fun so I wasn't gonna flip the table over it)
Just the increased number of research and encounter cards are fantastic because they make it infinitely less likely you'll ever see the same card twice in one game and that is so good for keeping the game interesting and fun
Dread is the best RPG for Halloween.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I... Think so. Pretty sure. Like 95% sure.
Slightly more spoilers
I managed to win one game without ever setting foot in Tokyo. Got a combo of cards going with "points for hoarding energy," "points for buying stuff," and "ability to buy any card when it is first revealed." I like to imagine King Kong sitting just outside the city limits, sucking on a power transformer like a Capri Sun straw, frantically ordering things from the Home Shopping Network until all the other monsters give up and go home.
Y'all.
Bluebeard's Bride.
Goddamn.
I'm read the beta documents. I need a little more skeleton and meat on the bones before I'm fully into it, but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.
I super highly recommend getting the Power Up expansion, if you're digging on the base game
It's what gives each character a personalized upgrade path (evolutions) and I consider it effectively necessary for continued enjoyment of the game (which like, I've had it for a long while now and play it pretty often at parties)
Also, I find it fascinating seeing how people naturally tend to gravitate towards the characters that will synergize with their strategies, even without knowing what the evolutions are
Every time I see a new player's eyes light up at the sight of Panda Kai I know exactly what I am getting into that evening