The faction turn in SWN is the first time I've personally (no idea which games might've also done it first) seen a game that gave the GM actual mechanics where they have to play the game by themselves to see what happens with the factions. It's a cool as hell thing.
Anybody who is a super nerd like me I'd encourage you to check out Adam Koebel's youtube series "Hack Attacks," where he and Steven Lumpkin(used to GM for Rollplay and is a video game designer) would try to hack games to make them fit what they wanted out of them.
Like when Steven was running a West Marches sandbox campaign using D&D 5E, they came up with a system where players did RP scenes that could guarantee they'd earn an inspiration die rather than use the standard and terrible system that relies on the GM memorizing and looking for every PCs personality traits and flaws mid-session, and they actually tried working out a way to use the faction turn in the west marches game but it didn't end up working out.
Just watching them try to figure out how to make Shadowrun work for the character drama that the Mirrorshades game turned into, or try to figure out what mechanics they'd use to have the two separate light side/dark side groups in FFG Star Wars clash against each other is really fun if you're a huge nerd like me who ends up having to hack pretty much every game you play.
Here's a link to the playlist for hack attacks because it feels annoying to talk about it and not include:
Started watching Adam's GM turns for swan song again and now I am partially tempted to shove it into my new dark heresy game. Different factions would be like the administratum or gangs or rogue traders etc
Mon-Fri 8:30 PM CST - 11:30 PM CST
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
There's a Pathfinder bundle up at Humble Bundle that's mostly comics and some of their earlier supplements, but it includes the entire Iron Gods adventure path at the $15 level, which is a really odd one that has looked entertaining to me since I heard about it.
I was about to ask if that's worth while. I'm a little strapped for cash right now but that seems like a lot of material for that price. Even if fantasy RPG's aren't usually my area.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I was about to ask if that's worth while. I'm a little strapped for cash right now but that seems like a lot of material for that price. Even if fantasy RPG's aren't usually my area.
Iron Gods features a spaceship, space drugs, a barbarian warlord, and a bunch of other weird-even-by-Pathfinder-standards stuff. The rulebooks included aren't bad ones, they're just not anything particularly new.
I saw that. Sadly I already own all those Adventure Path books.
In that case, is Iron Gods anything like as cool as it sounds from the blurbs?
I have been enjoying it. Of note however:
You might want to go into it giving your players a heads up that it's going to be touching on a lot of sci-fi as opposed to typical fantasy. It took a couple of my players for a loop at first but they eventually settled in.
Iron Gods is probably my second favorite adventure concept, behind Reign of Winter. Also of note in the bundle is all of Season 5 of the Pathfinder Society adventures.
Had the second session of Fragged Empire. The crew were hired by a definitely shady Nephilim scientist who fucks with Mechanids along with bio-tech to create hybrids no one should want to exist. Our task is to go to Sector 3 of Alabaster 6, the youngest and still under construction Corporate run orbital station around Alabaster, and retrieve several samples from the laboratory now that the locals will not let him near the site. Oh, also he injected everyone except our Twi-far (me) with a drug that he promised was to immunize against the labs conditions. My Farren rather rudely interrupted the drone attempting to inject me.
Our DM had written out a great blurb about the mono-rail mono-rail journey from the expansive, and ad filled, docking bay (where our mercenary contract offered us some cash for plastering an advert for shitty Umbrella Corp stand in C.U.R.E. on our ship) to the classy, for Alabaster 6, Sector 1 and all the way to our eventual destination.
Sector 3's security had being significantly beefed up by recent events and headed by a legion mercenary brought in to sort the locals need to keep undesirables out while the situation was resolved. Thankfully +3 conversation plus the ability to talk the native language got us past without issue.
Then we had fun visiting a local bar that, like all corporate vendors aimed at the working class, sold various narcotics and stimulants. A pleasant experience that also caught us onto the name Derek Barter, an older man who runs the militia and has the security computer we need to open the lab door (very rudely removed).
We ran into him after he responded to the gunfire of us defending ourselves from some Draz addicts looking for an easy mark. After spending the night getting to know him he trusted us enough to give the key back. Provided we promised to secure any of the children that had gone missing in the past few months.
The session ended with us going into the underground lab of a man who thinks Mechanids are playthings and who no one trusts. Oh, and the elevator is out of power.
So. I'm now considering a fantasy setting where rogues all enjoy something like the Outsider's blessing, a la Dishonored and fighters have access to supernatural martial arts (a la any JRPG). This is because I'm mostly done with the starfighter combat game except for the procrastinating on the final details.
The flip side is that this setting's clerics enjoy blessings not dissimilar to the Outsider's (a conundrum!), and the wizards are more alchemist, less mobile artillery cannons.
But the setting is all pre-Enlightenment Northern Europe, where mechanisms are just starting to become a thing. Winters are harsh, warriors are the lifeblood of their communities, clerics and wizards are rare and itinerant from village to village in normal times, teaching the local kids reading, writing, and arithmetic (in exchange for food, clothing, and shelter). A man's wealth is measured in livestock, the old gods are quiet, and trade with the south is just beginning to become a thing you can make a fortune off of, thanks to the establishment of banks.
Like...the balance point where either tradition or technology can take the reins of destiny and guide the people on, and the party influences which factions succeed or fail. Often inadvertently by whatever their adventures reveals, uncovers, or returns.
So I saw a post on the RPG subreddit about a FUDGE(I dunno the system) based system that got announced that's going to be a licensed game of The Princess Bride. As a huge fan of the movie/book, I thought hah, that's funny though I don't see a need for such a thing in my gaming life.
But then I saw this comment from James D'Amato of the One Shot Podcast network which reminded me why James is too good for this world.
My pitch for this game is a competitive GMless system where the only way to lose HP is to quote or reference The Princess Bride.
Players set up elaborate situations to tempt each other to quote the 1987 cult classic. Anyone who slips up and quotes a line, references a character, or calls back to beloved performances by actors like Wallace Shawn or Billy Crystal are instantly struck with damage. The last player to survive wins!
FUDGE is the OGL framework on which Fate is built.
Aye, I remember my old skill trees and having to hack in powers and skill to fit early attempts with the system.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
In other news, HOT DAMN is Savage RIFTS scratching an itch I didn't know I had.
In other news, HOT DAMN is Savage RIFTS scratching an itch I didn't know I had.
I keep looking over the new books with a mixed sense of longing and dread. I'm not sure what I'd do, or even who I'd be able to find to do it with.
Right now, I'm kind of thinking something along the lines of Chaos Earth to try and lay some conceptual groundwork for the craziness, if I ever get a group together for it.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
I have no problem with Crawford as a mechanic. His weakness has always been not fully engaging on setting building. His secondary weakness has been core mechanics that aren't quite as polished (OSR in general has this problem, though). But his subsystems are often great.
Can somebody sort of sell me on Savage Worlds and games that run on that system? I'm intrigued by some things I've heard about the exploding dice and such, but I'm trying to figure out if it's something I'd like to try out with my group when we do our "non-campaign side games."
For reference, 13th Age is our favorite version of D&D by a mile, we like FFG Star Wars, and then for our side stuff we're the kind of group to dig on PbtA games and stuff like that. Though we haven't played it yet, I think Night's Black Agents and GUMSHOE in general will be a big hit.
I guess I know just enough about Savage Worlds to be intrigued by it, but not enough to understand why it would represent an interesting and different experience than what we already play.
Can somebody sort of sell me on Savage Worlds and games that run on that system? I'm intrigued by some things I've heard about the exploding dice and such, but I'm trying to figure out if it's something I'd like to try out with my group when we do our "non-campaign side games."
For reference, 13th Age is our favorite version of D&D by a mile, we like FFG Star Wars, and then for our side stuff we're the kind of group to dig on PbtA games and stuff like that. Though we haven't played it yet, I think Night's Black Agents and GUMSHOE in general will be a big hit.
I guess I know just enough about Savage Worlds to be intrigued by it, but not enough to understand why it would represent an interesting and different experience than what we already play.
Savage Worlds is like d20 in that it's a system made to resolve conflict and have interesting combat; it doesn't really do anything else. I don't know if that's changed since I played it back in 2005 or so. IIRC it's basically GURPS but without all the modular components.
I'd play SW if I wanted a d20 experience in a setting but didn't already have a book/system for it, or if I didn't like that particular system. If my friends and I enjoyed a particular book/game series (say, Elric of Melnibone or Mass Effect), we could pick up SW and I could just tell people to make appropriate characters for the setting, then clean up anything that doesn't fit. The important part of SW is that you can cut or add things without worrying about breaking everything.
I would not get into SW unless you super wanted to play Deadlands or something unique to SW; there were plenty of interesting settings, in my opinion. Or if you're just tired of poor design in your current system and want to run fantasy/star wars in a different system.
I think the main update is that they errata'd Shaken and a couple things: recovering from Shaken lets you act on the same turn, so players aren't spending Bennies on the ability to simply act.
Hmm. Sounds like the only way I'll probably try it out is if we're going to do a short Deadlands campaign or something and just wanna try something different. Nothing about Savage Worlds makes me think it could even get on the radar for my fantasy games over 13th Age which after some very slight tweaking is basically the perfect fantasy RPG for my table.
I thought maybe the exploding dice and other aspects of it might make it stand out from other games. Thanks for the info.
Savage Worlds doesn't really seem to have anything to recommend it other than some of its settings, imho. I'm looking at it because of the new Rifts stuff, but it's really uninspiring as a system.
The only thing that was kind new was that whole "Shaken" thing and people being able to sorta soak an attack each round but it's been years so I'm not surprised if I'm screwing that up.
Edit: Oh, and it was paired with basically doing nothing to recover which was way less cool and prone to long, pointless combats.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
I have no problem with Crawford as a mechanic. His weakness has always been not fully engaging on setting building. His secondary weakness has been core mechanics that aren't quite as polished (OSR in general has this problem, though). But his subsystems are often great.
What ? Have you read the world creation tables from SWN ? They imply a rich and diverse setting. Whatever world you randomly create, it'll always give you tons of playable hooks, much more efficiently than a trad game.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Last week I found out that the gaming group that I left due to a mixture of lacking time and not liking the DM's ridiculous and constant bullshit has returned to Rifts.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Hey, so I have a guy who likes finding fishing holes to catch food and a guy who likes to use being a druid/hunter to gather food to potentially reduce the rations needed during travel. Somebody give me ideas for an easy but fun way to let them use dice to determine if they get fish/forage/hunt, and how effective it is?
Since we're playing 13th Age I was thinking maybe I'll come up with a list of how effective a 15, 20, 25 are on a skill check, just offering more success the higher they roll.
13th Age has no skills - just rated Backgrounds (1-5) that players come up with, so if one is related to hunting/foraging you use that one as the roll (plus level plus DEX/WIS/INT).
Sounds like higher success = better recovery, like getting Strong Recovery for the next Recovery used/til the next Long Rest. I'm not a GM, though.
Also a reminder that most of the 13th Age stuff is free.
Yeah, 13th Age is d20 fantasy like D&D, but without specific skills. That part is all good. I can tell them to roll a WIS based check and tell a quick anecdote(the first time at least) about how the background they're applying makes them good at catching fish or hunting or foraging or whatever.
The question I'm thinking about is just how to make the outcome more fun. Telling them they need a 20 to get food is fine, but how much food do I give? Is failing the check just no extra food so you're eating rations today?
Thinking something like this:
Success is either normal, hard, very hard at DC 15, 20, 25, but they're all success.
Failure, so 14 or lower - Find food but something goes awry, probably get sick and throw a condition on that they'll be stuck with until they have a chance to save it off in a combat.
15 - Find enough food to feed yourself for one day
20 - Find enough food to feed you and all allies for one day
25 - Really score, enough food to feed you and all allies for one day and give an extra perk, like strong recovery for the next recovery for each PC.
They travel a lot, and the cost of rations adds up, they seem to love opportunities to not use them, so I think this will be fun for them. Obviously
Edit: @doomybear I love that idea about strong recovery. Gonna use that! Thanks.
I would probably drop those all by 5 with the new 10 result being something not worth rolling. Though that's a tenor thing.
I would definitely put unknowing failure as a very different thing than knowing failing. It should be far more likely the competent dude recognizes and skips the food that would make them sick than not realizing it at all. That's like fumble level stuff. Like <5 so most skilled folks would never do that.
I can't lower the DCs or the checks are too easy. If you don't know 13th Age, characters add a background to checks if they can justify it, and they add their level.
So my level 2 Druid making this check will be rolling 1d20+4(WIS)+2(Level)+4(druidy background). So he has to roll a 4 or lower on the d20 to even hit the failure threshold.
Also, for this particular thing I don't want there to be a failure option that's just "you fail to find food" because if that's all failure is then it's more of less purely beneficial to do this every time. This way there's an actual risk. We only do this once per leg of travel or so anyway, so it's more fun if the outcome is going to be helpful and failure stings a bit rather than being a routine thing.
My players are like me in that they relish the chance to roleplay fun failures, so that colors what I'm using here.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
I have no problem with Crawford as a mechanic. His weakness has always been not fully engaging on setting building. His secondary weakness has been core mechanics that aren't quite as polished (OSR in general has this problem, though). But his subsystems are often great.
What ? Have you read the world creation tables from SWN ? They imply a rich and diverse setting. Whatever world you randomly create, it'll always give you tons of playable hooks, much more efficiently than a trad game.
It implies, but it doesn't deliver. As I said, he doesn't fully engage on worldbuilding.
We had our first Dungeon World session not too long ago. I've been in a Call of Cthulhu game for awhile but it's been on hold since Sept. and I've been feeling the itch. Picked up the book during Christmas break, really dug it and so grabbed 4 other people to come and play.
One dude has been playing pnp and board games for over 20 years, one has dabbled, one plays board games with my wife and I and the other guy...I think he's maybe played Monopoly before.
It was so much fun. A learning experience for all of us and the total newbie killed it. He knew exactly what he wanted to do as a Barbarian and went HAM at every opportunity. Not having any preconceptions really aided him. He even had an amazing role playing moment at the end.
At Death's door, since he's a Barbarian, he presents a deal TO Death. He lifts the heavy gold chains around his neck and cocks an eyebrow at Death. "Fine, you can return for your wealth…ALL your wealth. You now owe me EVERYTHING." And Khrom, this guy who has never played a pnp game until now, thinks for a sec and say, "Nah. That's too high a price." And strides through the Black Gates and says, "Give me a couple of years and I'll be running this place…"
We've been playing at work during lunch since then and having a really good time. I'm really liking DW and will absolutely try some of the other hacks once we're done with this.
Oh man, that's a legendary death for that Barbarian. Just perfect.
People who are new to this hobby and haven't had time to lose the creative edge of somebody who doesn't know the mechanics they might be breaking with what they ask for are awesome to have at your table.
Savage Worlds doesn't really seem to have anything to recommend it other than some of its settings, imho. I'm looking at it because of the new Rifts stuff, but it's really uninspiring as a system.
Well if one likes the rifts setting the savage worlds rules are a pretty good way to run it in a lot more fluid way than the palladium system. Much less in the way of needed record keeping and the system is a lot better setup to handle larger sized combats at a good speed without bogging down.
Also handles the whole mega damage/non mega damage split better. So if your character does not have MDC armor it is not an instant death situation if they encounter somebody in the bar packing an MDC light laser pistol.
Basically it works like their old heavy armor. To damage heavy armor/mdc you need a heavy weapon/mdc weapon. But if you are shooting at standard types of armor MDC does nothing addition it just works like a normal weapon. Generally a higher damage weapons so dangerous but not likely to turn you into a vapor if it nicks your foot.
Rifts has a ton of interesting lore/setting materials and the savage world stuff makes it easy to convert a couple decades worth of stuff into something thats a lot more newbie friendly and immediately playable.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
I have no problem with Crawford as a mechanic. His weakness has always been not fully engaging on setting building. His secondary weakness has been core mechanics that aren't quite as polished (OSR in general has this problem, though). But his subsystems are often great.
What ? Have you read the world creation tables from SWN ? They imply a rich and diverse setting. Whatever world you randomly create, it'll always give you tons of playable hooks, much more efficiently than a trad game.
It implies, but it doesn't deliver. As I said, he doesn't fully engage on worldbuilding.
Wordbuilding isn't just writing a big setting chapter.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
I have no problem with Crawford as a mechanic. His weakness has always been not fully engaging on setting building. His secondary weakness has been core mechanics that aren't quite as polished (OSR in general has this problem, though). But his subsystems are often great.
What ? Have you read the world creation tables from SWN ? They imply a rich and diverse setting. Whatever world you randomly create, it'll always give you tons of playable hooks, much more efficiently than a trad game.
It implies, but it doesn't deliver. As I said, he doesn't fully engage on worldbuilding.
Wordbuilding isn't just writing a big setting chapter.
You've basically got two options these days: not define the setting beyond whatever tropes you're setting up or define the major pieces fully. Crawford routinely finds his way right to the middle.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
I have no problem with Crawford as a mechanic. His weakness has always been not fully engaging on setting building. His secondary weakness has been core mechanics that aren't quite as polished (OSR in general has this problem, though). But his subsystems are often great.
What ? Have you read the world creation tables from SWN ? They imply a rich and diverse setting. Whatever world you randomly create, it'll always give you tons of playable hooks, much more efficiently than a trad game.
It implies, but it doesn't deliver. As I said, he doesn't fully engage on worldbuilding.
Wordbuilding isn't just writing a big setting chapter.
You've basically got two options these days: not define the setting beyond whatever tropes you're setting up or define the major pieces fully. Crawford routinely finds his way right to the middle.
Crawford's worldbuilding might not be the type you like, but I disagree with your assessment that it is his "weakness". I would even say that it is what elevates his works above much of the OSR.
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Anybody who is a super nerd like me I'd encourage you to check out Adam Koebel's youtube series "Hack Attacks," where he and Steven Lumpkin(used to GM for Rollplay and is a video game designer) would try to hack games to make them fit what they wanted out of them.
Like when Steven was running a West Marches sandbox campaign using D&D 5E, they came up with a system where players did RP scenes that could guarantee they'd earn an inspiration die rather than use the standard and terrible system that relies on the GM memorizing and looking for every PCs personality traits and flaws mid-session, and they actually tried working out a way to use the faction turn in the west marches game but it didn't end up working out.
Just watching them try to figure out how to make Shadowrun work for the character drama that the Mirrorshades game turned into, or try to figure out what mechanics they'd use to have the two separate light side/dark side groups in FFG Star Wars clash against each other is really fun if you're a huge nerd like me who ends up having to hack pretty much every game you play.
Here's a link to the playlist for hack attacks because it feels annoying to talk about it and not include:
Interesting I just picked up a few and they seemed pretty available at both local gaming stores and local barnes and noble.
There's a Pathfinder bundle up at Humble Bundle that's mostly comics and some of their earlier supplements, but it includes the entire Iron Gods adventure path at the $15 level, which is a really odd one that has looked entertaining to me since I heard about it.
Iron Gods features a spaceship, space drugs, a barbarian warlord, and a bunch of other weird-even-by-Pathfinder-standards stuff. The rulebooks included aren't bad ones, they're just not anything particularly new.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
In that case, is Iron Gods anything like as cool as it sounds from the blurbs?
I have been enjoying it. Of note however:
You might want to go into it giving your players a heads up that it's going to be touching on a lot of sci-fi as opposed to typical fantasy. It took a couple of my players for a loop at first but they eventually settled in.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Our DM had written out a great blurb about the mono-rail mono-rail journey from the expansive, and ad filled, docking bay (where our mercenary contract offered us some cash for plastering an advert for shitty Umbrella Corp stand in C.U.R.E. on our ship) to the classy, for Alabaster 6, Sector 1 and all the way to our eventual destination.
Sector 3's security had being significantly beefed up by recent events and headed by a legion mercenary brought in to sort the locals need to keep undesirables out while the situation was resolved. Thankfully +3 conversation plus the ability to talk the native language got us past without issue.
Then we had fun visiting a local bar that, like all corporate vendors aimed at the working class, sold various narcotics and stimulants. A pleasant experience that also caught us onto the name Derek Barter, an older man who runs the militia and has the security computer we need to open the lab door (very rudely removed).
We ran into him after he responded to the gunfire of us defending ourselves from some Draz addicts looking for an easy mark. After spending the night getting to know him he trusted us enough to give the key back. Provided we promised to secure any of the children that had gone missing in the past few months.
The session ended with us going into the underground lab of a man who thinks Mechanids are playthings and who no one trusts. Oh, and the elevator is out of power.
The flip side is that this setting's clerics enjoy blessings not dissimilar to the Outsider's (a conundrum!), and the wizards are more alchemist, less mobile artillery cannons.
But the setting is all pre-Enlightenment Northern Europe, where mechanisms are just starting to become a thing. Winters are harsh, warriors are the lifeblood of their communities, clerics and wizards are rare and itinerant from village to village in normal times, teaching the local kids reading, writing, and arithmetic (in exchange for food, clothing, and shelter). A man's wealth is measured in livestock, the old gods are quiet, and trade with the south is just beginning to become a thing you can make a fortune off of, thanks to the establishment of banks.
Like...the balance point where either tradition or technology can take the reins of destiny and guide the people on, and the party influences which factions succeed or fail. Often inadvertently by whatever their adventures reveals, uncovers, or returns.
But then I saw this comment from James D'Amato of the One Shot Podcast network which reminded me why James is too good for this world.
Aye, I remember my old skill trees and having to hack in powers and skill to fit early attempts with the system.
Oh, Folks should know SWN is due to get a revised edition this year. Crawford is doing the ground work on it as we speak. Expect it to look more like Godbound in layout/content. Crawford's skills and tweeks to his D&D engine hacks have been getting better. So it might be worth a look.
In other news, HOT DAMN is Savage RIFTS scratching an itch I didn't know I had.
I keep looking over the new books with a mixed sense of longing and dread. I'm not sure what I'd do, or even who I'd be able to find to do it with.
Right now, I'm kind of thinking something along the lines of Chaos Earth to try and lay some conceptual groundwork for the craziness, if I ever get a group together for it.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
For reference, 13th Age is our favorite version of D&D by a mile, we like FFG Star Wars, and then for our side stuff we're the kind of group to dig on PbtA games and stuff like that. Though we haven't played it yet, I think Night's Black Agents and GUMSHOE in general will be a big hit.
I guess I know just enough about Savage Worlds to be intrigued by it, but not enough to understand why it would represent an interesting and different experience than what we already play.
Savage Worlds is like d20 in that it's a system made to resolve conflict and have interesting combat; it doesn't really do anything else. I don't know if that's changed since I played it back in 2005 or so. IIRC it's basically GURPS but without all the modular components.
I'd play SW if I wanted a d20 experience in a setting but didn't already have a book/system for it, or if I didn't like that particular system. If my friends and I enjoyed a particular book/game series (say, Elric of Melnibone or Mass Effect), we could pick up SW and I could just tell people to make appropriate characters for the setting, then clean up anything that doesn't fit. The important part of SW is that you can cut or add things without worrying about breaking everything.
I would not get into SW unless you super wanted to play Deadlands or something unique to SW; there were plenty of interesting settings, in my opinion. Or if you're just tired of poor design in your current system and want to run fantasy/star wars in a different system.
I thought maybe the exploding dice and other aspects of it might make it stand out from other games. Thanks for the info.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Edit: Oh, and it was paired with basically doing nothing to recover which was way less cool and prone to long, pointless combats.
What ? Have you read the world creation tables from SWN ? They imply a rich and diverse setting. Whatever world you randomly create, it'll always give you tons of playable hooks, much more efficiently than a trad game.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Since we're playing 13th Age I was thinking maybe I'll come up with a list of how effective a 15, 20, 25 are on a skill check, just offering more success the higher they roll.
Edit: Oh. 13th Age has no skills? Nevermind me, then.
Sounds like higher success = better recovery, like getting Strong Recovery for the next Recovery used/til the next Long Rest. I'm not a GM, though.
Also a reminder that most of the 13th Age stuff is free.
The question I'm thinking about is just how to make the outcome more fun. Telling them they need a 20 to get food is fine, but how much food do I give? Is failing the check just no extra food so you're eating rations today?
Thinking something like this:
Success is either normal, hard, very hard at DC 15, 20, 25, but they're all success.
Failure, so 14 or lower - Find food but something goes awry, probably get sick and throw a condition on that they'll be stuck with until they have a chance to save it off in a combat.
15 - Find enough food to feed yourself for one day
20 - Find enough food to feed you and all allies for one day
25 - Really score, enough food to feed you and all allies for one day and give an extra perk, like strong recovery for the next recovery for each PC.
They travel a lot, and the cost of rations adds up, they seem to love opportunities to not use them, so I think this will be fun for them. Obviously
Edit: @doomybear I love that idea about strong recovery. Gonna use that! Thanks.
I would definitely put unknowing failure as a very different thing than knowing failing. It should be far more likely the competent dude recognizes and skips the food that would make them sick than not realizing it at all. That's like fumble level stuff. Like <5 so most skilled folks would never do that.
So my level 2 Druid making this check will be rolling 1d20+4(WIS)+2(Level)+4(druidy background). So he has to roll a 4 or lower on the d20 to even hit the failure threshold.
Also, for this particular thing I don't want there to be a failure option that's just "you fail to find food" because if that's all failure is then it's more of less purely beneficial to do this every time. This way there's an actual risk. We only do this once per leg of travel or so anyway, so it's more fun if the outcome is going to be helpful and failure stings a bit rather than being a routine thing.
My players are like me in that they relish the chance to roleplay fun failures, so that colors what I'm using here.
One dude has been playing pnp and board games for over 20 years, one has dabbled, one plays board games with my wife and I and the other guy...I think he's maybe played Monopoly before.
It was so much fun. A learning experience for all of us and the total newbie killed it. He knew exactly what he wanted to do as a Barbarian and went HAM at every opportunity. Not having any preconceptions really aided him. He even had an amazing role playing moment at the end.
We've been playing at work during lunch since then and having a really good time. I'm really liking DW and will absolutely try some of the other hacks once we're done with this.
People who are new to this hobby and haven't had time to lose the creative edge of somebody who doesn't know the mechanics they might be breaking with what they ask for are awesome to have at your table.
Well if one likes the rifts setting the savage worlds rules are a pretty good way to run it in a lot more fluid way than the palladium system. Much less in the way of needed record keeping and the system is a lot better setup to handle larger sized combats at a good speed without bogging down.
Also handles the whole mega damage/non mega damage split better. So if your character does not have MDC armor it is not an instant death situation if they encounter somebody in the bar packing an MDC light laser pistol.
Basically it works like their old heavy armor. To damage heavy armor/mdc you need a heavy weapon/mdc weapon. But if you are shooting at standard types of armor MDC does nothing addition it just works like a normal weapon. Generally a higher damage weapons so dangerous but not likely to turn you into a vapor if it nicks your foot.
Rifts has a ton of interesting lore/setting materials and the savage world stuff makes it easy to convert a couple decades worth of stuff into something thats a lot more newbie friendly and immediately playable.
Wordbuilding isn't just writing a big setting chapter.
Crawford's worldbuilding might not be the type you like, but I disagree with your assessment that it is his "weakness". I would even say that it is what elevates his works above much of the OSR.