[Roleplaying Games] Schrodinger's NPC
Super Namicchi
Orange County, CARegistered User regular
Orange County, CARegistered User regular
(Most of this OP stolen from Vanguard's Old Roleplaying Thread)
Welcome to the Critical Failure's General Roleplaying Thread. It's where we talk about playing Elves, Wizards, Vampires, Cowboys, and Robots. It's where we come to argue about our favorite games. It's where we try to make a better game, sometimes.
It's a safe place. Except when the Gamemasters here decide it isn't and you forget to check for traps.
It's where we don't talk about Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. They do that over here.
What Is A Roleplaying Game?
A roleplaying game is a more structured version of what you did when you were young. Part improv-theatre, part board game (though usually without the board), it typically involves a group of people taking on the role of one of more characters and acting out their actions in a shared fictional setting. Most games designate one player as the Game Master, who arbitrates the rules, describes the setting, and narrates all of the non-player character's actions. Additionally, most games use a chance-based method to determine the outcome of conflicts and actions, dice being the most common.
Not All Games Are Created Equal
We are truly living in a golden era of roleplaying games. With so many options, it can be hard to know where to start and which game is the right fit for your group. Before going to your friendly, local game store (FLGS) and plunking down on the hot new game of the week, it might be useful to start by sitting down with your group and discussing the kind of game you want to play. Is there a particular setting you want to explore? Genre? How rules-heavy do you want the game to be? All of these are important questions and there are no right answers. Each group is different and you will likely have to experiment before finding what works.
Additionally, this thread is full of people with a wide variety of gaming tastes and tons of experience. Use us a resource! It's more than likely someone in this thread has played whatever game you're interested in and can answer any questions you may have.
Gamer's Dictionary
Below are the definitions for some common and not so common terms you might encounter in this thread.
Chargen: Character generation; the act of making a character for a game
Crunch: Rules, mechanics; the opposite of Fluff
Crunchy: Math and/or rules-intensive; the opposite of Fluffy
GM: Game master; see also Judge, Dungeon Master
Fluff: Setting/ambience; the opposite of Crunch
Fluffy: Relies on fiction for explanation more than numbers; the opposite of Crunchy
IC: In-Character; typically used in PbP games, this designates that a character is acting
Metagaming: When a player makes in-game decisions based on information their character does not have
NPC: Non-player character; everyone who is not controlled by one of the players at the table
OOC: Out-of-Character; typically used in PbP games, this designates table chatter and things not said by the character
OSR: Old School Renaissance; refers to games and/or playstyles that emulate the experience of the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons
PbP: Play-by-Post; games played via message boards
Storygame: A game that has rules to facilitate storytelling
TPK: Total Party Kill; when every single player character is killed during an encounter
Rather than list out a bunch of games, you can find a comprehensive list here:
An Index of RPGs
(Popular games include, but are not limited to: 13th Age, Apocalypse World & its many variants, Fate & its many variants, Fantasy Flight's Genesys/Star Wars system, Star Wars D6, Burning Wheel, Pathfinder, Iron Kingdoms, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire: The Masquerade, Exalted, the Warhammer 40k/Fantasy RPGs, Delta Green, Mouse Guard... and many more)
If you like to ponder the theory and philosophy behind roleplaying games, perhaps look here:
RPG Theory
If you're looking for advice on how to RPG, perhaps look at these:
Improv for Gamers, a good book of exercises for learning how to improv in the context of roleplaying games
The Ultimate Character Backstory Guide, a useful book for when your inspiration is perhaps running low
Dialects Archive of English, a resource for hearing accented English from all over the globe
Running the Game, a youtube series by Matt Colville covering various topics in the running of a game (Dungeons & Dragons centric at times, nevertheless useful)
How to Run a Roleplaying Game and How to Play a Roleplaying Game by Greg Stolze, designer of Godlike, Delta Green, and other influential RPGs
... and more to come!
--
with that out of the way: Roles and the people who Play them (sometimes with a game)
Super Namicchi on
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(not that the idea of an index is crap, but the list of games out there is too huge to collect and keep up with imo in this thread, and there are indexes out there)
Speaking of incomplete lists...we were talking about Shadowrun 6e.
As someone who played a hacker in a 5e campaign, I can definitely see hacking being streamlined down to a couple rolls instead of findstuff/mark/mark/hackonthefly/finally get to what I was trying to do. Our GM was pretty good about not letting hacking incidents slow down the game, and I wound up being the team medic and leader, somehow, but I still wound up throwing around a lot of dice in your average session, a lot more than the rest of the table.
DS Friend code: 3840-6605-3406
Like Strength no longer boosts your melee damage but your unarmed damage is still Strength + Net Hits. Combine this with damage on weapons being reduced because armour no longer provides soak dice and now your troll is punching as hard as a Predator Assault Cannon.
There's obviously a poor trade-off between granularity and complexity versus the relative amounts of 'fun' this brings to most tables, but I still think most games should have some sort of appreciation to this with the goal of making weapon & armor choice more meaningful. Even Burning Wheel does this to some degree with its weapons, though I think how it handles armor leaves something to be desired.
What I came up with for my system (and I think it's pretty clever) is successes on the hit roll transfer over to the damage dice pool (Hit Successes + Weapon Damage). The damage dice pool is then compared to the target's armor: if it exceeds the armor the damage is rolled and successes on that roll deal lethal health damage. If it is equal to or less than the damage pool is still rolled but the TN is increased and successes deal non-lethal damage. I can then manage the weapon & armor interactions by giving armor-piercing weapons higher damage but also higher TNs (making fewer of those dice convert to health damage), but if you're accurate enough you can potentially bypass armor entirely. Something like that really appeals to me, but in the one test game that I did only 2 of the 4 players 'got' the system while the other two needed to be reminded each time. It's always a trade-off between simplicity and simulation, but for a Shadowrun game I do want that increased verisimilitude. I'm interested to see what 6th edition comes up with.
Tutor: OK, the next exercise is titled "Dum-Dum Ltd". A strange name, I think somebody in the last lesson told me it was a kind of bullet...
Me: Yep, expanding hollowpoints that do more damage to soft targets but don't have as much penetrative power so they're not as effective against armour.
Turns out that I was the only one who had that information ready to hand in the class, and a few people questioned why I knew so much about ammunition
Thank you, roleplaying games, for providing a wealth of information that can be used to drop a wrench into a normal conversation
Which is why I think it's very important to keep in mind that gaming is a simulation, and that means that you don't need to worry so much about the granular truth. Unfortunately defensive mechanics are usually very poorly explained in terms of how they should be interacting with the simulation outside of direct mathematical consequence. Hit points as plot immunity is an obvious one; for a lot of people when they're introduced to that concept it suddenly makes a lot more sense. Some people can't get their heads around it and reject it, of course, but cognitive dissonance is always a threat. But armor rating as a representation of direct mitigation is a lot less commonly touched upon. Games mathematically represent it as such; AC bonuses for cover, for example, but the audience doesn't really connect the dots. Instead of the "what's a role-playing game" sections I wish they'd just talk about how these mechanics can (but not should) interact with the game's narratives.
Sometimes it's cool to have even hypercompetent people mess up a little bit though. For a game like Shadowrun, it'd be important not to let people become automatically competent enough that they can't screw up and turn a smooth run into a disaster because of a bad roll. I feel like that's being faithful to the heist genre that kind of underlies the presumed work of Shadowrunners.
This is the Storyteller System's approach as well (or was, back in the day, I don't know what modern Exalted or World of Darkness systems look like). Attack vs Defense -> Weapon Damage (+ Attack Successes) vs Damage Resistance.
I'm kind of hopeful that some games will start releasing with like mobile apps with all of their game's randomization logic ready to go, so you can just key stuff in. I was excited for like, 10-step attack phases, complicated type interactions, etc when I was a younger, but I'm 30 now and while I want the fun of building those characters and getting excited about what they can do, I also don't want to mess around with complicated resolution mechanics that I know could be done with a tap on my phone while the game continues without delay.
Edit: I guess Wizards of the Coast did this? I haven't used D&D Beyond. I'm so out of touch.
Edit2: I guess the D&D Beyond Mobile App doesn't have this functionality, but for D&D you don't need it, either.
Simple. Easy. Works.
So Arcanis is talking about running Shadowrun, so I'm thinking about cutting down those dice pools; since Shadowrun does its best to be pretty crunchy, I'm going to assume it doesn't want patently bizarre behavior like increases in character competency causing them to become less likely to succeed at all (the result of using a simple translation like "for every 3 dice after the first, remove 3 dice and 1 success" would accomplish), so you'd need a more complicated way to explain character competency.
I figure to keep everything running smoothly you'd probably have to design your system with having two separate axes of competence to measure each roll (one which measures your expected minimum competency, the other which measures how reliably your efforts don't go wrong despite that competence) in mind from the outset.
Edit: Maybe I'm overthinking. Perhaps after X dice you want to more slowly by new competency as successes or something (say after a dice pool reaches 6 (or whatever amount you feel is unwieldy) dice, you buy additional progress as successes instead at a slower pace.) That would make progression less granular but probably keep everything running about the same.
it's why i like PBTA; instead of focusing on competency, it turns the question of the roll towards answering "what are the consequences of this action?"
but that doesn't really eliminate or solve the buckets-o-dice problem, just more an observation on my part
I think you could incorporate what VTM5 is doing with its hunger dice. I haven't read the game at all but apparently there's special dice that can throw critical effects/disadvantages into the mix when those things come up, so you're always rolling that die despite however many successes you peel out of the conversion formula
I'm actually kind of interested in / excited about this game: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/massifpress/lancer and partially because it calls out a system that transitions from a tactical, board-gamey simulationist game (when you're piloting giant robots in battle) back to a more narrative-focused system when you get back out of them.
Dice pool is X + Y = Z. You roll Z against a target number for each die to achieve successes. If you roll no successes, you fail the roll. You also have abilities that give you successes should you not fail the roll. It allows you to make a lot of assumptions about character competency without, you know, assuming success.
PbtA is fine for a lot of things, but it suffers pretty significantly if you're trying to use it for an action-heavy narrative like what you'd presumably want in Shadowrun. Even if you're leaning more trenchcoat than mohawk.
I would agree - Genesys makes a much better system for the kind of roleplaying I like -- fast, loose, narratively driven by the choices of the players and the GM, with everyone trying to tell a story together. You could probably graft on the magic stuff from Terrinoth to the Shadow of the Beanstalk rules really easily to mimic Shadowrun.
But the thing most people forget about Shadowrun is that the modifiers and all that stuff can be fudged. The GM should not set out to make a super lethal story - that may be fun for the GM, but it certainly isn't fun for the players. Know the rough strokes of what you are trying to accomplish, and go from there. Most of the crunch is there because of the longtime, hardcore players and the reputation of the game. 90% of players should never get access to that stuff without a damned good reason. Even a typical Prime Runner game won't have you running around in milspec or throwing around force 12 spells backed by Geas and fetishes.
My proudest achievement as a GM was running a one-shot at a convention of 3rd edition and not once rolling dice, on any side of the table. We just rolled with it and it became freeform, which was great as I was panicking as I usually do.
Jason's been making Shadowrun for pretty much 15+ years now. I trust he knows what he's doing, and the willingness to experiment is great. It's kind of a shame he can't get away from the d6 legacy, but hey... at least they are trying different things, like with the limits to make it feel like certain areas had weight.
But I openly admit it isn't a game for everyone. I just hope everyone gets to experience an amazing game of it sometime, where the rules are light and the roleplay is heavy.
(Oh, and look into Hero Lab, it helps a TON with character creation.
Shadowrun has always been "cyber-Yahtzee" to a degree, but the big issue with enormous dice pools usually starts part way through the lifespan of an edition, when the supplementary books come out and the players have ways to stack a large number of modifiers on what would otherwise be an Attribute+Skill roll. My understanding is that in 6th Ed they plan to fix this by changing Edge to be something more akin to Advantage in D&D, and so all of the miscellaneous modifiers boil down to ways to acquire or lose Edge. Edge is then either a state you have or you don't, with there being no benefit to having "triple Edge" or whatever for multiple stacking benefits.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
But yeah, it's not advantage from D&D but instead a currency you spend for effects and accrue by having advantage through stuff that's usually modifiers.
EG for an attack there's three ways to gain edge (but you can only gain 2 per action):
Attack Value of weapon vs Defence Value of armour. If a side is 4 higher they get the edge.
Character based stuff like spells or augments that give edge.
GM fiat situation bonuses like having the high ground or being the only guy in the exchange with low light vision.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Such as the fanhacks Runners in the Shadows and Karma in the Dark, and the prohack Hack The Planet.
Frankly I don’t like the simplification and so called ‘streamlining’ of the current OP, I’m a first edition man to the end.
I played it and found it just as unwieldy as 2nd edition; I'll probably give it another look when the DB book lands, but it was still as much of a book-keeping experience as before, just in different ways
http://theonyxpath.com/exalted-third-edition-mechanics-overview/
It looks comically outdated when compared to OPP's other Story-engine modifications and it plays somewhere between bad and mediocre, depending on your group's ability to either a) ignore the mechanics when they're slowing things down or b) save mechanics arguments for after the session.
Solars are once again trash-tier exalts compared to Lunars and probably Sidereals, as a consequence of being "first." (and in this specific case being written by John Morke instead of Robert Vance; Vance is a fair superior mechanical writer and designer) Dragonblooded play pretty well.
They changed quite a lot about the setting. Whether that's good or bad is still being hotly debated on the handful of forums that still discuss Exalted.
Exalted used to be a critically needed alternative to bog-standard D&D, but it's 2019. There are dozens of good D&D alternatives tailored to whatever playstyle your group might have.
IIRC part of the original pitch was that Solars were supposed to get a lot of their power through Evocations and being the best at (using?/learning?) them. I remember being disapointed that Arms of the Chosen failed to produce that, but my understanding of the edition was shaky at best and I haven't revisited it.
http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2019/05/preview-the-lineup-of-shadowrun-sixth-edition-rulebooks-sourcebooks-and-game-aids/
I like the new logo, but I think a lot of the covers are sooo busy. The Cutting Black cover is just so overloaded. The core rulebook cover has lots of details but very little content - showing off only two characters, and having them take up so much space that you can barely see anything else, is the opposite of what I want to see. (But then, I think the 1st Edition core rulebook cover is like the platonic ideal for Shadowrun.)
In terms of actual content, 30 Nights seems like a cool concept, and I've always loved the fiction of the setting more than the rules, so Cutting Black (ugly cover aside) seems good. I really like that Streetpedia, too; I might grab it just to catch up on what's what.
They look, playable. That's a vast improvement over the last 2 attempts.
For my Birthday I got L5R5. 5 Editions I've had this game. This one at least feels closer to 1E in vibe. With less of the previous kruft. Weird dice aside.
I’m thinking of running it as a pulp comic serial, real short adventures, every NPC would be linked to one of the heroes, usually low stakes. No main villain, no cosmic horrors or devil princes turning up. Lots of crooks though!
It’d be Play by Post on this forum, with (if that’s allowed) a thread for the game overall, and individual threads for adventures.
I’d run it in Dungeon World as it’s simple and I know it works for PbP games.
*Thats where you have more than one party that exist in the same world, and people can drop in and out, and switch parties.
^Floating islands! Giant bat mounts! Rocketeer leathers! Fabulous pirates! Magi-tech! Other things!
Elevator pitch:
In a world of floating islands in an age of relative peace, breakthroughs in magic and technology have brought forth the ‘isleship’, small islands capable of being manoeuvred. Three such vessels have been created by competing nations.
Due to an eternal storm surrounding it an area of the sky has remained uncolonised even in these modern times—until now! The three isleships are set to break through, and expedition members (spelunking monster stabbing adventurers) will explore, catalogue and lay claim to what lies within the shroud of black clouds.
To maintain the facade of peace (and to spy on each other) the three isleships are moored relatively close together, and members of different factions can work together, at least in the short term!
The starting points of your adventures:
The Golden Isleship
Commissioned by the Osnier Republic.
Hundreds of years ago a little country stole half of the sky and founded an empire that shaped the destiny of a thousand islands for centuries to come. A dozen civil wars, usurpations, expansions, regressions and treaties later, and the empire became a diplomatic republic with a representative of every major and minor island chain having a seat at the high council.
Those here on behalf of Osnier are quite honest on why they’re here, though no two will have quite the same answer. Wealth, the thrill of danger, a claim to stake, pride, curiosity. As far as the Republic is concerned they simply have a right to be here for their sheer grit and ingenuity in getting here.
Aurlancea is a dusty frontier town.
Pang’s Wish
The Verdant Isleship
Commissioned by the Temple of Renewal.
Officially a neutral religious group, the Temple is widespread but ultimately Mysian in origin. Mysia is known as ‘The Last Kingdom’, a small nation lead by a young queen and a fearsome elite guard of warrior monks and devilish assassins. Or so they say. Mysia has been on the backpedal for generations, and claiming new ground would be of significant benefit to their queen, who rules in the stead of her father, who chose to abdicate.
The Temple of Renewal in contrast is rising, a welcoming faith that believes strongly in redemption, the interconnected nature of all mortal life, liberty, and rustic living. Those less charitable say they draw in the unwanted and strange. If pressed, many members claim they’re just here to keep the peace, spread the faith and bask in the beauty of the wilderness.
Pang’s Wish is a windswept Shaolin snowy mountain spot.
Maykupuni
The Sapphire Isleship
Commissioned by the Sabaan League.
The League is perhaps the oldest of nations, though they’ve dipped, faded, or otherwise been ignored for large stretches of history. They began as a few island chains, and as sure as a river runs, they just kept going. They’ve integrated other smaller islands over the years as more industrial nations pushed them aside, though they’ve wiped their fair share of ‘troublemakers’ off the map too.
The Sabaan League could be called tribal despite their high art, technology and magic, which is on par with any nation. Each individual island is lead by a chief, or some other manner traditional to that particular group, but each holds a binding contract in the Tablet of Order, which keeps them on hand to feed the hungry of a neighbour, fight on their behalf, and abide by the law of the island they’re currently standing on. It works to be sure, but at the cost of change being difficult among the islands.
Which begs the question why they’re so far from home at all...
Maykupuni is a tropical paradise.
Flying around!
Zeppelins and galleons are crewed by about 25 to 50 people, and they’re too slow for the kind of adventuring the expedition members will undertake. So… everyone gets a flying mount! Because Rule of Cool!
There won’t be many extra rules for mounts. They’ve got no HP, they don’t attack (you can just describe them helping), and any roll you make to do something cool with them will just use your stats. There won’t be any rolls to fly them, we’ll assume you’re good at it or else you wouldn’t be on the expedition.
A mount has the following attributes:
Your mount has one tag, such as barbed, strong, graceful, aquatic, burrowing, frightening, thoroughbred or rare, which sets it apart from other mounts. Work with the GM to settle on one appropriate.
Your mount has an instinct. Though trained, your mount is compelled to fulfil a basic want or flee an innate fear, and will do so whenever the chance arises no matter the situation at hand.
Your mount is large sized. There are few internal areas of an island it can follow you into, instead it must wait for you by the entrance.
Your mount can carry a rider, passenger and 5 load within its saddlebags. It can only move slowly if fully laden with a passenger and gear. A mount can carry something far heavier than its load over a short distance so long as it does not attempt to fly.
Your mount begins with 0 stress. Mark stress when you:
- Push it beyond its limit. You can choose to ignore the result of your roll and treat it as a 7-9 while you are riding your mount.
- Have your mount take a hit for you.
- Force your mount to ignore its instinct.
- Have your mount use a Mount Move.
When your mount reaches 5 stress, it is lost to you. Finding a new one is no easy feat. Stress can be removed with downtime and an active effort to tend to your mount.
Each time you level up, choose an advance move for your mount from the options below:
Add 2 load.
Add 2 load.
Your mount can now take a maximum 7 stress.
Choose a Mount Move.
Choose a Mount Move.
When you Hack and Slash while riding your mount, add +1 damage.
Add a tag to your mount.
Add a tag to your mount.
Your mount is huge. It can carry two passengers.
Examples:
Giant bats from neathward cavernous isles.
Instinct: To gorge on food.
Stress: 0
Tags: frightening, graceful, perceptive, cunning
Shriek: Near, far, area. Your targets are stunned by your mounts high pitched scream.
Bloodbat: After telling your mount what to look for, it will lead you to it, or to a point where the trail is washed away.
Kano’akitsa
Impressive and beautiful dragonfly-like beasts associated with nobility.
Instinct: To mark territory.
Stress: 0
Tags: poised, armoured, fast, fearless, enduring
Harass: Mark a target you can see, you and your allies carry +1 forward against it.
Encircle: When you attack, you fly back around to finish them. Reroll your damage and keep the best result.
Krake
Faintly glowing tentacled creatures that are naturally buoyant; various sky vessels mimic their inner workings.
Instinct: To follow curiosity.
Stress: 0
Tags: clever, patient, strong, aquatic, alert
Grappler: Your mount grips onto a target and cannot be removed.
Blinding Ink: Close, near. A target is blinded by squirt of defensive black ink. Your mount also launches themselves well away in the process.
Feel free to create your own mount and together will make tags and moves for it as you gain them. You can choose an existing mount type and we can alter it to suit you.
At level 1, your flying mount might look like:
Gloop the Krake
A scarred dark purple krake with a ‘frilly skirt’ over its many tentacles. It’s a rare breed.
Instinct: To follow curiosity.
Stress: 2
Tags: rare (sought after, gives you social standing etc.)
Simple, yes?