I'm not super familiar with Planescape, but for those who might be interested one of the people who worked on the setting has a spiritual successor out called Planebreaker. I just got done looking at the preview PDF. Aside from detailing planar locations it also features a moon-like body called the Planebreaker which travels to a different plane every 2 days or so.
Brief overview of the info on Timeborne, the small city on the Planebreaker, in the preview PDF:
The Planebreaker spends about 48 hours in a given plane (though shorter and longer timespans have occurred), raining debris when it arrives (about a mile above the surface of a plane) and carrying things within 300 feet along with it when it departs.
The Planebreaker is an irregular, moonlike body mostly covered by planar detritus called the Sea of Uncertainty and boasting the city of Timeborne.
Timeborne has no ruler, but a mysterious being called the Mantis enforces the peace (it isn't part of the preview PDF, but it sounds like the Mantis is basically the Planebreaker's counterpart to the Lady of Pain).
Timeborne is a small city with an even smaller population than the number of buildings would suggest (about half of the buildings are uninhabited, in fact). Sometimes structures from planes recently visited by the Planebreaker appear in Timeborne, carrying with them any occupants. Buildings disappear at times, as well, possibly deposited in a plane.
A ragged breach keeps reforming in Timeborne's wall in the same spot every time sometone tries to fix it. Fortunately, no one needs to because a giant statue with the stats of a tarrasque animates to defend the city whenever it comes under attack (not to mention the Mantis is also around).
Other material in the preview PDF includes:
A city built on the back of a walking primordial, both named Etherguard.
Short descriptions of planar locations and demiplanes meant to inspire one-shots (such as a layer of the Abyss disguised as a portion of an Upper Plane, a palace in the Plane of Mirrors, and a parasitic demiplane whose native creatures burrow into other planes).
A fighter subclass that draws power from the Elemental Chaos (this is especially surprising; I guess the authors must have looked into the planar lore of 4E, because the Elemental Chaos is pretty much absent from 5E other than a brief mention in the DMG).
A number of new spells, including one that is basically an anti-Banishment (the affected target cannot teleport or travel to another plane for the duration, even being barred from using portals) and another that lets you view into alternate timelines to visit alternate versions of a specific being (not certain how often that would see use, but neat).
Two more Planebreaker books are advertisted; one for player characters and another for monsters.
I'll admit that I'm curious why Timeborne, which appears to be Planebreaker's alternative to Sigil, is so small and uninhabited. Is it that they didn't want to compete too directly with Planescape and wanted it to be possible for Sigil and Timeborne to both exist in somebody's campaign without much overlap? Or maybe they didn't want to distract from interplanar travel and exploration by putting too much focus on the city?
Yeah it doesn't sound much likeSigil in Planescape. The factions, the Cant, the Maze, the portals with their various keys...this doesn't seem to replicate those things.
Wasn't the concept of Eberron that stuff from other planes just ended up there like a cosmic junkyard? I vaguely remember being annoyed about that because my submission for the 3E base setting back in the day was very similar. This seems like the other end of that dynamic, a big teleporty thing that drags planar stuff around (this is also derivative of Drift travel in Starfinder).
There's nothing wrong with doing their own thing of course; more directly copying Sigil is a losing proposition too.
+1
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Mork Borg seems dope but yeah the grim dark of it might be a tough sell
I wonder how hard it would be to cook up a semi custom pbta fantasy game, I love the core mechanics of pbta, but think it seems kinda overwhelming to find one the fits exactly what everyone would want that isn't DW which makes me feel a little iffy because of koeble. But really kitchen sink fantasy stuff would just be throwing a bone to the others as far as familiarity with d&d so they feel more comfortable. maybe a different genre of fantasy might shake things up a bit anyway. Maybe monster of the week or something similar?
I hear Stonetop is excellent. I’ve got really bad internet right now or I’d try to get you a link. It’s basically your classic fantasy game, but each character is explicitly an important member of a ye olde fantasy village. You fight to keep it safe rather than fighting for loot.
See that sounds pretty fun
I haven't played Stonetop yet but it looks incredible. It was originally designed as a campaign setting/set of expanded rules for Dungeon World and eventually metamorphosized into its own thing.
Mork Borg seems dope but yeah the grim dark of it might be a tough sell
I wonder how hard it would be to cook up a semi custom pbta fantasy game, I love the core mechanics of pbta, but think it seems kinda overwhelming to find one the fits exactly what everyone would want that isn't DW which makes me feel a little iffy because of koeble. But really kitchen sink fantasy stuff would just be throwing a bone to the others as far as familiarity with d&d so they feel more comfortable. maybe a different genre of fantasy might shake things up a bit anyway. Maybe monster of the week or something similar?
I hear Stonetop is excellent. I’ve got really bad internet right now or I’d try to get you a link. It’s basically your classic fantasy game, but each character is explicitly an important member of a ye olde fantasy village. You fight to keep it safe rather than fighting for loot.
See that sounds pretty fun
I haven't played Stonetop yet but it looks incredible. It was originally designed as a campaign setting/set of expanded rules for Dungeon World and eventually metamorphosized into its own thing.
I might have went to their backerkit and preordered it.
0
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Mork Borg seems dope but yeah the grim dark of it might be a tough sell
I wonder how hard it would be to cook up a semi custom pbta fantasy game, I love the core mechanics of pbta, but think it seems kinda overwhelming to find one the fits exactly what everyone would want that isn't DW which makes me feel a little iffy because of koeble. But really kitchen sink fantasy stuff would just be throwing a bone to the others as far as familiarity with d&d so they feel more comfortable. maybe a different genre of fantasy might shake things up a bit anyway. Maybe monster of the week or something similar?
I hear Stonetop is excellent. I’ve got really bad internet right now or I’d try to get you a link. It’s basically your classic fantasy game, but each character is explicitly an important member of a ye olde fantasy village. You fight to keep it safe rather than fighting for loot.
See that sounds pretty fun
I haven't played Stonetop yet but it looks incredible. It was originally designed as a campaign setting/set of expanded rules for Dungeon World and eventually metamorphosized into its own thing.
I might have went to their backerkit and preordered it.
So would it be super ridiculously cheesy to build a custom background with a +2 Cha and the Fey-Touched Feat that also grants a +1 Cha? Asking for an Orc Paladin
So would it be super ridiculously cheesy to build a custom background with a +2 Cha and the Fey-Touched Feat that also grants a +1 Cha? Asking for an Orc Paladin
It’s probably fine balance wise but mono stat characters are boring, imo, so that would be my personal concern.
So would it be super ridiculously cheesy to build a custom background with a +2 Cha and the Fey-Touched Feat that also grants a +1 Cha? Asking for an Orc Paladin
It’s probably fine balance wise but mono stat characters are boring, imo, so that would be my personal concern.
Yeah I mean I'd still build in some Str and Con, but they'd be weaker, and the character would be a bit less effective for a bit, probably.
But the character's "schtick" is that he's the most beautiful (Half-?) Orc ever seen, so the 18 Cha is kinda of the point.
Mork Borg seems dope but yeah the grim dark of it might be a tough sell
I wonder how hard it would be to cook up a semi custom pbta fantasy game, I love the core mechanics of pbta, but think it seems kinda overwhelming to find one the fits exactly what everyone would want that isn't DW which makes me feel a little iffy because of koeble. But really kitchen sink fantasy stuff would just be throwing a bone to the others as far as familiarity with d&d so they feel more comfortable. maybe a different genre of fantasy might shake things up a bit anyway. Maybe monster of the week or something similar?
I hear Stonetop is excellent. I’ve got really bad internet right now or I’d try to get you a link. It’s basically your classic fantasy game, but each character is explicitly an important member of a ye olde fantasy village. You fight to keep it safe rather than fighting for loot.
See that sounds pretty fun
I haven't played Stonetop yet but it looks incredible. It was originally designed as a campaign setting/set of expanded rules for Dungeon World and eventually metamorphosized into its own thing.
I might have went to their backerkit and preordered it.
I was going to make the hard sell once I was back on a computer, but I suppose it's too late for that one.
Just kidding, here's a few of my favorite things in Stonetop:
- The characters are all defined as residents of the town, and frequently defined with regards to their relationship to the town. So where you might play a warlord elsewhere, here you play as the Marshal, who heads up the town's militia (which do get a form of a stat block and can be used actively). Or a paladin might be better represented as the Judge, who can work by either violently declaring things to be witches or focus more heavily on convincing people to tell them the truth and improving the community. These are simply cool, they give you a fair amount of flexibility while still giving everyone a strong connection to the town.
- One other cool playbook, a uniquely cool playbook. The Would-Be Hero doesn't start as strong as the other classes, their moves aren't quite as focused, but they start with this:
POTENTIAL FOR GREATNESS
Once per level, when you roll a stat and get a 10+, mark one of the following (note the level during which you marked it). You don’t have to mark them in order.
Increase the stat you rolled by 1, to a max of +2 (at level ___)
Increase the stat you rolled by 1, to a max of +2 (at level ___)
Increase the stat you rolled by 1, to a max of +2 (at level ___)
Increase the stat you rolled by 1, to a max of +2 (at level ___)
Increase your max HP by 4 (at level ___)
Increase your damage die to a d8 (at level ___)
They also have some high level abilities that require you to, when you use them for the first time, cross off Would-Be from the top of your character sheet. Which is simply sick as shit, you started off as the tagalong character and now you're officially The Hero.
- Okay enough about playbooks, bigger stuff is afoot. The bigger stuff is also a playbook though I guess - you know how the town is really important? It's so important it gets a character sheet. That town has resources that you can requisition, it's got people who live in it, it has a variety of improvements you can make to it that all have different requirements you might have to go on quests for, it's got a little map that you get to fill in with all of that, it's great. And those improvements can give you stuff like access to cool weapons (cool being defined as like, swords, this is a fairly low tech world), they permanently improve the actions you could take or give you access to new ones in distinct tangible ways.
- Finally let's talk about magic items. You ever find a cool sword and you cast detect magic on it and hell yeah that sucker is magic let's see what it does and oh, I guess +1 is nice but it's not really cool is it? Worry no more, here we have arcanum, which are just weird things you find. They're represented on little cards, and each one will have a description and a list of requirements - maybe you need to decipher some unfamiliar musical notation and then learn to play an instrument nobody has ever used before and play the song you deciphered and hope you get it right, and then you get to flip the card over and suddenly you have a new ability that goes a little like this:
Song of the Dool Trees
When you stand among dool trees and play the proper tune on a flute of a murderer’s bone, you summon a dool spirit and bind it to your service. Treat it as a follower. Only one dool spirit will serve you at a time
Or maybe you have to do something else entirely and you get something else entirely, or that same thing and you get an entirely different thing because you simply do not know what an item is just because you've been handed it. It's weird and it's unpredictable and it requires time and effort to figure out and that's magic baby.
Also there's like a cool world and stuff, I haven't read through all of that yet because those parts of the book(s) aren't finished yet but it's got some good classic weird stuff that lives in nature that might be a hundred different things and you've gotta play to find out what happens. It's currently probably my most anticipated RPG to show up on my front doorstep (Trophy and DIE are also high up there) and then never actually get to the table because my gaming group meets once a month in a good season and we're in the midst of a bad one.
Also flipping back through my PF2e book and, man I'd like to play that.
I'd also love if someone came up with some sort of e6 style 5th edition game (basically build characters at a certain level, 6ish usually), and instead of leveling you just more or less can spend XP to get more feats, or skills, or hit dice or whatever. I think that'd be fun. Maybe go weird and say level 8 PCs but you have to multiclass or something. So like nothing above 3rd spell level
I bought the one published adventure for Monster Care Squad hoping to glean some insight about how a play session is actually supposed to go, and I'm... underwhelmed. The "adventure" basically mirrors a location page + a bestiary page from the book: it describes the setting, explains what the monster's deal is, and includes a bulleted list of potential Session Aces (i.e., items that can provide a one-time bonus or be lost as a narrative consequence) the PCs might acquire... and that's it. Players and guide are expected to fill in the rest.
It was $5, so I guess I can't really complain.
I feel like MCS presents you with a bunch of interesting ideas, but precious little guidance on how to put them together or tie in the mechanics. Is that common to PbtA games? Am I just expecting too much from the sourcebook?
I bought the one published adventure for Monster Care Squad hoping to glean some insight about how a play session is actually supposed to go, and I'm... underwhelmed. The "adventure" basically mirrors a location page + a bestiary page from the book: it describes the setting, explains what the monster's deal is, and includes a bulleted list of potential Session Aces (i.e., items that can provide a one-time bonus or be lost as a narrative consequence) the PCs might acquire... and that's it. Players and guide are expected to fill in the rest.
It was $5, so I guess I can't really complain.
I feel like MCS presents you with a bunch of interesting ideas, but precious little guidance on how to put them together or tie in the mechanics. Is that common to PbtA games? Am I just expecting too much from the sourcebook?
Shit thanks for the warning. Had no idea. I expected much more.
A good PbtA game should ideally have the game mechanics be the game itself.
The original Apocalypse World had stuff like the Hardholder (town mayor) roll to see where the area is at with surplus and scarcities, which would trigger what the Chopper (bike gang) might get up to this session because their gang has wants that must be fulfilled to keep them in check, putting them at odds with the Angel (medic), or forming an alliance of necessity with the Hocus (cult leader). Outliers like the Driver and Gunlugger will be hired or work against them as suits. All to have them double cross or team up again later. This is good, because you’re playing ‘Mad Max but everyone thinks they’re the protagonist’.
I haven’t seen the game but as a rule of thumb you need focused playbooks and only a small number of basic moves that pinpoint the genre you’re going for.
When it comes to pre-made adventures, how it was done in ancient times is you’d write each player ‘a love letter’ that explained where they’re starting and had a one-time move: You’ve just finished raiding the Fens, roll + Hard to see how that went…
Next you’d write something that links that player to another one, like, Rao killed your cousin, you saw Lugnut in a dream.
Maybe some description of factions and locations, bent to tell them what you want them in particular to know. Then yeah, you’d just play to find out.
If a PbtA game strays too far from interpersonal genre fiction / mechanics as game you need to add more to the system. It’s ultimately why Blades in the Dark became its own thing.
My bet, at a guess, is they went all in on the monster healing and didn’t put much down for the drama, so now you’re wondering what you do between finding a monster to heal.
I bought the one published adventure for Monster Care Squad hoping to glean some insight about how a play session is actually supposed to go, and I'm... underwhelmed. The "adventure" basically mirrors a location page + a bestiary page from the book: it describes the setting, explains what the monster's deal is, and includes a bulleted list of potential Session Aces (i.e., items that can provide a one-time bonus or be lost as a narrative consequence) the PCs might acquire... and that's it. Players and guide are expected to fill in the rest.
It was $5, so I guess I can't really complain.
I feel like MCS presents you with a bunch of interesting ideas, but precious little guidance on how to put them together or tie in the mechanics. Is that common to PbtA games? Am I just expecting too much from the sourcebook?
I can't speak to MCS, but maybe check out thematically related Apawthecaria? It's a solo journaling RPG, so I have a feeling it would fill in some of the blanks a.f.a. guiding gameplay, and it has multiplayer playbooks... (E: I also can't speak to Apawthecaria beyond its presence on my wishlist...)
I'll be really excited to get my hands on it too, I only wish I had backed it so I could get my hands on the playtest stuff.
I'll have to settle for waiting patiently for them to finish it. It sounds like they've have lots of unfortunate set backs including health issues.
I also ordered the print version. And I imagine that will take quite some time with the way printing and shipping is. But the mock ups looked really nice. And it would be great if a shelf with my other rpg stuff.
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I'll be really excited to get my hands on it too, I only wish I had backed it so I could get my hands on the playtest stuff.
I'll have to settle for waiting patiently for them to finish it. It sounds like they've have lots of unfortunate set backs including health issues.
I also ordered the print version. And I imagine that will take quite some time with the way printing and shipping is. But the mock ups looked really nice. And it would be great if a shelf with my other rpg stuff.
If you preorder, you get access to all the backer stuff
You ought to get an email from Jason Lutes at some point, it took a few days after I ordered
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Looking back through my email, I pre-ordered it on September 24th last year, and by the 29th I had gotten the email with links to the play test docs and the Kickstarter updates
My Caver arrived and while I'd seen pics and knew how big and heavy it would be, I'm still impressed with it's size and weight. Pulling this out at the table is going to be fun.
I bought the one published adventure for Monster Care Squad hoping to glean some insight about how a play session is actually supposed to go, and I'm... underwhelmed. The "adventure" basically mirrors a location page + a bestiary page from the book: it describes the setting, explains what the monster's deal is, and includes a bulleted list of potential Session Aces (i.e., items that can provide a one-time bonus or be lost as a narrative consequence) the PCs might acquire... and that's it. Players and guide are expected to fill in the rest.
It was $5, so I guess I can't really complain.
I feel like MCS presents you with a bunch of interesting ideas, but precious little guidance on how to put them together or tie in the mechanics. Is that common to PbtA games? Am I just expecting too much from the sourcebook?
The thing about PbtA is that you can get so deep into it, especially when you're iterating on a game to develop it, that you get Apocalypse Brain and forget what is and isn't obvious. MCS could really have benefited from a final editing pass in that regard.
The foundational assumption of any PbtA game is that you're bringing your own enthusiasm to it. You're buying a game about curing fantastic monsters so it's assumed you'll have had a sip of "curing fantastic monsters" juice elsewhere in media and liked the taste. Like, Nausicaa and the Valley of Wind, or Spirited Away, or Mushishi, or Steven Universe, or heck, even Monster Hunter for the perspective of being a tiny fleshy thing in a big fantasy ecosystem trying to get what you need from it. Just, uh, ignore all the parts where you ultimately slaughter most of it?
MCS also assumes that your PCs are not some stumbling bumblers fresh off the turnip cart but working professionals with experience and understanding of how to do the job, from session one moment one. Curing a monster is complex work and there is no one right thing to do but whatever your PCs take the initiative in doing should be assumed to be, at least, a right thing to do.
The core structure of MCS is extremely rigid: diagnosis clock, synthesis clock, symbiosis beam struggle. But there are a couple of fundamental things that'll really help you out there.
The zeroth, the one I forgot at first because of my own Apocalypse Brain, is that as the Guide you should constantly be leaning forward. Whenever you want to frame the situation for the PCs to take action you should be making a Guide move for them to respond to.
The first is how to mark failed clock segments. Yeah, I know, how'd they leave that one out? Well, the foundation of clock segments in the PbtA philosophy is essentially a price the PCs can pay. A different kind of hit points, if you will, that generally go up onesie twosie. That's how you use them as a Guide - stand up a failed clock segment as a potential cost that PCs have to scramble to avoid, or introduce it as the price of failure at a dramatic moment.
The second is that the core structure is rigid but the moves are not fixed within it. The diagnosis, synthesis, and symbiosis moves apply best and most strongly to actions taken in their particular phase of the game, but as elements of the world fiction they can bleed into each other. Treasured Insight is absolutely not just a diagnosis-phase move, it's the help action and you should pull it out in synthesis too. (The help action in the symbiosis phase is We Go On Three.) And there's always the part, right, where you think you're doing a milk run to get some goodwill in the diagnosis phase but you unexpectedly cross paths with the monster and oh shit what do? The symbiosis phase moves Set 'Em Up and Get In The Way are pretty good models for what do, just replace "push the monster on the control track" with "you get away" -- and I suppose if you're all in deep, We Go On Three can work here too. Outside of that help action thing, though, PCs shouldn't be making out-of-phase moves on their own initiative, but they're good for the Guide to present as a path forward.
The symbiosis phase is probably the clearest fictionally, right? It's you and the monster and either it gets cured or you have to retreat. The other two feel a little more floaty but they're pretty easy to chart out. The key is looking at how the PCs mark clock segments in both of them.
You get clock segments in the diagnosis phase by trading favors with the townsfolk with Make a Deal or by putting some evidence together with Here's What I Got. In Harm's Way, Pull a Thread, and Follow the Trail are there to support both of those activities - they can get you the standing you need to do Here's What I Got or things the townsfolk want so you can Make a Deal.
You get clock segments in the synthesis phase by assembling ingredients into a (Ok, Here's The) Plan or by risking yourself to grab something vital with Take On The World. Shopping List and Seeking Wisdom are the simple setups for those, or you could setup a chain through all four other moves by building off a Novel Application.
Also flipping back through my PF2e book and, man I'd like to play that.
I'd also love if someone came up with some sort of e6 style 5th edition game (basically build characters at a certain level, 6ish usually), and instead of leveling you just more or less can spend XP to get more feats, or skills, or hit dice or whatever. I think that'd be fun. Maybe go weird and say level 8 PCs but you have to multiclass or something. So like nothing above 3rd spell level
I did write this for 5E in Nasty, Brutish, and Short, in the Tiered Advancement section, though I generalized it so you can stop at T1 (level 4), T2 (level 10), T3 (level 16), or T4 (level 20). Once at level cap, every time you gain a certain amount of XP (determined by tier), you gain a Boost, and you can pick what you want to add to your character with your Boost.
Combo it with the roguelike progression of your Title in an Adventuring Company and you get a semi-multiclass.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I have not read MCS but that is a pretty common problem for a lot of derivative (no negative connotation intended) RPGs for sure. Sometimes it's because they're in playtest or ashcan or whatever, but at the end of the day writing the how to play content is hard to do and can just kind of get missed or under done.
Which especially sucks for a game that should have very specific GM stuff, which most PbtA would fall into. Like, I can suggest going to read Monsterhearts (or whatever else) because I think that has some of the better GM advice I've read, but that won't necessarily help with the specific problems you're encountering.
Thanks Glazius, that's an amazing write-up. I was kinda disappointed in the KS campaign after I read the final draft and noticed it was extremely similar to their earlier versions. And then to see the final book have pretty much exactly the same text... and the errata were pretty minor as well. There's just a big divide between new interested players and folks who already play PbtA-likes.
I have not read MCS but that is a pretty common problem for a lot of derivative (no negative connotation intended) RPGs for sure. Sometimes it's because they're in playtest or ashcan or whatever, but at the end of the day writing the how to play content is hard to do and can just kind of get missed or under done.
Which especially sucks for a game that should have very specific GM stuff, which most PbtA would fall into. Like, I can suggest going to read Monsterhearts (or whatever else) because I think that has some of the better GM advice I've read, but that won't necessarily help with the specific problems you're encountering.
No but it can help me get a better understanding of how GMs behave in PbtA games. If there's any particular online games that have a GM doing good stuff I'm all ears. There's a lot of content for DnD/DnD-likes, but PbtA is completely new to me. I didn't even know what PbtA meant and I didn't realize that MCS was based largely on that.
0
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Thanks Glazius, that's an amazing write-up. I was kinda disappointed in the KS campaign after I read the final draft and noticed it was extremely similar to their earlier versions. And then to see the final book have pretty much exactly the same text... and the errata were pretty minor as well. There's just a big divide between new interested players and folks who already play PbtA-likes.
I have not read MCS but that is a pretty common problem for a lot of derivative (no negative connotation intended) RPGs for sure. Sometimes it's because they're in playtest or ashcan or whatever, but at the end of the day writing the how to play content is hard to do and can just kind of get missed or under done.
Which especially sucks for a game that should have very specific GM stuff, which most PbtA would fall into. Like, I can suggest going to read Monsterhearts (or whatever else) because I think that has some of the better GM advice I've read, but that won't necessarily help with the specific problems you're encountering.
No but it can help me get a better understanding of how GMs behave in PbtA games. If there's any particular online games that have a GM doing good stuff I'm all ears. There's a lot of content for DnD/DnD-likes, but PbtA is completely new to me. I didn't even know what PbtA meant and I didn't realize that MCS was based largely on that.
Thanks Glazius, that's an amazing write-up. I was kinda disappointed in the KS campaign after I read the final draft and noticed it was extremely similar to their earlier versions. And then to see the final book have pretty much exactly the same text... and the errata were pretty minor as well. There's just a big divide between new interested players and folks who already play PbtA-likes.
I have not read MCS but that is a pretty common problem for a lot of derivative (no negative connotation intended) RPGs for sure. Sometimes it's because they're in playtest or ashcan or whatever, but at the end of the day writing the how to play content is hard to do and can just kind of get missed or under done.
Which especially sucks for a game that should have very specific GM stuff, which most PbtA would fall into. Like, I can suggest going to read Monsterhearts (or whatever else) because I think that has some of the better GM advice I've read, but that won't necessarily help with the specific problems you're encountering.
No but it can help me get a better understanding of how GMs behave in PbtA games. If there's any particular online games that have a GM doing good stuff I'm all ears. There's a lot of content for DnD/DnD-likes, but PbtA is completely new to me. I didn't even know what PbtA meant and I didn't realize that MCS was based largely on that.
::flips through book incredulously:: ...holy zoinks they didn't even go for the PbtA tag on it? That's cheap as free! Wow wow wow.
I would also buy a more explicitly PbtA game about something you care about that has a solid discussion about the role of the GM. Monsterhearts has a good GM section but it's a good GM section for games that lean into the interpersonal drama and Monster Care Squad is absolutely not one of those games. There's no PC-on-PC interaction besides the help action and the social scene isn't super big, it's really a lot like a pacifist version of Monster Hunter that's about preparing for and then engaging big notable monsters.
If you're not put off by the language in the free player handouts of the second edition of Apocalypse World and you've ever madded a max, tanked a girl, or fisted a north star, it's absolutely worth buying and reading. It has big piles of play examples and it's the second edition so it's been shaped by a lot of live feedback.
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Monsterhearts and The Sprawl have some of my favorite "how to RPG/GM/PBtA" writeups I have ever seen. I think they can be extremely helpful no matter what you're playing
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
My partner incidentally brought up one of my favorite pieces of GM advice from Monsterhearts in a casual conversation with a person who is currently one of my players and was previously my GM and the way she balked at it gave me so much insight into how differently we do RPGs.
Just an all-time great set of GM tips, fast and lean and deeply instructive.
My partner incidentally brought up one of my favorite pieces of GM advice from Monsterhearts in a casual conversation with a person who is currently one of my players and was previously my GM and the way she balked at it gave me so much insight into how differently we do RPGs.
Just an all-time great set of GM tips, fast and lean and deeply instructive.
I'm going to guess "Treat side characters like stolen cars."
Ding ding ding!
It's very good GM advice, and it's advice I frequently follow as a player as well
The person in question came up into RPGs through the LARP scene, which understandably can make that advice seem pretty bad, as your character can represent a significant financial investment as well
And yeah, she plays her character cautious to a fault, which is a fun quirk and an irritating quality to work around in a game of Blades
I'm going to guess "Treat side characters like stolen cars."
Ding ding ding!
It's very good GM advice, and it's advice I frequently follow as a player as well
The person in question came up into RPGs through the LARP scene, which understandably can make that advice seem pretty bad, as your character can represent a significant financial investment as well
And yeah, she plays her character cautious to a fault, which is a fun quirk and an irritating quality to work around in a game of Blades
So I've played campaigns that lasted years and I'm not certain of that advice for something like that.
For something like Blades? That was John Harper's design intent. He crammed in every possible reward for making characters do exciting, if horribly unsafe, things. Blades wants the characters to burn up as glorious candles in the wind.
Hurtling through the multiverse like a skimming stone, the Monumus! A colossal disc of arcane crystal topped by an impossible city! Layers of bygone ages make the foundations of the vibrant streets and strange towers that jostle for prominence! Secrets and wonders drawn from all Creation await you! Monumus, the Stolen City, the Big Weird! If you can make it there, you’ll go everywhere!
I don’t really need any more projects to not finish but I kinda wanna make my own Planebreaker jus’ because I think there is a vibe a bustling city can bring to an otherwise great concept. I like the idea of a lonely abandoned city though, just not to play in as a base.
The Premise
I think it’d be pretty cool if Monumus arrived on a plane whenever it is undergoing a catastrophic change; not necessarily a world ending scenario, but certainly at its most pivotal moment. That means every session has some high stakes that the heroes can get dragged into. I think once the Monumus phases into a plane it begins to slow down over 12 hours, hitting a dead stop for 24 hours, then picks back up for a further 12 until it plane shifts again. I also think it should be at whatever angle is most fun, like 90 degrees to the world, one inch from a tavern on Mystara, or directly above the palace of Mammon in Hell, Independent’s day style.
Monumus itself should be New York + Venice I reckon. I have this very, very vivid picture in my head already that the water goes where it wants, zigzagging upwards and looping back around to the opposite side of the disc like a Pac-Man maze. I want a satyr to say “Ey! I’m walking here!”, but I also want that razzmatazz that is long lost to us, that whole mood where someone is so sure the city is full of wonders and that every day will bring some new innovation. Try Wartner’s Whole Body Lightning Resistance Elixir! Results guaranteed!
This also means some kind of kooky mer-people can be part of the city, potentially frilly jellyfish folks just for the alien factor. I’m also thinking a knock-off tiefling or even goblin would be the standard citizen, though as a rule there is no majority ethnicity. Oh dang, big foots should totally come from here. Just to be cute humans are actually rare in the grand scheme of things too, I think.
It’s the ‘Stolen City’ because one of several legends suggest there was a slave revolt on some material plane, and the slaves literally shot the city and surrounding area through the multiverse to escape the evil magicracy that was oppressing them. Boom! Your level 20 endgame antagonists if you like.
I won’t bother with a system, but I’ll put in some suggestions maybe. Or some 2d6 dice roll tables. Or some rules that don’t involve dice at all.
Thoughts?
Endless_Serpents on
+3
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I'm going to guess "Treat side characters like stolen cars."
Ding ding ding!
It's very good GM advice, and it's advice I frequently follow as a player as well
The person in question came up into RPGs through the LARP scene, which understandably can make that advice seem pretty bad, as your character can represent a significant financial investment as well
And yeah, she plays her character cautious to a fault, which is a fun quirk and an irritating quality to work around in a game of Blades
So I've played campaigns that lasted years and I'm not certain of that advice for something like that.
For something like Blades? That was John Harper's design intent. He crammed in every possible reward for making characters do exciting, if horribly unsafe, things. Blades wants the characters to burn up as glorious candles in the wind.
I think it's still good GM advice in a long-running game (and it is advice for GMs explicitly, even if some of us write a character's deathwish as part of their backstory).
The fuller description serves partially as a reminder to the GM that the characters they play are not their characters, they're side characters in someone else's story.
And like, speaking from personal experience, it does have some fun paradoxical things to it - if you play your characters with that recklessness as a GM then they will be more exciting and more fun to be around, your players will fall in love with them, and you'll actually end up keeping them around for longer because of it. A perfect wizard in a perfect tower isn't very fun to be around, nobody likes Sherlock Holmes as a person, but a weird mess who keeps getting themselves into trouble is endearing.
Posts
Yeah it doesn't sound much likeSigil in Planescape. The factions, the Cant, the Maze, the portals with their various keys...this doesn't seem to replicate those things.
Wasn't the concept of Eberron that stuff from other planes just ended up there like a cosmic junkyard? I vaguely remember being annoyed about that because my submission for the 3E base setting back in the day was very similar. This seems like the other end of that dynamic, a big teleporty thing that drags planar stuff around (this is also derivative of Drift travel in Starfinder).
There's nothing wrong with doing their own thing of course; more directly copying Sigil is a losing proposition too.
I haven't played Stonetop yet but it looks incredible. It was originally designed as a campaign setting/set of expanded rules for Dungeon World and eventually metamorphosized into its own thing.
I might have went to their backerkit and preordered it.
I may have done the same thing.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It’s probably fine balance wise but mono stat characters are boring, imo, so that would be my personal concern.
Yeah I mean I'd still build in some Str and Con, but they'd be weaker, and the character would be a bit less effective for a bit, probably.
But the character's "schtick" is that he's the most beautiful (Half-?) Orc ever seen, so the 18 Cha is kinda of the point.
The character is basically a Himbo.
Sir Fabilis the Beautiful, Knight of the Bo-Hymn
I was going to make the hard sell once I was back on a computer, but I suppose it's too late for that one.
Just kidding, here's a few of my favorite things in Stonetop:
- The characters are all defined as residents of the town, and frequently defined with regards to their relationship to the town. So where you might play a warlord elsewhere, here you play as the Marshal, who heads up the town's militia (which do get a form of a stat block and can be used actively). Or a paladin might be better represented as the Judge, who can work by either violently declaring things to be witches or focus more heavily on convincing people to tell them the truth and improving the community. These are simply cool, they give you a fair amount of flexibility while still giving everyone a strong connection to the town.
- One other cool playbook, a uniquely cool playbook. The Would-Be Hero doesn't start as strong as the other classes, their moves aren't quite as focused, but they start with this: They also have some high level abilities that require you to, when you use them for the first time, cross off Would-Be from the top of your character sheet. Which is simply sick as shit, you started off as the tagalong character and now you're officially The Hero.
- Okay enough about playbooks, bigger stuff is afoot. The bigger stuff is also a playbook though I guess - you know how the town is really important? It's so important it gets a character sheet. That town has resources that you can requisition, it's got people who live in it, it has a variety of improvements you can make to it that all have different requirements you might have to go on quests for, it's got a little map that you get to fill in with all of that, it's great. And those improvements can give you stuff like access to cool weapons (cool being defined as like, swords, this is a fairly low tech world), they permanently improve the actions you could take or give you access to new ones in distinct tangible ways.
- Finally let's talk about magic items. You ever find a cool sword and you cast detect magic on it and hell yeah that sucker is magic let's see what it does and oh, I guess +1 is nice but it's not really cool is it? Worry no more, here we have arcanum, which are just weird things you find. They're represented on little cards, and each one will have a description and a list of requirements - maybe you need to decipher some unfamiliar musical notation and then learn to play an instrument nobody has ever used before and play the song you deciphered and hope you get it right, and then you get to flip the card over and suddenly you have a new ability that goes a little like this: Or maybe you have to do something else entirely and you get something else entirely, or that same thing and you get an entirely different thing because you simply do not know what an item is just because you've been handed it. It's weird and it's unpredictable and it requires time and effort to figure out and that's magic baby.
Also there's like a cool world and stuff, I haven't read through all of that yet because those parts of the book(s) aren't finished yet but it's got some good classic weird stuff that lives in nature that might be a hundred different things and you've gotta play to find out what happens. It's currently probably my most anticipated RPG to show up on my front doorstep (Trophy and DIE are also high up there) and then never actually get to the table because my gaming group meets once a month in a good season and we're in the midst of a bad one.
They wax rhapsodic, from time to time.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'd also love if someone came up with some sort of e6 style 5th edition game (basically build characters at a certain level, 6ish usually), and instead of leveling you just more or less can spend XP to get more feats, or skills, or hit dice or whatever. I think that'd be fun. Maybe go weird and say level 8 PCs but you have to multiclass or something. So like nothing above 3rd spell level
It was $5, so I guess I can't really complain.
I feel like MCS presents you with a bunch of interesting ideas, but precious little guidance on how to put them together or tie in the mechanics. Is that common to PbtA games? Am I just expecting too much from the sourcebook?
Shit thanks for the warning. Had no idea. I expected much more.
The original Apocalypse World had stuff like the Hardholder (town mayor) roll to see where the area is at with surplus and scarcities, which would trigger what the Chopper (bike gang) might get up to this session because their gang has wants that must be fulfilled to keep them in check, putting them at odds with the Angel (medic), or forming an alliance of necessity with the Hocus (cult leader). Outliers like the Driver and Gunlugger will be hired or work against them as suits. All to have them double cross or team up again later. This is good, because you’re playing ‘Mad Max but everyone thinks they’re the protagonist’.
I haven’t seen the game but as a rule of thumb you need focused playbooks and only a small number of basic moves that pinpoint the genre you’re going for.
When it comes to pre-made adventures, how it was done in ancient times is you’d write each player ‘a love letter’ that explained where they’re starting and had a one-time move: You’ve just finished raiding the Fens, roll + Hard to see how that went…
Next you’d write something that links that player to another one, like, Rao killed your cousin, you saw Lugnut in a dream.
Maybe some description of factions and locations, bent to tell them what you want them in particular to know. Then yeah, you’d just play to find out.
If a PbtA game strays too far from interpersonal genre fiction / mechanics as game you need to add more to the system. It’s ultimately why Blades in the Dark became its own thing.
My bet, at a guess, is they went all in on the monster healing and didn’t put much down for the drama, so now you’re wondering what you do between finding a monster to heal.
I'll be really excited to get my hands on it too, I only wish I had backed it so I could get my hands on the playtest stuff.
I'll have to settle for waiting patiently for them to finish it. It sounds like they've have lots of unfortunate set backs including health issues.
I also ordered the print version. And I imagine that will take quite some time with the way printing and shipping is. But the mock ups looked really nice. And it would be great if a shelf with my other rpg stuff.
If you preorder, you get access to all the backer stuff
You ought to get an email from Jason Lutes at some point, it took a few days after I ordered
Awesome
The thing about PbtA is that you can get so deep into it, especially when you're iterating on a game to develop it, that you get Apocalypse Brain and forget what is and isn't obvious. MCS could really have benefited from a final editing pass in that regard.
The foundational assumption of any PbtA game is that you're bringing your own enthusiasm to it. You're buying a game about curing fantastic monsters so it's assumed you'll have had a sip of "curing fantastic monsters" juice elsewhere in media and liked the taste. Like, Nausicaa and the Valley of Wind, or Spirited Away, or Mushishi, or Steven Universe, or heck, even Monster Hunter for the perspective of being a tiny fleshy thing in a big fantasy ecosystem trying to get what you need from it. Just, uh, ignore all the parts where you ultimately slaughter most of it?
MCS also assumes that your PCs are not some stumbling bumblers fresh off the turnip cart but working professionals with experience and understanding of how to do the job, from session one moment one. Curing a monster is complex work and there is no one right thing to do but whatever your PCs take the initiative in doing should be assumed to be, at least, a right thing to do.
The core structure of MCS is extremely rigid: diagnosis clock, synthesis clock, symbiosis beam struggle. But there are a couple of fundamental things that'll really help you out there.
The zeroth, the one I forgot at first because of my own Apocalypse Brain, is that as the Guide you should constantly be leaning forward. Whenever you want to frame the situation for the PCs to take action you should be making a Guide move for them to respond to.
The first is how to mark failed clock segments. Yeah, I know, how'd they leave that one out? Well, the foundation of clock segments in the PbtA philosophy is essentially a price the PCs can pay. A different kind of hit points, if you will, that generally go up onesie twosie. That's how you use them as a Guide - stand up a failed clock segment as a potential cost that PCs have to scramble to avoid, or introduce it as the price of failure at a dramatic moment.
The second is that the core structure is rigid but the moves are not fixed within it. The diagnosis, synthesis, and symbiosis moves apply best and most strongly to actions taken in their particular phase of the game, but as elements of the world fiction they can bleed into each other. Treasured Insight is absolutely not just a diagnosis-phase move, it's the help action and you should pull it out in synthesis too. (The help action in the symbiosis phase is We Go On Three.) And there's always the part, right, where you think you're doing a milk run to get some goodwill in the diagnosis phase but you unexpectedly cross paths with the monster and oh shit what do? The symbiosis phase moves Set 'Em Up and Get In The Way are pretty good models for what do, just replace "push the monster on the control track" with "you get away" -- and I suppose if you're all in deep, We Go On Three can work here too. Outside of that help action thing, though, PCs shouldn't be making out-of-phase moves on their own initiative, but they're good for the Guide to present as a path forward.
The symbiosis phase is probably the clearest fictionally, right? It's you and the monster and either it gets cured or you have to retreat. The other two feel a little more floaty but they're pretty easy to chart out. The key is looking at how the PCs mark clock segments in both of them.
You get clock segments in the diagnosis phase by trading favors with the townsfolk with Make a Deal or by putting some evidence together with Here's What I Got. In Harm's Way, Pull a Thread, and Follow the Trail are there to support both of those activities - they can get you the standing you need to do Here's What I Got or things the townsfolk want so you can Make a Deal.
You get clock segments in the synthesis phase by assembling ingredients into a (Ok, Here's The) Plan or by risking yourself to grab something vital with Take On The World. Shopping List and Seeking Wisdom are the simple setups for those, or you could setup a chain through all four other moves by building off a Novel Application.
Does that help?
I did write this for 5E in Nasty, Brutish, and Short, in the Tiered Advancement section, though I generalized it so you can stop at T1 (level 4), T2 (level 10), T3 (level 16), or T4 (level 20). Once at level cap, every time you gain a certain amount of XP (determined by tier), you gain a Boost, and you can pick what you want to add to your character with your Boost.
Combo it with the roguelike progression of your Title in an Adventuring Company and you get a semi-multiclass.
Link is in sig, let me know if you want a copy
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Which especially sucks for a game that should have very specific GM stuff, which most PbtA would fall into. Like, I can suggest going to read Monsterhearts (or whatever else) because I think that has some of the better GM advice I've read, but that won't necessarily help with the specific problems you're encountering.
No but it can help me get a better understanding of how GMs behave in PbtA games. If there's any particular online games that have a GM doing good stuff I'm all ears. There's a lot of content for DnD/DnD-likes, but PbtA is completely new to me. I didn't even know what PbtA meant and I didn't realize that MCS was based largely on that.
In this situation I would probably go looking for an Actual Play. I found this, which seems to have been done in collaboration with Sandy Pug.
::flips through book incredulously:: ...holy zoinks they didn't even go for the PbtA tag on it? That's cheap as free! Wow wow wow.
I would also buy a more explicitly PbtA game about something you care about that has a solid discussion about the role of the GM. Monsterhearts has a good GM section but it's a good GM section for games that lean into the interpersonal drama and Monster Care Squad is absolutely not one of those games. There's no PC-on-PC interaction besides the help action and the social scene isn't super big, it's really a lot like a pacifist version of Monster Hunter that's about preparing for and then engaging big notable monsters.
If you're not put off by the language in the free player handouts of the second edition of Apocalypse World and you've ever madded a max, tanked a girl, or fisted a north star, it's absolutely worth buying and reading. It has big piles of play examples and it's the second edition so it's been shaped by a lot of live feedback.
Just an all-time great set of GM tips, fast and lean and deeply instructive.
You can't just say that and not say what it was!
Be a fan of the characters is classic of PbtA.
Kiss a werewolf?
I mean, fine.
Ding ding ding!
It's very good GM advice, and it's advice I frequently follow as a player as well
The person in question came up into RPGs through the LARP scene, which understandably can make that advice seem pretty bad, as your character can represent a significant financial investment as well
And yeah, she plays her character cautious to a fault, which is a fun quirk and an irritating quality to work around in a game of Blades
So I've played campaigns that lasted years and I'm not certain of that advice for something like that.
For something like Blades? That was John Harper's design intent. He crammed in every possible reward for making characters do exciting, if horribly unsafe, things. Blades wants the characters to burn up as glorious candles in the wind.
I don’t really need any more projects to not finish but I kinda wanna make my own Planebreaker jus’ because I think there is a vibe a bustling city can bring to an otherwise great concept. I like the idea of a lonely abandoned city though, just not to play in as a base.
The Premise
I think it’d be pretty cool if Monumus arrived on a plane whenever it is undergoing a catastrophic change; not necessarily a world ending scenario, but certainly at its most pivotal moment. That means every session has some high stakes that the heroes can get dragged into. I think once the Monumus phases into a plane it begins to slow down over 12 hours, hitting a dead stop for 24 hours, then picks back up for a further 12 until it plane shifts again. I also think it should be at whatever angle is most fun, like 90 degrees to the world, one inch from a tavern on Mystara, or directly above the palace of Mammon in Hell, Independent’s day style.
Monumus itself should be New York + Venice I reckon. I have this very, very vivid picture in my head already that the water goes where it wants, zigzagging upwards and looping back around to the opposite side of the disc like a Pac-Man maze. I want a satyr to say “Ey! I’m walking here!”, but I also want that razzmatazz that is long lost to us, that whole mood where someone is so sure the city is full of wonders and that every day will bring some new innovation. Try Wartner’s Whole Body Lightning Resistance Elixir! Results guaranteed!
This also means some kind of kooky mer-people can be part of the city, potentially frilly jellyfish folks just for the alien factor. I’m also thinking a knock-off tiefling or even goblin would be the standard citizen, though as a rule there is no majority ethnicity. Oh dang, big foots should totally come from here. Just to be cute humans are actually rare in the grand scheme of things too, I think.
It’s the ‘Stolen City’ because one of several legends suggest there was a slave revolt on some material plane, and the slaves literally shot the city and surrounding area through the multiverse to escape the evil magicracy that was oppressing them. Boom! Your level 20 endgame antagonists if you like.
I won’t bother with a system, but I’ll put in some suggestions maybe. Or some 2d6 dice roll tables. Or some rules that don’t involve dice at all.
Thoughts?
I think it's still good GM advice in a long-running game (and it is advice for GMs explicitly, even if some of us write a character's deathwish as part of their backstory).
The fuller description serves partially as a reminder to the GM that the characters they play are not their characters, they're side characters in someone else's story.
And like, speaking from personal experience, it does have some fun paradoxical things to it - if you play your characters with that recklessness as a GM then they will be more exciting and more fun to be around, your players will fall in love with them, and you'll actually end up keeping them around for longer because of it. A perfect wizard in a perfect tower isn't very fun to be around, nobody likes Sherlock Holmes as a person, but a weird mess who keeps getting themselves into trouble is endearing.