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[Roleplaying Games] New Year, New Dungeons, Same Ol' Bane

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Posts

  • AmiguAmigu Registered User regular
    I think the problem with PbPs is that a lot of system mechanics don't hold up when you are playing post to post. Things that should be resolved with a few dice rolls take days. 13th age feels like it's going at a good pace but anything with a grid... forget about it!

    How crunch heavy is monster hearts? If it is light on crunch I'd be super keen to play.

    BitD PbP Character Volstrom
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  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    MonsterHearts is a Dungeon World/Apocalypse World game, the mechanics is 2d6+Stat. It's pretty simple, but I feel like it would work better when you can see the emotions of those you are playing with. I mean, all games work better that way, but MonsterHearts especially.

  • AspectVoidAspectVoid Registered User regular
    It runs on the Apocalypse system, so everything is just Roll 2d6+Stat.
    If you get a 10+ Good happens
    7 to 9 Good happens but...
    6 or lower Bad happens

    It makes things quick and easy to resolve.

    PSN|AspectVoid
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Also, as someone who has played and ran some Pbp games here, the problem is interest. While it's awesome in the beginning, the pace of the games means that awesome takes awhile and deciding things takes time. I'm shocked how long my 13th Age game as gone, less so that they just reached 2nd level last month. And so far I've lost 2 players (and gain 2 others so...). But I have a lot of problems getting RL games working and I can guess how hard it would be to get games with Roll20/Maptools might be.

  • AmiguAmigu Registered User regular
    Haha interesting, I think I'd actually feel more comfortable laying a drama based game behind a screen. My real life games are usually a bit more swashbuckling "kick down the door" type adventures with a lot of lols.

    BitD PbP Character Volstrom
    QEz1Jw1.png
  • AspectVoidAspectVoid Registered User regular
    Yeah, Real Life is always getting in the way of gaming, whether its around the table or online.

    PSN|AspectVoid
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    The last MonsterHearts game here didn't make it past creating the homeroom, which was sad as I was already to be a mortal Queen who would gain supernatural abilities later on, gaining even more power over the school. I was thinking of being somewhat like Ashley from The Source. Terrible movie, awesome concept.

  • AmiguAmigu Registered User regular
    Someone should start a new game. I'm on board.

    BitD PbP Character Volstrom
    QEz1Jw1.png
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    I'm cool with playing it, but I'm not sure about running it. I'm very much enjoy being in the driver's seat as a Gamemaster and everything I've seen of it it's more of a player controlled game, with the GM dropping drama in when possible. But I could be wrong. I didn't watch the video above so I'm not sure.

  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    anytime monsterhearts is mentioned i drop by to say @jdarksun and @rainfall can speak to how fun monsterfarting is

  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    I listened to this last night while working:



    It kinda confirmed by belief that it's a very player controlled system. Which I'd love to play but not GM.

  • OptimusZedOptimusZed Registered User regular
    In general, PBtA games tend to swing more toward player control than more rigid systems.

    We're reading Rifts. You should too. You know you want to. Now With Ninjas!

    They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    I still feel bad about abandoning my Call of Cthulhu PbP, but the ultimate problem was it just bogged down too slowly and the writing demand was very high (on my end) to keep it going.

    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • dresdenphiledresdenphile Watch out for snakes!Registered User regular
    My gaming group is obsessed with 5E at the moment, whereas I'm still firmly entrenched in 4E.

    There's also bunch of games that I'd love to play (Demon: The Descent, Mummy: The New One (?), Trail of Cthulhu, Marvel Heroic, Dread, Ten Candles, etc.), but I appear to be stuck in one of those situations where unless I'm the DM, it ain't happening.

    Maybe when I get to the old folks' home...

    steam_sig.png
  • AspectVoidAspectVoid Registered User regular
    Oh, I know that feeling. The only way I get to "play" L5R is if I DM L5R. This makes me sad, as I'd really like to be a player instead of a DM. But I want to be engulfed in L5R enough that I am DMing it for my table group. My regular nightly group loves combat, so I'm taking them into the Clan War. And since none of them know the history of L5R, its all going to be a surprise.

    Right now we're in the lead up to the Clan War, just a few months away from the Crab invasion. I really lucked out in that the group is made up of Cranes, Phoenix, a Dragon, and a Crab. The Crab, though, is a Kuni Witch Hunter, so I cannot see him siding with the rest of his clan when it comes to joining forces with the Shadowlands. I can't wait to see what he does when he gets those orders.

    PSN|AspectVoid
  • FaranguFarangu I am a beardy man With a beardy planRegistered User regular
    Aegeri wrote: »
    I still feel bad about abandoning my Call of Cthulhu PbP, but the ultimate problem was it just bogged down too slowly and the writing demand was very high (on my end) to keep it going.

    I enjoyed that game greatly

  • ArdentArdent Down UpsideRegistered User regular
    OptimusZed wrote: »
    In general, PBtA games tend to swing more toward player control than more rigid systems.
    My firm belief is that the more a GM has to interject to deal with mechanical issues, the worse a game is.

    The best games involve the GM painting scenes, answering questions other players could not, and arbitrating when there's conflict. That's about it. I've run several sessions where I literally say nothing but "last session we..." and "Alright, I think we need to wrap it up." It just depends on the system and the players.

    Steam ID | Origin ID: ArdentX | Uplay ID: theardent | Battle.net: Ardent#11476
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    I like to be active as a DM. The way I GM games is that I take threads from my players' backgrounds, stuff that I had in mind, and tie them together and the players react, then I react from that, which makes this back and forth on the control. Looking at Monsterhearts, it is more players reacting to each other and the DM dropping drama when they can, which means I play less.

    Also, if I want to play games, I have to GM. Mostly because I'm the only GM I know. I got 5 people I know who can play, but none have ever stepped into the GM's chair. I know my brother wants to with the Dragon Age RPG, but he's still scared to do it.

  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    I listened to this last night while working:



    It kinda confirmed by belief that it's a very player controlled system. Which I'd love to play but not GM.

    When the Queen was naming the members of her click, I was really hoping they were going to be Heather, Heather, and Heather.

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Nah, Chanel #2, Chanel #3, and Chanel #5

  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Hey, @Marshmallow how does that Pokemon Voltage game work? It looks interesting.

  • Professor PhobosProfessor Phobos Registered User regular
    Would anyone here be interested in joining an online game taking place on Roll20 on Thursday evenings from 9-12 PM EST?

    The short list of campaigns under discussion with my group is Delta Green, Eclipse Phase, Unknown Armies, Beyond the Wall, Ashen Stars, or Trail of Cthulhu.

  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Yes. The only one I got is Eclipse Phase through.

  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    So after wrestling with the idea, I might do a MonsterHearts game. I've been watching Being Human and Teen Wolf lately any how and even thought it isn't my normal GM style, I'm always wanting to challenge myself and try new things. Keep an eye here and I should have something posted in a few hours/days.

  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 2016
    Planning on the ground work for a WoD: Innocents game. Preference on them being an established group or unknowns who band together? Maybe it depends on the concepts.

    The hook I have is local children turning up badly wounded or worse. Adults are going crazy trying to find the 'culprit', but the kids in town know it's not that simple...

    cj iwakura on
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  • MrVyngaardMrVyngaard Live From New Etoile Straight Outta SosariaRegistered User regular
    edited April 2016
    Obligatory head sticking in to ominously report the near ending of Yet Another Damn Kickstarter:

    There can be only one, and this time it's a full version of Katanas & Trenchcoats: Retromodern Roleplaying. The... GatheringTotallyNotTheGathering is here/now and it's made of pure 90's grimdark cheese: because lawsuits would kill it off faster than the terrible wrestling did to that one guy in a parking lot that one time if the Masquersomething was violated. So be cool and tie back your ponytail, nightpersons.

    The following is totally not propaganda and surely unrelated to the subject matter. Classic World of Darkness fans might feel at home with it more than a little bit.

    MrVyngaard on
    "now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
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  • CheeselikerCheeseliker Registered User regular
    Hey, I'm going to be Gming an Edge of the Empire game, all of us are new to the system. Any tips?

  • MarshmallowMarshmallow Registered User regular
    edited April 2016
    Hey, @Marshmallow how does that Pokemon Voltage game work? It looks interesting.

    Hoo boy, I could probably write a novel, but in the interest of brevity/sanity I'll give the pamphlet version. Note that the OP to the thread has a link to a slightly out-to-date wiki for the system and game. Also a list of all my hilarious thread titles.

    Voltage currently uses the latest of maybe a dozen standalone iterations of a homebrew that began with fixing some perceived issues with early Pokemon Tabletop Adventures. As years went by, it developed into a weird amalgamation of rules and concepts I liked, mostly cribbed from Dungeon World, Don't Rest Your Head, Risus, Old School Hack, and so on and so forth. I've been calling it "PKMN" because Trainers have the Traits "Physique", "Knowledge", "Mobility", and "Network". I spent a few days with a thesaurus to ensure this would be the case because I am a doofus.

    The core, that I consider at least a little polished, is the Pokemon battle system. It's intended to be flexible and simple, but still offer some limited tactical options in terms of positioning, terrain, and opponent prediction. I feel that it shines particularly well in a PbP context since it is diceless, players may act in any order so you rarely have to wait for someone before you can get your stuff in, and you usually have a pretty good idea how your turn is going to play out so you can write some fun action sequences into your post.

    If you want to see how they tend to go, here's a pretty quick battle between the group and some NPC allies against a pack of wild Grass Types. And another, also with NPC allies, against some Fire and Ground Types while preparing for Legendary Pokemon attack. And then the subsequent boss battle against a very angry Heatran.

    Like the games (which I try to take a lot of cues from in the interest of making battles feel Pokemon-y), Pokemon have six stats: HP, Attack, Special Attack, Defense, Special Defense, and Speed. When a Pokemon performs an offensive Move against another Pokemon, the stats interact in predictable (non-random) ways to deal damage, as well as an additional effect in most cases. I've attempted to make it so each stat is useful for some reason or another. So even if you want a Pokemon with the strongest physical attacks, you would still want them to have a little bit of special attack, and even slow, tanky pokemon will decide to pick up a bit of Speed instead of another point of HP every now and then. I was never a fan of the 'This is a physical attacker so put all points into Attack and keep Special Attack as close to zero as possible' thing.

    Anyway, Pokemon are created in a completely open, point buy manner. You freely pick their Type(s), Resistances, and Weaknesses, and spend Experience to individually raise their stats, and allow them to learn new Moves. You can (and probably should) use the canon stats of the Pokemon as a guideline, but there's nothing stopping you from making a Fire/Ghost Absol with a high Special Attack if that's what you really, really want.

    Moves are particularly fun because those are also mostly custom. When you purchase a Move (and they are very cheap), you select a Type, a Category to determine if it deals damage and what stats to use, and a Style that is chosen from a list to give it a secondary effect (like raising the Pokemon's stats, lowering the target's stats, allowing you to shove the target into a new area, and so on).

    There are also Pokemon Abilities, but they are currently rewards for completing a story objective (each Trainer got to pick one for one of their Pokemon after defeating Heatran).

    Finally, Trainer rules are in a bit of a limbo at the moment, while I try and figure out how much, and how, I want them to contribute to pokemon battles. They currently use a Token system where you get a number of different Tokens that you can spend to automatically succeed at a small effect, ie. Spend a Physique Token to survive an attack made against you, Spend a Knowledge Token to learn the answer to a question about your current situation, spend a Network Token to make a threat or promise you just made seem credible, etc. It's my next major project with the system.

    If you want a "The Story So Far" for the thread for some reason, I wrote one over the course of a few posts recentl- well, apparently two years ago, but with how slow the thread updates its only a couple encounters behind.

    Incidentally, while it's been brought up, I wouldn't mind having another player or two, so if anyone happens to be interested in a lengthy PbP Pokemon game set in Feudal era Kanto and doesn't mind waiting a long time between updates then hit me up.

    Marshmallow on
  • Ken OKen O Registered User regular
    Hey, I'm going to be Gming an Edge of the Empire game, all of us are new to the system. Any tips?

    Don't let the funny dice scare the players. I made cheat sheets on what they could spend advantages on. That helped for the first few sessions.
    When making characters players probably want to invest heavily in attributes since raising them post character creation is very costly/difficult.

    Have fun. If you have an specific questions I'm sure the people here can help.

    http://www.fingmonkey.com/
    Comics, Games, Booze
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Yeah, I was thinking about it but I couldn't find the info on how the game works. So it's diceless? So it's Move Stat vs. Defense Stat= Damage Taken?

  • MarshmallowMarshmallow Registered User regular
    edited April 2016
    Yeah, I was thinking about it but I couldn't find the info on how the game works. So it's diceless? So it's Move Stat vs. Defense Stat= Damage Taken?

    Pretty much! An example would be Physical Attacks dealing "[Attack] + 1/2[Special Attack] - [Target's Defense]" damage.

    So say, a Caterpie using a Physical Move with Attack 4, Special Attack 2 will deal 3 damage to a Weedle with Defense 2. (4+½[2] - 2 = 3).

    The "half your other attack stat" thing is a little bit wonky, but it makes it so it's hard to completely ignore a stat, gives offense stats a mild bonus over defense stats, and offers a small benefit to a Pokemon that attempts to specialize in both methods of attacking.

    Marshmallow on
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Ok, cool. I'm reading the recap now. I like the idea that Pokemon are spirits or fae creatures that are magical. It makes more sense than the normal pokemon games. I might see about making a character today.

  • MarshmallowMarshmallow Registered User regular
    Yeah, fae Pokemon make it very easy to answer questions like "what if my Pokemon dies?" and "why can't I catch fainted Pokemon?" and "If Alakazam is so smart, why doesn't he rule the world?"

    It's because an Alakazam doesn't see the point of ruling the world. Part of your job as a Trainer is to teach them that ruling the world is rad and they ought to help you do it.

    I went ahead and updated the Rules page on my wiki, so that should be good for creating a starting character, which can then be powered on up to match the current PCs.

  • ArdentArdent Down UpsideRegistered User regular
    13076804_10209410555526178_3659942557111054502_n.jpg?oh=a61d8864095832f6fd4d60ab4d41ea6b&oe=57A07C5D
    Yeah.

    Not my desk. Pretty sure it's Morke's.

    But yeah.

    Somehow I don't see this taking off. Not at that weight, anyway.

    Steam ID | Origin ID: ArdentX | Uplay ID: theardent | Battle.net: Ardent#11476
  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    I threw up a little @Ardent

  • ArdentArdent Down UpsideRegistered User regular
    Someone posited that the reason Morke insisted on natural language and 600+ pages is because he gets paid per word.

    I was like "But Rich..." and then I was like "But Rich..!" and finally I was like "But Rich."

    Steam ID | Origin ID: ArdentX | Uplay ID: theardent | Battle.net: Ardent#11476
  • OatsOats Registered User regular
    More rules are better right?

    Right?

  • ArdentArdent Down UpsideRegistered User regular
    Oats wrote: »
    More rules are better right?

    Right?
    More is more, after all.

    Steam ID | Origin ID: ArdentX | Uplay ID: theardent | Battle.net: Ardent#11476
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