Dungeon Crawl Classics is real fun. I ran a group of 15 PCs through a dungeon and we were happy when eight of them survived to hit first level right before they hit the Chaos Lord at the end, who killed one more.
Woohoo DCC !!!
I'm guessing Sailors on the Starless Sea ? My players didn't get that far, they got TPK'd by the sea monster ! I'm curious to know how did your players manage that part and the ending? I've always had problems visualising how a bunch of low-levels could get through the final two encounters of that module.
Was this a one-shot or are you planning to run other adventures with this groupe?
Yup. Sailors. And the answer is I fudged it a little bit:
When they got to the leviathan they had figured out that a sacrifice was involved somehow, but were split on whether the sacrifice sated the leviathan or summoned it. They quickly figured out how to bring the ship, and boarded without doing anything else.
I figured they would get it when the leviathan grabbed on, but nope -- now they were convinced it was too late and they'd have to fight. A number of them went after it with spears and managed to do a healthy chunk of damage (20) but I described the leviathan as barely noticing. On its turn I had it make one melee attack instead of all six, which was still enough to grab their dwarf (who was wearing one of their three suits of chain mail) and, even though he rolled an 18 on his strength check, instantly pull him overboard to his death. At this point they realized the leviathan was gonna kill them all, so one of my players had a PC slit another of his PC's throats and they all heaved him overboard. Most of the remaining party was Chaotic, so it was very in character.
At that point there were eight left, so had I used all six tentacles there would've been maybe 3-4 left alive, and I don't see them making it past that.
The next thing I did was decide that they leveled before going up the ziggurat. It seemed like they were right around 10xp based on the what I read of XP and I had read other session reports that leveled them at the same spot. Leveling gave them three warriors -- two with over 10HP, a cleric (who only managed to successfully pray one in four tries, and died) two thieves, a wizard, and an elf. With that party they were able to slaughter their way through the beastmen and the chaos lord only managed to kill the cleric. He almost got the thief, but with level 1 bleed out rules the cleric had time to heal him.
It was just a one-shot, unfortunately. Only one of my players was particularly hyped about it. Everyone had fun but I don't think the other two would be interested in a full campaign.
Thanks, I've always wondered how the final encounter was manageable and I didn't account for leveling up during the module. Anyway, I seem to have a TPK curse on me on both the OSR one-shots I've run recently (DCC and Torchbearer) !
Yeah. I didn't get it myself until I decided they'd level up. The module suggests the players could don the cultist robes and beastman garb to get past the horde, but that just puts them on the top of the ziggurat where they're now facing the chaos lord AND 22 beastmen??? Once they were level 1 they were able to legit clear that shit -- level 1 DCC characters are actually pretty nasty, until they take a crit and die instantly.
In a sense it feels like a very classic OSR situation, where you need the players to look at it, go "we can't possibly just combat our way through this" and then come up with an idea that neither you nor the module designer thought of. Then as a good OSR GM you reward their creativity.
Thinking up ideas with a friend of mine I came up with an idea I like a lot. RIFTS Phase World has a race in it called the Catyr, they are basically 6-7 foot tall red skinned/gold haired humans, with supernatural strength. Their planet orbits a star that puts out a lot more radiation than other stars, and life adapted there to be resistant to it. The side effect is that they naturally put out low levels of radiation that can harm or kill other races after prolonged exposure.
Combining this with the old, old, old original Heroes Unlimited as well as some stuff from Aliens Unlimited, to put her into 20th/21th century Earth, as a superhero.
That's what I like about Palladium stuff. Yeah there's a shit-ton of bloat, but it's all content and it's all able to work with everything else. Is there overpowered bullshit? Sure. But the GM and players can agree what can and can't be used ahead of time, what setting they want to put it in, what the power level of the world and people are. It's a shit-ton of choice and I love that.
I dunno if i'll be doing anything with this character, but it's a fun little project. Her name is Rad Red and I already love her.
I've been flipping through Heroes Unlimited (and Villains Unlimited) a lot lately, actually.
I've kind a left the Palladium orbit in terms of the actual mechanics of running games, but I love the fact that you could almost roll an entire superhero from start to finish using their random tables for origins and powers.
Dungeon Crawl Classics is real fun. I ran a group of 15 PCs through a dungeon and we were happy when eight of them survived to hit first level right before they hit the Chaos Lord at the end, who killed one more.
Woohoo DCC !!!
I'm guessing Sailors on the Starless Sea ? My players didn't get that far, they got TPK'd by the sea monster ! I'm curious to know how did your players manage that part and the ending? I've always had problems visualising how a bunch of low-levels could get through the final two encounters of that module.
Was this a one-shot or are you planning to run other adventures with this groupe?
Yup. Sailors. And the answer is I fudged it a little bit:
When they got to the leviathan they had figured out that a sacrifice was involved somehow, but were split on whether the sacrifice sated the leviathan or summoned it. They quickly figured out how to bring the ship, and boarded without doing anything else.
I figured they would get it when the leviathan grabbed on, but nope -- now they were convinced it was too late and they'd have to fight. A number of them went after it with spears and managed to do a healthy chunk of damage (20) but I described the leviathan as barely noticing. On its turn I had it make one melee attack instead of all six, which was still enough to grab their dwarf (who was wearing one of their three suits of chain mail) and, even though he rolled an 18 on his strength check, instantly pull him overboard to his death. At this point they realized the leviathan was gonna kill them all, so one of my players had a PC slit another of his PC's throats and they all heaved him overboard. Most of the remaining party was Chaotic, so it was very in character.
At that point there were eight left, so had I used all six tentacles there would've been maybe 3-4 left alive, and I don't see them making it past that.
The next thing I did was decide that they leveled before going up the ziggurat. It seemed like they were right around 10xp based on the what I read of XP and I had read other session reports that leveled them at the same spot. Leveling gave them three warriors -- two with over 10HP, a cleric (who only managed to successfully pray one in four tries, and died) two thieves, a wizard, and an elf. With that party they were able to slaughter their way through the beastmen and the chaos lord only managed to kill the cleric. He almost got the thief, but with level 1 bleed out rules the cleric had time to heal him.
It was just a one-shot, unfortunately. Only one of my players was particularly hyped about it. Everyone had fun but I don't think the other two would be interested in a full campaign.
Thanks, I've always wondered how the final encounter was manageable and I didn't account for leveling up during the module. Anyway, I seem to have a TPK curse on me on both the OSR one-shots I've run recently (DCC and Torchbearer) !
I apparently have a lot of thoughts on this shit so I'm just gonna keep typing.
This was my first time running an OSR game* and as a GM who normally shies away from causing death in RPGs it was absolutely outside my comfort zone -- which I liked! -- I tried not to fudge anything: when the tar ooze sprang to life it slapped someone before they got a turn, but they lived through the hit; so I gave them a warning that the victim was gonna burst into flames and when they came up with a good idea, asked for a Reflex save to do it before he took any more damage (he had 1HP left) they failed and he died. I remembered all the morale checks, but it turns out those beastmen were FUCKIN BLOODTHIRSTY and would pretty much fight to the last man. I allowed their pitchforks to attack from the second rank, but that meant the beastmen spears also got to.
But when they got to that leviathan I did feel like they had all the proper warning and had just talked themselves out of the correct solution, but at the same time I didn't want to either (a) ask them to make an INT check to have some revelation (the modern D&D approach) or (b) just kill them (the OSR approach?). Neither of those felt like satisfying resolutions. I felt like having just one fatal tentacle attack was a good way to split the difference, and it created a really great image of a brief moment of cheering as these brave heroes stab valiantly down at this massive beast, then in an instant the armored dwarf is pulled off the boat and without even blinking a guy slits the throat of the dude next to him. That was hella cinematic.
*I technically started playing RPGs with a D&D beginners set in the early 90s, but I never really ran that game.
Thinking up ideas with a friend of mine I came up with an idea I like a lot. RIFTS Phase World has a race in it called the Catyr, they are basically 6-7 foot tall red skinned/gold haired humans, with supernatural strength. Their planet orbits a star that puts out a lot more radiation than other stars, and life adapted there to be resistant to it. The side effect is that they naturally put out low levels of radiation that can harm or kill other races after prolonged exposure.
Combining this with the old, old, old original Heroes Unlimited as well as some stuff from Aliens Unlimited, to put her into 20th/21th century Earth, as a superhero.
That's what I like about Palladium stuff. Yeah there's a shit-ton of bloat, but it's all content and it's all able to work with everything else. Is there overpowered bullshit? Sure. But the GM and players can agree what can and can't be used ahead of time, what setting they want to put it in, what the power level of the world and people are. It's a shit-ton of choice and I love that.
I dunno if i'll be doing anything with this character, but it's a fun little project. Her name is Rad Red and I already love her.
I've been flipping through Heroes Unlimited (and Villains Unlimited) a lot lately, actually.
I've kind a left the Palladium orbit in terms of the actual mechanics of running games, but I love the fact that you could almost roll an entire superhero from start to finish using their random tables for origins and powers.
Yeah while the alien species I chose was pre built so that will mostly define her powers, there's a lot of good stuff in Heroes' alien section. How she got to earth, what resources she has now she's here, what equivalent education she has, etc. Things that I could think up on my own but having a table of options helps a ton for jumpstarting creativity.
Also I saw in the alien creation tables there's one section that has different homeworld types. One of these is "high radiation", where the alien is immune to radiation but emits it at low levels so that any human who spends a week or more in close contact may get radiation poisoning. Also the height range for that homeworld type is 6-7 feet. They basically used their own alien creation tools to put together this race in Phase World however many years later. I like that a lot.
Thinking up ideas with a friend of mine I came up with an idea I like a lot. RIFTS Phase World has a race in it called the Catyr, they are basically 6-7 foot tall red skinned/gold haired humans, with supernatural strength. Their planet orbits a star that puts out a lot more radiation than other stars, and life adapted there to be resistant to it. The side effect is that they naturally put out low levels of radiation that can harm or kill other races after prolonged exposure.
Combining this with the old, old, old original Heroes Unlimited as well as some stuff from Aliens Unlimited, to put her into 20th/21th century Earth, as a superhero.
That's what I like about Palladium stuff. Yeah there's a shit-ton of bloat, but it's all content and it's all able to work with everything else. Is there overpowered bullshit? Sure. But the GM and players can agree what can and can't be used ahead of time, what setting they want to put it in, what the power level of the world and people are. It's a shit-ton of choice and I love that.
I dunno if i'll be doing anything with this character, but it's a fun little project. Her name is Rad Red and I already love her.
I've been flipping through Heroes Unlimited (and Villains Unlimited) a lot lately, actually.
I've kind a left the Palladium orbit in terms of the actual mechanics of running games, but I love the fact that you could almost roll an entire superhero from start to finish using their random tables for origins and powers.
Yeah while the alien species I chose was pre built so that will mostly define her powers, there's a lot of good stuff in Heroes' alien section. How she got to earth, what resources she has now she's here, what equivalent education she has, etc. Things that I could think up on my own but having a table of options helps a ton for jumpstarting creativity.
Also I saw in the alien creation tables there's one section that has different homeworld types. One of these is "high radiation", where the alien is immune to radiation but emits it at low levels so that any human who spends a week or more in close contact may get radiation poisoning. Also the height range for that homeworld type is 6-7 feet. They basically used their own alien creation tools to put together this race in Phase World however many years later. I like that a lot.
Yeah, you see that a lot in the weirder Rifts stuff, actually. Dog Boys can be built out of the TMNT rules, as can the other mutant animals in Lone Star. I'm not sure if the ones from South America work that way. They loved re-purposing their old material like that.
Dungeon Crawl Classics is real fun. I ran a group of 15 PCs through a dungeon and we were happy when eight of them survived to hit first level right before they hit the Chaos Lord at the end, who killed one more.
Woohoo DCC !!!
I'm guessing Sailors on the Starless Sea ? My players didn't get that far, they got TPK'd by the sea monster ! I'm curious to know how did your players manage that part and the ending? I've always had problems visualising how a bunch of low-levels could get through the final two encounters of that module.
Was this a one-shot or are you planning to run other adventures with this groupe?
Yup. Sailors. And the answer is I fudged it a little bit:
When they got to the leviathan they had figured out that a sacrifice was involved somehow, but were split on whether the sacrifice sated the leviathan or summoned it. They quickly figured out how to bring the ship, and boarded without doing anything else.
I figured they would get it when the leviathan grabbed on, but nope -- now they were convinced it was too late and they'd have to fight. A number of them went after it with spears and managed to do a healthy chunk of damage (20) but I described the leviathan as barely noticing. On its turn I had it make one melee attack instead of all six, which was still enough to grab their dwarf (who was wearing one of their three suits of chain mail) and, even though he rolled an 18 on his strength check, instantly pull him overboard to his death. At this point they realized the leviathan was gonna kill them all, so one of my players had a PC slit another of his PC's throats and they all heaved him overboard. Most of the remaining party was Chaotic, so it was very in character.
At that point there were eight left, so had I used all six tentacles there would've been maybe 3-4 left alive, and I don't see them making it past that.
The next thing I did was decide that they leveled before going up the ziggurat. It seemed like they were right around 10xp based on the what I read of XP and I had read other session reports that leveled them at the same spot. Leveling gave them three warriors -- two with over 10HP, a cleric (who only managed to successfully pray one in four tries, and died) two thieves, a wizard, and an elf. With that party they were able to slaughter their way through the beastmen and the chaos lord only managed to kill the cleric. He almost got the thief, but with level 1 bleed out rules the cleric had time to heal him.
It was just a one-shot, unfortunately. Only one of my players was particularly hyped about it. Everyone had fun but I don't think the other two would be interested in a full campaign.
Thanks, I've always wondered how the final encounter was manageable and I didn't account for leveling up during the module. Anyway, I seem to have a TPK curse on me on both the OSR one-shots I've run recently (DCC and Torchbearer) !
I apparently have a lot of thoughts on this shit so I'm just gonna keep typing.
This was my first time running an OSR game* and as a GM who normally shies away from causing death in RPGs it was absolutely outside my comfort zone -- which I liked! -- I tried not to fudge anything: when the tar ooze sprang to life it slapped someone before they got a turn, but they lived through the hit; so I gave them a warning that the victim was gonna burst into flames and when they came up with a good idea, asked for a Reflex save to do it before he took any more damage (he had 1HP left) they failed and he died. I remembered all the morale checks, but it turns out those beastmen were FUCKIN BLOODTHIRSTY and would pretty much fight to the last man. I allowed their pitchforks to attack from the second rank, but that meant the beastmen spears also got to.
But when they got to that leviathan I did feel like they had all the proper warning and had just talked themselves out of the correct solution, but at the same time I didn't want to either (a) ask them to make an INT check to have some revelation (the modern D&D approach) or (b) just kill them (the OSR approach?). Neither of those felt like satisfying resolutions. I felt like having just one fatal tentacle attack was a good way to split the difference, and it created a really great image of a brief moment of cheering as these brave heroes stab valiantly down at this massive beast, then in an instant the armored dwarf is pulled off the boat and without even blinking a guy slits the throat of the dude next to him. That was hella cinematic.
*I technically started playing RPGs with a D&D beginners set in the early 90s, but I never really ran that game.
Yeah, I really feel you on this, and I'm pretty harsh with my players (I love my hard moves :biggrin: ). When I read that part of the adventure, I just thought that I didn't get it, because it seemed absurdly harsh, even from an old-school point of view. I think you've handled it perfectly !
Are they making a new version of Apocalypse World? Has anybody gotten their hands on, with thoughts to offer?
I wanna get my hands on that and Dungeon World. For a special project.
It's an incremental change on one of the most influential rpg of the last decade. I tought that it would be my favourite game along with Burning Wheel, but now that I've run both I know that I prefer Apocalypse World. It's very good. If you don't have the first edition, you should buy it, even if you don't plan to run it. The GM rules have completly changed how I run my games.
Running just about anything from the Apocalypse family is a joy, a major workout for your creativity and a great way to git gud at storytelling. The lessons baked into the system are pretty universal for running games.
Running just about anything from the Apocalypse family is a joy, a major workout for your creativity and a great way to git gud at storytelling. The lessons baked into the system are pretty universal for running games.
The PbtA games are great examples because the rules and mechanics are all in service of the story and role-play, unlike a lot of systems where all the rules exist... despite the story and role-play?
Running just about anything from the Apocalypse family is a joy, a major workout for your creativity and a great way to git gud at storytelling. The lessons baked into the system are pretty universal for running games.
The PbtA games are great examples because the rules and mechanics are all in service of the story and role-play, unlike a lot of systems where all the rules exist... despite the story and role-play?
There's really no filler, or weirdness to get hung up on. The system essentially just wind-tunnels you toward having a fun, cohesive experience. It's a neat thing to experience.
Are they making a new version of Apocalypse World? Has anybody gotten their hands on, with thoughts to offer?
I wanna get my hands on that and Dungeon World. For a special project.
2nd-edition Apocalypse World is out and you can buy it. It differs from the first in that most classes have a pretty clear timer working on them vis-a-vis a barter upkeep to be paid for session, and everybody's got a kind of gig mechanic to keep that monetary pressure on them. There are also worked-through extended rules to, say, use Seize By Force to seize safety or a retreat or a position, or Act Under Fire to chase well or not get chased, and rules for establishing position and running overwatch, in addition to some vehicle interaction and manipulation rules because Fury Road exists where it didn't before.
It's nothing you might not have come up with given time, but it's what people have talked about on the boards so there are some formalized rules for it now.
Also some new playbooks joined the party and the Operator bowed out since damn near everybody has to moonlight.
I've run some chatroom stuff with the rules, and they're a little bit more of a skeleton under me as my mind-blob stretches out to take new positions. It and Dungeon World and some of the Dungeon World offshoots like Planarch Heroes and the Perilous Wilds are well well well worth grabbing.
But, I mean, what's your project? PbtA was kind of the new hotness for a while, someone may have blazed a more direct trail for you.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
More Fate Core questions!
1) The first session only had three of five players available - only the Background Adventure phases of the three were worked on. What's a good way to incoporate the newer players into the shared background stuff?
2) In case I want to join in as a sometimes ally of the group, with one of the players GMing for the moment, can I just do "I was there" scenes in the characters' backgrounds for my Aspects?
I like EP's system. Streamlining to improve is good, rules-light just because it's a darling these days would not be what I wanted. I like the granularity in that game.
I like EP's system. Streamlining to improve is good, rules-light just because it's a darling these days would not be what I wanted. I like the granularity in that game.
Eh, they already made the official Fate conversion for it. I wasn't really that impressed by it, but a storygame version now exists. I don't really see why they'd repeat that performance and compete with themselves.
1) The first session only had three of five players available - only the Background Adventure phases of the three were worked on. What's a good way to incoporate the newer players into the shared background stuff?
2) In case I want to join in as a sometimes ally of the group, with one of the players GMing for the moment, can I just do "I was there" scenes in the characters' backgrounds for my Aspects?
I would say just drop the new characters into the old scenes. Unless one of the original character's stories changes significantly because of it, in a bad way, it doesn't really hurt anything.
I like EP's system. Streamlining to improve is good, rules-light just because it's a darling these days would not be what I wanted. I like the granularity in that game.
The fad right now is a lot more streamlined then it is rules light. The popular games coming out of Kickstarter these days range widely in complexity.
In Kickstarter now, but they've talked about a lot of streamlining.
That is 100% the right prescription for that game.
I really love the material but the original game mechanics were somewhat daunting to learn.
I have been gaming for 20 some years. I played a round at Gen Con last year. Nothing on the full page, small font character sheet wasn't an abbreviation. Most of them were like two letters. Pretty quickly just ignored it and played the character I had been given some bio info on until the person running asked for a roll.
The system was completely impenetrable even if the fiction was engaging.
I think the trans-humanism stuff is pretty deep for people that are already into it.
Everyone else you can basically just give a single-breath rundown of the setting; we're in space, earth is fucked, and people can jump bodies. It's your job to make sure we don't go extinct. Go.
The system for Eclipse Phase is easy as hell. Character Creation is a bit long, but I've made characters in EP in the same time it would take me to do in 3.5 D&D (or at least a 3.5 Wizard).
And the mechanics are easy to understand.
Roll dice.
Is the roll lower than the skill score you rolled?
If Yes-> Success
If No-> Failure
If Roll is double (11, 22, 33, ect) then Critical Success.
And if you are going against someone, contested roll work the same except one element, if both succeed on a roll, the lows score wins unless someone rolls doubles.
It's a pretty standard D100% system. If you've played CoC you've basically played EP. And even in the more complex elements, like combat and such, it's basically the same set-up.
The character creation system is granular but it's not hard. You have points, buy stuff with points. Mostly you will buy skills. Skills have a 1-1 cost. Skills start at a base of the relevant stat.
Also in EP your character won't die. So it's not like you need to remake characters during the campaign. You have to retire them, basically. Even if your character is a raging maniac who just got exploded by a nightmarish TITAN horror, then hey, it's cool, we'll restore him from six months ago.
The system for Eclipse Phase is easy as hell. Character Creation is a bit long, but I've made characters in EP in the same time it would take me to do in 3.5 D&D (or at least a 3.5 Wizard).
And the mechanics are easy to understand.
Roll dice.
Is the roll lower than the skill score you rolled?
If Yes-> Success
If No-> Failure
If Roll is double (11, 22, 33, ect) then Critical Success.
And if you are going against someone, contested roll work the same except one element, if both succeed on a roll, the lows score wins unless someone rolls doubles.
THAT'S IT. That's EP mechanics. Not that hard.
Basic dice resolution != game mechanics in general. The basic dice resolution mechanics in most games are fairly simple (I say "most" because you get outliers like Earthdawn, which is not simple at all, or Star Wars EotE which add a lot of nuance to a single roll that needs interpretation). It's how they are used to interact with each other that makes a game complicated or easy. One of the key elements you can look at is the physical number of times that you have to roll dice to resolve a basic action or a combat round. There are systems where you have to roll three separate times (or more) to resolve a basic attack. Hell, Dungeons and Dragons is minimum of two (to-hit, then damage), three if you include effects with saving throws. Exploding dice (featured in a lot of games) add to complexity because they add multiple dice rolls to the whole equation, extending the amount of time it takes to resolve basic shit.
I think EP could use a digital character creator that 4E had. Because, when you die, unless you get the same body you had last time, you just have to adjust your old sheet with the new body's base stats. I'd also like to have a mechanic where skills you increase are temp until you save, to show that your character doesn't remember those six months between saves, which might be a bitch to do with a physical sheet but completely possible with a digital one.
The system for Eclipse Phase is easy as hell. Character Creation is a bit long, but I've made characters in EP in the same time it would take me to do in 3.5 D&D (or at least a 3.5 Wizard).
And the mechanics are easy to understand.
Roll dice.
Is the roll lower than the skill score you rolled?
If Yes-> Success
If No-> Failure
If Roll is double (11, 22, 33, ect) then Critical Success.
And if you are going against someone, contested roll work the same except one element, if both succeed on a roll, the lows score wins unless someone rolls doubles.
THAT'S IT. That's EP mechanics. Not that hard.
Basic dice resolution != game mechanics in general. The basic dice resolution mechanics in most games are fairly simple (I say "most" because you get outliers like Earthdawn, which is not simple at all, or Star Wars EotE which add a lot of nuance to a single roll that needs interpretation). It's how they are used to interact with each other that makes a game complicated or easy. One of the key elements you can look at is the physical number of times that you have to roll dice to resolve a basic action or a combat round. There are systems where you have to roll three separate times (or more) to resolve a basic attack. Hell, Dungeons and Dragons is minimum of two (to-hit, then damage), three if you include effects with saving throws. Exploding dice (featured in a lot of games) add to complexity because they add multiple dice rolls to the whole equation, extending the amount of time it takes to resolve basic shit.
I think EP has the same roll dice roll thing for combat, skill roll to hit and then weapon damage. Still, it's way easier than FFG Star Wars, imo.
With a character creator it's actually soooooo easy
The only tricky part is gear and that's because there's quite a bit of gear? But at the same time, that contributes to the feel of the game I think. And also starting characters shouldn't be spending loads of points on gear. Buy skills.
Combat is relatively easy too
Especially because it tends to be over so quick, on account of it being HORRENDOUSLY LETHAL
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
edited May 2017
All the EP talk makes me sad knowing that I will probably never get it to the table, even though trans-human is probably my favoritist theme ever. I might be able to convince my friends if I port the mechanics/rules into a Special Circumstances story.
Edit: Also, I haven't payed a ton of attention to kickstarters in general, but the fact that they added a bonus to freelancers as a stretch goal seems really cool to me.
Brody on
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Eclipse Phase has been out for 8 years, and licensed as Creative Commons for all that time. No one used it to make another game. Compare that to Apocalypse World, which has been out for the same amount of time...
Even the designers think the character creation and morph-transfer processes are too complicated and that the skill list is redundant, they're doing do a new edition of their game to fix those problems! If you claim that EP's system is "easy" or "simple", fine, but I'll honestly doubt of your capability to assess a system's complexity.
All the EP talk makes me sad knowing that I will probably never get it to the table, even though trans-human is probably my favoritist theme ever. I might be able to convince my friends if I port the mechanics/rules into a Special Circumstances story.
They did a Fate conversion that's uninspired but alright.
I'm kinda surprised that there hasn't been anything done with the fact that EP and Gumshoe are both Creative Commons yet. Gumshoe seems like a much better system to do the existential mystery stuff in EP, and it would probably handle the transhuman aspects better to boot.
Eclipse Phase has been out for 8 years, and licensed as Creative Commons for all that time. No one used it to make another game. Compare that to Apocalypse World, which has been out for the same amount of time...
Even the designers think the character creation and morph-transfer processes are too complicated and that the skill list is redundant, they're doing do a new edition of their game to fix those problems! If you claim that EP's system is "easy" or "simple", fine, but I'll honestly doubt of your capability to assess a system's complexity.
I think this is an unfair comparison. EP's mechanics and how that game is built is done so because of the themes of it's world, one where body and mind are two separate things and body is interchangeable. PbtA is much more loose of a system and even when you go from Apocalypse World to Dungeon World to Monsterhearts and beyond, while the core dice mechanics are the same, each game is completely different in how it operates. With EP as it is, there aren't many reasons one might build a game where you are technically controlling two different things at once, my only thought is Mecha game or Autoracing game, or Star Trek kinda. So it not being used to spawn other games doesn't point to how bad it is, just that the game does what it does and there aren't many reasons to build a game based off it's system because of it's uniqueness.
All the EP talk makes me sad knowing that I will probably never get it to the table, even though trans-human is probably my favoritist theme ever. I might be able to convince my friends if I port the mechanics/rules into a Special Circumstances story.
Edit: Also, I haven't payed a ton of attention to kickstarters in general, but the fact that they added a bonus to freelancers as a stretch goal seems really cool to me.
If complexities the main blocking point the Infinity RPG (coming soon since a year and a bit ago) is a setting on the brink of trans humanism and also pretty simple.
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I've got it, from the kickstarter. I haven't played it, though, and don't have any experience with the older version either.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Yeah. I didn't get it myself until I decided they'd level up. The module suggests the players could don the cultist robes and beastman garb to get past the horde, but that just puts them on the top of the ziggurat where they're now facing the chaos lord AND 22 beastmen??? Once they were level 1 they were able to legit clear that shit -- level 1 DCC characters are actually pretty nasty, until they take a crit and die instantly.
In a sense it feels like a very classic OSR situation, where you need the players to look at it, go "we can't possibly just combat our way through this" and then come up with an idea that neither you nor the module designer thought of. Then as a good OSR GM you reward their creativity.
I've been flipping through Heroes Unlimited (and Villains Unlimited) a lot lately, actually.
I've kind a left the Palladium orbit in terms of the actual mechanics of running games, but I love the fact that you could almost roll an entire superhero from start to finish using their random tables for origins and powers.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I apparently have a lot of thoughts on this shit so I'm just gonna keep typing.
This was my first time running an OSR game* and as a GM who normally shies away from causing death in RPGs it was absolutely outside my comfort zone -- which I liked! -- I tried not to fudge anything: when the tar ooze sprang to life it slapped someone before they got a turn, but they lived through the hit; so I gave them a warning that the victim was gonna burst into flames and when they came up with a good idea, asked for a Reflex save to do it before he took any more damage (he had 1HP left) they failed and he died. I remembered all the morale checks, but it turns out those beastmen were FUCKIN BLOODTHIRSTY and would pretty much fight to the last man. I allowed their pitchforks to attack from the second rank, but that meant the beastmen spears also got to.
But when they got to that leviathan I did feel like they had all the proper warning and had just talked themselves out of the correct solution, but at the same time I didn't want to either (a) ask them to make an INT check to have some revelation (the modern D&D approach) or (b) just kill them (the OSR approach?). Neither of those felt like satisfying resolutions. I felt like having just one fatal tentacle attack was a good way to split the difference, and it created a really great image of a brief moment of cheering as these brave heroes stab valiantly down at this massive beast, then in an instant the armored dwarf is pulled off the boat and without even blinking a guy slits the throat of the dude next to him. That was hella cinematic.
*I technically started playing RPGs with a D&D beginners set in the early 90s, but I never really ran that game.
Yeah while the alien species I chose was pre built so that will mostly define her powers, there's a lot of good stuff in Heroes' alien section. How she got to earth, what resources she has now she's here, what equivalent education she has, etc. Things that I could think up on my own but having a table of options helps a ton for jumpstarting creativity.
Also I saw in the alien creation tables there's one section that has different homeworld types. One of these is "high radiation", where the alien is immune to radiation but emits it at low levels so that any human who spends a week or more in close contact may get radiation poisoning. Also the height range for that homeworld type is 6-7 feet. They basically used their own alien creation tools to put together this race in Phase World however many years later. I like that a lot.
Yeah, you see that a lot in the weirder Rifts stuff, actually. Dog Boys can be built out of the TMNT rules, as can the other mutant animals in Lone Star. I'm not sure if the ones from South America work that way. They loved re-purposing their old material like that.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Yeah, I really feel you on this, and I'm pretty harsh with my players (I love my hard moves :biggrin: ). When I read that part of the adventure, I just thought that I didn't get it, because it seemed absurdly harsh, even from an old-school point of view. I think you've handled it perfectly !
It's an incremental change on one of the most influential rpg of the last decade. I tought that it would be my favourite game along with Burning Wheel, but now that I've run both I know that I prefer Apocalypse World. It's very good. If you don't have the first edition, you should buy it, even if you don't plan to run it. The GM rules have completly changed how I run my games.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The PbtA games are great examples because the rules and mechanics are all in service of the story and role-play, unlike a lot of systems where all the rules exist... despite the story and role-play?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Ooooh. What's it like?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
There's really no filler, or weirdness to get hung up on. The system essentially just wind-tunnels you toward having a fun, cohesive experience. It's a neat thing to experience.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
2nd-edition Apocalypse World is out and you can buy it. It differs from the first in that most classes have a pretty clear timer working on them vis-a-vis a barter upkeep to be paid for session, and everybody's got a kind of gig mechanic to keep that monetary pressure on them. There are also worked-through extended rules to, say, use Seize By Force to seize safety or a retreat or a position, or Act Under Fire to chase well or not get chased, and rules for establishing position and running overwatch, in addition to some vehicle interaction and manipulation rules because Fury Road exists where it didn't before.
It's nothing you might not have come up with given time, but it's what people have talked about on the boards so there are some formalized rules for it now.
Also some new playbooks joined the party and the Operator bowed out since damn near everybody has to moonlight.
I've run some chatroom stuff with the rules, and they're a little bit more of a skeleton under me as my mind-blob stretches out to take new positions. It and Dungeon World and some of the Dungeon World offshoots like Planarch Heroes and the Perilous Wilds are well well well worth grabbing.
But, I mean, what's your project? PbtA was kind of the new hotness for a while, someone may have blazed a more direct trail for you.
In Kickstarter now, but they've talked about a lot of streamlining.
That is 100% the right prescription for that game.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
1) The first session only had three of five players available - only the Background Adventure phases of the three were worked on. What's a good way to incoporate the newer players into the shared background stuff?
2) In case I want to join in as a sometimes ally of the group, with one of the players GMing for the moment, can I just do "I was there" scenes in the characters' backgrounds for my Aspects?
Eh, they already made the official Fate conversion for it. I wasn't really that impressed by it, but a storygame version now exists. I don't really see why they'd repeat that performance and compete with themselves.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I would say just drop the new characters into the old scenes. Unless one of the original character's stories changes significantly because of it, in a bad way, it doesn't really hurt anything.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The fad right now is a lot more streamlined then it is rules light. The popular games coming out of Kickstarter these days range widely in complexity.
I really love the material but the original game mechanics were somewhat daunting to learn.
I have been gaming for 20 some years. I played a round at Gen Con last year. Nothing on the full page, small font character sheet wasn't an abbreviation. Most of them were like two letters. Pretty quickly just ignored it and played the character I had been given some bio info on until the person running asked for a roll.
The system was completely impenetrable even if the fiction was engaging.
But I just can't invest in a game that's going to take 3 solid credit hours worth of time to teach to a group.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Yea, and after you finish the "Intro to Post Humanism Literature" you then have to try and teach them the system.
Everyone else you can basically just give a single-breath rundown of the setting; we're in space, earth is fucked, and people can jump bodies. It's your job to make sure we don't go extinct. Go.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
And the mechanics are easy to understand.
Roll dice.
Is the roll lower than the skill score you rolled?
If Yes-> Success
If No-> Failure
If Roll is double (11, 22, 33, ect) then Critical Success.
And if you are going against someone, contested roll work the same except one element, if both succeed on a roll, the lows score wins unless someone rolls doubles.
THAT'S IT. That's EP mechanics. Not that hard.
It's a pretty standard D100% system. If you've played CoC you've basically played EP. And even in the more complex elements, like combat and such, it's basically the same set-up.
The character creation system is granular but it's not hard. You have points, buy stuff with points. Mostly you will buy skills. Skills have a 1-1 cost. Skills start at a base of the relevant stat.
Also in EP your character won't die. So it's not like you need to remake characters during the campaign. You have to retire them, basically. Even if your character is a raging maniac who just got exploded by a nightmarish TITAN horror, then hey, it's cool, we'll restore him from six months ago.
I think EP has the same roll dice roll thing for combat, skill roll to hit and then weapon damage. Still, it's way easier than FFG Star Wars, imo.
The only tricky part is gear and that's because there's quite a bit of gear? But at the same time, that contributes to the feel of the game I think. And also starting characters shouldn't be spending loads of points on gear. Buy skills.
Combat is relatively easy too
Especially because it tends to be over so quick, on account of it being HORRENDOUSLY LETHAL
Pretty sure it has an official one from talking with folks at the game.
WHAT?!?!?!
SEARCHING>>>
TARGET FOUND: eclipsephase.next-loop.com/Creator/version4/index.php
If you plan on running anything hmu
Edit: Also, I haven't payed a ton of attention to kickstarters in general, but the fact that they added a bonus to freelancers as a stretch goal seems really cool to me.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Even the designers think the character creation and morph-transfer processes are too complicated and that the skill list is redundant, they're doing do a new edition of their game to fix those problems! If you claim that EP's system is "easy" or "simple", fine, but I'll honestly doubt of your capability to assess a system's complexity.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They did a Fate conversion that's uninspired but alright.
I'm kinda surprised that there hasn't been anything done with the fact that EP and Gumshoe are both Creative Commons yet. Gumshoe seems like a much better system to do the existential mystery stuff in EP, and it would probably handle the transhuman aspects better to boot.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I think this is an unfair comparison. EP's mechanics and how that game is built is done so because of the themes of it's world, one where body and mind are two separate things and body is interchangeable. PbtA is much more loose of a system and even when you go from Apocalypse World to Dungeon World to Monsterhearts and beyond, while the core dice mechanics are the same, each game is completely different in how it operates. With EP as it is, there aren't many reasons one might build a game where you are technically controlling two different things at once, my only thought is Mecha game or Autoracing game, or Star Trek kinda. So it not being used to spawn other games doesn't point to how bad it is, just that the game does what it does and there aren't many reasons to build a game based off it's system because of it's uniqueness.
If complexities the main blocking point the Infinity RPG (coming soon since a year and a bit ago) is a setting on the brink of trans humanism and also pretty simple.