So one of my friends is looking to run the star finder default camp. I'd don't want spoilers, but is it a fun run? Is star finder good? I haven't committed to anything yet and I'm wondering if I should consider it.
Personal preferences: 4th ed, because I like rules WELL defined with lots of crunch, but my role play should not be dictated by a book or a rule. I've played pathfinder, and it's fun, but too much bloat for me, it's good if you keep the number of books for the game limited to less that 5.
thanks in advance...
Let me know how this goes man, am looking into starfinder love the space opera fantasy verse idea. ive heard good things about it.
Morskitter wrote "Spikes, choppas, tentacles, magic? Can't hold a candle to Sergeant Pimp here."
So one of my friends is looking to run the star finder default camp. I'd don't want spoilers, but is it a fun run? Is star finder good? I haven't committed to anything yet and I'm wondering if I should consider it.
Personal preferences: 4th ed, because I like rules WELL defined with lots of crunch, but my role play should not be dictated by a book or a rule. I've played pathfinder, and it's fun, but too much bloat for me, it's good if you keep the number of books for the game limited to less that 5.
thanks in advance...
My take on it is it's a reasonable update to the old Star Wars Revised Core Rules. They slapped a reasonably good coat of paint on somebody else's car and did a small amount of aftermarket tuning, but it is a quintessentially Paizo product:
Someone else's work with fresh lipstick and far lower standards.
Looks like the starfinder alien archive comes out in a week or so and that adds a nice bunch of critters for adventures and the critter creation rules they used to make them so it apparently is pretty slick for generating new stuff if your players decide to go fly somewhere totally unexpected.
Also apparently 22 of the aliens listed have the stat block needed to use them for player races. So if people want some fun alien space opera stuff it looks like starfinder should be a good fit.
I GM'd shadowrun and I didn't handwave away systems. It sounds like the problem is a miscommunication between the GM and players as to how big a part the hacking will play, and how big/involved their targets are.
Like I said, you can imagine the same thing about combat - imagine a game which is not based around combat mostly, just socializing and investigation, but one character creates a warrior. And then the warrior has a long involved combat while all of the socialites stand around. This isn't a problem with combat in roleplaying games! It's a problem with the expectations of the party.
If you're a GM and you design a big involved intrusion with multiple ice layers and servers, which is very involved and takes a long time, and you have a party with one single player who goes into cyberspace at all, then the problem is not with the system. It could be with the GM for designing the adventure in a way that puts too much emphasis on a skill only some players have, it could be with the players for choosing an avenue to go down that only one player is skilled with.
This entire argument seems to hinge on there being only one single hacker who is dragging down the whole rest of the non-hacker group, but in games like shadowrun it's entirely possible to have a variety of computer skills spread throughout the party.
You don't need a complicated computer system to hack into for the system to collapse under its own weight.
Let's take the SR4A hacking chapter authors' explanation of the mechanics behind the intro fiction for that chapter. One hacker, one technomancer, one rigger, all trying to control one drone. Pretty simple, right?
No? You picked an example where two pc's and an npc (such as they are in a story) and put them in direct conflict, and if I remember right the two pc's are working at somewhat cross purposes as well, at least going in different directions and trying different approaches. This is a pretty complex scenario, even if the system itself they are working to control is simple. This example doesn't support your point at all.
This to me is a great example of why games like shadowrun need complex hacking systems, is so that sessions like this can exist if the players want to do those kind of things. Like, Star Wars was brought up as an example of a game with a good simple hacking system - that's because hacking is not really an important facet of the star wars universe, I bet most fans would be surprised to learn that hacking even exists in it (at least as we think of it). But in games like shadowrun, computer systems are supposed to represent another parallel reality, one that is as rich and varied inside as the real world is outside. It would make sense that the conflicts inside it would be as rich as those outside.
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If three characters is such a complicated situation that it's fine that it takes forever, I submit the rules don't work. Hell, take one of the characters out of the running, any of them, and run the example again. It's still absurdly long and slow, and leaves all the other players twiddling their thumbs for 45 minutes instead of an hour. And it's over one drone. The example rigger character in the book has seven drones and a van plus a commlink and a bunch of gear that are each plausible hacking targets.
But fine. One hacker, one node, by the rules:
1) Hacker creates a false Access ID by rolling Hacking + Spoof. If the hacker needs a specific Access ID (and for any secure system, you do), the hacker must first get into the node with that ID's icon and roll Analyze + Computer against Firewall + Stealth.
2) Hacker finds the node by rolling Electronic Warfare + Scan against either threshold 4 or as an extended test needing 15 hits.
3) Hacker rolls Hacking + Exploit trying to get Firewall + (account security) hits to get in, node rolls Firewall + Analyze to get hacker's Stealth in hits to set off an alert.
4) Hacker is inside the node and must render it, this is a simple action to count the number of icons (rolling Computer + Analyze against Firewall + Stealth to get a count of stealthed icons), and then a simple action per icon to identify what it is. If the node is a nice friendly public site (that you are not hacking), it will helpfully tell you what each (non-security) icon is. But if you're burrowed deep into a megacorp's system, it's probably not politely informing you which are the icons you care about. And the number could be in the thousands easily.
But while the hacker is rendering the node, the IC on the node is rendering the hacker, rolling Rating + Analyze against Hacking + Stealth. The same applies to the hacker (your persona and all your programs are icons, you don't have to tell the system you're hacking which is which). The IC can call for backup, attack as soon as it renders you, or, ahem, just kick you out. Theoretically this is a process that takes several rounds that you can interrupt (Firewall + System against Exploit extended test), but changing the Access ID will just immediately boot every foreign user off the node.
5) If you have to fight the IC, the rules think you want to do Cyber Combat, which will take a good half hour because it just takes forever for attack programs to defeat targets. If you don't want to spend the time, you spoof a command to the node to unload the IC from memory. Assuming the IC didn't call for help, you're fine (if it did, you're screwed because you don't know what nodes control the agents dogpiling you).
6) When you have finally rendered the target file, you disarm the Data Bomb on it, rolling Hacking + Disarm against Bomb rating X 2. If you fail to get any net hits, you probably crash and the file is probably deleted. Unless you're a technomancer, in which case you get an agent/sprite to do it because taking 30 boxes of stun damage kills you.
7) Then you transfer the file (Computer + Edit).
8) You disconnect and spoof a different access ID.
9) Finally you decrypt the file (which you inevitably succeed at).
No security spider, no layered nodes. So it's literally the net equivalent of a D&D rogue sneaking into a room without triggering an alarm, picking the lock on the treasure chest, and disarming a trap. And this is how complicated it is.
SR5 multiplies the number of icons by a lot and you have to track who has what cell provider.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
I haven't come across many. Like, I guess WoD games might be pretty close and Eclipse Phase but most games seem to hold on to hard classes which I think is limiting. I can see the argument for like DnD where combat balance is important but not a lot of other games.
I mean Shadowrun, which is the one we've been discussing, is classless. It uses a build point system. I used to play Eclipse Phase a bunch, and that's also a build point system. It's too crunchy for me these days but holy cow is that game's setting good, and I loved playing it while I was playing it.
Dread and 10 candles are both classless, but they're both one-shot systems, so maybe they don't count. FATE is classless, or at least, the core is, I don't know about the varied hacks it's got. TechNoir and MechNoir (which are essentially the same game) are both classless and incredible.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
I was going to mention eote but iirc you can't reach into talent trees from other archetypes, right? So it would definitely be classless, but with subclasses you can reach into from the high level classes. Unless I'm totally off-base and don't remember that you can dip into other archetypes.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
I was going to mention eote but iirc you can't reach into talent trees from other archetypes, right? So it would definitely be classless, but with subclasses you can reach into from the high level classes. Unless I'm totally off-base and don't remember that you can dip into other archetypes.
You can buy any skill or talent tree, they just cost more if it's outside your career.
There aren't many generic fantasy classless games because DnD dominates that genre
I've mostly been playing PbtA games and games inspired by them recently, and they all include "playbooks" as classes so aside from my recent TechNoir game I'm very in on classes recently. But man do I love me some PbtA
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
I was going to mention eote but iirc you can't reach into talent trees from other archetypes, right? So it would definitely be classless, but with subclasses you can reach into from the high level classes. Unless I'm totally off-base and don't remember that you can dip into other archetypes.
You can buy any skill or talent tree, they just cost more if it's outside your career.
Yea, it's only like a 10 xp hit too. That's noticeable but by no means paralyzing.
At one point when I rebuilt Kik'tl I gained XP from grabbing a non-Guardian class. (Alright, they were weird and it worked because their focus wasn't really Guardian-y but still.)
PbtA is not for me in the slightest but I think playbooks are different from typical classes probably
Like, in terms of their mechanical purpose
A PbtA playbook is basically:
- Class flavor description
- Class starting stats/equipment/powers/whatever
- Lists of equipment/powers/whatever that the player can acquire during advancement
- Explanation of how advancement works
- Maybe some advice on how to play the class, or other class-specific notes
So really a playbook is just a mini-player's guide for a specific class, containing all the stuff they need during the game, so they don't need to hunt through the communal PHB to figure out how their spell works.
So, I think "playbook" is just used synonymously with "class".
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
Yeah, but I'm not sure if it was our group or what but we seem pretty OP by the time I had to drop out. Like, I feel like Vader would have been no challenge to our group.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
Yeah, but I'm not sure if it was our group or what but we seem pretty OP by the time I had to drop out. Like, I feel like Vader would have been no challenge to our group.
Based on the movies, I don't think Vader is actually all that powerful.
Yeah a PbtA playbook is almost identical to a class actually. If not just straight up the same thing.
The difference is in design rather than development. You can build PbtA playbooks that are effectively classes, but in most PbtA a playbook defines a genre archetype more than just a collection of abilities.
Blades in the Dark is interesting because it pretends to do playbooks like PbtA, but secretly your playbook only determines your equipment options and how you want to earn XP because everything else is shared across all playbooks.
The only real difference between classes and playbooks, I think, comes from the difference between the core paradigms of PbtA and games like D&D/Pathfinder/even WoD:
Classes in the latter games typically say: Here is who you are and how you can interact with the world you exist in (pick a lock; stab a dagger; quick-talk a guard; throw a magic spell at an orc).
PbtA playbooks typically say: Here is who you are and how you can interact with the story you exist in (speak some lore about your people that becomes Truth; say "Hey I happen to know a guy who can get us into the research lab" to produce a contact out of thin air; create a distraction; reach into your backpack to pull out a grappling gun that you "prepared for such an eventuality").
EDIT: They both basically draw a boundary around a set of actions that you can perform, with at least some of those actions being exclusively available to whoever picks the class/playbook (although the PbtA games I've seen typically let you pick one or two powers from other playbooks as you advance).
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
Yeah, but I'm not sure if it was our group or what but we seem pretty OP by the time I had to drop out. Like, I feel like Vader would have been no challenge to our group.
Based on the movies, I don't think Vader is actually all that powerful.
Based on Rogue One, I think Vader doesn't use the full extent of his power often. Like his fight with Luke he held back, and Obi-Wan let Vader kill him.
Yeah a PbtA playbook is almost identical to a class actually. If not just straight up the same thing.
The difference is in design rather than development. You can build PbtA playbooks that are effectively classes, but in most PbtA a playbook defines a genre archetype more than just a collection of abilities.
Blades in the Dark is interesting because it pretends to do playbooks like PbtA, but secretly your playbook only determines your equipment options and how you want to earn XP because everything else is shared across all playbooks.
It also determines your special abilities, since it costs 3x as much to take an ability from another playbook, and that's a pretty big deal!
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Yeah a PbtA playbook is almost identical to a class actually. If not just straight up the same thing.
The difference is in design rather than development. You can build PbtA playbooks that are effectively classes, but in most PbtA a playbook defines a genre archetype more than just a collection of abilities.
Blades in the Dark is interesting because it pretends to do playbooks like PbtA, but secretly your playbook only determines your equipment options and how you want to earn XP because everything else is shared across all playbooks.
It also determines your special abilities, since it costs 3x as much to take an ability from another playbook, and that's a pretty big deal!
newp. Those are three separate choices that each give you one ability.
I dunno that it specifically says that anywhere other than multi-point costs being linked boxes elsewhere on the playbook, but John Harper has confirmed it.
Yeah a PbtA playbook is almost identical to a class actually. If not just straight up the same thing.
The difference is in design rather than development. You can build PbtA playbooks that are effectively classes, but in most PbtA a playbook defines a genre archetype more than just a collection of abilities.
Blades in the Dark is interesting because it pretends to do playbooks like PbtA, but secretly your playbook only determines your equipment options and how you want to earn XP because everything else is shared across all playbooks.
It also determines your special abilities, since it costs 3x as much to take an ability from another playbook, and that's a pretty big deal!
newp. Those are three separate choices that each give you one ability.
I dunno that it specifically says that anywhere other than multi-point costs being linked boxes elsewhere on the playbook, but John Harper has confirmed it.
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
Yeah, but I'm not sure if it was our group or what but we seem pretty OP by the time I had to drop out. Like, I feel like Vader would have been no challenge to our group.
Based on the movies, I don't think Vader is actually all that powerful.
Based on Rogue One, I think Vader doesn't use the full extent of his power often. Like his fight with Luke he held back, and Obi-Wan let Vader kill him.
My understanding is that the Emperor did his best to keep Vader from gaining too much power, in the hopes that it would stop Vader from following your typical Sith advancement path.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Stuff like Rogues and Hackers are why I am tried of classes. I think that the next thing to go in the evolution of RPGs is class-lite or classless RPGs; build your character like you would in Skyrim.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
I mean, you've played EotE. It's not totally classless, but you can take whatever skills you want and dip into whatever other trees you want. They're good.
Yeah, but I'm not sure if it was our group or what but we seem pretty OP by the time I had to drop out. Like, I feel like Vader would have been no challenge to our group.
Depends. If Vader's supposed to be a threat, you treat him as something more an environmental hazard: if you cannot open the door, you will die. There's nowhere else to go; you've backed yourself as far as you can on the pylon, and a seemingly bottomless chasm is below.
If it's dramatically appropriate, sure, you can defeat your nemesis - hopefully revealing certain truths about yourself on the way. Like you're one bad day from being just like your father.
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Personal headcannon is that the Emperor always sent Vader off on missions all over the place was to keep Vader's whiny assvaway from him. Pure happenstance that it kept Vader from learning anything new
Classless system where everything is just a 13th Age druid. You get a certain number of points to spend, and a certain number of trees to choose from, and you spend points to buy the trees themselves.
Which is close to how Legend RPG was set up, and I could certain see a game like Legend being ported into a classless or near-classless system.
So what are the hallmarks of a good classless system? What are the design decisions that set the good classless games apart from the mediocre or bad ones?
So what are the hallmarks of a good classless system? What are the design decisions that set the good classless games apart from the mediocre or bad ones?
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
That was snark but usually the biggest risk of classless systems is massive power-level variation in potential builds because everything is so open. There are a lot of ways to avoid it (step 1 no flaws that give you more character points) but you've gotta pick one.
So what are the hallmarks of a good classless system? What are the design decisions that set the good classless games apart from the mediocre or bad ones?
Design principles that allow all of the options theoretically possible within the system to contribute to how the game is played in some way.
This tends to mean these game engines necessarily have smaller skill lists, less focus on specialization, and a dearth of trap options. If playing a ship's engineer is boring in the game paradigm, it's generally not possible to play one.
So what are the hallmarks of a good classless system? What are the design decisions that set the good classless games apart from the mediocre or bad ones?
Proper scaling.
You shouldn't have to (or be able to) specialize so hard that you're only capable of doing one thing. Which means characters should be forced into situations where they have to use a wide range of skills to reward a more diverse skill set.
Likewise, there should be room for characters to be pretty good at something in the presence of other characters who are very good at it. Like, if one character specializes at hacking, there should be room in the system for another character to have hacking as an off-skill and still be useful.
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Let me know how this goes man, am looking into starfinder love the space opera fantasy verse idea. ive heard good things about it.
Someone else's work with fresh lipstick and far lower standards.
Also apparently 22 of the aliens listed have the stat block needed to use them for player races. So if people want some fun alien space opera stuff it looks like starfinder should be a good fit.
No? You picked an example where two pc's and an npc (such as they are in a story) and put them in direct conflict, and if I remember right the two pc's are working at somewhat cross purposes as well, at least going in different directions and trying different approaches. This is a pretty complex scenario, even if the system itself they are working to control is simple. This example doesn't support your point at all.
This to me is a great example of why games like shadowrun need complex hacking systems, is so that sessions like this can exist if the players want to do those kind of things. Like, Star Wars was brought up as an example of a game with a good simple hacking system - that's because hacking is not really an important facet of the star wars universe, I bet most fans would be surprised to learn that hacking even exists in it (at least as we think of it). But in games like shadowrun, computer systems are supposed to represent another parallel reality, one that is as rich and varied inside as the real world is outside. It would make sense that the conflicts inside it would be as rich as those outside.
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If three characters is such a complicated situation that it's fine that it takes forever, I submit the rules don't work. Hell, take one of the characters out of the running, any of them, and run the example again. It's still absurdly long and slow, and leaves all the other players twiddling their thumbs for 45 minutes instead of an hour. And it's over one drone. The example rigger character in the book has seven drones and a van plus a commlink and a bunch of gear that are each plausible hacking targets.
But fine. One hacker, one node, by the rules:
1) Hacker creates a false Access ID by rolling Hacking + Spoof. If the hacker needs a specific Access ID (and for any secure system, you do), the hacker must first get into the node with that ID's icon and roll Analyze + Computer against Firewall + Stealth.
2) Hacker finds the node by rolling Electronic Warfare + Scan against either threshold 4 or as an extended test needing 15 hits.
3) Hacker rolls Hacking + Exploit trying to get Firewall + (account security) hits to get in, node rolls Firewall + Analyze to get hacker's Stealth in hits to set off an alert.
4) Hacker is inside the node and must render it, this is a simple action to count the number of icons (rolling Computer + Analyze against Firewall + Stealth to get a count of stealthed icons), and then a simple action per icon to identify what it is. If the node is a nice friendly public site (that you are not hacking), it will helpfully tell you what each (non-security) icon is. But if you're burrowed deep into a megacorp's system, it's probably not politely informing you which are the icons you care about. And the number could be in the thousands easily.
But while the hacker is rendering the node, the IC on the node is rendering the hacker, rolling Rating + Analyze against Hacking + Stealth. The same applies to the hacker (your persona and all your programs are icons, you don't have to tell the system you're hacking which is which). The IC can call for backup, attack as soon as it renders you, or, ahem, just kick you out. Theoretically this is a process that takes several rounds that you can interrupt (Firewall + System against Exploit extended test), but changing the Access ID will just immediately boot every foreign user off the node.
5) If you have to fight the IC, the rules think you want to do Cyber Combat, which will take a good half hour because it just takes forever for attack programs to defeat targets. If you don't want to spend the time, you spoof a command to the node to unload the IC from memory. Assuming the IC didn't call for help, you're fine (if it did, you're screwed because you don't know what nodes control the agents dogpiling you).
6) When you have finally rendered the target file, you disarm the Data Bomb on it, rolling Hacking + Disarm against Bomb rating X 2. If you fail to get any net hits, you probably crash and the file is probably deleted. Unless you're a technomancer, in which case you get an agent/sprite to do it because taking 30 boxes of stun damage kills you.
7) Then you transfer the file (Computer + Edit).
8) You disconnect and spoof a different access ID.
9) Finally you decrypt the file (which you inevitably succeed at).
No security spider, no layered nodes. So it's literally the net equivalent of a D&D rogue sneaking into a room without triggering an alarm, picking the lock on the treasure chest, and disarming a trap. And this is how complicated it is.
SR5 multiplies the number of icons by a lot and you have to track who has what cell provider.
Yeah...sure would be nice if someone came up with a classless RPG at some point.
(There are like, tens of dozens of them!)
But are they good?
Classless RPGs are very common and varied
Dread and 10 candles are both classless, but they're both one-shot systems, so maybe they don't count. FATE is classless, or at least, the core is, I don't know about the varied hacks it's got. TechNoir and MechNoir (which are essentially the same game) are both classless and incredible.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
(L5R, Mage, Exalted, Eclipse Phase, ToR, WoD... think that covers it?)
There aren't many generic fantasy classless games because DnD dominates that genre
I was going to mention eote but iirc you can't reach into talent trees from other archetypes, right? So it would definitely be classless, but with subclasses you can reach into from the high level classes. Unless I'm totally off-base and don't remember that you can dip into other archetypes.
Fate.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I've mostly been playing PbtA games and games inspired by them recently, and they all include "playbooks" as classes so aside from my recent TechNoir game I'm very in on classes recently. But man do I love me some PbtA
Like, in terms of their mechanical purpose
Yea, it's only like a 10 xp hit too. That's noticeable but by no means paralyzing.
At one point when I rebuilt Kik'tl I gained XP from grabbing a non-Guardian class. (Alright, they were weird and it worked because their focus wasn't really Guardian-y but still.)
- Class flavor description
- Class starting stats/equipment/powers/whatever
- Lists of equipment/powers/whatever that the player can acquire during advancement
- Explanation of how advancement works
- Maybe some advice on how to play the class, or other class-specific notes
So really a playbook is just a mini-player's guide for a specific class, containing all the stuff they need during the game, so they don't need to hunt through the communal PHB to figure out how their spell works.
So, I think "playbook" is just used synonymously with "class".
Yeah, but I'm not sure if it was our group or what but we seem pretty OP by the time I had to drop out. Like, I feel like Vader would have been no challenge to our group.
Based on the movies, I don't think Vader is actually all that powerful.
The difference is in design rather than development. You can build PbtA playbooks that are effectively classes, but in most PbtA a playbook defines a genre archetype more than just a collection of abilities.
Blades in the Dark is interesting because it pretends to do playbooks like PbtA, but secretly your playbook only determines your equipment options and how you want to earn XP because everything else is shared across all playbooks.
Classes in the latter games typically say: Here is who you are and how you can interact with the world you exist in (pick a lock; stab a dagger; quick-talk a guard; throw a magic spell at an orc).
PbtA playbooks typically say: Here is who you are and how you can interact with the story you exist in (speak some lore about your people that becomes Truth; say "Hey I happen to know a guy who can get us into the research lab" to produce a contact out of thin air; create a distraction; reach into your backpack to pull out a grappling gun that you "prepared for such an eventuality").
EDIT: They both basically draw a boundary around a set of actions that you can perform, with at least some of those actions being exclusively available to whoever picks the class/playbook (although the PbtA games I've seen typically let you pick one or two powers from other playbooks as you advance).
Based on Rogue One, I think Vader doesn't use the full extent of his power often. Like his fight with Luke he held back, and Obi-Wan let Vader kill him.
It also determines your special abilities, since it costs 3x as much to take an ability from another playbook, and that's a pretty big deal!
newp. Those are three separate choices that each give you one ability.
I dunno that it specifically says that anywhere other than multi-point costs being linked boxes elsewhere on the playbook, but John Harper has confirmed it.
I stand corrected!
ova is classless
savage worlds is classless (but has templates)
basic rp (call of Cthulhu)
there are a lot they just aren't the glamorous games being talked about right now
There are class games, and there are classy games. The former are almost never the latter.
My understanding is that the Emperor did his best to keep Vader from gaining too much power, in the hopes that it would stop Vader from following your typical Sith advancement path.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
If it's dramatically appropriate, sure, you can defeat your nemesis - hopefully revealing certain truths about yourself on the way. Like you're one bad day from being just like your father.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Which is close to how Legend RPG was set up, and I could certain see a game like Legend being ported into a classless or near-classless system.
not being fuckin' broken
This tends to mean these game engines necessarily have smaller skill lists, less focus on specialization, and a dearth of trap options. If playing a ship's engineer is boring in the game paradigm, it's generally not possible to play one.
Proper scaling.
You shouldn't have to (or be able to) specialize so hard that you're only capable of doing one thing. Which means characters should be forced into situations where they have to use a wide range of skills to reward a more diverse skill set.
Likewise, there should be room for characters to be pretty good at something in the presence of other characters who are very good at it. Like, if one character specializes at hacking, there should be room in the system for another character to have hacking as an off-skill and still be useful.