About a month ago my weekly game wrapped up it's Pirates and Dungeons campaign. The surviving party members finished the game rich beyond their dreams and we had a pretty dramatic character death in the final fight. Good stuff.
Last night was out second session of ETU, a supernatural game set around college aged characters. Super fun. It's both fun and frustrating to go from playing someone with tons of xp to a brand new one with none.
About a month ago my weekly game wrapped up it's Pirates and Dungeons campaign. The surviving party members finished the game rich beyond their dreams and we had a pretty dramatic character death in the final fight. Good stuff.
Last night was out second session of ETU, a supernatural game set around college aged characters. Super fun. It's both fun and frustrating to go from playing someone with tons of xp to a brand new one with none.
I haven't played ETU yet, but my experience with other games in the Savage Worlds line has been that starting characters are awful and barely get into a place where they have a "thing" that they can do that sets them apart, much less developed quirks and interesting abilities. These days I just refuse to start at anything less than Veteran in a Savage Worlds game
I've done a lot of Savage Worlds. The game we just finished was using Savage Worlds. There is definitely the feel of I don't have everything I want yet. I just finished playing a pirate who could quick draw a fresh flintlock pistol every turn of combat. Now I'm an 18 year old freaking out over a ghost.
ETU makes sense for it to be that way at least. You start out as college freshman with little to no combat/occult skills. But as you get exposed to weirder and weirder stuff that grows. Each raise also represents a passing of time. So the first raise we'll be taking our midterms, the next represents finals for that semester.
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Yeah, that is quite a shift on the power scale. I mean, it's not to say that good play experiences can not be had by playing a less powered character. Being a scared shitless frosh can be fun! But if you're looking to really get into the meat of the system and how it interacts with the setting, then Novice characters are just the worst way to do that
Speaking of alternatives to the big games, are there any campaign-oriented games that handle combat like a fighting game? Sirlin's Yomi is pretty neat in that there is no randomness added to the conflict resolution, but it's not campaign-oriented, and there aren't many options for character building.
Basically, you can choose powers in most games, but then the dice decide if you did it or not. Whereas a game like Yomi (or even Krosmasters) you just resolve things largely based on your decisions.
I'm thinking about the rock-paper-scissors relationships, like the way Virtua Fighter handles attack > throw > block.
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
The Burning Wheel family of games do RPS-style rules for their big conflict mechanics, but they still resolve with dice at some point.
Campaign-oriented makes it a rough ask because campaign-oriented games tend to involve long-term character progression, which doesn't really sync with pure RPS resolution.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
It seems like providing an interesting challenge in that setup would place an enormous burden of system mastery on the GM, who would need to spend their time outguessing five players at once.
It seems like providing an interesting challenge in that setup would place an enormous burden of system mastery on the GM, who would need to spend their time outguessing five players at once.
Fundamentally I think you can't have that interesting of fights in an RPG because it's not a competitive game. It's not even like a video game where you anticipate retrying things. Looking to card games or board games for inspiration can only take you so far.
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
It seems like providing an interesting challenge in that setup would place an enormous burden of system mastery on the GM, who would need to spend their time outguessing five players at once.
Fundamentally I think you can't have that interesting of fights in an RPG because it's not a competitive game. It's not even like a video game where you anticipate retrying things. Looking to card games or board games for inspiration can only take you so far.
I feel like there are lots of RPGs that let you do interesting tactical things in combat, but they can't rely too heavily on information asymmetry and can't be too fussbudgety or the GM ends up doing 3-6 times the amount of calculation every round that the players do. And I feel like generally trying to model blow-by-blow fights seems to produce less satisfying results than modeling the dramatic mechanics of a combat with stuff like action points/karma/daily powers/escalation die etc etc that conspire to hasten a fight to its end.
It seems like providing an interesting challenge in that setup would place an enormous burden of system mastery on the GM, who would need to spend their time outguessing five players at once.
Fundamentally I think you can't have that interesting of fights in an RPG because it's not a competitive game. It's not even like a video game where you anticipate retrying things. Looking to card games or board games for inspiration can only take you so far.
I feel like there are lots of RPGs that let you do interesting tactical things in combat, but they can't rely too heavily on information asymmetry and can't be too fussbudgety or the GM ends up doing 3-6 times the amount of calculation every round that the players do. And I feel like generally trying to model blow-by-blow fights seems to produce less satisfying results than modeling the dramatic mechanics of a combat with stuff like action points/karma/daily powers/escalation die etc etc that conspire to hasten a fight to its end.
Not interesting was probably too harsh, but I think you're still limited. Fundamentally the GM has all the power and none of the stakes. They decide how powerful the bad guys are and the PCs have to win every time. I think games like fate, Marvel Heroic, Apocalypse World, and Blades in the Dark do combat well, but it's not really mechanically interesting in any of them.
The combat is a strange thing. It's either really complex and deep, like 4e or it's simple and is basically on par with other options for handling situations, like how most PbtA games are. I've yet to see any game make the other options just as complex and fun as combat, it's always combat is dumbed down.
Speaking of alternatives to the big games, are there any campaign-oriented games that handle combat like a fighting game?
Can? Yes. Well? Eh.
Played correctly, D6 Star Wars requires you to plan your defense before it happens, turning combat into something of a checkers match. It's also super brutal because blasters really do remove most people from combat with one hit.
Weapons of the Gods is supposed to emulate the great fighting games to some extent. I've heard mixed results from it.
Legend of the Wulin was supposed to fix the problems WotG had, but doesn't really play any more smoothly.
There are a bunch of Fate hacks that try it, but none that I've seen that really nail it.
Then there's Burn Legend, which is literally Street Fighter using Exalted 2e's basic mechanics. It's pretty bad.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
The One Ring has Encounter (social challenges when meeting powerful NPCs) and Journey (travels across wilderness) subsystems that are of roughly the same order of complexity as its combat. Chronicles of Darkness has a whole system for Social Maneuvering (basically wheedling favors out of people over the course of days/weeks instead of a single roll) and lots of games have p detailed Investigation subsystems, often based on or directly using GUMSHOE.
But yeah in general I think combat tends to get a lot of design space devoted to it because it is probably the part of the game most likely to be contentious. Most reasonable people are cool with the GM saying "there's no way you can climb that sheer cliff" but nobody wants the GM to fiat their character dead.
+2
Options
dresdenphileWatch out for snakes!Registered Userregular
Speaking of alternatives to the big games, are there any campaign-oriented games that handle combat like a fighting game?
Not quite the same thing, but I've played in a number of LARPs that used card-based combat, where each move had, e.g., three numbers and a description on it, and you'd line your numbers up against your opponent's to determine the effect of your attack. The stats would be something like Defense - Weapon Value - Attack, where winning the weapon value comparison would grant a bonus to either attack or defense.
So, a Normal Punch might be "0 - 0 - 1" (it's weak and short-ranged but always available), a Haymaker is "-1 - 0 - 3 Can't be used in consecutive turns" (more damage, no defense), a knife is "1-1-1", etc.
Each character would have a separate deck (e.g., a martial artist would not have a Normal Punch card at all; she'd have a Spinning Roundhouse "1-1-2 +1 Weapon value if you used a punch last round") and pieces of equipment came with their move card(s).
Exalted 3rd was explicitly designed with fighting games as a mechanical inspiration and I think it does a decent job at that tbh.
0
Options
StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
Finally did a game of dread last night. I don't feel like there was really any tension and that is mostly just because of the people I play with. It is very hard to get them to not make jokes.
I also feel like I could have done better. I got a little side tracked and was not as focused as I should have been.
The people I play with are also just good at Jenga so I might need to wrap the blocks in sandpaper to add a challenge.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I've only run it once, but I think part of what keeps the tension up is making sure that pulls are being made (or at least, offered to be made) almost constantly.
I'm really liking what I see in the L5R beta rules. Enough that I'm going to try to promote it at a FLGS and start a group. It's been really tough trying to start a new face-to-face group this last year. There's a certain perception that if one were to simply announce that you were willing to GM a game, players would flock to you like sparrows at a county fair. So far this is not the case even in a big college town like Raleigh NC. There's an old coot at my store who's been DM'ing almost as long as I've been alive, so I went to him asking if he had any players waiting in the wings that I could poach. What happened over the next 90 minutes was a metaphorical night at the Golden D&D Coral as fed me plate after plate of indulgent, sometimes patronizing advice with a few juicy kernels of proper self-promotion. He started talking about the importance of setting the expectations of the players when it comes to what kinds of games one runs and especially house rules, which is great advice for young DMs but shit I learned more than 10 years ago. Possibly 10 minutes later he started talking about how his critical fumble house-rule worked and I was close to throttling him. Not really. But as I sat silently fuming I realized that this house rule of his, however poorly designed and punishing to the one class that narratively should be the least likely to fumble, was really important to him: a prized polished turd with a mirror finish. I wondered if my own foibles were any less smelly.
Regardless, I've got some legit questions for the thread. I'll compromise if I need to and play D&D to get a group started, but until I get more desperate I'm going to lead out the door with a L5R Beta. I want to do very episodic adventures for two reasons: I don't want to be beholden to some potentially unreliable rotating cast of players, and I think I just work better thinking up fun mini-scenarios rather than far-reaching campaigns. My dream is to have a bunch of characters; premades I've made, multiple characters that my players make, and keep their individual continuity and overall story continuity but to rotate those characters as needed into and out of sessions. I envision having an adventure that requires say Akodo Jirou and Matsu Ryousuke, one female Scorpion courtier character, and cannot include any shugenja, and potentially having a different player play as Jirou than his original creator. The next time Jirou returns he could be played by somebody else entirely. Samurai period drama is a very lethal place, and L5R embraces the concept. Jirou could meet his end and not while in his original creator's control. In fact, what I'm looking forward to most is creating adventures that pit players' obligations and desires against each other, or even against themselves. I could see a game coming to a particularly stunning and satisfying end as a PC both fulfills his duty and commits sepukku out of desperation. The question for the thread is how do I reward players individually when their characters are temporal? I still mean to give XP, but in this case I think it more appropriate (if potentially time consuming) for a player to spend XP at the start of a session instead of at the end of one. I also feel like there should be some portion of that xp or some other reward that could be permanent or otherwise reusable. What I don't want to happen is for a player to waste a bunch of xp on a character only to have that character killed off, especially by someone else. I certainly don't want players hording their xp for just their favorites either. I also want to further incentivize good roleplay, especially where it results in good period drama, so that players aren't scared of killing off their characters. At the same time I don't want death to be so unthreatening that each play session ends like Macbeth. I'm thinking of letting the player whose character dies a particularly noble or dramatic death make a new 'premium' character (to use the gacha concept) with higher starting stats and also some unique narrative prominence (clan scion for example). That would be appealing to me at least.
Growing up @DaMoonRulz and I had one or two L5R books because they looked cool, but I never knew much about it or how big it used to be. This morning Matt Colville filled me in on what I was missing out on...and now all I want are more legacy games (I have none) but then I remember that RPGs are basically legacy games anyway. I'll settle.
@italianranma That's pretty much what I'm going to be attempting using Zombicide: Black Plague and ICRPG. I have a set 45 characters that will be the cast of my Fantasy Walking Dead, but who plays them and what they do from episode to episode is entirely up to their players, whoever they may be. Once one character dies, they pick a new character to tie into the story.
Fuselage on
+1
Options
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
It's a testament to Matt Colville's charisma that he can take a speech that sounds like it would be given by a socially inept guy at a game store to a table full of people trying desperately to ignore him hard enough that he goes away and make it actually interesting.
The story still sounds fuckin' stupid and L5R's card design and balance was a fuckin' mess throughout the whole process he describes, but it's still a cool video.
Matt Colville gives fantastic GMing advice but is one hundred percent a grognard who will always recommend older games over new ones.
But so am I so I can't fault him.
I always felt like I solidly agreed with pretty much exactly half of what he said (and disagreed somewhat vehemently on the other half) and this is a fantastically concise way of putting it.
Yeah, absolutely, being a grognard does not imply anything other than you prefer old games. There's nothing wrong with that, inherently, and some old games are genuinely fantastic and require less tweaking than modern games to run efficiently.
It's getting weirder with the "Old School Revival" games but honestly it's a whatever. As a grognard I'm required to point out that old school games never went away, they simply stopped selling. Because we already own them.
It's fine to like older games, I still like 3.5 and the whole d20 Modern stuff even though I know how bad it is as a whole. But don't dismiss new games just because they aren't like they used to be. Evolution is good.
Generally speaking my favourite games tend to be somewhat old school in some ways but with years of polish
Like, CofD is quite an old-school design, very 90s, but with huge improvements that make it a very sleek and modern game (although it's most "modern" feature, beats, is probably my least favourite part of the system. I hate beats).
ToR feels like it could, at it's core, be written two decades ago but the version we have now is very modern in other ways
D&D, Traveller, Gamma World, and other games originating in the 1970s.
I've seen it stretched a bit to 1986 to capture GURPS, HarnMaster, MechWarrior (all 1986), which obviously snags things like Middle Earth RP, Star Trek RPG, Palladium Fantasy, and Top Secret (as examples).
The 1990s is distinctly the Silver Age of RPGs (stretching into the mid 2000s with the Golden Age arguably arriving with 2003's D6 Adventure, FATE, HeroQuest, and Savage Worlds but YMMV).
everything in a nonformalized academia is made up tho
0
Options
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I thiiiiink the distinction @Solar is making would commonly* be referred to as "pre-Forge" vs. "post-Forge" where post-Forge represents games with heavy narrative mecahnics.
*where such a concept exists in a fragmented niche like RPGs
Because games that fall into the OSR specifically set out to emulate games made in the 1970s, that's the obvious bounding. As I said, I've seen it stretched to include GURPs and HarnMaster and once MechWarrior. I don't necessarily agree with that but there's at least a reasonable argument to be made. GURPs is sort of the granddaddy of setting-agnostic systems, HarnMaster has deeply influenced tabletop game design, and MechWarrior tied in deeply to the wargame roots of the genre.
Old-school as a phrase and concept existed before the specific 'Old School Revival'. You can have a game that evokes a certain older feel without being specifically made to evoke nostalgia in that way.
Posts
Nice and flexible, point buy etc
Last night was out second session of ETU, a supernatural game set around college aged characters. Super fun. It's both fun and frustrating to go from playing someone with tons of xp to a brand new one with none.
Comics, Games, Booze
I haven't played ETU yet, but my experience with other games in the Savage Worlds line has been that starting characters are awful and barely get into a place where they have a "thing" that they can do that sets them apart, much less developed quirks and interesting abilities. These days I just refuse to start at anything less than Veteran in a Savage Worlds game
ETU makes sense for it to be that way at least. You start out as college freshman with little to no combat/occult skills. But as you get exposed to weirder and weirder stuff that grows. Each raise also represents a passing of time. So the first raise we'll be taking our midterms, the next represents finals for that semester.
Comics, Games, Booze
Basically, you can choose powers in most games, but then the dice decide if you did it or not. Whereas a game like Yomi (or even Krosmasters) you just resolve things largely based on your decisions.
I'm thinking about the rock-paper-scissors relationships, like the way Virtua Fighter handles attack > throw > block.
Campaign-oriented makes it a rough ask because campaign-oriented games tend to involve long-term character progression, which doesn't really sync with pure RPS resolution.
Fundamentally I think you can't have that interesting of fights in an RPG because it's not a competitive game. It's not even like a video game where you anticipate retrying things. Looking to card games or board games for inspiration can only take you so far.
I feel like there are lots of RPGs that let you do interesting tactical things in combat, but they can't rely too heavily on information asymmetry and can't be too fussbudgety or the GM ends up doing 3-6 times the amount of calculation every round that the players do. And I feel like generally trying to model blow-by-blow fights seems to produce less satisfying results than modeling the dramatic mechanics of a combat with stuff like action points/karma/daily powers/escalation die etc etc that conspire to hasten a fight to its end.
Not interesting was probably too harsh, but I think you're still limited. Fundamentally the GM has all the power and none of the stakes. They decide how powerful the bad guys are and the PCs have to win every time. I think games like fate, Marvel Heroic, Apocalypse World, and Blades in the Dark do combat well, but it's not really mechanically interesting in any of them.
Played correctly, D6 Star Wars requires you to plan your defense before it happens, turning combat into something of a checkers match. It's also super brutal because blasters really do remove most people from combat with one hit.
Weapons of the Gods is supposed to emulate the great fighting games to some extent. I've heard mixed results from it.
Legend of the Wulin was supposed to fix the problems WotG had, but doesn't really play any more smoothly.
There are a bunch of Fate hacks that try it, but none that I've seen that really nail it.
Then there's Burn Legend, which is literally Street Fighter using Exalted 2e's basic mechanics. It's pretty bad.
But yeah in general I think combat tends to get a lot of design space devoted to it because it is probably the part of the game most likely to be contentious. Most reasonable people are cool with the GM saying "there's no way you can climb that sheer cliff" but nobody wants the GM to fiat their character dead.
Howza 'bout Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game? :P
I remember that game being stupid amounts of fun.
Comics, Games, Booze
Not quite the same thing, but I've played in a number of LARPs that used card-based combat, where each move had, e.g., three numbers and a description on it, and you'd line your numbers up against your opponent's to determine the effect of your attack. The stats would be something like Defense - Weapon Value - Attack, where winning the weapon value comparison would grant a bonus to either attack or defense.
So, a Normal Punch might be "0 - 0 - 1" (it's weak and short-ranged but always available), a Haymaker is "-1 - 0 - 3 Can't be used in consecutive turns" (more damage, no defense), a knife is "1-1-1", etc.
Each character would have a separate deck (e.g., a martial artist would not have a Normal Punch card at all; she'd have a Spinning Roundhouse "1-1-2 +1 Weapon value if you used a punch last round") and pieces of equipment came with their move card(s).
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I also feel like I could have done better. I got a little side tracked and was not as focused as I should have been.
The people I play with are also just good at Jenga so I might need to wrap the blocks in sandpaper to add a challenge.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Regardless, I've got some legit questions for the thread. I'll compromise if I need to and play D&D to get a group started, but until I get more desperate I'm going to lead out the door with a L5R Beta. I want to do very episodic adventures for two reasons: I don't want to be beholden to some potentially unreliable rotating cast of players, and I think I just work better thinking up fun mini-scenarios rather than far-reaching campaigns. My dream is to have a bunch of characters; premades I've made, multiple characters that my players make, and keep their individual continuity and overall story continuity but to rotate those characters as needed into and out of sessions. I envision having an adventure that requires say Akodo Jirou and Matsu Ryousuke, one female Scorpion courtier character, and cannot include any shugenja, and potentially having a different player play as Jirou than his original creator. The next time Jirou returns he could be played by somebody else entirely. Samurai period drama is a very lethal place, and L5R embraces the concept. Jirou could meet his end and not while in his original creator's control. In fact, what I'm looking forward to most is creating adventures that pit players' obligations and desires against each other, or even against themselves. I could see a game coming to a particularly stunning and satisfying end as a PC both fulfills his duty and commits sepukku out of desperation. The question for the thread is how do I reward players individually when their characters are temporal? I still mean to give XP, but in this case I think it more appropriate (if potentially time consuming) for a player to spend XP at the start of a session instead of at the end of one. I also feel like there should be some portion of that xp or some other reward that could be permanent or otherwise reusable. What I don't want to happen is for a player to waste a bunch of xp on a character only to have that character killed off, especially by someone else. I certainly don't want players hording their xp for just their favorites either. I also want to further incentivize good roleplay, especially where it results in good period drama, so that players aren't scared of killing off their characters. At the same time I don't want death to be so unthreatening that each play session ends like Macbeth. I'm thinking of letting the player whose character dies a particularly noble or dramatic death make a new 'premium' character (to use the gacha concept) with higher starting stats and also some unique narrative prominence (clan scion for example). That would be appealing to me at least.
It's 47 minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9jxVbg_RWQ&t=
@italianranma That's pretty much what I'm going to be attempting using Zombicide: Black Plague and ICRPG. I have a set 45 characters that will be the cast of my Fantasy Walking Dead, but who plays them and what they do from episode to episode is entirely up to their players, whoever they may be. Once one character dies, they pick a new character to tie into the story.
The story still sounds fuckin' stupid and L5R's card design and balance was a fuckin' mess throughout the whole process he describes, but it's still a cool video.
But so am I so I can't fault him.
He also doesn't fuckin' suck.
I always felt like I solidly agreed with pretty much exactly half of what he said (and disagreed somewhat vehemently on the other half) and this is a fantastically concise way of putting it.
It's getting weirder with the "Old School Revival" games but honestly it's a whatever. As a grognard I'm required to point out that old school games never went away, they simply stopped selling. Because we already own them.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Like, CofD is quite an old-school design, very 90s, but with huge improvements that make it a very sleek and modern game (although it's most "modern" feature, beats, is probably my least favourite part of the system. I hate beats).
ToR feels like it could, at it's core, be written two decades ago but the version we have now is very modern in other ways
For me, it counts
D&D, Traveller, Gamma World, and other games originating in the 1970s.
I've seen it stretched a bit to 1986 to capture GURPS, HarnMaster, MechWarrior (all 1986), which obviously snags things like Middle Earth RP, Star Trek RPG, Palladium Fantasy, and Top Secret (as examples).
The 1990s is distinctly the Silver Age of RPGs (stretching into the mid 2000s with the Golden Age arguably arriving with 2003's D6 Adventure, FATE, HeroQuest, and Savage Worlds but YMMV).
*where such a concept exists in a fragmented niche like RPGs
Because games that fall into the OSR specifically set out to emulate games made in the 1970s, that's the obvious bounding. As I said, I've seen it stretched to include GURPs and HarnMaster and once MechWarrior. I don't necessarily agree with that but there's at least a reasonable argument to be made. GURPs is sort of the granddaddy of setting-agnostic systems, HarnMaster has deeply influenced tabletop game design, and MechWarrior tied in deeply to the wargame roots of the genre.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981