Stop talking about Blades in the Dark, I don't need another super cool game I'll never get to play and I'm trying not to get it... or Genesys... or the Dracula Dossier bundle...
(BitD seems super rad. Keep talking about it)
It's very very good.
I've DM'd about 30? sessions and played in about a dozen, streaming it all on Twitch.
It's very low friction, I definitely have edits I'd make personally, but the book is gorgeous, play is snappy, and it explicitly gives instruction to the DM on how to make sure the characters have a plan without the table stopping to make sure the players have the plan.
It has a system for doing Leverage style flashbacks to ensure the protagonists feel badass and competent (also tells the GM to make sure failures don't feel like the fault of incompetence). Every character has a vice and a bunch of plot hooks, the default setting is super evocative, and you can smoosh it in to your own world easily.
Any more specific questions? I feel like talking about Blades today I guess.
Two people plus GM probably works pretty well, by my estimation. When I was coming up with heists I'd try to split the party every so often for spice. The characters collectively form a gang (which has its own character sheet, XP track, etc).
It's vaguely aligned with PbtA style games in that the GM does stuff in response to player failure/partial success (or inaction), so fewer players don't really demand a rebalancing of combat.
2 players plus GM (3 total) is what I meant, and thanks for the answer. Don't know if I can sell my friends on it but want to try. I may try Dungeon World first to ease them into the playstyle.
2 players plus GM (3 total) is what I meant, and thanks for the answer. Don't know if I can sell my friends on it but want to try. I may try Dungeon World first to ease them into the playstyle.
I find that Blades is closer to traditional roleplaying than PbtA is. Blades has a defined skill list, points to spend on skills and abilities, etc, where PbtA games like Dungeon World lean fully into "moves" and such.
I think Blades would be a better lead-in to Dungeon World than the opposite tbh
Also I've DM'ed 2 players 1 GM in blades and it was fantastic. They unlocked the Ghost achievement by completing the score without ever being caught and it was awesome.
On another system note, is there a difference between collectors edition of the Star Trek Adventures book and the regular one besides the price?
I think it has a different cover and a folded map of the Alpha and Beta quadrants? I don't think you'll be missing any content from getting the regular version.
On another system note, is there a difference between collectors edition of the Star Trek Adventures book and the regular one besides the price?
I think it has a different cover and a folded map of the Alpha and Beta quadrants? I don't think you'll be missing any content from getting the regular version.
Wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any extras like story lines or campaigns. Thanks!
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
The biggest negative about blades in the dark is the book attracts fingerprints like mad. My book already looks kinda gross and I haven't even read through it once yet.
as in "interface with your group like humans and communicate your desires so you don't end up with a pile of shit for a game" sense
Oooh. I thought it meant it got really indepth on like governing vs governed and what that meant in the settings Genesys has. No joke, I like that sort of stuff.
Stop talking about Blades in the Dark, I don't need another super cool game I'll never get to play and I'm trying not to get it... or Genesys... or the Dracula Dossier bundle...
(BitD seems super rad. Keep talking about it)
wait what
what!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
*spends $30*
+2
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Yeah for people who don't know, Dracula Dossier is on the Bundle of Holding. It may be the greatest RPG campaign ever written? It's truly something special. Night's Black Agents was already something special and the Dracula Dossier is some next level high concept stuff.
0
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Yeah for people who don't know, Dracula Dossier is on the Bundle of Holding. It may be the greatest RPG campaign ever written? It's truly something special. Night's Black Agents was already something special and the Dracula Dossier is some next level high concept stuff.
Yeah for people who don't know, Dracula Dossier is on the Bundle of Holding. It may be the greatest RPG campaign ever written? It's truly something special. Night's Black Agents was already something special and the Dracula Dossier is some next level high concept stuff.
What's the down-low for this thing? Dracula Dossier I mean
Yeah for people who don't know, Dracula Dossier is on the Bundle of Holding. It may be the greatest RPG campaign ever written? It's truly something special. Night's Black Agents was already something special and the Dracula Dossier is some next level high concept stuff.
What's the down-low for this thing? Dracula Dossier I mean
Yes, please, someone tell me....whoops I already purchased it. What happened? What did I miss...
Diagnosed with AML on 6/1/12. Read about it: www.effleukemia.com
Yeah for people who don't know, Dracula Dossier is on the Bundle of Holding. It may be the greatest RPG campaign ever written? It's truly something special. Night's Black Agents was already something special and the Dracula Dossier is some next level high concept stuff.
What's the down-low for this thing? Dracula Dossier I mean
Basically it's an annotated version of the original Dracula and then a campaign book. Each annotation has several options in the campaign book. The PCs get the annotated copy and then go to investigate the "truth" behind the original Dracula novel and the British intelligence operation related to it. It's a crazy globetrotting campaign against vampire conspiracy, basically.
It's the same basic concept as another campaign for Trail of Cthulhu called the Armitage Files. That was ten pages of hand-written crazy that the PCs got to read and then they'd follow up on entries. For example, "Special agent Olsen is dead", and then the campaign book has three different potential versions of who that is and what happened. Basically it's highly customizable set of ideas for the GM. It's actually entirely possible to run the same campaign with the same players twice and not have anything more than thematic and structural duplication. I'm gearing up to run Dracula Dossier for a guy who GM'd the Dracula Dossier game I played in, and aside from Dracula, British intelligence, and related stuff, I can run an almost entirely different campaign than he did. He went with supernatural demonic Dracula and I'll go with alien mutant Dracula, etc.
If the game is written as simulationist, saying you can choose not to run it that way is akin to saying that you can play soccer on a baseball field. Sure, you can do that, but you're not using the thing for what it specifically told you it was for, and everyone needs to be on the same page.
"You can just do a different thing" is a pointless statement in this sort of a discussion. Of course I could just do a different thing, I've been doing a different thing for years. Dozens of them, in fact! None of that fixes the default assumptions coded into the 3rd edition rules about how the game was supposed to work, which were explicitly simulationist and constricting for DMs.
Running the game vs running the simulation is a big distinction, because it assumes two very different sets of player-facing duties on the part if the DM. It's the difference between prioritizing the overall experience and prioritizing the proper execution of the rules as presented in the books. 3rd presented a unique conflict in this regard, since there were SO MANY rules about how things in the general environment worked and the we're used to essentially simulate game physics in how they defined the shared play expectations within the game. If you wanted, as a DM to do something that didn't fit into that framework, you either had to find a way to make it fit our handwave it, with the latter option being strongly discouraged via subtext and never really even presented as a reasonable option by the books.
I guess the main point that you I'm trying to get you guys to address is that 3e isn't any MORE simulationist than 2e was. They both were largely monster killing simulators, it's just that 3e was better at it, with more options, better handling of edge cases, and fairer rules. There's not some philosophical difference here like there would be with D&D versus Apocalypse World or something. 2e was just a shitty simulator. That doesn't mean that philosophically it's not a simulator.
All the things you're saying about some big tonal shift in 3e forcing DM's to do some kind of maintenance work instead of running the game however they want, I still can't see any evidence that it exists at all. I still don't even know what you mean by environmental rules and game physics - can you give some examples of what you mean?
You're trying to make it sound like DMing 2e is like being a director of this easygoing narrative movie, and 3e is like performing maintenance work on a boiler, whereas in my experience that's not true at all.
The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, “What have we wrought?” Then I remember that we intended these rules to be tools to help people create their own game material. To demystify the craft of game designer – to look behind the curtain.
...
This is the approach we took in 3rd Edition: basically just laying out the rules without a lot of advice or help. The idea here is that the game just gives the rules, and players figure out the ins and outs for themselves – players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones. …I no longer think this is entirely a good idea.
...
At the very least, we should have called the table “Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Values” rather than “Calculating Magic Item Gold Piece Values.” … Do not – I repeat – do not allow players to look at that table and see what they can make for X amount of gold.
...
The original design intention behind [prestige classes] was to allow DMs to create campaign-specific, exclusive roles and positions as classes. … Too many prestige classes are designed like 2nd Edition kits: player-driven PC-creation tools for character customization. That’s okay sometimes, but it really overlooks the main reason that prestige classes were invented.
Those are just some choice quotes from Monte Cook, not an individual known for public introspection, lamenting the degree to which 3E took control from the DM and put it into provided tables of DCs or directly into the hands of players.
Personal, at the table experience is obviously highly subjective. But part of what they were trying to do with 3E, and they were happy to tell you this publicly.
Looking back on 3E, it seems really clunky and picky. We were trying to make the system more rational than what had come before, and we may have overshot it. 4E did a good job of bringing the game mechanics back to the service of game play.
Note that Tweet isn't really a fan of 4E. He went so far as to publish another game to have something to play that wasn't 4E D&D.
Third edition was a fundamental shift toward treating the game like a simulation of an imagined reality rather than focusing on the adventures being had therein. This in turn had a huge impact on the role of the DM. I'm struggling to see this as a controversial point, to be honest.
I think the main issue is that we seem to be using different definitions of simulationist (a term that is not used in any of the links you posted, that I can see).
To me simulationist is a style of game, one designed around setting up scenarios in the world, and then playing out the world in a way that is reasonable inside of it, with little to no regard for the narrative as a whole, or as to the actions of the player (outside of controlling the character).
I would contrast this to 'cinematic' style games where a primary driver of what happens is not the internal workings of the world, but making a coherent narrative with character arcs, (includes things like the 'rule of cool'), and to 'narrative' style games, where there are specifically rules about rewarding the player for playing the character in a certain way (like 5e and its character traits, or 4e with its action tokens, or anything like that).
In 2e and 3e, there is no concern about driving actions of the player at all, and there is no concern about providing characters with a narrative arc. It is purely about setting up a separate world where each player controls a character, and it is meant to simulate other people going about their lives in some kind of way. It is not a representation of a story (like fiasco/action movie world or things like that).
But, it sounds like you and a lot of other people on here treat it purely as a function of the number of rules, and the number of situations those rules cover. So, more rules = more simulationist, or more situations explicitly covered = more simulationist.
But as I said, to me this doesn't say anything about the philosophical approach to the game. D&D 2e is still a full on simulation to me, it's just a wonkier one, where more of the situations have to be resolved by DM fiat rather than mutually understood rules. And you can have a 'simulationist' game with pretty bare bones rules (ie Lasers and Feelings, a game with only a single stat, but which also has no player incentives or narrative structure - it's simulationist, it's just a super bare bones one. It's still just the characters operating in a world separate from any story structure or players).
I think you might also be referring to the 'rules mastery' issues people have with 3rd edition as some kind of simulationist bent, but I don't think that's related. That seems like a separate issue to me.
At any rate, as I said, the term simulation or simulationist is not used in any of the links or quotes you posted, so I don't see that it's nearly as cut and dried as you're claiming, I think you are just placing your interpretation onto them. I think the definition I'm using is much more accurate and useful.
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I've most often heard the term simulationist to reference an attempt at matching the real world via mechanics as closely as possible, which often involves making a rule/skill for everything, to simulate the effort required to do those things.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I think the main issue is that we seem to be using different definitions of simulationist (a term that is not used in any of the links you posted, that I can see).
To me simulationist is a style of game, one designed around setting up scenarios in the world, and then playing out the world in a way that is reasonable inside of it, with little to no regard for the narrative as a whole, or as to the actions of the player (outside of controlling the character).
I would contrast this to 'cinematic' style games where a primary driver of what happens is not the internal workings of the world, but making a coherent narrative with character arcs, (includes things like the 'rule of cool'), and to 'narrative' style games, where there are specifically rules about rewarding the player for playing the character in a certain way (like 5e and its character traits, or 4e with its action tokens, or anything like that).
In 2e and 3e, there is no concern about driving actions of the player at all, and there is no concern about providing characters with a narrative arc. It is purely about setting up a separate world where each player controls a character, and it is meant to simulate other people going about their lives in some kind of way. It is not a representation of a story (like fiasco/action movie world or things like that).
But, it sounds like you and a lot of other people on here treat it purely as a function of the number of rules, and the number of situations those rules cover. So, more rules = more simulationist, or more situations explicitly covered = more simulationist.
But as I said, to me this doesn't say anything about the philosophical approach to the game. D&D 2e is still a full on simulation to me, it's just a wonkier one, where more of the situations have to be resolved by DM fiat rather than mutually understood rules. And you can have a 'simulationist' game with pretty bare bones rules (ie Lasers and Feelings, a game with only a single stat, but which also has no player incentives or narrative structure - it's simulationist, it's just a super bare bones one. It's still just the characters operating in a world separate from any story structure or players).
I think you might also be referring to the 'rules mastery' issues people have with 3rd edition as some kind of simulationist bent, but I don't think that's related. That seems like a separate issue to me.
At any rate, as I said, the term simulation or simulationist is not used in any of the links or quotes you posted, so I don't see that it's nearly as cut and dried as you're claiming, I think you are just placing your interpretation onto them. I think the definition I'm using is much more accurate and useful.
And I disagree. Both in that 2e never tried to be the thing that 3e tried to be, and that it certainly never succeeded in creating the same type of environment. Your definition is not really terribly useful if you think you can use it to disprove the idea that 3rd Edition D&D was a simulationist game, or prove that 2e was somehow the same degree of such. You are starting at the end and working toward a beginning, and it's not doing you any favors.
Simulationist design is not simply about the number of rules at play, but it does typically require just tons of rules. So very many rules. But the core tenet of simulationism is that it tries to create a believable, consistent space for things to happen in, and that was 100% a stated design goal of 3rd edition. Which it wasn't to anywhere near the same extent in those previous. It's not even about narrative structures, really. It's about a focus on consistency over gameplay concerns. 2e was the posterchild for inconsistency in RPG mechanics, and that's a lot of what 3e was responding to in their mechanical changes.
Edit: To further illustrate, consider 4e. It had essentially zero narrative mechanics at all, but was so aggressively non-simulationist that it was off-putting to people who had 3rd as a baseline.
Posts
best rpg 2017
It's very very good.
I've DM'd about 30? sessions and played in about a dozen, streaming it all on Twitch.
It's very low friction, I definitely have edits I'd make personally, but the book is gorgeous, play is snappy, and it explicitly gives instruction to the DM on how to make sure the characters have a plan without the table stopping to make sure the players have the plan.
It has a system for doing Leverage style flashbacks to ensure the protagonists feel badass and competent (also tells the GM to make sure failures don't feel like the fault of incompetence). Every character has a vice and a bunch of plot hooks, the default setting is super evocative, and you can smoosh it in to your own world easily.
Any more specific questions? I feel like talking about Blades today I guess.
Two people plus GM probably works pretty well, by my estimation. When I was coming up with heists I'd try to split the party every so often for spice. The characters collectively form a gang (which has its own character sheet, XP track, etc).
It's vaguely aligned with PbtA style games in that the GM does stuff in response to player failure/partial success (or inaction), so fewer players don't really demand a rebalancing of combat.
I find that Blades is closer to traditional roleplaying than PbtA is. Blades has a defined skill list, points to spend on skills and abilities, etc, where PbtA games like Dungeon World lean fully into "moves" and such.
I think Blades would be a better lead-in to Dungeon World than the opposite tbh
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any extras like story lines or campaigns. Thanks!
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
this humblebrag
anyone know of any android lore resources i can hit up for knowledge?
There’s the system-agnostic book they released, Worlds of Android: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/the-worlds-of-android/
Other than that, it looks like there is a wikia out there? http://android-universe-fan.wikia.com/wiki/Android_Universe_Wiki
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Like by Rosseau or in an abstract sense?
I would assume more like hobbes
Oooh. I thought it meant it got really indepth on like governing vs governed and what that meant in the settings Genesys has. No joke, I like that sort of stuff.
This is also very good.
Now I want to hear Calvin's thoughts on the matter.
wait what
what!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
*spends $30*
He’d probably just nutter on about witches and savings.
I was thinking this Calvin:
Not this Calvin:
But now I am kinda curious to hear Jean Calvin's thoughts, too. (I suspect you're right on the money.)
ugh fine bye $30
What's the down-low for this thing? Dracula Dossier I mean
Yes, please, someone tell me....whoops I already purchased it. What happened? What did I miss...
Basically it's an annotated version of the original Dracula and then a campaign book. Each annotation has several options in the campaign book. The PCs get the annotated copy and then go to investigate the "truth" behind the original Dracula novel and the British intelligence operation related to it. It's a crazy globetrotting campaign against vampire conspiracy, basically.
It's the same basic concept as another campaign for Trail of Cthulhu called the Armitage Files. That was ten pages of hand-written crazy that the PCs got to read and then they'd follow up on entries. For example, "Special agent Olsen is dead", and then the campaign book has three different potential versions of who that is and what happened. Basically it's highly customizable set of ideas for the GM. It's actually entirely possible to run the same campaign with the same players twice and not have anything more than thematic and structural duplication. I'm gearing up to run Dracula Dossier for a guy who GM'd the Dracula Dossier game I played in, and aside from Dracula, British intelligence, and related stuff, I can run an almost entirely different campaign than he did. He went with supernatural demonic Dracula and I'll go with alien mutant Dracula, etc.
The centerpiece is a full length copy of Dracula with all manner of crazy, cryptic stuff scrawled in the margins.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
That's half the appeal for me, as well.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I think the main issue is that we seem to be using different definitions of simulationist (a term that is not used in any of the links you posted, that I can see).
To me simulationist is a style of game, one designed around setting up scenarios in the world, and then playing out the world in a way that is reasonable inside of it, with little to no regard for the narrative as a whole, or as to the actions of the player (outside of controlling the character).
I would contrast this to 'cinematic' style games where a primary driver of what happens is not the internal workings of the world, but making a coherent narrative with character arcs, (includes things like the 'rule of cool'), and to 'narrative' style games, where there are specifically rules about rewarding the player for playing the character in a certain way (like 5e and its character traits, or 4e with its action tokens, or anything like that).
In 2e and 3e, there is no concern about driving actions of the player at all, and there is no concern about providing characters with a narrative arc. It is purely about setting up a separate world where each player controls a character, and it is meant to simulate other people going about their lives in some kind of way. It is not a representation of a story (like fiasco/action movie world or things like that).
But, it sounds like you and a lot of other people on here treat it purely as a function of the number of rules, and the number of situations those rules cover. So, more rules = more simulationist, or more situations explicitly covered = more simulationist.
But as I said, to me this doesn't say anything about the philosophical approach to the game. D&D 2e is still a full on simulation to me, it's just a wonkier one, where more of the situations have to be resolved by DM fiat rather than mutually understood rules. And you can have a 'simulationist' game with pretty bare bones rules (ie Lasers and Feelings, a game with only a single stat, but which also has no player incentives or narrative structure - it's simulationist, it's just a super bare bones one. It's still just the characters operating in a world separate from any story structure or players).
I think you might also be referring to the 'rules mastery' issues people have with 3rd edition as some kind of simulationist bent, but I don't think that's related. That seems like a separate issue to me.
At any rate, as I said, the term simulation or simulationist is not used in any of the links or quotes you posted, so I don't see that it's nearly as cut and dried as you're claiming, I think you are just placing your interpretation onto them. I think the definition I'm using is much more accurate and useful.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Since apparently this is where we are.
And I disagree. Both in that 2e never tried to be the thing that 3e tried to be, and that it certainly never succeeded in creating the same type of environment. Your definition is not really terribly useful if you think you can use it to disprove the idea that 3rd Edition D&D was a simulationist game, or prove that 2e was somehow the same degree of such. You are starting at the end and working toward a beginning, and it's not doing you any favors.
Simulationist design is not simply about the number of rules at play, but it does typically require just tons of rules. So very many rules. But the core tenet of simulationism is that it tries to create a believable, consistent space for things to happen in, and that was 100% a stated design goal of 3rd edition. Which it wasn't to anywhere near the same extent in those previous. It's not even about narrative structures, really. It's about a focus on consistency over gameplay concerns. 2e was the posterchild for inconsistency in RPG mechanics, and that's a lot of what 3e was responding to in their mechanical changes.
Edit: To further illustrate, consider 4e. It had essentially zero narrative mechanics at all, but was so aggressively non-simulationist that it was off-putting to people who had 3rd as a baseline.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.