I'm right there with you, @Kadoken. Best thing to do is let someone else take the reigns and play yourself, or dare I say it, take a hiatus. Aside from that, I've found just having people jump in through the windows with guns tends to help me when I get bored. Vehicles help too, as having to solve things before the plane ends, the car runs out of gas, or the train runs out of track is great at both limiting scope and focusing attention.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited October 2018
I told my guys we’re on hiatus. With graduate school stuff’s too busy for more than the two scheduled RPGs I’m in.
I’m not really disappointing anybody since we as the same group with a different GM are just playing DnD another day.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited November 2018
had rant. good now
I got motifs for the big antagonist group leaders after trying to figure out one of them
Oniboshi (thanks for the name again guys) - Traitor librarian from a dead samurai themed space marine chapter he helped kill; he's a menacing manipulative sorceror who controls a Tzeentch faction w/in the big bad group. Sonaiyo - Jeff Van Dyke (Shogun 2). A slow ominous song with what sounds like ladies wailing the eponymous word. His opposite is the last samurai marine from that chapter who has his own theme, Ona Hei - Jeff Van Dyke (Shogun 2). Lots of taiko drums and rising mood.
The Rainmaker, real name Erioch Karpath, a southern gentleman confederate general type who is big into the social Darwinism (and the regular Darwinism). Commands the military traitors, mercenaries, and Khornate cultists of the bad group (The Tarot) but considers himself between Tzeentch and Khorne because he like the scheniving (scheming+canniving) but also is bloodthirsty (and I still want to use psykers with him). He has Rules of Nature - James Christofferson. He was the tricky one. There might be a better song. He did start out as a Revolver Ocelot ripoff, so a Metal Gear song sounds appropriate. (FE: though he was originally named after the Iron Maiden song) (FE2: I guess Raining Blood would work, but the wicked (awesome) and intense sound makes me want to save it for Khorne daemons to emphasize that shit is real bad now. FE: Fuck it, he's Raining Blood too. His name is Rainmaker because he literally did a rainmaker dance and rained the blood of human tribe's children on them from valkyries to get them to leave a promethium rich area on a planet for a rogue trader to set up in. So "Raining Blood" is also literal. His pet not-Guts-in-Berzerker-Armour has Devil Trigger (V Mills cover) as his little theme song. Also because his thing is that he's in a permanent devil trigger caused by the cursed armour and sword he uses that are possessed by daemons that basically take him over but leave his body intact so that they don't have to deal with that warp instability business. Those daemons have basically been broken to Rainmaker's will by Oniboshi bonding their control to an artifact Rainmaker uses.
Lascivious, a Slaaneshi Noise Marine sorcerer who is also called the Glam Sorcerer or the Sonic Sorcerer that wields a classic Rogue Trader style blastmaster (a guitar that shoots concussive sound waves) which he doubles as a psyfocus. He is mostly what you would expect, but rather than the burnt out husks of other Slaaneshi marine bodies, he vainly keeps his looking beautiful. Controls the Slaaneshi cultists of the Tarot. He's not super complicated. He's a sense freak with grand plans to increase sense freakiness in the galaxy in his devotion to Slaanesh and he loves it. He gets Like an Animal (Fuck like a beast) - WASP. Self explanatory. FE: also possibly Comin At You Live by Tesla.
FE: The entire Don Giovanni opera when he isn’t playing his 1E blastmaster. Add some class with the proto-pick-up artist opera.
I've been thinking a lot about increasing the pacing of my game, due to a 3-session derailment that I'd thought would only take one. I think there's a tradition of leaving every option open to the players, for fear of reducing their agency, but I don't think that actually a big problem. Maybe it's just my group, who don't really have any past tabletop RPG experience, but they don't seem to mind when I skip a bunch of time after they've made their decision, taking a more directorial role.
For example, they just finished a fight and needed a long rest. This fight was to rescue some trapped militia so they could get back to the nearby city and drive off some pirates. Instead of resuming at the long rest, I did a short narration of that and then dropped them right in the middle of the battle happening the next day, chasing after the last remaining pirate captain.
This next time, they've decided to head for a particular sidequest they received, which involves a lot of travel. Could I have them spend a bunch of time on the boat, then landing at a port, securing passage to where they're going, getting there, and visiting the address of who they're looking for? Yes, I could, but instead I'm just going to drop them in at the end, talking to the person who will give them the leads they need to choose how they want to investigate.
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oxybeEntei is appaled and disappointed in youRegistered Userregular
Sept/Oct has not been kind to my gaming group. we've basically lost 3 members: 1 decided to focus on their studies so likely won't be coming down anytime soon (entirely understandable as I did the same thing in college), 1 is focusing more on his work with the military (again, very understandable) and the third moved out of province to help his GF's family as complicated stuff is going on (they might move back here come spring, but "it's complicated" sums up a bit of the situation). We went from "7ish players" to "two are missing, guess we can't run tonight" almost overnight.
I am a bit excited at the prospect of a more manageable group size. We largely just discussed stuff as a group instead of playing last week and one of the consensus was that the prospects of potentially going on a tangent in our campaigns is something we look forward to, as with the larger group we had to make a very concerned effort to not stray from the path, otherwise absolutely nothing would ever get done.
you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited October 2018
Technical difficulties over discord almost ruined the first DH Session. Besides the voices roboting the fuck out and making listening to everyone sound like the equivalent of a heavily redacted document with every other word blocked and open to interpretation, we got a lot done.
The way the session started out seemed needlessly complex. My inquisitor just set up the players handler in a bar in plain sight and that worked.i
FE: That’s not a slight at the Gm that’s just how the published module be.
Also took notes for the first time like I’m a regular Cole Phelps (appropriate with the la noire music in the background). Can’t wait to yell at women and children then back down with a meek “my bad”.
This sounds sarcastic but I actually really liked it.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Yay, my LGS got in the L5R core book and GM screen and dice!
MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
edited October 2018
In sad news, Greg Stafford—founder of Chaosium, creator of Glorantha, Pendragon, and a ton of other awesome ahead of their time RPGs—passed away yesterday. The Great Pendragon Campaign is still on my campaign bucket list.
Edit: ...and now I see there is already a separate thread. I shall now go commit seppuku.
I'm not great at roll20 despite numerous attempts at it, so I normally do theater of mind stuff over discord with a dice bot. We're trying for 6pm EST.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited October 2018
Ok DH might have turned into Escape from New York.
The gangers killed the enforcers, are the enforcers, they know who we are, and on top of that someone making big mess of cybernetic modifications to bodies and is trying to kill us. Lansrick being a feudal simpleton didn't know that hand-vox casters can't go very far, and I'mma assume by the shitness of the place we're in does not have phone booths. So we have no backup, and one of our guys is already wounded. The next train out doesn't come until noon. It is midnight. I have a shield.
One of my many ideas for 40k is Escape From New York IN SPAAAACE
Also The Warriors IN SPAAAACE
Starting at one end of a space ship and trying to get to the bridge seems like an excellent way to introduce players to the grim nature of the universe, basic mechanics as it’s essentially a tightly-controlled dungeon crawl with no need to worry about Acquisition or space combat, and the sheer scale of the Void-faring vessels
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Oh man we got back to our Genesys game tonight after a 6 week hiatus. God i love the system. I need to learn how to better create combats.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited October 2018
GM hiatus done for a sec.
I feel the Emperor’s favor return!
Also figured out what to do about setting the players on the right track from before. There is an inquisitor they’ve met before who likes to deal with his missions personally unlike their own inquisitor who is more into giant webs of secretive intrigue with multiple overseen cells in the sector. He has a vested interest in the source of the illegal weapons they’re after. So he can supply the ride to the hidden space base. Which also gets around the fact that the person who runs the place knows their faces from an earlier adventure she is quite sore about and would have seen them and carted them off to be interrogated and tortured if they went the way I originally was planning. They just got to put a tracker on one of the ships the smugglers are using. They are planning to ambush the guy who regularly gets transported to the base and who started the trade between gangers getting xenos weapons from Dark Eldar. The Dark Eldar act as mediators who want to encourage a proxy war between the gangers and a split faction supplied by the Chaotic main bad guy group for fucking the Dark Eldar over earlier in the last campaign. A kroot kindred tribe called k'wes that supplies the Dark Eldar slaves has been bringing in pulse weaponry in exchange for good eats for genetic material (as they do). So the players can put it on the smuggler if they can force him to go back the way he usually does, find another smuggler doing the same deal and follow them, or act as a smuggler and have the tracker on themselves as they are taken away by the Dark Eldar. I have it that usually the smugglers making deals are told to go to a place, drink something that knocks them out, then are carried away to be woken up once they're on the base. If th other inquisitor is directly helping, he might be able to force the Dark Eldar to take them to the base, or have his squat (I brought them back in limited capacity) engineer acolyte make a tech dookickey to read where the ships they've been using have been going in the past.
After the players do their ambush thing, that other inquisitor comes in and basically encourages those options and supplies his own ship and resources to follow the Dark Eldar back to their base. He has a thing to do on the base and the players either need to take out the kroot or convince them to go away to stop the source of pulse weaponry flowing through the gangs on the planet they're on. Maybe even by trading the DE who would definitely betray them at one point for the other inqusitor who is by no means Xenos Hybris but is radical and could use mercenaries.
Edit: or their overseer that works for their inquisitor could do it, could just do it.
Edit 2: they got the guy, had a perfect ambush, interrogated him, placed a tracker on him, and got a deal to make the mafia-types stop sending hitmen after them; which is good especially when they showed one of the crime bosses their hideout while picking something up for his interrogation. In return, since they now know the source of the guns and a way to get to them, they’ve promised to leave him and that boss they let go alone since the guy those guys are fighting is worse than them. I don’t think the players will uphold the bargain once they’re done with the tribe.
Edit 3: So I don't trust these fellas to follow Dark Eldar stealth flying through an asteroid field. None of them have navigate or operate stellar. I think I am going to have that radical inquisitor and his retinue pop up on the ship the two groups were given from the last campaign to just kind of do it for them so they can get into the meat of the endgame.
About 3 months ago I shut down my ongoing D&D 5E game. I just wasn’t super into it for some reason and was starting to resent the time it was taking out of my weekend. With the release of Legend of the Five Rings RPG I’m starting to get the bug again. As I'm getting through the rulebook, and it is dense with mechanics and style, I'm also consuming some of the choice entries in the further research/inspiration sidebar. Notably I've got a bunch of chanbara films of the 50s and 60s, and I'm going to pick up a nonfiction books starting with Everyday Life in Traditional Japan by Dunn and Broderick and Samurai: The World of the Warrior by Turnbull. I'm also looking on the FFG's forum and r/rokugan for good tidbits of info, and I found a podcast to listen to called Shadows of the Cabal. They recently did an interview with one of the developers Katrina Ostrander which is super insightful. I think I'm at least a month out from organizing a campaign, but I'm a little suspicious that it'll be tough to find a group of like-minded people in a town were even getting a bog standard game of D&D 5E was a chore. Not to mention that you can't play L5R with a D&D mindset, so finding a bunch of people who want to play a game were the main enjoyment comes from internal and interpersonal character conflicts already seems daunting. I think I might turn to searching for an online game, so hopefully by the time that happens there will be a good dice roller app for the proprietary dice in roll 20 or discord.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited October 2018
I like the idea of L5R and would love to get roleplay heavy with it but I feel sketchy about the very strict ways you are supposed to act in that game if you are a samurai. After Storm King’s Thunder I’m not super into upholding caste systems.
Edit: Something that would be fun for DH but also anything with an indepth fear system: translating Pennywise into an NPC who gets higher stats and more abilities depending on how bad one fails a fear test, but his profile is based on individuals’ test. High DoF means incoporeality, ability to form hallucinations, or transform a whole area. Perhaps to the point of being mind controlled or influenced.
like that one guy during the Adult chapters of the book and the nu-movie.
spoilers just in case.
Low DoF would mean basic increases in stats and skills. Like a flat +5 to everything per DoF.
Success in a fear test means facing the Pennywise-like demon, ghost, monster, etc. at its base stats. High DoS lowers stats and generally weakens not-It. Obviously a Pennywise-like would not try to go for a standard combat. Until one overcame their fear it would mainly be an enemy to evade. Also while the book keeping would be annoying, it would be an interesting dynamic for the profile to change based on what individual they’re dealing with.
Key to this would be leveraging insanity to make the npc scary to players. Pennywise in the book scares kids because apparently they taste better when they’re terrified. Raising insanity should be used as the goal of the It-like npc to where players don’t want to confront the It-like. Maybe by increasing RAW values of how much insanity one gains (or sanity one loses) depending on how bad the test is. Like a failed fear test in DH2E gives insanity along with shock effects if you fail by 3DoF. So a Fear (3) npc will give you 3 insanity. Maybe something as simple as every DoF after 3 gives another insantiy point.
Main reason to treat insanity gain this way is that insanity and corruption in DH is more of a bad side effect of encountering daemons and warp phenomena rather than something purposefully inflicted on you like attacks in Darkest Dungeon. There’s not really any npc that purposefully inflicts insanity one you. Technically talking to cult leaders and daemons can cause you to gain corruption but that’s not quite the same thing. Though the problem with trying something like this is that upper levels of insanity in DH actually gives resistance to fear, but that’s based on the trait of fear of an npc rather than say hallucinatory stuff that Pennywise could do which might fall under warp phenomena where there’s not much resistance to that. Like a portal to the warp will always cause a fear test.
Fake Edit 2: that would probably be perfect for that one game where you’re college students fighting paranormal stuff.
Well I finished my read through of the rules and I do have a major compliant. The GM section is probably one of the best I've seen breaking down different kinds of scenes to set up for players, how to manage the timing and conflicts, and just generally what to value for different player types. It doesn't get into Robin's Laws like D&D 4E did, but it gets pretty darn close. It defines the social contract for L5R specifically, and it directly tells the GM and players that while role playing their characters must value things like their honor, status, and glory stats and by extension the tenets of bushido as defined by their clans. It even gives a set of rules for procedural generating of character conflicts. But, and I think this is pretty significant, it doesn't set up the story at all. Sure it gives some basic backgrounds on the clans and outlines the general social structure of the world, but it doesn't have any sort of narrative to accompany it. I mean, I've read through the FFG's previews (and a single side-bar in the rulebook itself) that there's a border dispute between the Lion and Crane clans, but that's about it as far as story seeds. And I get that samurai drama is usually about small internal and interpersonal conflicts, but what's the greater backdrop to contrast these against? I think the plan for the setting is to continually release fiction as influenced by the player results at tournaments, in keeping with previous editions of L5R. It's not a terrible idea, but I still feel cheated as a GM by not being given some basic story beats to plan around.
I like the idea of L5R and would love to get roleplay heavy with it but I feel sketchy about the very strict ways you are supposed to act in that game if you are a samurai. After Storm King’s Thunder I’m not super into upholding caste systems.
Yeah, I feel ya. That is one of the big differences in this game and a traditional western RPG: the (typical) heroes here are charged to maintain social order. Moreover the caste system isn't just a human justification, it's literally a divine mandate in a setting where people can communicate directly with the divine. That doesn't mean it's right; maybe the Kami want to simply keep their hegemony intact and created the pyramid scheme so that the samurai caste would maintain this order for them. It's possible to run an L5R game that doesn't uphold the social order; a wandering group of Kurosawa-esque ronin doing unappreciated good, or a Legend of Korra spirited away adventure mediating between angry spirits, or even a survival horror outing in the Crab lands could duck around that issue. But to be honest it's not something that bothers me particularly, and I think the strict social etiquette is one of the selling points of the setting. And if not that the resolution mechanic and specialized dice are my favorite of any RPG seen to date.
L5R can be done without the heavy emphasis on societal norms and rules and codes and all that if you were run, say, a ronin based game (it might still come up in towns and cities, but ronin aren't going to the Winter Court, for example) or a Shadowlands game where combat and survival are infinitely more important than minding your manners.
However, if you can get into it, it can be very enjoyable trying to navigate the intrigue of the various Clan courts. When what you say and how you say it carries real weight, social skills become a weapon your samurai can potentially wield. Out maneuvering an opposing courtier with your wits and securing an advantageous position for negotiations is very satisfying.
Even if a player isn't too into social interaction, there's still a place for bushi in the courts, both as bodyguards and duelists. In Rokugan, inevitably someone will say or do something that will result in a duel and the matter will be settled with swords.
But I will admit my own bias in this regard. I'm usually a Kakita bushi player, so getting into duels is my thing.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Well I finished my read through of the rules and I do have a major compliant. The GM section is probably one of the best I've seen breaking down different kinds of scenes to set up for players, how to manage the timing and conflicts, and just generally what to value for different player types. It doesn't get into Robin's Laws like D&D 4E did, but it gets pretty darn close. It defines the social contract for L5R specifically, and it directly tells the GM and players that while role playing their characters must value things like their honor, status, and glory stats and by extension the tenets of bushido as defined by their clans. It even gives a set of rules for procedural generating of character conflicts. But, and I think this is pretty significant, it doesn't set up the story at all. Sure it gives some basic backgrounds on the clans and outlines the general social structure of the world, but it doesn't have any sort of narrative to accompany it. I mean, I've read through the FFG's previews (and a single side-bar in the rulebook itself) that there's a border dispute between the Lion and Crane clans, but that's about it as far as story seeds. And I get that samurai drama is usually about small internal and interpersonal conflicts, but what's the greater backdrop to contrast these against? I think the plan for the setting is to continually release fiction as influenced by the player results at tournaments, in keeping with previous editions of L5R. It's not a terrible idea, but I still feel cheated as a GM by not being given some basic story beats to plan around.
I like the idea of L5R and would love to get roleplay heavy with it but I feel sketchy about the very strict ways you are supposed to act in that game if you are a samurai. After Storm King’s Thunder I’m not super into upholding caste systems.
Yeah, I feel ya. That is one of the big differences in this game and a traditional western RPG: the (typical) heroes here are charged to maintain social order. Moreover the caste system isn't just a human justification, it's literally a divine mandate in a setting where people can communicate directly with the divine. That doesn't mean it's right; maybe the Kami want to simply keep their hegemony intact and created the pyramid scheme so that the samurai caste would maintain this order for them. It's possible to run an L5R game that doesn't uphold the social order; a wandering group of Kurosawa-esque ronin doing unappreciated good, or a Legend of Korra spirited away adventure mediating between angry spirits, or even a survival horror outing in the Crab lands could duck around that issue. But to be honest it's not something that bothers me particularly, and I think the strict social etiquette is one of the selling points of the setting. And if not that the resolution mechanic and specialized dice are my favorite of any RPG seen to date.
They likely wrote the book to cover a large swath of L5R's potential settings. There's a lot of stuff out there already on the new setting, but I think what you are looking for is the Emerald Empire Sourcebook.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I am on hiatus. It suck.
How do effective horror in tabletop? I want to do a spooky asylum story but don't know how to do it properly. Also jump scares aren't really a thing (and I don't like them).
Also was it a dick move that when I was using a character that only one of the players could see, I kept gas lighting the other players when they kept asking "Is that character there?" and I kept answering "What are you talking about?" because I had his portrait up on the Roll20 map but technically only one person could see him?
How do effective horror in tabletop? I want to do a spooky asylum story but don't know how to do it properly. Also jump scares aren't really a thing (and I don't like them).
Also was it a dick move that when I was using a character that only one of the players could see, I kept gas lighting the other players when they kept asking "Is that character there?" and I kept answering "What are you talking about?" because I had his portrait up on the Roll20 map but technically only one person could see him?
Mechanical reinforcement of the kind of horror you want. Unknown Armies is probably my go to example because it's a game about fracturing psyche's and the terrifying power and fragility of human kind. So it's mechanics are about how shifting mental states effect performance and how the pillars of our identity provide rocks against that uncertain tide.
Also for the latter bit I feel like that would be a player group thing and about establishing expectations before a game. EG, in Infinity players are spies with ocassionally opposing interests in their side objectives. So I've let players lie about what a roll is for (while telling me in a side channel) and foil/harm another player's agenda but all the players knew that was possible going in and where the line was (I was completely uninterested in PVP).
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
How do effective horror in tabletop? I want to do a spooky asylum story but don't know how to do it properly. Also jump scares aren't really a thing (and I don't like them).
Also was it a dick move that when I was using a character that only one of the players could see, I kept gas lighting the other players when they kept asking "Is that character there?" and I kept answering "What are you talking about?" because I had his portrait up on the Roll20 map but technically only one person could see him?
I approve totally, but depending on how much it annoys people you might want to make the possibility of stuff like that clear up front.
If you're playing in-person, stuff like dimming the lights helps!
We tried to gaslight one of our players in a Lovecraft-based game by retconning the adventure to include a brother of his character, who we then claimed died during a boss battle. He came home to discover that his parents essentially disowned him for "dragging the poor impressionable boy into your globe-trotting foolishness," and we edited all the session after-action reports to include the brother up to his "death." The other players were encouraged to come up with "Don't you remember when he did X?" anecdotes about the character who never existed.
Bursar on
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We tried to gaslight one of our players in a Lovecraft-based game by retconning the adventure to include a brother of his character, who we then claimed died during a boss battle. He came home to discover that his parents essentially disowned him for "dragging the poor impressionable boy into your globe-trotting foolishness," and we edited all the session after-action reports to include the brother up to his "death." The other players were encouraged to come up with "Don't you remember when he did X?" anecdotes about the character who never existed.
#tooreal
+1 on mechanical reinforcement. I think most Lovecraftian settings have that built in to their game, but in D&D for instance a classic Rust Monster can be particularly terrifying for a mid-level party enamored with their few magic items. The important thing for horror though is that it needs to be well telegraphed. Dead Space is my favorite survival horror game simply because of how it presents the horror. Doing things like making the horrible thing (a powerful enemy) plainly visible but also inescapable; for example Dead Space has a sequence where you board a gondola to the other side of a spaceship that is shrouded in mist. During the gondola ride the music ramps up and eventually the destination slowly coalesces into view and it is occupied. First by one or two horrors, then more and more join it until you, the player, realize that you must start shooting now and never stop shooting because there are far more of those horrors waiting for you on the other side than you have ever encountered before. And even as you start shooting more of these things just pour out of every crawlspace and cranny as this malevolent gondola inexorably drags you closer and closer to your death. It's an amazing sequence.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I think I'll go the Steven King The Shining/It route and just make the abandoned asylum try to make them go insane with visions and hallucinations in an attempt to separate them from each other and an important NPC for the adventure that the force inhabiting the asylum wants. They could use some insanity, I've been going soft on them. Also they can't shoot that, so doubly goode.
On the other hand there are some things I do every game to remain consistent. For example I've got a checklist on a sticky note on my GM screen of how to describe new scenes in the same deliberate order (noises, light sources, movement (large to small), obstacles (high to low), exits (far to near), and smells (pleasant to unpleasant)). I always roll a die when my players ask me a question when they have reason to doubt the answer I give them, even if I'm not actually rolling for a result. I have a short list of names and prominent character traits I can assign to random people to give the illusion that they're all developed NPCs equally important to the story. I also often pretend to roll on tables even if I've already decided the answer ahead of time. I wish I were more consistent on other things too. I'd like to have a better music selection and create more props, but I often run really far behind on my prep. With my last group I made a decision never to spend more than 4 hours prepping the next adventure, partially because I intended to make each adventure very episodic. For my next group I think I'm going to spend a lot more time and create multi-game adventure arcs: mini-series instead of TV episodes if you will. Actually I'm pretty interested in learning a bit more academically about writing. I read through Dan Harmon's Story Circle (it's a quick read), and I'm thinking of picking up Story by Robert McKee on audio book once I'm finished with my current one. Either that or Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces.
I realize that's not really very horror focused. If I may recommend something really out of the ordinary, you may want to watch some Japanese horror cinema for inspiration. Japanese horror stories usually involve an immoral evil that is impossible to escape and end with the death (or worse) of the protagonists. Everyone's pretty familiar with Ju On (The Grudge) and The Ring, but Audition, Dark Water, and Onibaba are also highly recommended.
Obvious premise: Horror in an RPG is different from horror in a book, tv show or movie.
The most important the thing to understand is that the players having agency changes everything. It suggests that to setup a moment of horror taking agency from the players would be an appropriate mechanism but players haaaaaaaaate having agency taken from them. So don't do that. Instead I feel you need to look to video games.
But you can't just lean totally on computer game horror because in computer game it is principally a visual and aural medium for delivering the horror and RPG games are, fundamentally text and pure imagination. There is already always disconnect between what the GM is describing and what the players are imagining (every player 'sees' something different) so it is hard to build scares in the same way.
So... How2HorrorInRPG? I seem to have suggested it is really hard. It is.
1) Survival Horror is always effective. Give the players a resource, place them in a situation where the resource ticks down, give them a disastrous outcome if the resource goes all the way to zero. Bonus points if the resource is people. Like they are escorting the 3 clerics who can stop the outbreak of the undead but they are picked off 1 by 1. Brutal.
2) Steal agency from the players sneakily (shock twist as I contradict my foundational advice) - in the middle of the creepy dungeon drop a portcullis between the party splitting them up involuntarily. Suddenly give them a super tight time frame to complete a task. Put them in a room they can't escape or lock them out of a room they must get into.
3) Personal Horror (You did it) - have the players in a grim situation and then drop a variation of the Trolly Problem on them. Given them a situation where they have to make a 'bad' decision either way.
4) It's the cat - the critical thing for any horror - much like a good horror movie - is suggest don't show. Describe classic horror situations but then no jump scare or fright. A hallway of statues of monsters - clearly they are going to come alive right? Nope, they are just statues. Play on the fact that your players are genre savvy.
5) Location reuse (plus foreshadowing) - The players pass through a peaceful village with a friendly but inconsequential NPC, when they return later EVERYONE IS DEAD. Super effective for making a previously secure location a trap as the players advantages are turned against them.
6) Making the familiar unfamiliar - very close to the above and pretty self explanatory. It is an easy an effective way to unsettle the players.
7) The Oh shit - Setting up a situation where the players make a realisation about danger a long way from where they can fix the danger.
So I managed to run a very effective horror scenario in Feng Shui of all systems.
On the face of it it seems absurd, PCs in Feng Shui are hugely powerful and can face down impossible odds but
The players had captured an important NPC and were transporting him to their home base
However in the previous session they had taken massive damage and it had not healed yet, the Old Master was at death's door after he unwisely to a jet fighter chain gun blast to the chest whilst in free fall (long story).
And they were in the Netherworld. Basically their home turf. Except they were in the wrong bit of the Netherworld, they were in the domain the the Queen of the Darkness Pagoda. the one thing they knew was never be in the territory of the Queen of the Darkness Pagoda. Things were in the shadows, unseen. In the darkness the sound of bone scraping against bone could be heard. A chasm had to be crossed with dark unfathomably bottomless depths - where nothing happened, no fights, no action. The tension kept ratcheting up until bam they got to the light, finally free only to be faced with Desdemona Deathangel - an NPC that one of the players had been hyping up as absurdly powerful and was deeply involved in her backstory AND THEN the Skin And Darkness Horrors came boiling out of the tunnel behind them all wing and bone and claws.
In the ensuing fight a player made a move where they thought they were sacrificing their life to save the party. It was intense.
What would have been a perfectly mundane fight scene, a powerful Named NPC and a horde of mooks was elevated to something much more by cranking the tension and avoiding release for the whole session.
I've been gone for a while now due to having a baby:
But while I have been busy becoming a father, my 3 week old has gotten into Pokemon anime, and I have been looking at Pokemon TTRPGs. So far I've found one called Pokerole that's looked pretty good. It's got a Storyteller-lite system where you roll a pool of d6s; 4,5,6s are successes and two 1s cancel a success. Just wondering if others here have played it or heard about it. I joined their Discord and it seems there is a 2.0 book coming soon but I wonder what folks here might think about it compared to other Pokemon RPGs.
I've been gone for a while now due to having a baby:
But while I have been busy becoming a father, my 3 week old has gotten into Pokemon anime, and I have been looking at Pokemon TTRPGs. So far I've found one called Pokerole that's looked pretty good. It's got a Storyteller-lite system where you roll a pool of d6s; 4,5,6s are successes and two 1s cancel a success. Just wondering if others here have played it or heard about it. I joined their Discord and it seems there is a 2.0 book coming soon but I wonder what folks here might think about it compared to other Pokemon RPGs.
BESM with the "cute and fuzzy cockfighting seizure monster" supplement.
Yeah, Alistair coming at you with the cutting edge early 00s suggestions.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Separate from the asylum thingey, I am thinking a neat way to build up the arch-arch villain of the campaign is to literally have him call the players hideout every once in a while (it’s a closed down bar with a working phone). Not to gloat, taunt, try to convert them, or be purposefully creepy, but just like as a nervous guy who wants to talk. Have him bring up stuff he shouldn’t know, make allusions to his own allies goals without ever specifically stating them. Kind of show over time through a silver tongue and manipulation how he got to be how he is and where he is.
I've been gone for a while now due to having a baby:
But while I have been busy becoming a father, my 3 week old has gotten into Pokemon anime, and I have been looking at Pokemon TTRPGs. So far I've found one called Pokerole that's looked pretty good. It's got a Storyteller-lite system where you roll a pool of d6s; 4,5,6s are successes and two 1s cancel a success. Just wondering if others here have played it or heard about it. I joined their Discord and it seems there is a 2.0 book coming soon but I wonder what folks here might think about it compared to other Pokemon RPGs.
I heard of it a little over three years ago when one of the writers was posting it and answering questions. Pretty slick looking pdf and lots of good advice about getting into the mood of the Pokemon setting as a group, but the mechanics weren't in the vein of what I personally was looking for at the time, so I didn't delve into the crunch of it very much.
There's not really a lot of PokeTTRPGs floating around, really. Got PTA and PTU (rocking that 'write several hundred pages listing pokemon, moves, and abilities' thing), some jokey stuff like Pokethulhu (which often seem too simple and generalized to really capture a good Pokemon feel), and then there's Cute and Fuzzy Seizure Monsters as Ali noted. That book is a gem.
Also of course all the hackjob, one-off systems without production values that folk have made for their roleplay threads on gitp or wherever to suit their personal tastes.
It’s very simple by the looks of it, and has a cool addition of making your Pokemon have whatever typing you like.
I’d have a pink poison/fairy koffing that smells of overpowering perfume.
Posts
I’m not really disappointing anybody since we as the same group with a different GM are just playing DnD another day.
I got motifs for the big antagonist group leaders after trying to figure out one of them
Oniboshi (thanks for the name again guys) - Traitor librarian from a dead samurai themed space marine chapter he helped kill; he's a menacing manipulative sorceror who controls a Tzeentch faction w/in the big bad group. Sonaiyo - Jeff Van Dyke (Shogun 2). A slow ominous song with what sounds like ladies wailing the eponymous word. His opposite is the last samurai marine from that chapter who has his own theme, Ona Hei - Jeff Van Dyke (Shogun 2). Lots of taiko drums and rising mood.
The Rainmaker, real name Erioch Karpath, a southern gentleman confederate general type who is big into the social Darwinism (and the regular Darwinism). Commands the military traitors, mercenaries, and Khornate cultists of the bad group (The Tarot) but considers himself between Tzeentch and Khorne because he like the scheniving (scheming+canniving) but also is bloodthirsty (and I still want to use psykers with him). He has Rules of Nature - James Christofferson. He was the tricky one. There might be a better song. He did start out as a Revolver Ocelot ripoff, so a Metal Gear song sounds appropriate. (FE: though he was originally named after the Iron Maiden song) (FE2: I guess Raining Blood would work, but the wicked (awesome) and intense sound makes me want to save it for Khorne daemons to emphasize that shit is real bad now. FE: Fuck it, he's Raining Blood too. His name is Rainmaker because he literally did a rainmaker dance and rained the blood of human tribe's children on them from valkyries to get them to leave a promethium rich area on a planet for a rogue trader to set up in. So "Raining Blood" is also literal. His pet not-Guts-in-Berzerker-Armour has Devil Trigger (V Mills cover) as his little theme song. Also because his thing is that he's in a permanent devil trigger caused by the cursed armour and sword he uses that are possessed by daemons that basically take him over but leave his body intact so that they don't have to deal with that warp instability business. Those daemons have basically been broken to Rainmaker's will by Oniboshi bonding their control to an artifact Rainmaker uses.
Lascivious, a Slaaneshi Noise Marine sorcerer who is also called the Glam Sorcerer or the Sonic Sorcerer that wields a classic Rogue Trader style blastmaster (a guitar that shoots concussive sound waves) which he doubles as a psyfocus. He is mostly what you would expect, but rather than the burnt out husks of other Slaaneshi marine bodies, he vainly keeps his looking beautiful. Controls the Slaaneshi cultists of the Tarot. He's not super complicated. He's a sense freak with grand plans to increase sense freakiness in the galaxy in his devotion to Slaanesh and he loves it. He gets Like an Animal (Fuck like a beast) - WASP. Self explanatory. FE: also possibly Comin At You Live by Tesla.
FE: The entire Don Giovanni opera when he isn’t playing his 1E blastmaster. Add some class with the proto-pick-up artist opera.
For example, they just finished a fight and needed a long rest. This fight was to rescue some trapped militia so they could get back to the nearby city and drive off some pirates. Instead of resuming at the long rest, I did a short narration of that and then dropped them right in the middle of the battle happening the next day, chasing after the last remaining pirate captain.
This next time, they've decided to head for a particular sidequest they received, which involves a lot of travel. Could I have them spend a bunch of time on the boat, then landing at a port, securing passage to where they're going, getting there, and visiting the address of who they're looking for? Yes, I could, but instead I'm just going to drop them in at the end, talking to the person who will give them the leads they need to choose how they want to investigate.
I am a bit excited at the prospect of a more manageable group size. We largely just discussed stuff as a group instead of playing last week and one of the consensus was that the prospects of potentially going on a tangent in our campaigns is something we look forward to, as with the larger group we had to make a very concerned effort to not stray from the path, otherwise absolutely nothing would ever get done.
The way the session started out seemed needlessly complex. My inquisitor just set up the players handler in a bar in plain sight and that worked.i
FE: That’s not a slight at the Gm that’s just how the published module be.
Also took notes for the first time like I’m a regular Cole Phelps (appropriate with the la noire music in the background). Can’t wait to yell at women and children then back down with a meek “my bad”.
This sounds sarcastic but I actually really liked it.
... Boo, they won't sell it till tomorrow...
... because they are releasing how to play as them as a free download.
https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/0a/47/0a47cdac-9343-4626-8d2b-1dedb27ebafe/mantis_clan_dlc.pdf
Also, Tachyon Squadron came out for FATE today.
I’m in love!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Edit: ...and now I see there is already a separate thread. I shall now go commit seppuku.
"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
The gangers killed the enforcers, are the enforcers, they know who we are, and on top of that someone making big mess of cybernetic modifications to bodies and is trying to kill us. Lansrick being a feudal simpleton didn't know that hand-vox casters can't go very far, and I'mma assume by the shitness of the place we're in does not have phone booths. So we have no backup, and one of our guys is already wounded. The next train out doesn't come until noon. It is midnight. I have a shield.
GOODE times. Internet wasn't a fuck.
Also The Warriors IN SPAAAACE
Starting at one end of a space ship and trying to get to the bridge seems like an excellent way to introduce players to the grim nature of the universe, basic mechanics as it’s essentially a tightly-controlled dungeon crawl with no need to worry about Acquisition or space combat, and the sheer scale of the Void-faring vessels
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I feel the Emperor’s favor return!
Also figured out what to do about setting the players on the right track from before. There is an inquisitor they’ve met before who likes to deal with his missions personally unlike their own inquisitor who is more into giant webs of secretive intrigue with multiple overseen cells in the sector. He has a vested interest in the source of the illegal weapons they’re after. So he can supply the ride to the hidden space base. Which also gets around the fact that the person who runs the place knows their faces from an earlier adventure she is quite sore about and would have seen them and carted them off to be interrogated and tortured if they went the way I originally was planning. They just got to put a tracker on one of the ships the smugglers are using. They are planning to ambush the guy who regularly gets transported to the base and who started the trade between gangers getting xenos weapons from Dark Eldar. The Dark Eldar act as mediators who want to encourage a proxy war between the gangers and a split faction supplied by the Chaotic main bad guy group for fucking the Dark Eldar over earlier in the last campaign. A kroot kindred tribe called k'wes that supplies the Dark Eldar slaves has been bringing in pulse weaponry in exchange for good eats for genetic material (as they do). So the players can put it on the smuggler if they can force him to go back the way he usually does, find another smuggler doing the same deal and follow them, or act as a smuggler and have the tracker on themselves as they are taken away by the Dark Eldar. I have it that usually the smugglers making deals are told to go to a place, drink something that knocks them out, then are carried away to be woken up once they're on the base. If th other inquisitor is directly helping, he might be able to force the Dark Eldar to take them to the base, or have his squat (I brought them back in limited capacity) engineer acolyte make a tech dookickey to read where the ships they've been using have been going in the past.
After the players do their ambush thing, that other inquisitor comes in and basically encourages those options and supplies his own ship and resources to follow the Dark Eldar back to their base. He has a thing to do on the base and the players either need to take out the kroot or convince them to go away to stop the source of pulse weaponry flowing through the gangs on the planet they're on. Maybe even by trading the DE who would definitely betray them at one point for the other inqusitor who is by no means Xenos Hybris but is radical and could use mercenaries.
Edit: or their overseer that works for their inquisitor could do it, could just do it.
Edit 2: they got the guy, had a perfect ambush, interrogated him, placed a tracker on him, and got a deal to make the mafia-types stop sending hitmen after them; which is good especially when they showed one of the crime bosses their hideout while picking something up for his interrogation. In return, since they now know the source of the guns and a way to get to them, they’ve promised to leave him and that boss they let go alone since the guy those guys are fighting is worse than them. I don’t think the players will uphold the bargain once they’re done with the tribe.
Edit 3: So I don't trust these fellas to follow Dark Eldar stealth flying through an asteroid field. None of them have navigate or operate stellar. I think I am going to have that radical inquisitor and his retinue pop up on the ship the two groups were given from the last campaign to just kind of do it for them so they can get into the meat of the endgame.
Edit: Something that would be fun for DH but also anything with an indepth fear system: translating Pennywise into an NPC who gets higher stats and more abilities depending on how bad one fails a fear test, but his profile is based on individuals’ test. High DoF means incoporeality, ability to form hallucinations, or transform a whole area. Perhaps to the point of being mind controlled or influenced.
Low DoF would mean basic increases in stats and skills. Like a flat +5 to everything per DoF.
Success in a fear test means facing the Pennywise-like demon, ghost, monster, etc. at its base stats. High DoS lowers stats and generally weakens not-It. Obviously a Pennywise-like would not try to go for a standard combat. Until one overcame their fear it would mainly be an enemy to evade. Also while the book keeping would be annoying, it would be an interesting dynamic for the profile to change based on what individual they’re dealing with.
Key to this would be leveraging insanity to make the npc scary to players. Pennywise in the book scares kids because apparently they taste better when they’re terrified. Raising insanity should be used as the goal of the It-like npc to where players don’t want to confront the It-like. Maybe by increasing RAW values of how much insanity one gains (or sanity one loses) depending on how bad the test is. Like a failed fear test in DH2E gives insanity along with shock effects if you fail by 3DoF. So a Fear (3) npc will give you 3 insanity. Maybe something as simple as every DoF after 3 gives another insantiy point.
Main reason to treat insanity gain this way is that insanity and corruption in DH is more of a bad side effect of encountering daemons and warp phenomena rather than something purposefully inflicted on you like attacks in Darkest Dungeon. There’s not really any npc that purposefully inflicts insanity one you. Technically talking to cult leaders and daemons can cause you to gain corruption but that’s not quite the same thing. Though the problem with trying something like this is that upper levels of insanity in DH actually gives resistance to fear, but that’s based on the trait of fear of an npc rather than say hallucinatory stuff that Pennywise could do which might fall under warp phenomena where there’s not much resistance to that. Like a portal to the warp will always cause a fear test.
Fake Edit 2: that would probably be perfect for that one game where you’re college students fighting paranormal stuff.
Yeah, I feel ya. That is one of the big differences in this game and a traditional western RPG: the (typical) heroes here are charged to maintain social order. Moreover the caste system isn't just a human justification, it's literally a divine mandate in a setting where people can communicate directly with the divine. That doesn't mean it's right; maybe the Kami want to simply keep their hegemony intact and created the pyramid scheme so that the samurai caste would maintain this order for them. It's possible to run an L5R game that doesn't uphold the social order; a wandering group of Kurosawa-esque ronin doing unappreciated good, or a Legend of Korra spirited away adventure mediating between angry spirits, or even a survival horror outing in the Crab lands could duck around that issue. But to be honest it's not something that bothers me particularly, and I think the strict social etiquette is one of the selling points of the setting. And if not that the resolution mechanic and specialized dice are my favorite of any RPG seen to date.
However, if you can get into it, it can be very enjoyable trying to navigate the intrigue of the various Clan courts. When what you say and how you say it carries real weight, social skills become a weapon your samurai can potentially wield. Out maneuvering an opposing courtier with your wits and securing an advantageous position for negotiations is very satisfying.
Even if a player isn't too into social interaction, there's still a place for bushi in the courts, both as bodyguards and duelists. In Rokugan, inevitably someone will say or do something that will result in a duel and the matter will be settled with swords.
But I will admit my own bias in this regard. I'm usually a Kakita bushi player, so getting into duels is my thing.
They likely wrote the book to cover a large swath of L5R's potential settings. There's a lot of stuff out there already on the new setting, but I think what you are looking for is the Emerald Empire Sourcebook.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/8/3/enter-the-emerald-empire-1/
Also Katrina is absolutely awesome.
How do effective horror in tabletop? I want to do a spooky asylum story but don't know how to do it properly. Also jump scares aren't really a thing (and I don't like them).
Also was it a dick move that when I was using a character that only one of the players could see, I kept gas lighting the other players when they kept asking "Is that character there?" and I kept answering "What are you talking about?" because I had his portrait up on the Roll20 map but technically only one person could see him?
Mechanical reinforcement of the kind of horror you want. Unknown Armies is probably my go to example because it's a game about fracturing psyche's and the terrifying power and fragility of human kind. So it's mechanics are about how shifting mental states effect performance and how the pillars of our identity provide rocks against that uncertain tide.
Also for the latter bit I feel like that would be a player group thing and about establishing expectations before a game. EG, in Infinity players are spies with ocassionally opposing interests in their side objectives. So I've let players lie about what a roll is for (while telling me in a side channel) and foil/harm another player's agenda but all the players knew that was possible going in and where the line was (I was completely uninterested in PVP).
I approve totally, but depending on how much it annoys people you might want to make the possibility of stuff like that clear up front.
If you're playing in-person, stuff like dimming the lights helps!
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
#tooreal
+1 on mechanical reinforcement. I think most Lovecraftian settings have that built in to their game, but in D&D for instance a classic Rust Monster can be particularly terrifying for a mid-level party enamored with their few magic items. The important thing for horror though is that it needs to be well telegraphed. Dead Space is my favorite survival horror game simply because of how it presents the horror. Doing things like making the horrible thing (a powerful enemy) plainly visible but also inescapable; for example Dead Space has a sequence where you board a gondola to the other side of a spaceship that is shrouded in mist. During the gondola ride the music ramps up and eventually the destination slowly coalesces into view and it is occupied. First by one or two horrors, then more and more join it until you, the player, realize that you must start shooting now and never stop shooting because there are far more of those horrors waiting for you on the other side than you have ever encountered before. And even as you start shooting more of these things just pour out of every crawlspace and cranny as this malevolent gondola inexorably drags you closer and closer to your death. It's an amazing sequence.
Pro Tip: the phrase "It sounds like bone scraping against bone" always works.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I realize that's not really very horror focused. If I may recommend something really out of the ordinary, you may want to watch some Japanese horror cinema for inspiration. Japanese horror stories usually involve an immoral evil that is impossible to escape and end with the death (or worse) of the protagonists. Everyone's pretty familiar with Ju On (The Grudge) and The Ring, but Audition, Dark Water, and Onibaba are also highly recommended.
The most important the thing to understand is that the players having agency changes everything. It suggests that to setup a moment of horror taking agency from the players would be an appropriate mechanism but players haaaaaaaaate having agency taken from them. So don't do that. Instead I feel you need to look to video games.
But you can't just lean totally on computer game horror because in computer game it is principally a visual and aural medium for delivering the horror and RPG games are, fundamentally text and pure imagination. There is already always disconnect between what the GM is describing and what the players are imagining (every player 'sees' something different) so it is hard to build scares in the same way.
So... How2HorrorInRPG? I seem to have suggested it is really hard. It is.
1) Survival Horror is always effective. Give the players a resource, place them in a situation where the resource ticks down, give them a disastrous outcome if the resource goes all the way to zero. Bonus points if the resource is people. Like they are escorting the 3 clerics who can stop the outbreak of the undead but they are picked off 1 by 1. Brutal.
2) Steal agency from the players sneakily (shock twist as I contradict my foundational advice) - in the middle of the creepy dungeon drop a portcullis between the party splitting them up involuntarily. Suddenly give them a super tight time frame to complete a task. Put them in a room they can't escape or lock them out of a room they must get into.
3) Personal Horror (You did it) - have the players in a grim situation and then drop a variation of the Trolly Problem on them. Given them a situation where they have to make a 'bad' decision either way.
4) It's the cat - the critical thing for any horror - much like a good horror movie - is suggest don't show. Describe classic horror situations but then no jump scare or fright. A hallway of statues of monsters - clearly they are going to come alive right? Nope, they are just statues. Play on the fact that your players are genre savvy.
5) Location reuse (plus foreshadowing) - The players pass through a peaceful village with a friendly but inconsequential NPC, when they return later EVERYONE IS DEAD. Super effective for making a previously secure location a trap as the players advantages are turned against them.
6) Making the familiar unfamiliar - very close to the above and pretty self explanatory. It is an easy an effective way to unsettle the players.
7) The Oh shit - Setting up a situation where the players make a realisation about danger a long way from where they can fix the danger.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
On the face of it it seems absurd, PCs in Feng Shui are hugely powerful and can face down impossible odds but
The players had captured an important NPC and were transporting him to their home base
However in the previous session they had taken massive damage and it had not healed yet, the Old Master was at death's door after he unwisely to a jet fighter chain gun blast to the chest whilst in free fall (long story).
And they were in the Netherworld. Basically their home turf. Except they were in the wrong bit of the Netherworld, they were in the domain the the Queen of the Darkness Pagoda. the one thing they knew was never be in the territory of the Queen of the Darkness Pagoda. Things were in the shadows, unseen. In the darkness the sound of bone scraping against bone could be heard. A chasm had to be crossed with dark unfathomably bottomless depths - where nothing happened, no fights, no action. The tension kept ratcheting up until bam they got to the light, finally free only to be faced with Desdemona Deathangel - an NPC that one of the players had been hyping up as absurdly powerful and was deeply involved in her backstory AND THEN the Skin And Darkness Horrors came boiling out of the tunnel behind them all wing and bone and claws.
In the ensuing fight a player made a move where they thought they were sacrificing their life to save the party. It was intense.
What would have been a perfectly mundane fight scene, a powerful Named NPC and a horde of mooks was elevated to something much more by cranking the tension and avoiding release for the whole session.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
But while I have been busy becoming a father, my 3 week old has gotten into Pokemon anime, and I have been looking at Pokemon TTRPGs. So far I've found one called Pokerole that's looked pretty good. It's got a Storyteller-lite system where you roll a pool of d6s; 4,5,6s are successes and two 1s cancel a success. Just wondering if others here have played it or heard about it. I joined their Discord and it seems there is a 2.0 book coming soon but I wonder what folks here might think about it compared to other Pokemon RPGs.
BESM with the "cute and fuzzy cockfighting seizure monster" supplement.
Yeah, Alistair coming at you with the cutting edge early 00s suggestions.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I heard of it a little over three years ago when one of the writers was posting it and answering questions. Pretty slick looking pdf and lots of good advice about getting into the mood of the Pokemon setting as a group, but the mechanics weren't in the vein of what I personally was looking for at the time, so I didn't delve into the crunch of it very much.
There's not really a lot of PokeTTRPGs floating around, really. Got PTA and PTU (rocking that 'write several hundred pages listing pokemon, moves, and abilities' thing), some jokey stuff like Pokethulhu (which often seem too simple and generalized to really capture a good Pokemon feel), and then there's Cute and Fuzzy Seizure Monsters as Ali noted. That book is a gem.
Also of course all the hackjob, one-off systems without production values that folk have made for their roleplay threads on gitp or wherever to suit their personal tastes.
Yeah! Over at Critical Failures they’re using it, Pokemon Voltage:
The thread:
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/211671/poke-pkmn-comfy-and-easy-to-wear/p1
It’s very simple by the looks of it, and has a cool addition of making your Pokemon have whatever typing you like.
I’d have a pink poison/fairy koffing that smells of overpowering perfume.