A short update on the guy: I asked him if he would have something ready for our next game, and he replied that he should have an introductory session ready the day before and would let me know by then. (This is for a one-shot, meaning two sessions max, not an ongoing campaign...)
He dropped to one word answers ("OK", "understood") when I answered that the group needs at least three days' notice and he couldn't keep us in suspense like this, especially not me since I'll be the one running the table. I think most of us can guess who'll be running the table next time we meet...
By the way, I understand that this sounds like Discord drama, but this is a group which only plays IRL; Discord is just what we use to keep in touch between sessions.
How the fuck is this real life. I would have just told the guy to stuff it and uninvited him from everything, forever.
Its a fucking one-shot. I have run one shots without fully reading the source book let alone the module. If you just want to try a system, we can all figure it out at the table.
I've never watched a Ghibli movie and never will, but yeah, nothing I've learned about them leads me to believe that they add up to a coherent world that you can play an RPG in. 5e is also designed for a specific kind of play that is violent and centered on conquering people and seizing valuables, I don't get the impression that Ghibli movies are like that.
Eh, I don't get the people rub themselves out to them as bastions of cinematic excellence, but they are cutesy adventure stories with engaging characters and good story telling even if the story's plot is usually Nip-brained nonsense that gets questionable resolution. There are worse ways to spend two hours now that everything from hollywood is written for MODERN AUDIENCES (of niggers, fags, and trannies).
But you've hit the nail on the head:
Its about an aesthetic, a vibe, of a world like ours but with some level of magic. Trying to codify that magic and put rules on things is going to completely fuck the vibe, and combat would be infrequent and more about escaping the situation than defeating the monster (who is probably just misunderstood). There would be much more about social interactions, exploring the environment, and interacting with the world and its uniqueness than beating things with swords and 5e is DEFINITELY the wrong system.
5e compatible = more sales. Sure, they could adapt a more generic system or come up with something of their own, but this is already a novelty which is only going to be bought by a small number of people, you're not gonna get a lot of impulse buys with a mystery system people know nothing about. This is why OSR publishers all put out stuff that is cross-compatible as well.
Wholly agree, but something more narrative like PbtA would.... well, it would still fail miserably but it might actually come close to the impossible thing they're trying to do.
I wish I had that flexibility, but I have to do at least a little prep, even if it's just flipping through some books and finding a good small dungeon and putting together a cheat sheet with a few monster stats and location keys.
I don't know if it comes from being a forever DM, or the systems I try to run, or what.
Savage Worlds.
Once you know the system, it's trivial to run while making up stat blocks on the fly. The real issue is generating PCs, which is a pain. I had a google doc of slapped together PCs and NPCs, but no one was interested when I shared it, and I don't remember where it is.
Knave.
I want to run this more than I do, but it being the 6 dnd attributes, rated 0-10, means character creation is piss easy. Monster stat blocks are a bit more cumbersome however. Still, I could wing it if I had to.
Tiny d6.
My goto rules lite system. Again, character creation is an issue, but measuring doesn't really matter, and it's played with just 3d6 which (used to be) widely available.
As for adventures. Treasure Hunt and The Mutator are easy to run from memory, because they are so simple. The mutator is basically the hospital from Silent Hill. Treasure Hunt I've talked about a bunch, but the PCs are slaves, their ship crashes on an island that's sinking, got to escape.
5e compatible = more sales. Sure, they could adapt a more generic system or come up with something of their own, but this is already a novelty which is only going to be bought by a small number of people, you're not gonna get a lot of impulse buys with a mystery system people know nothing about. This is why OSR publishers all put out stuff that is cross-compatible as well.
There are some genres that are starved for good, playable systems (mechs, action heroes, heroic sci-fi). But we don't really need another d20 tolkien esc fantasy TTRPG.
I never fully understood people who have an entire wall of RPGs they never played. I understand some but my collection is mostly stuff I play, or stuff that was cheap and I want to run.
I think so. Though I'd only given it a skim before. Might not need as much work as I'm trying to do.
My idea was a few one shot shit posts. Basically taking seal team 6 and running through well known old school dungeons.
But the idea might be shit from the start.
At present, I'm struggling. Not just to find players, but to fully commit to an idea. I want to run a 5e compatible through a portal/multiverse campaign, modern heroes through ravenloft, a savage lands/lost world/hollow earth type game, some classic adventures, and many others. I've even been thinking of a game set in the Half-Life 2 universe.
I only know the changes that make combat much more lethal (which OSR people love). Cities introduces trauma dice, a nat 6 on a d6 does 3x damage. And Ashes removed the Die Hard foci, so players are much easier to kill.
I'll give cities a skim, but I get the feeling I'm going to have to try and get a different rule system to do what I want.
Has anyone tried the playtest for 'Public Access'? It's made by the same people who created Brindlewood Bay and seems like a decent casual mystery game. I tried doing a run of it with just myself but it didn't feel like a game I could get the vibes for doing that.
>2 gators became presidents
>Took part of the North African Campaign
So is there an Uncle Ruckus of gators that just shits on his species in favor of crocs?
This so much. Every mech system I try to learn is either a huge autistic technical manual, PbtA crap or Lancer. It's a similar problem with superhero systems trying to build powers from scratch, it's just too much. Has nobody learned the lesson with GURPS?
>2 gators became presidents
>Took part of the North African Campaign
So is there an Uncle Ruckus of gators that just shits on his species in favor of crocs?
The most creative they were was making Rommel a Fennec Fox. It also just completely gives up on doing a diesel punk setting the moment it talks about China and Japan and shifts right over to wuxia.
Curious about something, which boxarts stuck out the most to you guys? I remember always being fond of the pathfinder 1e box; that one kinda had some power on the shelf
It's why I've been tempted many times to write my own, but always chickened out as I have no means to playtest it.
Oddly enough, the best mech system I've seen was Tiny d6. Though most of it spread between multiple books, which is why I recommend piracy over paying for it.
Curious about something, which boxarts stuck out the most to you guys? I remember always being fond of the pathfinder 1e box; that one kinda had some power on the shelf
This one?
If so, never seen it before, but looks great.
I'm going to get hate for this. The 5e starter set.
It's just so cool.
If we're talking books. Various 4e books.
I know people hate dragonborn, but that 4e cover with the dragonborn on it, so cool. The hot chick certainly helps too. It looks more goofy the more you stare at it, but at a glance, looks great. There was some other books that had great covers too, and the trade dress is nice as well.
This so much. Every mech system I try to learn is either a huge autistic technical manual, PbtA crap or Lancer. It's a similar problem with superhero systems trying to build powers from scratch, it's just too much. Has nobody learned the lesson with GURPS?
Just get autistic enough to build your own system. I'm not a mechfag, I prefer my armored vehicles tracked or wheeled thank you very much, and I'd use GURPS for that if I could ever wrangle enough autists to run another campaign, but a good dedicated mech system would be pretty cool.
How hard can it be?
Just get autistic enough to build your own system. I'm not a mechfag, I prefer my armored vehicles tracked or wheeled thank you very much, and I'd use GURPS for that if I could ever wrangle enough autists to run another campaign, but a good dedicated mech system would be pretty cool.
How hard can it be? View attachment 8858887
Anyone ever heard of or play the game "Elric!" based off of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné? Was developed by Chaosium in 1993 and I only recently heard of it.
Anyone ever heard of or play the game "Elric!" based off of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné? Was developed by Chaosium in 1993 and I only recently heard of it.
This so much. Every mech system I try to learn is either a huge autistic technical manual, PbtA crap or Lancer. It's a similar problem with superhero systems trying to build powers from scratch, it's just too much. Has nobody learned the lesson with GURPS?
Mecha Hack (based on Black Hack) is ok. Not ideal, though. I think the answer lies somewhere between it and Lancer (which I hate). I attempted to make my own Mecha system but it fell apart. I still like my setting a lot, though (1970s alternate history extended Vietnam War, inspired by 08th MS Team).
Triax and the NGR specifically. Kevin (Palladium) also made "Robotech" which someone said could be ported over to RIFTS. There's a couple of world books and various source books that add on to the whole mech thing.
Triax and the NGR specifically. Kevin (Palladium) also made "Robotech" which someone said could be ported over to RIFTS. There's a couple of world books and various source books that add on to the whole mech thing.
Anyone ever heard of or play the game "Elric!" based off of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné? Was developed by Chaosium in 1993 and I only recently heard of it.
We played it for a shorter campaign. It's a decent, flavorful implementation of the BRP system to let you run games in the Young Kingdoms. Less spergy than Runequest, and fairly smooth at the table. It works better if you start with slightly more competent characters than default if you specifically want the tone of the Elric stories. I don't remember much about the supplements, so they may not have been all that good. We just made up our own adventures based on the stories.
Elric! had a predecessor in Stormbringer, which is apparently a bit different; more random and with a different magic system (I think it was all based on summoning demons, and making them do your bidding).
The art was kickass for its time. Just all these moody B&W pieces that captured the style perfectly.
Elric! had a predecessor in Stormbringer, which is apparently a bit different; more random and with a different magic system (I think it was all based on summoning demons, and making them do your bidding).
And they generally hated your guts for doing it so Arioch forbid that they break your binding, because they're going to fuck your shit. If they didn't, it was because while you thought you were using them, they were actually using you (chief example of course being the eponymous demon sword).
I believe there were some other options if you played Lawful, but why the Hell would you play Stormbringer and play Lawful?
I finished reading VtM 1e, quite liked it. I think being the very first corebook does it a lot of favors, because everything is very fresh and I can almost feel how excited the authors are just to be writing it. It's sucked me back into doing multiple VtMB runs, and I don't even really like that game.
I wanted to read Wraith next, but the scan I have is atrocious and makes the first 20-ish pages nearly unreadable: black text on greyscale full page artwork, for all the intro story section.
Looking at this gives me eyestrain.
Demon is very silly and I've kinda fallen off reading it, because the entire first half of the corebook is character insert fiction, with a lot of idealistic spergery which nowadays comes off as tacky libshittery (e.g. police are bad, all you need is social workers)
Instead, I'm slowly reading Werewolf 1e. There's still the overwhelming sense of "silliness" here, but different to in Demon: Rather than Mary Sue shit, I'm finding it funny because of how fucking serious the Garou seem to take themselves. It only got harder to take it seriously once the actual tribes started getting detailed. I mean fuck, there's apparently an entire tribe of Garou who are just computer nerds and Law&Order fanboys?
I'm enjoying it despite the silliness though, because at least it doesn't feel like preachy bullshit the way Demon does.
If you like the idea of Wraith, check out one of the smaller sideline systems Orpheus, where you play as living people who can temporarily become ghosts, It actually had a fully written up campaign (not just adventures, but a pretty cool 6 book campaign)
