Tabletop gaming guilty pleasures: what are yours?
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XP for quests and over-reliance on random tables. A level system that works by just handing out levels at certain points of the story is unquestionably better, but I just like watching XP accumulate. Likewise, I share Desdan's love of "roll to see if the fountain gives you superpowers or makes your eyes melt out of their sockets." It's not grognardianism, because I came into the hobby seriously like six years ago.
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Rifts. At one point I put together a Fiasco! Phase World playset, just so people could have fun with character creation but not have to interact otherwise with the rules.
Hybrid characters: I played 2e D&D the most, and was all about the H-E F/M/C. Dark Sun was even better for that, with Elf/H-E Preserver/Cleric/Psionicist
Shitty NPC classes. I very much want to have a game where a floating coral city of Rhulisti lifeshapers (athas.org squares off against Dragonmech coglayers inside an Assimilated citymech.
Hybrid characters: I played 2e D&D the most, and was all about the H-E F/M/C. Dark Sun was even better for that, with Elf/H-E Preserver/Cleric/Psionicist
Shitty NPC classes. I very much want to have a game where a floating coral city of Rhulisti lifeshapers (athas.org squares off against Dragonmech coglayers inside an Assimilated citymech.
I don't think Erick Wujcik was involved with Rifts all that much, just Ninjas & Superspies and TMNT (and Amber). Good ideas guy for setting stuff (e.g. Transdimensional TMNT), but his mechanical design work never struck me as anything remarkable.OgreBattle wrote:RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS, Kevin Long's designs are like a library of 70's-80's anime mecha lineart and Eric Wujcik was a scholar of design.
Cyborgs, Juicers, Crazies, Mystic Knights, Ley Line Walkers, Dragons, Glitterboys are all cool archtypes with distinct looks. All of my "I'm gonna write a tabletalk RPG" projects end up as "I'm gonna make RIFTS playable!", then I fill up a notebook with little sketches.
Fair call.Surgo wrote:Post a real guilty RPG pleasure or don't post at all.
I still build things with GURPS Vehicles now and then. It's 300 pages of algebra that give you four numbers that don't make any sense and don't work anyway, and while I have a lot of custom rules to fix the math and stuff, I have never had a use for the numbers it generates.
I enjoy turning Pathfinder APs into sandbox clue webs. Not to run, just, you know, hacking at them until they make sense as a sandbox. But the bits they put in for the people who just buy them to read? I don't like that stuff.
I spend way more time tinkering with RPGs that I ever have playing them. OK, always the GM, so that sort of happens, but even still. Like, I run rules-light D&D clones because it saves me having to do that, and then I go find other ways to do that instead.
Hmm. My characters. When I play. They're, they tend to be disruptive cranks. You know, a Fighter who complains the Gods favour their Clerics and give them all the power, so obviously we have to gang up against them. Take them down a peg or two. Disrespect their Gods. A Monk who wears half-plate, a shield, and uses a greatsword, because unlike the monastery training that actually works.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
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The Bygone Bestiary. It's a supplement for Mage the Ascension and Mage: The Sorcerers' Crusade which is intended to show you how to create and field mythical creatures in the World of Darkness, and has the questionable idea of doing this mostly through Merits and Flaws. You can use it to approximate a large variety of mythical creatures, but I fell in love with it when I realized that it was what you did when you wanted to create something weird and didn't have any established (or any better established) rules for it, whether it existed in folklore or not.
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I wouldn't call that a guilty pleasure, but more of a magical community service. How do you do that? Do you have conversion notes somewhere that people can read?tussock wrote: I enjoy turning Pathfinder APs into sandbox clue webs. Not to run, just, you know, hacking at them until they make sense as a sandbox.
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I love accents and obnoxious character names.
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RIFTS[/b]
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
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I know Champions is superior over Mutants and Masterminds d20 in every single category except ease of pick-up and maybe supplements (I haven't read any Champions supplements, mind), but I'm still quite fond of MnM d20.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
I have that. My eighteen year old self loved it, because at the time I was really taken with White Wolf's MTP-plus service. I don't want to read it now because it would just depress me.Desdan_Mervolam wrote:The Bygone Bestiary. It's a supplement for Mage the Ascension and Mage: The Sorcerers' Crusade which is intended to show you how to create and field mythical creatures in the World of Darkness, and has the questionable idea of doing this mostly through Merits and Flaws. You can use it to approximate a large variety of mythical creatures, but I fell in love with it when I realized that it was what you did when you wanted to create something weird and didn't have any established (or any better established) rules for it, whether it existed in folklore or not.
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So Dogbert, your guilty pleasure is that you no longer play role-playing games because every system is crappy?
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I also like adventures that go into insane detail and tell you things like what you'd find if you jumped into the dungeon's privy and fought the ooze living in it.
Also, another vote for Rifts.
Also, another vote for Rifts.
Last edited by K on Mon Aug 11, 2014 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Do you remember the old great Call of Cthulhu books like Beyond The Mountains of Madness or Dunwich: Return to the Forgotten Village? They had absolutely mental amounts of backstory and detail that underpinned every single thing you'd see, and loads that you never would. They were really, really well thought out. It's a shame that your players would never see anything but a fraction of it.K wrote:I also like adventures that go into insane detail and tell you things like what you'd find if you jumped into the dungeon's privy and fought the ooze living in it.
Also, another vote for Rifts.
Yeah, I think it was a feat of Chaosium back in the day. I remember Griffin Mountain having obscene ammounts of detail too. On one side it was a delicious reading if you had the time, on the other it imposed a somewhat intimidating entry barrier for some GMs.Laertes wrote:Do you remember the old great Call of Cthulhu books like Beyond The Mountains of Madness or Dunwich: Return to the Forgotten Village? They had absolutely mental amounts of backstory and detail that underpinned every single thing you'd see, and loads that you never would. They were really, really well thought out. It's a shame that your players would never see anything but a fraction of it.K wrote:I also like adventures that go into insane detail and tell you things like what you'd find if you jumped into the dungeon's privy and fought the ooze living in it.
Also, another vote for Rifts.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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He taught at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2003-2008) too, some of my friends got the opportunity to meet him and said he was a really great teacher and all around swell guy.CCarter wrote:I don't think Erick Wujcik was involved with Rifts all that much, just Ninjas & Superspies and TMNT (and Amber). Good ideas guy for setting stuff (e.g. Transdimensional TMNT), but his mechanical design work never struck me as anything remarkable.OgreBattle wrote:RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS, Kevin Long's designs are like a library of 70's-80's anime mecha lineart and Eric Wujcik was a scholar of design.
Cyborgs, Juicers, Crazies, Mystic Knights, Ley Line Walkers, Dragons, Glitterboys are all cool archtypes with distinct looks. All of my "I'm gonna write a tabletalk RPG" projects end up as "I'm gonna make RIFTS playable!", then I fill up a notebook with little sketches.
I wonder how Wujcick intended the combat system of Ninjas & Superspies/TMNT to actually run though, it was basically a die pool system with all of the action points you got per round to spend on various moves.
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First you read as much of the RIFTS (TM) core rule book (currently you'd be looking at RIFTS (TM) Ultimate Edition) as you can handle. Then you drink. A lot. Then you flip through splat books until something catches your eye. Character creation takes between half an hour and eight hours, depending on how many weird options you take and how often X makes you go back and recalculate Y which in turn adjusts Z. Longer if you continue the drinking. I recommend RIFTS (TM): South America, Juicer (TM) Uprising, RIFTS (TM): Atlantis (1 and 2), and Phase World (TM). Some issues of the RIFTER (TM) can also be pretty good, particularly... the ones that add martial art styles.
Honestly if you just scribble down some numbers (MDC, attack bonus, attacks per round, damage, parry bonus, dodge bonus, bonus to Saves vs X, Initiative perhaps, some random things that you think sound like skills, perhaps PPE and ISP if you want to just add some spells or psionics), then you'll still end up with something that makes as much sense as anything else (and works as well as anything else). That is "yeah, whatever, about that".
I'm in a PbP RIFTS (TM) game, and the only way it moves forward at all is that you post all your actions for 1 round at a time (or in some cases 2 rounds, if it's a simpler, meat-grinder type battle), and the GM is in the military so he sets deadlines for posting, harasses people who are taking their time, then just makes you go full defence if you haven't posted by the time he updates. I can't actually say it works better in tabletop, because "do everything in your own time all at once and post it in one go" actually seems easier, what with all the dice rolling involved.
Incidentally, they're still making them. They are seriously churning out more RIFTS (TM) splat books to this day, and they're basically what you might expect if you've read any of the older ones.
Honestly if you just scribble down some numbers (MDC, attack bonus, attacks per round, damage, parry bonus, dodge bonus, bonus to Saves vs X, Initiative perhaps, some random things that you think sound like skills, perhaps PPE and ISP if you want to just add some spells or psionics), then you'll still end up with something that makes as much sense as anything else (and works as well as anything else). That is "yeah, whatever, about that".
I'm in a PbP RIFTS (TM) game, and the only way it moves forward at all is that you post all your actions for 1 round at a time (or in some cases 2 rounds, if it's a simpler, meat-grinder type battle), and the GM is in the military so he sets deadlines for posting, harasses people who are taking their time, then just makes you go full defence if you haven't posted by the time he updates. I can't actually say it works better in tabletop, because "do everything in your own time all at once and post it in one go" actually seems easier, what with all the dice rolling involved.
Incidentally, they're still making them. They are seriously churning out more RIFTS (TM) splat books to this day, and they're basically what you might expect if you've read any of the older ones.
Last edited by Koumei on Tue Aug 12, 2014 4:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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You start with watching the RIFTS anime, here's some trailers:Surgo wrote:It sounds like we need to have a RIFTS game!
Actually I've never read or played RIFTS. Where does one start?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv2aLiqDZiQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCODmVr0WUI
First, think up any kind of character you might like to play. Anything at all. I've played a Hecatomb Endbringer, a heavily armed anthropomorphic goat who hated the human supremicists, Rampage from Beast Wars who could glass a field by himself, and an anthropomorphic black widow lesbian soldier. Another player I've seen played the harvest moon farmer, complete with backpack of holding and growth times measured in days. Oh, and super high strength. I've also had a roommate who wanted to play a fourth dimensional squid, but then changed his mind.
Then talk to your DM about how to make that in Rifts. Don't worry, you'll find a way.
Then talk to your DM about how to make that in Rifts. Don't worry, you'll find a way.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.