Minor game stuff from around the web for commentary...

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Sep 29, 2016 6:12 pm

Zaranthan wrote:I find it useful to ask a Diplomancer player if an NPC rolling a 70 on their Diplomacy check should mean I get to dictate the party's actions. If he says no, I get to shut down whatever he's trying to pull. If he says yes, I declare that the BBEG Diplomances the party into his inner circle and performs his world-ending ritual, so now we can play Strip Jenga. This leads to either the other players pressing the cheeser into abiding by the Gentlemen's Agreement or everybody taking their clothes off, depending on how late in the evening it is.

Either way, everybody wins.

What if they say "No because the rules say I'm immune to Diplomacy but the BBEG isn't." and cite "You can change the attitudes of others (nonplayer characters) with a successful Diplomacy check; see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs."

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:19 pm

I think that the real irony of the failure of Diplomacy occurs when:

-The Players actually explain to their target how cooperation will benefit them
-One PC can make that argument's Difficulty Class check in the games Diplomacy mechanic
-The Mister Cavern has the NPC suddenly go suicidal and try to kill themselves

Most of the time, Diplomacy fails; because the Referees are fucking idiots without a shred of understanding of how the process of war has been fought by humans in history.

Yes, you do shove your stabbers into the enemies faces; but the only way to totally destroy an enemy? Make them your friend. Unfortunately, most people don't know that no conflict lasts forever; and that times of peace & commerce must happen from time to time. Even between sometimes warring nations.

It's DMs who can't get their head out of their ass; those who hypocritically insist that they are "roleplay DMs" while only wanting combat-to-the-death encounters; that reduce most fantasy gaming to the state of facestabbing hobomurderism.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:11 am

I saw this in my FB feed today; the art production values aren't bad, but I'm unsure of the mechanics. Even if they don't have an art director, the artists seem to be really tight on their use of colour to evoke the late 80's/early 90's aesthetic.

Only one of the "game designers" on the project has any D&D content on their linked homepage; I can't say off-hand if it's balanced, but it seemed interesting (e.g. a Rogue archetype called "Dirt Eater", basically a Meld w/ Stone, or Xorn-like, Rogue that one could see a Dwarf/Gnome/Kobalt being).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/15 ... plemental/

The 'designers' websites.

Shannon Campbell
http://www.wordweasel.ca

Dillon MacPherson
https://sites.google.com/view/dmcoldbrew

Malcolm Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmwilson/

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:26 am

I'm sort of flabbergasted at how complicated this homebrew class is. Ten pages of text for a non-spellcaster. Few of the abilities matter, or require tons of juggling of little things; like a level-scaling Max HP debuff with barely-scaling damage buff; or deciding if you want to be sort of a ghost, a bard, or an alchemist-mutant (I think you want to be a bard b/c spell slots).

https://geekandsundry.com/wp-content/up ... ss-1.2.pdf

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Thu Feb 01, 2018 3:28 pm

Paradox/WhiteWolf finally breaks silence; they're doing a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game http://werewolf-videogame.com/en

No real information there yet, but looks like they're partnered with Cyanide (boo) and Fathom (yay!)

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Feb 01, 2018 3:46 pm

Wonder when EA will buy Paradox . .

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 6:15 am

Stahlseele wrote:Wonder when EA will buy Paradox . .

They're not pretty or successful enough. EA only likes to destroy pretty things.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 8:17 am

I've finally got my hands on the release edition of Unknown Armies 3e. It is the absolute worst RPG I've ever seen. It is insuferably pretentious hipsterish bullshit. To give you a highlight:

The school of magic built around guns prohibits you from using guns. Which is retarded, but then it gets worse. There is a sidebar saying that during playtest many people complained that their gunmages can't shoot people. And in the sidebar Stolze declares this as his victory and the intended result.

I'm going to try and do a drunken review of this when I have time.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 8:29 am

I'm intrigued at how "gunmagic" precludes "gunplay". Also, why people who signed up for "gunplay" don't pick an other form of magic that synergizes better than "gunmagic" doesn't.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 9:02 am

Dogbert wrote:
Stahlseele wrote:Wonder when EA will buy Paradox . .
They're not pretty or successful enough. EA only likes to destroy pretty things.

Paradox?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_P ... tive_games
With that list of games under their belt they are a pretty shiny bauble in my eyes o.o

Cervantes · Post by **Cervantes** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 9:29 am

Longes wrote:I've finally got my hands on the release edition of Unknown Armies 3e. It is the absolute worst RPG I've ever seen. It is insuferably pretentious hipsterish bullshit. To give you a highlight:

The school of magic built around guns prohibits you from using guns. Which is retarded, but then it gets worse. There is a sidebar saying that during playtest many people complained that their gunmages can't shoot people. And in the sidebar Stolze declares this as his victory and the intended result.

I'm going to try and do a drunken review of this when I have time.

Some Gunmages CAN shoot people and you absolutely should only do those ones because they're clearly better

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 10:31 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:I'm intrigued at how "gunmagic" precludes "gunplay". Also, why people who signed up for "gunplay" don't pick an other form of magic that synergizes better than "gunmagic" doesn't.

Because Unknown Armies 3 is awful. I didn't think it's possible to design a school worse than 2e Dipsomancy*, but 99% of the schools in UA3 are actually worse than Dipsomancy.

*Dipsomancy had many issues. Its charge structure was drinking (minor), drinking from rare vessels (significant), drinking unique booze (major). This meant that Dipsomancy charging was extremely deterministic and you either always got minor charges or always got significant charges until GM takes away your rare cup. Dipsomancy's taboo was getting sober, so Dipsomancers were mechanically incentivised to get hammered before action, spend a minor charge to negate penalties, and then go nova.
As a cherry on top, Dipsomancy's area of expertise was "cheating", doing with magic anything that benefits you. Which is fucking everything that you'd do with magic anyway. Published Dipsomancy spells did everything ranging from using Dipsomancy in place of any skill (including other magic schools) to summoning and binding ghosts demons to drinking ghosts demons to get their skillpoints. It was total bullshit.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 10:40 am

Drunken Magester? O.o

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 11:26 am

Ferret wrote:Paradox/WhiteWolf finally breaks silence; they're doing a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game http://werewolf-videogame.com/en

No real information there yet, but looks like they're partnered with Cyanide (boo) and Fathom (yay!)

Eh. This has been known for a while- back when they announced the new dogshit paper version of vampire, they mentioned that for some reason they were doing werewolf the video game first. And publishing it through Focus, despite... being a publisher.

It should be a hilarious clusterfuck. And/or really depressing

So, Fathom- what have they done and why should we care?
I don't actually see them named anywhere.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 9:26 pm

Longes wrote:
Judging__Eagle wrote:I'm intrigued at how "gunmagic" precludes "gunplay". Also, why people who signed up for "gunplay" don't pick an other form of magic that synergizes better than "gunmagic" doesn't.
Because Unknown Armies 3 is awful. I didn't think it's possible to design a school worse than 2e Dipsomancy*, but 99% of the schools in UA3 are actually worse than Dipsomancy.

*Dipsomancy had many issues. Its charge structure was drinking (minor), drinking from rare vessels (significant), drinking unique booze (major). This meant that Dipsomancy charging was extremely deterministic and you either always got minor charges or always got significant charges until GM takes away your rare cup. Dipsomancy's taboo was getting sober, so Dipsomancers were mechanically incentivised to get hammered before action, spend a minor charge to negate penalties, and then go nova.
As a cherry on top, Dipsomancy's area of expertise was "cheating", doing with magic anything that benefits you. Which is fucking everything that you'd do with magic anyway. Published Dipsomancy spells did everything ranging from using Dipsomancy in place of any skill (including other magic schools) to summoning and binding ghosts demons to drinking ghosts demons to get their skillpoints. It was total bullshit.

Dude, Dipsos being able to sub their good skill for any other skill was great, since it got around the Mother May I nature of the skill rules. Being able to go nova with a minor meant not having to deal with the god-awful mechanics any longer than you had to. They were fun, flavorful, and bullshit strong. Most the UA3 schools suck because they're useless, restrictive, or both. Gun mages that can't use guns are jokes, but they did capitulate on that.

At least UA3 has something resembling rules able to pilfered for other projects (Identities, Build a School rules, Reality Bruising).

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 9:41 pm

Mask_De_H wrote: Dude, Dipsos being able to sub their good skill for any other skill was great

Which is also why it was bad. Alcoholism was the Unknown Armies equivalent of SR3 Skillwires. They were completely pointless if you didn't take things to 11 and they absolutely broke the game in half if you did. It wasn't some derpy pun-pun bullshit that was clearly unintended or arguably illegal, either, the school was just very clearly designed to work that way, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Anyway, I love that a persistent bias around here is a tendency to interpret "bad design" as meaning the class must be incompetent rather than stupidly powerful. It fits the common denner stereotype like a glove.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 9:57 pm

There was a thematic thing running through the Dipso list that it was somehow meant to cost you in the long run or not be as good at whatever it was imitating as the "real thing", hence its ability to raise the dead being explicitly "half living abominations only" where Thanatomancy allowed you to reverse someone's death within a short time period in exchange for a sig charge that you most likely got through ritual murder.

Although this does make me feel I would only have made things worse if I'd ever run UA for a campaign and used the Dipsomancy house rule I'd seen suggested that you should get sig charges for "drinks that set your alcohol penalty sufficiently high that you're probably not using skills properly regardless" instead of from a GM pity token. Because, well, I hadn't thought of the route of "just get smashed and roll Magic instead of Skill for the entire adventure as if you were a hypercompetent mundane adequately competent mundane in a band of total incompetents.

Cervantes · Post by **Cervantes** » Fri Feb 02, 2018 11:46 pm

it's kind of hard to critique UA3e on a particular basis because it's fucked from the second they decided to stick with percentile roll-under

also I think Mask's point wasn't "it's okay because it's stupidly powerful", it was "it's okay because it's stupidly powerful and thus allows you to actually be competent at things"

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 12:29 am

I can understand that argument but I'd argue that from an ongoing game design standpoint Dipsos by the RAW are actually more problematic than a school that's merely weak. You know that troublesome thing in D&D where Clerics are buffed by every book that comes out because they automagically know every spell on the cleric list? Dipsos are like that except for pretty much any skill you could conceivably print for the game. It makes buffing other schools rather tricky for reasons that should be pretty obvious.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 1:16 am

Longes wrote:I've finally got my hands on the release edition of Unknown Armies 3e. It is the absolute worst RPG I've ever seen. It is insuferably pretentious hipsterish bullshit.
...
I'm going to try and do a drunken review of this when I have time.

OSSR: Unknown Armies review by AH and Frank

Can compare and contrast. I'd like to know how 3rd edition is differently stupid.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:07 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:I'm intrigued at how "gunmagic" precludes "gunplay". Also, why people who signed up for "gunplay" don't pick an other form of magic that synergizes better than "gunmagic" doesn't.

The key is that Fulminaturgists are not actually gun mages. They are open carry mages.

Actually shooting people invalidates the NRA talking points that they use to empower themselves.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:47 am

Whipstitch wrote:I can understand that argument but I'd argue that from an ongoing game design standpoint Dipsos by the RAW are actually more problematic than a school that's merely weak. You know that troublesome thing in D&D where Clerics are buffed by every book that comes out because they automagically know every spell on the cleric list? Dipsos are like that except for pretty much any skill you could conceivably print for the game. It makes buffing other schools rather tricky for reasons that should be pretty obvious.

This is true, but any non-magic skill you could conceivably print for the game comes out the MC's rectum in UA2. Even the magic skills don't do overmuch without charges (Adept) or the right percentile range (Avatar). You still have to guess what the MC is thinking with the skill-swap spell unless you stack on enough other shit it doesn't matter.

UA2 is a dogshit game and playing RAW is basically impossible. If it were not raw ass, Dipsos would be a problem. Since it is, the game as a whole is a problem.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 6:01 am

Mask_De_H wrote:
Longes wrote:
Judging__Eagle wrote:I'm intrigued at how "gunmagic" precludes "gunplay". Also, why people who signed up for "gunplay" don't pick an other form of magic that synergizes better than "gunmagic" doesn't.
Because Unknown Armies 3 is awful. I didn't think it's possible to design a school worse than 2e Dipsomancy*, but 99% of the schools in UA3 are actually worse than Dipsomancy.

*Dipsomancy had many issues. Its charge structure was drinking (minor), drinking from rare vessels (significant), drinking unique booze (major). This meant that Dipsomancy charging was extremely deterministic and you either always got minor charges or always got significant charges until GM takes away your rare cup. Dipsomancy's taboo was getting sober, so Dipsomancers were mechanically incentivised to get hammered before action, spend a minor charge to negate penalties, and then go nova.
As a cherry on top, Dipsomancy's area of expertise was "cheating", doing with magic anything that benefits you. Which is fucking everything that you'd do with magic anyway. Published Dipsomancy spells did everything ranging from using Dipsomancy in place of any skill (including other magic schools) to summoning and binding ghosts demons to drinking ghosts demons to get their skillpoints. It was total bullshit.
Dude, Dipsos being able to sub their good skill for any other skill was great, since it got around the Mother May I nature of the skill rules. Being able to go nova with a minor meant not having to deal with the god-awful mechanics any longer than you had to. They were fun, flavorful, and bullshit strong. Most the UA3 schools suck because they're useless, restrictive, or both. Gun mages that can't use guns are jokes, but they did capitulate on that.

At least UA3 has something resembling rules able to pilfered for other projects (Identities, Build a School rules, Reality Bruising).

I immediately said that Dipsomancy is very powerful. Being powerful is not the issue. Being way out of line with every other school is and is a clear failure of school design. If in your game you've designed ten BMX Bandits and one accidentally turned out to be Angel Summoner, then its clear that your intent was to make ten BMX Bandits, not ten Angel Summoners.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 8:08 am

Longes wrote: I immediately said that Dipsomancy is very powerful. Being powerful is not the issue. Being way out of line with every other school is and is a clear failure of school design. If in your game you've designed ten BMX Bandits and one accidentally turned out to be Angel Summoner, then its clear that your intent was to make ten BMX Bandits, not ten Angel Summoners.

In case you missed it, you're posting in a forum where the general consensus is that since the wizard and cleric exist in 3.X, every other class should at minimum be as powerful as them. If one option is DA STRONGEST, then it's clearly the baseline and what the designers intended all along.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:24 am

maglag wrote: In case you missed it, you're posting in a forum where the general consensus is that since the wizard and cleric exist in 3.X, every other class should at minimum be as powerful as them. If one option is DA STRONGEST, then it's clearly the baseline and what the designers intended all along.

Nah, that's a strawman.

The correctly stated form of that position is that since the wizard and cleric actually perform level-appropriately against monsters for the greatest part of the game's level range out of all the core classes, and require the least amount of GM pity or special pleading, they are not broken but should be the baseline.

Even then, many Tome rules involve stealth nerfs to them in the form of limitations on things like teleportation, shapeshifting, planar binding, metamagic stacking and unlimited spell knowledge that they use to really run up the score at higher levels.