I played a bit of ACKS through forums and it was good.
Any particular systems that are good for murderhobo dungeon crawling? The goal being to get loot, murdering things along the way while avoiding murder by monsters and hazards.
Best system for murderhobo sandbox dungeoncrawling, PbP
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OgreBattle
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Lago PARANOIA
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Well, I've heard things about Torchbearer. Specifically:
[*] Since it uses a BW system similar to Mouseguard, games run really quickly and smoothly. Even the people who didn't like the system said that it's slick for both the players and Maimmaster to run.
[*] There's no default overarching campaign or goal unless your DM inserts one. Your characters start off pretty pathetic and there's not room for anything but a narrow focus on dungeon crawling and strict pragmatism.
[*] The game just does murderhobo dungeon crawling. The town phase is literally the level-up scene and the wilderness phase is like money-grinding. There are no diplomacy mechanics or even any expectation of MTP diplomacy.
[*] Since you don't get kill experience and what we think of as low-grade status effects are really devastating, the game strongly encourages you to use fighting as a last resort.
[*] If you don't care for strict party inventory management, you're not going to enjoy the game. The game seriously tries to make you believe that a satchel full of rope, lantern oil, and copper pieces is a plausible alternative to a shield.
[*] The game functions on narrative time, not objective time. The frequency of phases that determine things like when you need to eat or replenish your light are determined by how often you make meaningful rolls from climbing to trying to figure out the riddle of a statue. This results in heavy, possibly WSoD-breaking use of Schrodinger's Gun for everything.
[*] The game expects total or near-total cooperation between everyone in the party. You can't have conflict, let alone backstabbing, without seriously risking a TPK.
[*] It's hipster and pretentious as fuck. Of course, I've only really heard OSR grognards really whine about this, but they've posted some passages and I can see where they're coming from. Personally, I'm pretty okay with pretention as a marketing gambit as long as marketeers know that we're free to mock them and pee on their works if they don't bring their A-game. Artificial strutting of your superiority made oWoD and the console wars for that matter. Of course, that can seriously backfire on you like with 4E D&D, but it's the risk you run.
[*] But seriously, any game system that makes OSR grognards piss their pants in rage is A-OK with me. I think oWoD players are demented (I mean, the REALLY committed ones, the ones that dress up to go to a TTRPG session and populated what were 85% of the MU*s 10 years ago), but I would gladly let them be the face of TTRPGing for the next 30 years if it meant shitting on those guys.
As I said, though, I've only heard it through reviews and previews. I'm not spending 15 dollars on a fucking PDF for the game and I don't have enough cash on hand to order the actual book.
If Torchbearer lives up to its hype I would really like to experiment adding a functioning social system to it with NPC-on-PC diplomacy (as I think that's the only way you could make urban and village encounters work within the framework) along with some good resource management system for superpowers. Probably Shadowrun-style Drain with an activation roll. Shadowrun's RM system is pretty much the best I've ever seen in a game, after all.
[*] Since it uses a BW system similar to Mouseguard, games run really quickly and smoothly. Even the people who didn't like the system said that it's slick for both the players and Maimmaster to run.
[*] There's no default overarching campaign or goal unless your DM inserts one. Your characters start off pretty pathetic and there's not room for anything but a narrow focus on dungeon crawling and strict pragmatism.
[*] The game just does murderhobo dungeon crawling. The town phase is literally the level-up scene and the wilderness phase is like money-grinding. There are no diplomacy mechanics or even any expectation of MTP diplomacy.
[*] Since you don't get kill experience and what we think of as low-grade status effects are really devastating, the game strongly encourages you to use fighting as a last resort.
[*] If you don't care for strict party inventory management, you're not going to enjoy the game. The game seriously tries to make you believe that a satchel full of rope, lantern oil, and copper pieces is a plausible alternative to a shield.
[*] The game functions on narrative time, not objective time. The frequency of phases that determine things like when you need to eat or replenish your light are determined by how often you make meaningful rolls from climbing to trying to figure out the riddle of a statue. This results in heavy, possibly WSoD-breaking use of Schrodinger's Gun for everything.
[*] The game expects total or near-total cooperation between everyone in the party. You can't have conflict, let alone backstabbing, without seriously risking a TPK.
[*] It's hipster and pretentious as fuck. Of course, I've only really heard OSR grognards really whine about this, but they've posted some passages and I can see where they're coming from. Personally, I'm pretty okay with pretention as a marketing gambit as long as marketeers know that we're free to mock them and pee on their works if they don't bring their A-game. Artificial strutting of your superiority made oWoD and the console wars for that matter. Of course, that can seriously backfire on you like with 4E D&D, but it's the risk you run.
[*] But seriously, any game system that makes OSR grognards piss their pants in rage is A-OK with me. I think oWoD players are demented (I mean, the REALLY committed ones, the ones that dress up to go to a TTRPG session and populated what were 85% of the MU*s 10 years ago), but I would gladly let them be the face of TTRPGing for the next 30 years if it meant shitting on those guys.
As I said, though, I've only heard it through reviews and previews. I'm not spending 15 dollars on a fucking PDF for the game and I don't have enough cash on hand to order the actual book.
If Torchbearer lives up to its hype I would really like to experiment adding a functioning social system to it with NPC-on-PC diplomacy (as I think that's the only way you could make urban and village encounters work within the framework) along with some good resource management system for superpowers. Probably Shadowrun-style Drain with an activation roll. Shadowrun's RM system is pretty much the best I've ever seen in a game, after all.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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.