Has anybody got any experience with any of the following RPGs and what was interesting about them. This is the Den so I already know that each of these games is garbage, but then again so is everything else.
Dreampod 9: Silcore or the Jovian Chronicles or Heavy Gear RPGs
I have played the Heavy Gear RPG. It has all the same problems as mechwarrior. If everybody plays a Gear pilot then its basically impossible to write meaningful opposition. I really like the games damage system.
Fantasy AGE / Modern AGE / Future AGE
Started life as Dragon AGE rpg. Now appears to be Green Ronin's house system to be used for everything. Appears to be supported even more sparingly that 5e.
WOIN (What's Old is New)
Another universal system, I have no idea how well this is doing. Seems like they put out more stuff for this than Green Ronin does for AGE but its all PDFs.
Monster of the Week
This is evil hat, who normally does FATE stuff, doing a PbtA game. Both Fate and PbtA are difficult for me to get in the mindset of because they honestly don't seem to have very much "game" to them. I know PbtA is not popular here, but how many of hte Power by the appocolypse games include the weird sex stuff and "90s extreme dude bro" writting style? Those things were huge turn offs for me and everyone I know...
Fate Accelerated (specifically Dresden Files Accelerated)
Is this still really nebulous like fate or is there some more structure?
Fantasy Flight Games Genesys:
People sort of act like this is a ruleslight game. It does not appear that way at all to me. Also, not a huge fan of special dice.
Chronicles of Darkness 2.0 (The god machine Chronicles)
A pdf and Print on demand from Onyx Path. This seems to be a desperately needed fix to clean up the rules and make the game more functional. Gets Rid of Frank's pet peeve of virtue/Vice in place of a "positive trait/negative trait." Includes negative traits that are not chosen from the seven deadly sins. It can't do anything to change the fact that the requiem/forsaken/awakening settings are garbage, but seems like you could use the rules + powers to make a more interesting game. Anybody bothered with it at all?
Late Addition:
Savage Worlds: Seems like a supported game but is it?
RPG Grabbag! Have you played any of these!
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RPG Grabbag! Have you played any of these!
Last edited by souran on Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
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angelfromanotherpin
- Overlord
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- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
I've played all the Silhouette system stuff, and it all has the same problems: The tactical stuff is too fiddly, the skill system is vaporware, and nobody involved knew what any element of your character was worth relative to any other element. As a wargame it's passable, as an RPG it's not a thing.
I really like silhouette's damage system. It doesn't require hitpoints, there is lots of room for armor and weapon effects.angelfromanotherpin wrote:I've played all the Silhouette system stuff, and it all has the same problems: The tactical stuff is too fiddly, the skill system is vaporware, and nobody involved knew what any element of your character was worth relative to any other element. As a wargame it's passable, as an RPG it's not a thing.
However, when we played Heavy Gear everybody wanted to be a Gear Pilot (duh) and that meant that there were like 4 skills that were relevant for the whole game. It had all the same problems as when we played mechwarrior. A starting PC can, and will, be better than a super veteran pilot from the wargame. If you actually wanted to play with the gears then the game broke down. That was disappointing.
From those, the only one I read thoroughly is AGE... and for all I usually like Green Ronin products, AGE is simply boring. It was made with 4E design philosophy in mind, which is to say the gaming equivalent of a Bowdlerized edit of a play or a Fox Kids Show: Safe, sanitized, safe, samey, safe, cookiecutter, safe, pigeonholing, safe, asphyxiating, safe.
I did read FATE accelerated on the same reading I did the latest FATE version... or at least I'm sure I did, because there wasn't much to read... I think the whole read was five pages long if I remember right... and from what little I remember the system didn't leave an impression on me at all (it's sort of an executive summary of FATE, so an actual rules-like version of a rules-medium system, but I didn't find it memorable at all)... also I haven't touched basic FATE in years because I don't endorse gangsters.
I hope that helps.
I did read FATE accelerated on the same reading I did the latest FATE version... or at least I'm sure I did, because there wasn't much to read... I think the whole read was five pages long if I remember right... and from what little I remember the system didn't leave an impression on me at all (it's sort of an executive summary of FATE, so an actual rules-like version of a rules-medium system, but I didn't find it memorable at all)... also I haven't touched basic FATE in years because I don't endorse gangsters.
I hope that helps.
It does actually. I know its sad but I often find myself asking what does this system do that 5e doesn't. That seems to me to set the bar really low. However, for as bad a game as 5e is it is easy to play and has a rules complexity that is sufficient that I can get the people I know who like board games/older rpgs to play while at the same time not being so overwhelming that I can get people who get action paralysis looking at a pathfinder character sheet to actually play it and not zone out.Dogbert wrote:From those, the only one I read thoroughly is AGE... and for all I usually like Green Ronin products, AGE is simply boring. It was made with 4E design philosophy in mind, which is to say the gaming equivalent of a Bowdlerized edit of a play or a Fox Kids Show: Safe, sanitized, safe, samey, safe, cookiecutter, safe, pigeonholing, safe, asphyxiating, safe.
I did read FATE accelerated on the same reading I did the latest FATE version... or at least I'm sure I did, because there wasn't much to read... I think the whole read was five pages long if I remember right... and from what little I remember the system didn't leave an impression on me at all (it's sort of an executive summary of FATE, so an actual rules-like version of a rules-medium system, but I didn't find it memorable at all)... also I haven't touched basic FATE in years because I don't endorse gangsters.
I hope that helps.
This does not mean it is a good game, but 5e becomes the Mendoza line of RPGs for me. If a game doesn't do some appreciably better than 5e such that I can explain it to my wife and she thinks it worth the effort then it fails.
I still don't know what Dogbert is talking about with gangsters and Fate, but I've played Accelerated and MotW. MotW is one of the least bullshit PbtA hacks, has a good one shot session generator (although that might be Demon Hunters: Comedy of Terrors). I liked the narrative bullshit point meter setup, and I think Dresden Files Accelerated stole it for their stress tracks.
Fate Accelerated is actually rules-light Fate, and pretty solid for a fuckaround game. It's easier to pick up than Core, but there's no built in rules to make people not roll face on their best Stat forever.
Fate Accelerated is actually rules-light Fate, and pretty solid for a fuckaround game. It's easier to pick up than Core, but there's no built in rules to make people not roll face on their best Stat forever.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
Dragon Age is fine for wandering around a fantasy world engaging in fairly mundane adventures. I assume the computer game is a bit more “high fantasy”, but I’ve never actually played it.
They push you towards random character creation – my dwarf character got something like 3 racial abilities, and one of them turned out to be “Skill Focus: Drive Cart”. (I am genuinely baffled as to why they’d put something like that in the game.) In the second box set, they brought out a much better Dwarf sub-race and the GM allowed me to switch, so I lost my elite cart driving skills.
Character advancement consists of taking the most obvious options and then scratching around trying to find anything else worth bothering with. The “feat” equivalents are pretty much all terrible, although at higher levels you can take “specialisations” instead which, whilst not exactly powerful, are at least a bit more interesting and may actually allow you to do something new rather than taking the “feat” approach of making you microscopically better at the stuff you’ve been doing since level 1.
There are skills, but absolutely nothing to say what they do. If you don’t know what (say) “Carousing” is then you can’t use it, since the game doesn’t tell you what it is or why you’d want to do it, only which ability it keys off. What does “Self Discipline” do in the game? Read all the spells and all the monsters to find out.
Our game broke around level 7, when the warrior character was walking around in armour that pretty much made him invulnerable, and my rogue’s attacks never missed. The mage’s spells had seemed quite balanced (and boring) at lower levels but enemies now seemed incapable of saving against them, allowing her to take out entire groups in one go – although possibly we weren’t using the magic rules correctly (I haven’t read them since unless you play a mage you get no spellcasting, ever).
The ability to generate “stunt points” was interesting at first, but the optimal choice is easy enough to figure out so you end up doing the same thing every time. It gets tweaked a bit once stunt-related class abilities come into play, but that just creates a new “normal”.
They push you towards random character creation – my dwarf character got something like 3 racial abilities, and one of them turned out to be “Skill Focus: Drive Cart”. (I am genuinely baffled as to why they’d put something like that in the game.) In the second box set, they brought out a much better Dwarf sub-race and the GM allowed me to switch, so I lost my elite cart driving skills.
Character advancement consists of taking the most obvious options and then scratching around trying to find anything else worth bothering with. The “feat” equivalents are pretty much all terrible, although at higher levels you can take “specialisations” instead which, whilst not exactly powerful, are at least a bit more interesting and may actually allow you to do something new rather than taking the “feat” approach of making you microscopically better at the stuff you’ve been doing since level 1.
There are skills, but absolutely nothing to say what they do. If you don’t know what (say) “Carousing” is then you can’t use it, since the game doesn’t tell you what it is or why you’d want to do it, only which ability it keys off. What does “Self Discipline” do in the game? Read all the spells and all the monsters to find out.
Our game broke around level 7, when the warrior character was walking around in armour that pretty much made him invulnerable, and my rogue’s attacks never missed. The mage’s spells had seemed quite balanced (and boring) at lower levels but enemies now seemed incapable of saving against them, allowing her to take out entire groups in one go – although possibly we weren’t using the magic rules correctly (I haven’t read them since unless you play a mage you get no spellcasting, ever).
The ability to generate “stunt points” was interesting at first, but the optimal choice is easy enough to figure out so you end up doing the same thing every time. It gets tweaked a bit once stunt-related class abilities come into play, but that just creates a new “normal”.
Dragon age came out when 4e was fresh and people didnt really know what was gonna happen with it, pathfinder, something else?. I looked at it pretty heavy and remember being pissed at the random character gen stuff. I had a big list of house rules to make it playable, and eventually decided it was too similar to 3.x and would just play that instead and lost interest.
The first box was level 1-5 and seemed like it would need big power ups to go to box 2, so i didnt bother. By level 5 we were generally untouchable. So i couldnt imagine what huge content update they would roll out with box 2 to make it worth anything. Seeing the answer was “nothing” sounds about right.
The first box was level 1-5 and seemed like it would need big power ups to go to box 2, so i didnt bother. By level 5 we were generally untouchable. So i couldnt imagine what huge content update they would roll out with box 2 to make it worth anything. Seeing the answer was “nothing” sounds about right.
Savage Worlds has products to support it, but it's better run with a lot of MTP and not bothering with those anyway. Anathema to the Den I know, but it's a simple game where it's easy enough for the player or GM to write something up between sessions and for them to agree on it. Not a great game for a long term campaign where flaws can become familiar via repetition.
I made it through only one session of Savage Worlds before it felt stretched to the breaking point. The RNG is really not robust: mild character optimization and environmental effects can make the game an unplayable mess. Further, the combat maneuvers are fiddly and joyless and the default magic system is not evocative. Simple rules that support fast resolution of modern combat is a good pitch, but I was underwhelmed.
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OgreBattle
- King
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- Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am
What's the Silhouette system like in play, I've read about it years ago... like a one roll for hit and damage thing?souran wrote:I really like silhouette's damage system. It doesn't require hitpoints, there is lots of room for armor and weapon effects.angelfromanotherpin wrote:I've played all the Silhouette system stuff, and it all has the same problems: The tactical stuff is too fiddly, the skill system is vaporware, and nobody involved knew what any element of your character was worth relative to any other element. As a wargame it's passable, as an RPG it's not a thing.
However, when we played Heavy Gear everybody wanted to be a Gear Pilot (duh) and that meant that there were like 4 skills that were relevant for the whole game. It had all the same problems as when we played mechwarrior. A starting PC can, and will, be better than a super veteran pilot from the wargame. If you actually wanted to play with the gears then the game broke down. That was disappointing.
Yeah, attack roll gives you a (small) margin of success. You then take your damage, subtract their armour, and multiply the remainder by the margin, and pass the target that number. They then compare it to their 'wound threshold' to see how big a wound they take (think a little bit like Shadowrun LMSD, but derived as a multiplier of their Constitution or something 
).
It's not terrible to play, but it's also not super-fast, and honestly, accuracy is king.
).It's not terrible to play, but it's also not super-fast, and honestly, accuracy is king.