Potential Game / Temperature Read

faraday

@three-eyed-crow Sure, but you can have open sheets on a WoD game. That's not FS3-specific (and actually in FS3 that's configurable, so some games might not have it). And the benefits of having linkable documentation that's "the same for everybody" goes out the window when people use it in square-peg-round-hole kinds of ways. (House rules are always a thing in any system, but many of the house rules for FS3 go beyond 'house rules' to 'wtf').

FS3 has advantages, sure. It rocks mass combats. Chargen and approvals are super-fast. It's already coded in a kinda-sorta generic way. I'm just not seeing the "oh it's so much easier to run plots" argument.

I mean, I don't have to see it. That's fine. Just struck me odd is all.

@Auspice - I never said for you to code your own system from scratch? I just said "WoD minus merits/flaws is virtually indistinguishable from FS3 in a mechanical sense." Removing the commands to set them would be a trivial code change to the WoD code base, I would think.

Ganymede

@faraday said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

"But Fara, we have to consider superpower stuff for a Magicians game." Sure, but the existing WoD mage system doesn't fit and FS3 has no magic system, so either way you're going to end up cooking up something custom. Just cook up something simple and it shouldn't matter which system you use.

@Auspice, re-working the Changeling: the Dreaming Arts and Realms could do the trick.

I'd help you, but I'm cobbling together an entirely new blood magic system for Vampire 2E.

Auspice

There's a lot of reasons for me not to use WoD.

I hate the current CG system out there for it. I hate it with a burning passion. I don't want to touch it. I hate using it to build characters. So if I used WoD? Oh look, back to having to code something from scratch.
Again, as much as people try to argue me, I don't think WoD is easy to ST in. If that makes me some sort of dumbass, then so be it.
CG is slower, approvals would take longer (esp. if I use something that can be abused wildly like Mage), and I don't want to have to keep a full app staff just to go through them.
One of the complaints we hear on the forums are 'yet another WoD game'. That's what it would be. I could slap the veneer of Magicians on it, but it'd be yet another WoD game.

Ganymede

@auspice

Fair enough. I think the proposals so far are Unisystem and FS3.

Witchcraft may be your best bet, but I didn't like it personally.

faraday

@ganymede Without a coder, that pretty much leaves you down to FS3. (unless there's a pre-build Unisystem game out there somewhere I'm unaware of, which would be cool)

Ganymede

@faraday said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

Without a coder, that pretty much leaves you down to FS3. (unless there's a pre-build Unisystem game out there somewhere I'm unaware of, which would be cool)

I think the Shaowhunters game was Unisystem, as was a survival-apocalypse game whose name I can't recall right now. And I think Buffy was Unisystem. Betcha @Cobaltasaurus knows where to find one.

Sunny

Buffy is Cinematic Unisystem, which is pretty close to the base Unisystem, which is what Witchcraft uses. To do Witchcraft, I don't think a Buffy setup would need that much modification.

Auspice

If the base system exists, it's probably more data entry to adapt it.

Sunny

@auspice I don't want to try and tackle details because I don't know what they are (I have not done an analysis or looking in pretty much forever), but I know there's SOME sort of differences in Cinematic vs Not Cinematic Unisystem, in the mechanics themselves. Buffy (and the other Cinematic stuff) is setup so you can get wilder heroics and such, to go along with a TV show sort of feel.

Collective

@sunny said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

@auspice I don't want to try and tackle details because I don't know what they are (I have not done an analysis or looking in pretty much forever), but I know there's SOME sort of differences in Cinematic vs Not Cinematic Unisystem, in the mechanics themselves. Buffy (and the other Cinematic stuff) is setup so you can get wilder heroics and such, to go along with a TV show sort of feel.

Cinematic is streamlined for quicker play. The main differences:

Fewer skills, more omnibus skills.
A simplified dice mechanic (no reroll and add on a 10).
A simplified damage mechanic. (Higher damage being the end result.)
Drama points, to help the player keep narrative control.
Simplified templates for the characters. Less options, but a quicker build.

And I think that's about it. It's been a decade or so, though, since I last played them.

Thenomain

@auspice said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

There's a lot of reasons for me not to use WoD.

I hate the current CG system out there for it. I hate it with a burning passion. I don't want to touch it. I hate using it to build characters. So if I used WoD? Oh look, back to having to code something from scratch.

Hi. My name is Thenomain and I code WoD related things for fun.

Well, not fun, but it’s second nature now.

This isn’t a reason to do it, but it’s a thing that I do. The reasons not to do WoD far outweigh the reasons to do it.

Auspice

So here's a sidebar...

...if I were to find someone willing to code it and a decent enough system (I think Misadventure had one)...

...would anyone enjoy a game of randomized PCs? It'd be meant entirely to be tongue-in-cheek, satire, and a TVTropes playground.

Tempest

I imagine plenty of people will say yes.

However, I'd be pretty amazed if the novelty of the whole thing didn't wear off incredibly quickly.

Jennkryst

@auspice Yes!

Followup query: must take first one? Can pick from set of, say... three?

Auspice

@jennkryst said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

@auspice Yes!

Followup query: must take first one? Can pick from set of, say... three?

I'd be willing to allow a limited number of re-rolls, yes. Sort of like how some d20 games will allow you to pick from a set of rolled numbers for use in attributes.

Lithium

@auspice Damn you.

Damn you for making me want to code an actual Ultimate Powers Random Chargen again... Damn you to hell.

Not really.

Maybe I'll break down and actually code this up.

Seraphim73

I would be very curious, but I also agree that it would probably get old pretty fast.

Ganymede

@auspice said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

...would anyone enjoy a game of randomized PCs? It'd be meant entirely to be tongue-in-cheek, satire, and a TVTropes playground.

I'd play it, for a long time.

If you could, use the old Castle Falkenstein system. Here's a primer/teaser from Wikipedia.

It gets really fun when you have shit cards.

Auspice

@ganymede said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

Here's a primer/teaser from Wikipedia

I approve of anything with cards (look I own like, 80+ decks okay).
But I'm not sure on the Victorian era setting.

HMMM.

Ganymede

@auspice said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

I approve of anything with cards (look I own like, 80+ decks okay).
But I'm not sure on the Victorian era setting.

Then don't. It's just a setting. CF can really be applied to any time or place.

But cards are important. I think random PCs + random cards = fun and mayhem. Make it a wacky post-apocalyptic world where your enemies are robots, but not cool Cylons or deadly IG-88s, but instead WALL-Es. Nothing but WALL-Es.