@Arkandel said in New moderator.:
@Coin said in New moderator.:
@Arkandel would never make me a mod because putting up a united front is too much like agreeing with me and he experiences physical pain when that happens.
I just experienced PTSD at the very thought.
Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, you wussy Canuk?
Stranger Things Season 3 is a revitalization of the franchise
Does a franchise a scant 2 years old need "revitalized"?
Also, is it true that Netflix is thinking about removing all the smoking from season 3?
@Sparks said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
The Secret World
But what about, e.g., The Secret World?
Also: How in the world would you do this on a Mu*? The amount of staff support required sounds astounding.
@Ganymede said in New moderator.:
Y’all act like this is the end of the world or some shit. The truth is far more prosaic.
An active mod?
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.
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Waitwaitwaitwait! Nononono! I got it!
Modern Day Dragon Age. Especially triggered by the Kirkwall Coffee mini-series.
I don't know how this would work, but I doubt it could be done with any degree of seriousness and still be any good. Serious moments, but not "gritty fantasy" serious.
We’re talking about the prime Pillow Fort instigator and at the time all around shitty person to our hobby, yes. Her ability to get people to like her until she decides they’re not worth it anymore is a defining trait, and I’d be looking forward to the moment where her current support network figures this out.
It’s good to be self-aware, @AeriaNyx , and I you can probably be pretty confident that you now have more of it than she does.
@Coin said in Alternate Universes, OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fanfic:
@insomniac7809 said in Alternate Universes, OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fanfic:
@Sparks said in Alternate Universes, OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fanfic:
@insomniac7809 said in Alternate Universes, OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fanfic:
If we're really getting into classical crossover fanfic, though, we have to talk about Jason and the Argonauts.
"Every culture hero from the Greek city-states team up and have an adventure."
Now I just imagine the classical version of AO3, but instead of leaving comments people cluster around the Jason fanfic author to shout that the author is clearly getting this characterization wrong, because Hercules is totally not with Hylas and wouldn't leave the quest for him, because Hercules/Iolaus OTP, no Hercules/Megara OTP, are you kidding that relationship was so unhealthy, etc. And then one person starts screaming "UPDATE PLS!"
"Which poleis get to have their culture heroes on the boat" was a serious political statement for a while.
And if we're going into classical shipper territory, "was Achilles or Patroclus the top" was something 5th- and 4th-century BCE playwrights and philosophers liked to argue.
(Seriously, it shows up in the Symposium.)
Clearly it was patroclus, that's why his name means "Daddy Glory". <.<
@Bad-at-Lurking said in BESM 4th Edition KS:
Hopefully, it gives McKinnon enough assets so he can be sued by all the game writers and artists he screwed over with Guardians of Order. (His last company.) Last I heard, he'd literally conned folks out of an aggregate high six figures/low seven figures amount of cash.
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@Rinel said in Alternate Universes, OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fanfic:
Have any of you ever thought about what your characters or MU* settings would be like in an alternate universe?
You know what? I don't think I really ever have.
Maybe I don't have imagination for such things, but probably because I'm a no-fun killjoy when it comes to world building, which is evidence that I need to go out and get drunk more often.
I am, however, excited with a concept relayed to me by @Coin wherein it's a superhero game but the world is attached to every possible alternative dimension so nobody would bat an eye if there were fifteen Batmans and six Spider-Mans. Mens. Peoples. This makes me giddy, which is strange for someone who is at best lukewarm about superhero comics.
Me. I'm talking about me.
I did once want to reimagine Dark Metal MUSH in a turn-of-the-century steampunk setting called "The Darkness of our Mettle" because a) puns, b) why not take something infamous and play around with it, and c) puns.
I've loved other things with the conceit of throwing ideas into another setting, such as Clone High or Brad Neely's Washington (video nsfw: swears and foot-dicks) and RPG's Famous John Wick came up with a game conceit on how to do this cheeky and wonderful "how the future looked back in the past" game called Yesterday's Tomorrow that's worth checking out.
So yes, I guess I have thought about it, just not with my own characters. My characters live in a specific world. If you take them out of that world, they're not the same character. Rad would not be Rad if he wasn't a Silent Strider in the middle of a once-irradiated nuclear power-plant. Vera wouldn't be Vera if her mother hadn't sold her out to the faeries. I could start in the same place from these people, but I hope they would end up as very different people.
... I seemed to have waxed philosophical.
Again.
@Tempest said in New Handheld-only Switch:
Include a kickstand?
Recent history says you'll be lucky if they include an AC adapter to charge this thing.
Bonus points if they don't tell you any other AC adapter but theirs will brick the unit.
@Auspice said in New Handheld-only Switch:
if this is doable, why not include a kickstand?
This is a "Why doesn't Company X do Thing Y That I Want" question, and the answer is always the same: If you can answer that kind of question, get into stock trading ASAP.
While it's probably also about money, it could also be about time and the lack thereof, or the desire to make a product that can't be done between the various resources available (time, money, employees, other projects demanding attention, etc).
There's nothing wrong with a company leaving a potential solution with third party developers. This is a win all around for the company and those developers if it catches on; the company is supported by choice, and the developers are supported by the rising popularity of something that's rising in popularity because they're supporting it.
It's not a guarantee, but when it happens it's a sight to behold and the fans should be grateful for it too, though people will still complain about it.
Sorry for this almost-double-post (good to know, @Alamias), but in going through my DTRPG downloads I forgot one.
The big one.
The best one.
A Dirty World, by Greg Stolze.
People probably know him better because of Reign, Unknown Armies, Wild Talents/Godlike, Better Angels (mentioned previously).
A Dirty World is a game about living in the the 1940s and uses a system that I desperately want to make work elsewhere wherein you can do pretty much anything that doesn't take a lot of skill as long as your personality says you're confident in doing so.
If you want to deflect a scum mobster, you need to be confident in your righteousness. If you want to hit harder, you need to give up some innocence to throw your anger behind your punch.
These personality traits aren't just whatever number you want, but they come in pairs, and at a level they're mutually exclusive. You don't have "slight of hand", but if you're more sleazy than innocent your character is more likely to pick that lock no matter how much "skill" your character might have.
And the system is tiny. My explanation of why I like the system is about as deep as the system goes, and follows up with many specific examples because the idea of rolling "Persuasion + Purity" doesn't come naturally.
It is not a game of high worldly stakes. It's noir, through-and-through, and as part of a larger system I could take to it even faster than Apocalypse World for a new way of playing RPGs.
So it's interesting to me that DriveThru RPG made a macOS client for downloading the stuff you have through them and keeping it up to date. Not that I buy things through DTRPG, but that almost every Kickstarter I've participated in does.
But I'm on my main computer and let's see what's going on here in things I've found, purchased, read, but never or hardly ever played.
(Incidentally, I found my copy of Donjon. If anyone wants a copy, please PM me.)
--
Annalise: A game about being involved with a Dracula-level novella vampire. It mentions "carry: a game about war" which is the RPG version of Valiant Hearts in scope and impact.
Feed: Like "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" but for vampires, for telling stories about being vampires by creating the kind of vampires there are in the world, as long as they always push against a societal norm and they feed on something personal.
(I like games where limitations are there to make you more creative.)
Primetime Adventures: We talk about Horror Mush and its roles and ways to get people into scenes, the beauty of troupe play, and if you want to see where someone would take this as a formatted Story RPG, check out PTA. Key ideas are how to share scenes, and how to play an improv game together.
Tales from the Loop: A "Kids On Bikes" game inspired by the stories in the art from Simon Stålenhag. I could spend hours just staring. This game came out slightly before Stranger Things and is an alternative-history sci-fi game, but his art (and this game) is easily my first experience with 70s Nostalgia.
The One Ring and/or Mouse Guard RPG: I'm lumping these together because they both take the D&D standard idea of murder-hobos and add heart and soul and intent as key elements to the game system, forcing you to pay attention. Sometimes it's simple—kill the (giant) snake—and sometimes it's not—deal with betrayal.
I probably should add Pendragon in that grouping too, then, since it's one of the earliest RPGs I can think of that take on more than hack-and-slash in a mechanical and central role.
--
So Many Steampunk Games: Clockwork Dominion, Edara, Leagues Of Adventure, and of course Space 1889 (the grandaddy of all of these)
Games About And/Or For Kids: Faerie Skies, Bubblegumshoe, I know I have more somewhere. (I love the portrayal of innocence in RPGs, too.)
Post-Apoc And/Or Horror Games: Fragged Empire, SINS, Kult (yes, this game is still pretty fringe)
--
I have more worth talking about somewhere. I wonder when I last purged my library.
@Sparks said in Fringe/Weird RPGs:
@Thenomain said in Fringe/Weird RPGs:
- Spire: Oh my god, read Spire; this needs to be less fringe
I've never heard of this one, but 'elven urban rebellion' sounds pretty neat.
It hits my antiestablishment buttons. You all play drow, in what was your home city until your people lost the war. Now it’s an occupied city where the high elves are in charge. The elves are mostly Nordic in origin, silver hair and light skin, but very haughty high elf in culture, and if you think this might be a bit of social commentary I’d have to say: Well yuh.
Humans have grasped the ancient magic of the previous people, artificers, and the Spire is a mile-high building of some mystic construction that goes underground almost as far as it does into the air, and if you think this is a suggestion that the world is post-disaster fantasy I’d have to say: You’re probably right there too.
The Spire is powered by a gigantic heart that is partially in another dimension and controls the minds of those who live too near it.
Tech period is otherwise the 20s. The advertisement for the gnoll corset gets me in the mood every time. Magic is very real but not D&D; it’s closer to Apocalypse World class has its own power set, and classes are very specific.
And in all of this, you and your fellow people decide how to rebel against originally impossible odds, and what would you do with that power once you get it?
What you do affects your allies and your enemies though a clever but small system. And without your contacts you’re unlikely to get anywhere.
This game reminds me of Kill Six Billion Demons, and Pendula Swing and something else that is not at the moment coming to mind but I’ll probably edit the moment I remember. (Fallen London. It was Fallen London.)
Mmmm, I love the taste of living worlds in the morning.
That said, here are some things I used to play, want to play, or imagined that maybe I played:
Fringe games that probably aren't really fringe:
Let's talk modern-day fringe:
I could mention a half dozen more that aren't even 20 pages, but I have to draw the line somewhere. (Emily and Vincent are just so good that they can break this rule whenever they want.)
And this is just what's on my iPad.
I haven't played anything post-D&D 2e or WoD 2nd Ed, but that's not to say I don't want to. I would play any game I've mentioned, with glee.
@Sparks said in Fringe/Weird RPGs:
Donjon.
I think this is one of the games that sent ripples throughout the entire industry. You can see Wick and Hicks playing with ideas here for almost a decade. You can see some of the core ideals here very solidly in Apocalypse World. None of this should be a surprise as they all participated in the same community.
I once lost access to the Donjon site because it wasn't maintained or kept up and was glad to grab a PDF version of it the second it resurfaced.
Really, if anyone wants to see what Cowboys & Indians style play looks like with some minimal rules, you could do a lot worse with your time (like continuing to read this thread) than to read Donjon.
If you can find it.
I couldn't.
@Arkandel said in The litRPG thread:
@Thenomain said in The litRPG thread:
Which makes me wonder what about this is surprising to @Arkandel . Spill the beans, bro.
All of it. The fact that it's a thing at all surprises me. The fact that people would read about other people's imaginary experiences of playing a non-existing game surprises me.
I don't understand!
Dude, do you even Critical Role? People watch other people role-play.
I think @Lotherio wins, though.
Stories about people playing RPGs has been floating around Dragon Magazine since at least its early teens, if not in the first ten issues.
My favorite was about NPCs trying to stay sapient outside the tabletop game time long enough to get to Earth and confront the players.
Which reminds me of The Gamers.
Which makes me wonder what about this is surprising to @Arkandel . Spill the beans, bro.
I've heard BESM 3rd is flexible enough to apply to pretty much whatever genre you want. Yes? No? Will 4e be the same?
And can we fast-track it to 5th Edition so that we have at least three game lines that "5E" could refer to?