Month: March 2021

Categories
RPG

Stats, they speak to me

Most stats in most systems have effective ranges of 5 (-1, 0, 1, 2, 3) and often the same for skills and special abilities.
My condrium is intellectual there is a 5 point range but that doesn’t leave me feeling anything for them. DnD 3-18 gives me a feeling. SW d4,d6,d8,d10,d12 give me a feeling. Star Wars RPG 2d6-5d5 give me a feeling. Traveller 2-12 give me a normal feeling. But 20,40,60,80,100 don’t give me a feeling. The past 2 times we played CoC I had to mentally convert back to pre-7th ed to get the character feeling. This is maybe my biggest hurdle with Ironsworn, -1 to 3 ranges. Didn’t Star Frontiers do a percentile stats? Have this vague memory of never understanding the SF rules as a kid and just putting DnD characters in the setting when we played it.
Just one of those strange things probably from starting with DnD but it does put me off of some systems.

Categories
RPG

A Complicated Profession

Does anyone have good/fun mechanics for bounty hunting?

Find it interesting that the great bounty hunter Mando is only shown bringing in 2 bounties alive, Mythrol and the child.

Then Cowboy Beebop which is all about failed bounties.

I’ve noticed a lot of recent Beebop link games recently and while some have interesting ideas none seem to answer the bounty problem usefully.

Categories
RPG

RPG Best Mechanics Ideas

What are some of the best of mechanics to come out in the RPG space in the past decade?

Blades in the Dark Flashbacks
Advantage/Disadvantage rolling
Clocks, so i hear but don’t havn’t looked into yet
Playbooks, PtbA
Fail Forward, PtbA
Player Facing Rolls, PtbA
Point Crawl like Gardens of Ynn, Stygian Library, Neverland uses this for Faye land
Oracles, Ironsworn and Scarlet Heroes
Stars Without Number Factions system,
Fronts from Dungeon World but I haven’t looked into it yet
Letting the random tables define the world, Electronic Bationland and to some extent Greyhawk Fiolo random tables
Hexcrawling but fun, Hot Springs Island and Neverland
Categories
RPG

Protagonist Underdogs

Listening to an interview with Graham Walmsley about Cthulhu/Lovecraft gaming.

In his Cthulhu Dark mini game the protagonists have to be the underdog. When he added settings in the Victorian one the players are the underclass, orphans, prostitutes and beggars and not the upper class. He is british and found when playing  upper class characters players would become pretty nasty to the underclass.
In episode 49, we interview Graham Walmsley, writer of Play Unsafe, Stealing Cthulhu, and Cthulhu Dark, as well as two Trail of Cthulhu campaign books (The Final Revelation & Cthulhu Apocalypse).
Categories
RPG

The Vanilla Game

https://vanillagame.carrd.co/

Maybe a good candidate for a least feature DnD like base to build on.

And checkout the The Other Vanilla Game Jam

https://itch.io/jam/the-other-vanilla-game-jam

Categories
RPG

Kenneth Hite interview

Listening to a podcast interview with Kenneth Hite(Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents, The Fall of Delta Green, GURPS Horror 3e)
https://9littlebees.com/mab019-kenneth-hite-horror/
Horror is about player emotion at the table. If all the players are not willing to bring emotion to the table Horror doesn’t work. Think we have talked around this a bit but he seemed to sum it up succinctly. Also part of why Ravenloft and the Domains of Dread doesn’t really work, people are playing DnD not Horror.
Second one was to read masterpieces of the hobby. In context he suggests Masks of Nyarlathotep as a masterpiece of sandbox.