tissek

joined 2 years ago
[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 3 points 2 weeks ago

Shawn Tomkin's Ironsworn series. Delve I regularly use for setting up point crawls. Ironsworn/Starforged/Sundered Isles have great collections of random tables, I use the book thematically most fitting for the situation at hand. The core tables of Action, Theme, Descriptor and Focus all get heavy use.

Kevin Crawford's [SOMETHING] Without Number series have awesome tables as well. These however get more use when I need more detail. Prep stuff. Again most thematic book is picked first but I do have used Cites (cyberpunk) for fantasy cities.

When I want to create background for "medieval fantasy" characters I pick up Burning Wheel and burn something up. Through that I get a good selection of relevant skills to sue (for flavor)

Anything related to cosmos and mythology I say HELLO! to my growing collection of Glorantha material. From cult books to magic tomes and Atlases.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 14 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Damn I'm feeling you. I'm in the fall process (solidly down 15kg/33lb, approaching 20kg/44lb) with about 10-15kg to go. When my belly stops flapping I'm good I think. But I fear the rebound... Currently lots of my evening snacking have disappeared because of evening gym classes, so late home and even later dinner. So I don't have time anymore to get snacky. Or if I do it's almost bedtime anyway so I'll just go to bed instead.

But once I've hit my goal and don't need to hit gym that hard anymore... That frightens me. A little bit at least. Made some good connections there and got a routine going so i can probably keep it up.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 7 points 5 months ago

Hitting the gym

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 16 points 5 months ago (3 children)

What do you mean capitalism WAS a misstake? Did I miss a memo?

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 12 points 5 months ago

The chosen one trope hands down all the time. I would love to get through Wheel of Time but I cannot stand chosen

spoilerRand and everyone around him is
That series I have put down so many times. Having a "hero" protagonist that is essentially unkillable (because they are the title character) I don't mind, Conan for example. We all know Conan won't die because there is always another story about him. But he is not fated for anything, no grand destiny he has to achieve or the cosmos suffers.

Second is also another that has been touched upon - the goodness of divine authority. Especially if it is light flavored. And nobles divine right to rule set as a standard of good etc. Give me stories of folks fecking up the system and creating their own anarchistic communities while continuing to feck up the system.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Another Himedere checking in. I love setting up situations where the players and/or the characters squirm in anguish about what to do.

My favorite so far was an estranged princess living as a man and hostel owner. He had turned his back on the throne and wanted little to do with it. As a bonus he was the only child of the king's only remaining child. Fast forward a bit and he needed a (legal) favor from the king. Went to court and met with his grandfather. The king would do it, no strings attached if a) he returned to court and resumed his duties as prince and b) sired an heir.

There were a good thirty minutes of the players anguishing if he should accept while going deep into character motivations and the setting. During that game I don't think I did as much concrete worldbuildning as during those thirty minutes. I loved it, the players loved it. Great time.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 1 points 6 months ago

Issue in that case I rather see as why is it allowed to enter into legally binding agreements when you aren't sober. Why there isn't a (forced) period to review the papers.

Marriage is a legally binding agreement. Let's treat it as such.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 33 points 6 months ago (3 children)

The Swedish vacation law (Semesterlag 1977:480) amateurishly translated by me. And I am in no way experienced enough in our labour law to comment on how it looks for those not working full time. The short lesson is to Remember Ådalen, or those that fought, bled and died four our labour rights.

4 § En arbetstagare har rätt till tjugofem semesterdagar varje semesterår [...]
An employee have right to twentyfive vacation days per year

12 § Om inte annat har avtalats, ska semesterledigheten förläggas så, att arbetstagaren får en ledighetsperiod av minst fyra veckor under juni-augusti[...]
If nothing else have been agreed upon, the vacation is to be scheduled such that the employee get a vacation period of at least four weeks during june -august

Unions work. Labour movements work.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

As long as the Russian bear is around to scare the west and occupy our mibds the Chinese dragon is at much more liberty to do whatever they want.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 31 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Love the addition of "again".

I mean if you don't want your yacht sunk then don't sail it where orcas sink yachts. Sorry but actually not sorry for the casual victimblaming.

[–] tissek@ttrpg.network 40 points 7 months ago (11 children)

Spoiler it is 30km/h. After that noise and injury risk/severity shoot up. It is the compromise speed.

 

Agter our latest DnD game our regular DM once again thought loudly on how to make dragons have more teeth. And it got me thinking about how Dragonbane handles capital M monsters differently.

DnD Monsters tend to have a slew of ways to nullify the PCs disabling abilities (magic resistance, legendary resistance). What those does are forcing the party to spend a couple of rounds having their cool stuff be nullified. For me that is boring. Without it though - CC fest and an underwhelming fight.

Dragonbane being a different beast and makes Monsters dangerous in a different way. With way less disabling abilities the PCs fun stuff isn't nullified and foes don't get CC'ed to death. So everyone can do their thing. Which Monsters can do multiple times each round (multi-attack but full turns) and their attacks always hits. Think about that - Monsters' attacks always hits. That brings danger and tension. The attacks are randomly selected lowering the rise of catastrophe, or increasing it as the GM cannot pull their punches.

To help the PCs out they have the option to take a defensive action (dodge, parry) which have already led to clutch moments. It comes at the cost of having an offensive action and the defensive action cannot be taken if they already have acted this round. Cost benefit choices whoooo! In a way it goes from Monster dodge (legendary resistance) to PC dodge. And PCs can build for defensive actions. And it can give you a counter attack. Defending is cool.

To sum it up. DnD gives monsters staying power by nullifying the PCs cool stuff allowing them to stay fighting. Dragonbane has less disables in general so Monsters have no need to nullify them. So Monsters stay around longer naturally bringing danger the PCs can actively try to avoid.

 

Rumours, speculation and hearsay? "Interesting" at least.

 

Dave's review of Across a Thousand Dead Worlds by Alex T, a gritty horror sci-fi sandbox.

Across a Thousand Dead Worlds is a new horror space exploration tabletop roleplaying game that can be enjoyed as a single player experience, or in a group of up to five players, with or without a Game Master - by Blackoath Entertainment! You'll create your Deep Diver, using a free-form character creation system, and begin your journey across the galaxy where you'll discover abandoned research facilities, explore scientific outposts, and traverse other dilapidated sites in search for ancient alien technology.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/431730/Across-a-Thousand-Dead-Worlds

 

Kevin Crawford's latest offering Cities Without Number is here. Pretty much more of the same good stuff but this time with cyberpunk flavour.

Cities Without Number is a cyberpunk role-playing game built for sandbox adventures in a dystopia of polished chrome and bitter misery. It's both a full-fledged Sine Nomine toolkit for building a cyberpunk world of your own and an Old School Renaissance-inspired game system for playing out the reckless adventures of the desperate men and women who live in it. Whether polished metal or flesh and blood, your operators will risk their lives and more to seize those precious things a merciless world would keep from them.

Will I run it? No
Play it? Most likely no
Will I use the frikk out of the GM tools? YES!

Link to free version: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/449873/Cities-Without-Number-Free-Version

 

Let me begin by making it clear this is not my invention, I encountered the method in City of Mist but I doubt it debuted there. But it is a nifty method.

The problem I encounter from time to time is that my players don't latch onto my descriptions of the scene, not using things in it to grant themselves advantages (bonuses, extra effect etc). Am I perfect? No. Could I do better? Yes.

Or I can take my fuzzy descriptions and make them mechanical by introducing them as Scene Tags. Market square during market day would get Crowded-Market-1 and during a festival Packed-Festival-Market-2 indicating that there is a lot of people there and also how much advantage one would get by incorporating it into ones action. Or disadvantage depending. Trying to pickpocket someone? Take a bonus. Following someone? They easily get lost in the crowd - penalty.

How dark is the night? Moonlight-Night-1 or Moon-Behind-Heavy-Clouds-2?

Traveling through a mountain pass and how deep is the snow? Ankle-Deep-1 or Up-To-The-Dwarf's-Beard-2? What about that Foul-Voice-In-The-Wind-4?

I play pretty much only online so tossing an index card onto the table with the Scene Tag on it is kinda tricky. Instead, depending on how much effort I've put into the VTT, I either write it in big bold letters on the scene image/map. Or I put down a virtual index card, essentially a small graphical element to bring attention to it (see post image).

One more thing, how much is a Tag-1 compared to a Tag-2 worth? This all depends on your system. City of Mist gives +1 for a Tag-1, +2 for Tag-2 etc. So for pretty much any other PbtA/2d6 systems the same works. For D&D (and other d20 systems) a scheme of +2, Advantage, Advantage and +2. I've lost much of my familiarity with d20 systems due not having ran something recently. So someone (everyone?) else probably have better ideas. In dicepool systems an extra dice for each tag level is appropriate.

That is the basics of it. But what if the players want to create a Panic!-At-The-Market-3? I'll write about that some other time.

PS. Still recruiting for my small sortie into Swords of the Serpentine, Fridays at 19CEST.

 

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7097518

More info at https://paizo.com/starfinderplaytest

According to the document they have up there, SF2E will be 100% compatible with PF2E. That's a huge win for me - I like Starfinder's setting and vibe, and love PF2E's action economy.

 

Blurb taken from the Kickstarter

People liked the game system powering Shadow of the Demon Lord, but some bounced off the game’s tone. (Evil Dead meets Diablo is not for everyone!) Not long after Demon Lord came out, I began working on a family-friendly version of the original game, and the project became something I tinkered with for a long time, moving farther and farther away from the original game in a move to make something new. Where Demon Lord expected, even celebrated, the deaths of characters, Weird Wizard makes heroes of the characters and their story an epic journey. So while much of the game looks and plays like Shadow of the Demon Lord, there are differences enough to make it its own thing. If you want an early look, check out the quick play.

 

Over on Mastodon we are enjoying ourselves with this #RPGaDay2023 thing. Have spawned a few interesting conversations. So why don't take it over here here as well? And let's do the whole first week (Day 1-6) at once.

  1. FIRST RPG played (this year)

  2. First RPG GAMEMASTER

  3. First RPG BOUGHT (this year)

  4. Most RECENT game bought

  5. OLDEST game you've played

  6. Favourite game you NEVER get to play

 

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/81626

The ENNIE Awards (the “ENNIES”) are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENNIES give game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a peoples’ choice award, and the final winners are voted upon online by the gaming public.

The ENNIES were created in 2001 as an annual award ceremony, hosted by the leading D&D/d20 system fan site, EN World in partnership with Eric Noah’s Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News. The awards were owned by Russ Morrissey until 2019. As the awards have grown, the ENNIES have expanded from an Internet-based awards selection to an annual award ceremony at Gen Con. The ENNIES have also branched out from their roots as an award ceremony focused upon d20 system publishers and products to celebrate the achievements of all tabletop RPGs and the publishers and products that support them.

With award categories recognizing the components that make a game great to the types of products fans have come to love, categories for fan-based websites and much more, the ENNIES are the best way for fans to acknowledge outstanding effort from and to say “thank you” to the creators, publishers, designers and artists who make this hobby great.

https://ennie-awards.com/about/

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