Here's what has been said so far. I've emphasized the title of every post for ease of reading.
That cracks me up
Submitted by SheikhJahbooty on Thu, 2009-10-01 10:02.
I don't know why, but I find that comment hilarious.
Maybe I read it with a lot of attitude, like, "How will you do that? Bring it cheese boy. Show us what you got."
Go ahead and challenge him to Game Chef too. Of course you would want to lose a challenge like that, like you would hope he comes up with a game about heroism, decency, and hope in the face of inescapable tragedy, and the PCs are French privateers who know such powerful secrets of the sea and Haitian voodoo that they make Elric look wimpy, and he posts the rules for his game in youtube, dressed as a pirate with a French accent, and the game mechanics involve posting French limericks on each others' Facebook walls.
I always hope that something like that is about to happen when I see a newbie in the lab, that I'm about to learn a game as fun and dramatically powerful as My Life with Master.
Or maybe he's just here to read what we're doing, to inspire him or to learn about new RPGs, stuff he hasn't seen on the shelf.
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Hahaha!
Submitted by Ar Kayon on Thu, 2009-10-01 11:45.
No - there was no snide subtext intended. I see anyone who thinks current RPGs as uninspired as a like-minded individual. D&D has turned into a MMORPG; Warhammer Fantasy jumped on the bandwagon too. Huge shoulder pads; huge FF7 sword rip-offs; cartoonish artwork; collectible cards; my suspension of disbelief is effectively dispelled.
What I would like to see is a natural progression of role-playing that gets better as time passes by. Perfect examples of this are Paizo's Pathfinder (although I still hate the artwork, despite the skill), and Godlike, who in my opinion, have the most elegant dice mechanic of all time. I guess Ambrose Diceless as well, because it helped me to think outside the box and come up with my semi-diceless concept.
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You might also like...
Submitted by SheikhJahbooty on Fri, 2009-10-02 04:18.
The dice mechanic for Godlike, if I recall correctly, is called ORE, One Roll Engine, you know, cause the one roll tells you two different things.
You might also want to check out Reign, because it also uses the ORE, and because I find the setting interesting.
And then there's A Dirty World, a noir style game that uses the same mechanic, but the game is basically about social conflicts, and your stats can change wildly during a conflict as a dame tries to eat away your incredulity by getting you to fall for her, or a scoundrel tries to eat at your integrity to get you to take a bribe.
I soon may get my first chance to try Amber Diceless. As one of the house rules, the GM proposed replacing the bad stuff mechanic with a system like the plot twist rules found in Sufficiently Advanced. I can't wait to see how it plays.
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It's all about the video games baby.
Submitted by alderneyvamp on Thu, 2009-10-01 15:59.
And that's the problem. Modelling tabletop games on a large aspect of current culture is a great way to get new people involved. Saying DnD is like WoW but you play with people in the same room has probably turned a few people from just comp gamers to pnper. Just like the first games were modelled on popular literature, later games following film titles it only makes sense that mimicking of video games is the next step. Sad fact is, RPGs on the computer are shit (as a general rule, there are some shining examples) in fact I would say there hasn't been a truly ground breaking RPG game on a computer or console since Planescape Torment, which was modelled on a DnD setting. So we get game copying (lets say utilizing material from) pnp, pnp copies game, game copies pnp and so on and so forth, and everytime it's got a little worse, a little more shallow, a little less intellectual.
Not that I'm against PC/console games, I'm an avid follower of both. But I want the two times a week I meet to roleplay not feel like I'm casual gaming on my PC. Not to say the mood can't be relaxed, but the game should be involving, less pick up and play.
Hot damn I feel strongly about this. Actually shamed that I've not done anything new or innovative for awhile. Might revisit dreamer now.
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Don't steal... The Government hates competition.
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Don't remind me of Torment
Submitted by SheikhJahbooty on Fri, 2009-10-02 05:08.
I always remember that there was one thing I really really hated about that game... the fact that it ended.
I screamed when it ended. I begged the computer, "No, really his soul separated from him so that as a soulless creature he could undertake a further quest that the fate of the entire ring of outer planes depends upon, and on this quest he meets angels and demons that want to discuss with him just what is a soul and if its important at all, and the nature of free will, and suffering, I mean because demons like being in hell, or at least they fit in, right, so is it really suffering for them? But then it turns out the quest was a lie, a ruse, and the nameless one's been duped, please? Please, let there be more!"
I think the real problem with modelling a game on an MMORPG is that MMORPG quests are usually amusement park attractions rather than compelling stories.
I am totally for making RPGs more like computer games, but to me, that means taking out most of the math, not taking out most of the options or putting the story in the hands of the authors who write adventures for Living RPGworld vetted quests and convention events.
And I will even play a pickup game. I will play the hell out of some Geiger Counter, or Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot. But if I play MNPR, I want to sound like my friends and I are talking about some really silly Saturday morning cartoon we watched as kids. I want to throw down those dice to support or refute something cool that I, Jahbooty (or whatever my friends call me) said, something I made up myself that made them laugh or grin in excitement or cringe, not something I picked out of a list of pre-sanctioned options.
Hot damn. I guess I also feel really strongly about this.
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I remember when I popped my cherry...
Submitted by Ar Kayon on Fri, 2009-10-02 05:56.
...and beat Torment. I didn't save his dead love, he didn't hook up with Anna, and I didn't reanimate Fall-from-Grace after the Transcendent One kills her. And I also never got around to getting Lawful Good alignment so I could wield Trias' sword. I completely missed Vhailor. Fuck it - I'm gonna download that shit and beat it the right way.
I wish we could duplicate Chris Avellone so he could churn out more games of that caliber.
And now, I feel that Obsidian and Bethesda are the last bastions of role-playing, whereas my old-time friends D&D and Squaresoft have sold out and betrayed me. Blizzard too; Diablo 3 is now all fun and colorful - remember when you played the original at night and then a scary ass boss with a meat cleaver and hordes of minions pop around the next corner and you shit your pants?
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Stories of the past
Submitted by alderneyvamp on Fri, 2009-10-02 08:43. *new
You know one thing I've noticed. Stories of the past seemed better. When I look into it, they weren't particularily, they were just presented better. I've been waiting for Dragon Age to come out for awhile now, but with every video I've become more dissapointed. The voice acting is god awful. It's stale. You see that with a lot of RPGs these days. Back when there wasn't voice overs, all that mattered was what was being said, you put your own how in as you read the text. RPG video games are like b-movies made of your favourite book, whereas before they used to be the book.
What I don't get is how this as happened. Take any other video game genre and they've seemed to nail the story telling aspects on more occassions. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the voice acting was great, so what if my character didn't talk I felt more involved with him and his compatriates than I did for any of the two bit hussies in The Witcher. The Command and Conquer games presented (and are getting into the habit of doing it again) their mission backgrounds in wonderfully entertaining real life cutscenes. I played the missions in order to see those, not the other way round. RPGs are like the hare in the tortoise and the hare story. They were once so far ahead, so they stopped and now they are so far behind.
This really deserves it's own thread. Which it will have in a moment. Sorry Chris! So what are your plans? Have you got something cooking up, wanting to do a collab or just having a browse at our wares?
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Don't steal... The Government hates competition.
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