Tabletop & Board Games

User avatar
Mothra
Woah Dangsaurus
Posts: 3963
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:12 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mothra » Thu Feb 25, 2016 8:08 pm

What is it with us and roleplaying as homeless bedogged drifters

User avatar
Friday
Posts: 6264
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:40 pm
Location: Karma: -65373

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Friday » Thu Feb 25, 2016 9:41 pm

"roleplaying"
ImageImageImage

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Sun Mar 20, 2016 1:42 pm

This campaign recap is pretty great (it's short).
Image

User avatar
Z%rø
Posts: 287
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:10 pm
Location: Throne

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Z%rø » Tue Jun 07, 2016 9:40 pm

I've been trying to learn Shadowrun 5e since about November of last year. At this point I've read a lot of books, made a lot of characters, and DM'd a few combat sims. I can safely say that Shadowrun 5e is the worst written and edited roleplaying game books I've ever read. There's also pointless nuance and detail to a bunch of bullshit, because it tries to dip its toes into "simulation gameplay" despite being a game about trolls and magic in the year 2076.

Houseruling is mandatory, a character creation program named chummer is mandatory, as is several readings of the matrix and astral sections to understand the true insanity of what they have built here is also mandatory.

The worst part is I barely feel like I have a grasp on any of this. I read the threads on /tg/ or on the subreddit about people going into detailed mechanics talks about characters or situations and I can follow it to a point, but then it becomes noise. I know how to deal with shooting, combat, and very general Matrix/Astral stuff, but not as much as I feel like I should know.

It's infuriating because I love cyberpunk. Setting, visuals, themes, music - the whole package. And at this point I'm too invested into Shadowrun to go to another system
Image

User avatar
Grath
Posts: 2387
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Grath » Tue Jun 07, 2016 10:10 pm

My friends and I tried to play Shadowrun 5e, thankfully with... 'borrowed' books, so when we realized how absolutely fucking miserable Shadowrun 5e was we switched to Savage Worlds which is like, infinitely less overhead on rules and actually enjoyable because they abstract away a lot of bullshit.

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby sei » Tue Jun 07, 2016 10:40 pm

That's quite possibly the best possible thing Ziiro could have heard.

I tried SR4. My experience matched Ziiro's. The decking system in particular was fundamentally flawed. It split the party activities into "decker" and "non-decker" stuff, which always left someone bored.

Another issue was that the SR system seemed to encourage disposable characters and therefor not much personal continuity. While other systems are more Final Fantasy, SR winds up being SaGa Frontier 2. No thanks.
Image

User avatar
Büge
Posts: 5440
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:56 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Büge » Wed Jun 08, 2016 12:01 am

sei wrote:I tried SR4. My experience matched Ziiro's. The decking system in particular was fundamentally flawed. It split the party activities into "decker" and "non-decker" stuff, which always left someone bored.


Hasn't that always been the problem with Shadowrun and any other cyberpunk game? That anytime there's a decker or hacker or some other role like that, it splits off into a subgame that seems interesting on paper but actually grinds the game to a halt?
Image

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby sei » Wed Jun 08, 2016 1:09 am

Depends on the system. The decker problem is essentially the rogue (or other scout) stealth and recon problem from D&D, but made much worse.
Image

User avatar
Wheels
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Jan 22, 2014 1:25 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Wheels » Wed Jun 08, 2016 2:28 am

Learning this stuff in parallel to Ziiro, I actually like SR5 a lot. The detail and customization is there for just about anything you want to do, but uh... the books themselves are organized like shit. I'll take the sim stuff and over-detail over the comparatively shallow Savage Worlds any day. Please don't tell me we're doing Savage Worlds. Bal won't let me hack cars in Savage Worlds.
Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem

User avatar
Z%rø
Posts: 287
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:10 pm
Location: Throne

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Z%rø » Wed Jun 08, 2016 2:31 am

In 5e, the Matrix is now a whole different world involving things like Grids (think phone carriers) and hosts (think virtual buildings you go into). Not to mention the network nonsense involved.

EXAMPLE: Your team decides to slave all their devices to your decker's deck, as that has the best defense stats. They are all hidden, and the opposing decker must make a matrix perception test to even see them, let alone start hacking them. In order to do stuff, you need to have a MARK on the device (Note: Marking a slave also puts a mark on the master of the network... Because it uses the Master's defensive stats. If you fail at placing a mark, the owner of the slave device is notified, and they get a mark on you). Each mark grants more user access privileges, meaning more actions can be taken. Defenestration's favorite trick is to rig their smart guns to kick out the clip when they pull the trigger. This has to, theorhetically, be done one gun at a time. While also making sure that your GOD (Grid Overwatch Division) Score stays under a certain amount, so that the powers-that-be that control the matrix don't boot you off with a massive headache/dumpshock.

Now everything up there I wrote takes about 15 minutes when skipping over what could be considered good descriptions (The matrix can actually be very visually interesting), as well as cutting a lot of the bullshit for simplicity. In those 15 minutes, there's things the rest of the team could be doing, but aren't.

Point is, if played by the book, this is a problem. If not played by the book, the decker has the ability to fuck everything and everyone over, since nearly everything is on networks.

Astral is a different flavor of the same nonsense, but less involved, as I am 99% sure there is no MARK system.

Grath wrote:My friends and I tried to play Shadowrun 5e, thankfully with... 'borrowed' books, so when we realized how absolutely fucking miserable Shadowrun 5e was we switched to Savage Worlds which is like, infinitely less overhead on rules and actually enjoyable because they abstract away a lot of bullshit.


Interface Zero 2.0, I presume? I've skimmed the fluff section, as well as parts of the mechanics (which unhelpfully just say "GO READ SAVAGE WORLDS DELUXE DESPITE THE FACT THIS IS A 350 PAGE RULEBOOK THAT COULD STAND ON ITS OWN") and it seems to have the opposite problem of Shadowrun - SW seems really shallow and simple. Not to mention potentially nightmarish to balance, due to the fact that every dice can explode? I need to read more about SW, at least, but my initial impression left me less than impressed.
Image

User avatar
Wheels
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Jan 22, 2014 1:25 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Wheels » Wed Jun 08, 2016 2:37 am

No, there's no mark system in Astral. But it's broken in it's own way; the relative rarity of Awakened metahumans means that most entry level jobs can be scouted out very easily by your mage projecting.
Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem

User avatar
Blossom
Posts: 2297
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:58 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Blossom » Wed Jun 08, 2016 4:00 am

All I remember about the one Shadowrun 5e game I was in was making a shaman who summoned spirits and apparently that being a colossal gamebreaker? We had to kidnap a child from a prep school so I sent in a 12-point beast spirit made of bees in after him, and it was just ignoring point-blank grenades that were pulping the guards that threw them.
Image

User avatar
Grath
Posts: 2387
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Grath » Wed Jun 08, 2016 11:36 am

Z%rø wrote:
Grath wrote:My friends and I tried to play Shadowrun 5e, thankfully with... 'borrowed' books, so when we realized how absolutely fucking miserable Shadowrun 5e was we switched to Savage Worlds which is like, infinitely less overhead on rules and actually enjoyable because they abstract away a lot of bullshit.


Interface Zero 2.0, I presume? I've skimmed the fluff section, as well as parts of the mechanics (which unhelpfully just say "GO READ SAVAGE WORLDS DELUXE DESPITE THE FACT THIS IS A 350 PAGE RULEBOOK THAT COULD STAND ON ITS OWN") and it seems to have the opposite problem of Shadowrun - SW seems really shallow and simple. Not to mention potentially nightmarish to balance, due to the fact that every dice can explode? I need to read more about SW, at least, but my initial impression left me less than impressed.

We're using Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition for the base, with a few selected parts of the Science Fiction Companion for cyberwear/hacking and the Super Powers Companion for Astral/magic/whatnot. Plus some homebrewed races (using the Sci Fi companion's race generator thing) and, since my primary character is a Rigger, homebrewed conversions of drones to Savage Worlds rules.

It's definitely on the boundary of oversimplified, but I'll take 'simple and enjoyable' over 'we spent an hour and a half arguing about how decking worked and then gave up on the game system because holy fuck is it bad'.

User avatar
zaratustra
Posts: 1665
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:45 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby zaratustra » Wed Jun 08, 2016 11:50 am

Someone pointed out most cyberpunk RPGs have interfaces backwards: the regular Joes get raw text consoles, the hackers get fancy 3d ultra-intuitive interfaces.

User avatar
Yoji
Posts: 1440
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2016 4:12 pm
Location: Screamtown

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Yoji » Wed Jun 08, 2016 12:59 pm

zaratustra wrote:Someone pointed out most cyberpunk RPGs have interfaces backwards: the regular Joes get raw text consoles, the hackers get fancy 3d ultra-intuitive interfaces.

And now I'm picturing an average-grade hacker using some janky freeware interface with a big ad banner running along the bottom of the screen.
Image: Mention something from KPCC or Rachel Maddow
Image: Go on about Homeworld for X posts

User avatar
Silversong
Posts: 714
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:00 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Silversong » Tue Jul 19, 2016 2:59 pm

I've played a lot of Shadowrun 3e and 4e, and I'm mostly offended by how in 5e the future is most definitely not the 80s, and they disavow any knowledge of charmingly dorky future-slang. They will never take my "drek" from me, I'm so mad I'm sending a cyber-fax to my senator.

Then again, I'm a player, not a GM.

User avatar
Büge
Posts: 5440
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:56 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Büge » Tue Jul 19, 2016 4:40 pm

Null khorosho, chummer.
Image

User avatar
François
Posts: 1708
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:00 am

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby François » Tue Jul 19, 2016 4:44 pm

It's about time someone told these fragging suits to slot off!

...and now I'm sad the new Torment probably won't have anyone telling berks to pike off either, but then again it's not set in Planescape anymore.

Maximillian
Posts: 71
Joined: Thu May 26, 2016 8:07 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Maximillian » Tue Jul 19, 2016 9:59 pm

Shadowrun 4E had some 'interesting' loopholes in the wording. Bows range and damage went off strength with no cap. A max strength troll could shoot low flying jets and helicopters with grenade force impact.

The revised prints of 4E added a strength cap to that. Probably a good idea.

Never played 5E.

Currently enjoying the Pathfinder boom since many people I know bought the humble bundle that covered damn near everything you could need to play with a good selection of options.

User avatar
Blossom
Posts: 2297
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:58 pm

Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Blossom » Sat Aug 13, 2016 4:38 pm

So here's a weird fuckin' question.

In one of my IRC RPGs, we're looking at hosting an ELEGANT DINNER PARTY for some people soon. We're looking for some sort of party activities other than sitting around eating food and trading stories, some organized fun to have, but since we're hosting some naval officials we're looking for activities of a higher level of sophistication than our normal levels of "sleepover/frathouse" and "swinger party". But also something that would actually be fun to play out in a text chat roleplay and not take up an entire night, so not like ... charades? Anyone have any suggestions?
Image

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 16 guests