If I’m being honest, the best thing to come out of 4e was Gamma World 7e, which took the dnd 4e rules and injected them with some gonzo post apocalyptic mutant mayhem flavor. Setting worked well with the ‘superpowered fights against monsters’ holding pattern and the texts were streamlined enough that it fit into an all in one 160 page rulebook
I only got to play GW7e once, but it was a great time
linking character powers to booster packs of cards was some bullshit, though. Game is actually better now that its dead than during the initial release
This will never cease to amaze me because the one thing everyone I knew who played 4e all said (some as positive, some as a negative) was that is just was a videogame rule system.
Oh yeah. I got so far away from DnD during that period that when I hear about people’s experiences with 5e, I just feel like the goals are so far from what I’d want, like the old d6 Star Wars never feels like it NEEDS to be balanced the way that DnD does, like it isn’t threatening to fall apart at any moment.
d6 Star Wars is an all time great RPG
I find spell/ammo dice is cool in theory but the way it fucks with attrition means I find it more difficult to plan around
Attrition rolls are cool in theory and practice.
it is not difficult to track arrows, or spells etc lol
This is actually the part of the game I find most interesting.
Like, picking up my spent arrows or mathing each pound of encumberance is boring. Give me big chunky numbers so I can be surprised when the bullshit hits the fan. I want to be covered in it.
I love car wars, impulse is the best.
has there been any updates on the english version of meikyuu kingdom that was announced a year and a half ago?
hey @Mothra have you been playing the first or second edition of Star Trek Adventures? Saw that there is a starter set for the 2e version and I’m gonna pick it up to learn and maybe play sometime. Heard the first edition wasn’t very fun, sort of in the way you’ve described.
Does anyone have smol 1 page 'zine sized TTRPGs they like? Like Lasers & Feelings, WoDu, 24XX?
We have a booth at our local zinefest and are going to be showcasing something along those lines.
Looking at it now, we’re definitely still using 1e. The much-needed Trait improvements in 2e are nowhere to be seen in the books we’re using.
The 2e changes look promising, I’m glad there’s some course-correcting. 1e really does fail to use a lot of things on your characters sheet.
Now I should note that we have a too-merciful GM and that we never get into combat
The Star Trek Adventures game continues to be a real mixed bag. The group I’m playing with, one of the Achewood community’s infinite sub-groups, is simply a great hang and enormously pleasant to talk to.
In-game, there’s incredibly low engagement unless the GM directly prompts them, or another player directly prompts them. As a result, my dweeby scientist character is now having to like badge over to a specific player to ask them a direct question, or like, say stuff like “Quintillion looks at the group for ideas” if we’re in a meeting.
On the other hand, the GM is very creative and I love his scenarios, all of which virtually never involve combat in any way, and are just problems for us to solve. Since I took the approach of framing this as an episode of television, it’s helped give some kind of structure to how we approach the mystery and how we “suggest” escalations or new developments to the GM. I really make it a point to invite danger or complication, to offer the GM something to yes-and dramatically. It’s really become just a two-person show with occasional ideas from the group. Not entirely sure how to get the rest more involved but to continue to badge them with questions or go to them for advice in-character, which is working fairly well (but is a bit like pulling teeth).
Whenever something that requires a roll comes up, we select the person among us that has the best stats in that area, roll the two d20s, almost always succeed, and if we fail, there’s like four separate things that we can use to ensure a success, which means we never suffer any negative consequences, nor does the tension ratchet up, thus, sort of a boring game? I partially lay this at the feel of a system that is unwilling to indulge in failure as a means to increase the risk. Bad is good! It makes the Later Good better!
Curious if and exactly how 2e would improve some of those gripes. Making a Star Trek RPG interesting sounds pretty daunting. But the structure your group has built around the game seems like a really fun idea.
Lately, ttrpg and board games have been whispering wormtongue-like into my ear to pay more attention to them than videogame level design. And I will say I am quite tempted.
It is! I’ve got a draft of a Star Trek story game that I should get back to finishing one of these days. It’s kind of a hybrid design of Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands and Swords Without Master (eg it is a lot of ‘mini-games’ that link to each other, mostly about structuring the conversation in a trekkie way (you can’t solve a problem without first discussing it, this is my guiding principle for what makes a star trek plot feel like a star trek plot))
Love this idea. Talking it through is absolutely Star Trek’s most enduring unique quality at this point.
I may just refactor what I had into a brindlewood bay hack since in between my first draft and today, there’s now a popular game premised on players coming up with their own solution to a mystery and that’s another trek thing I had in my draft
Ernie Gygax who has the distinction of both inspiring all the Tensor spells and for having an RPG rule set that’s more explicitly racist than the one by the guy from Burzum died. Good riddance.