willh
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 220
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Post by willh on Oct 5, 2015 6:44:15 GMT -8
For example, one character types is the Chosen, a monster hunter like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When the Chosen has sex, they heal all of their damage and lose any negative conditions they had. There's a catch though. If the person the Chosen has sex with disgusts them, or if the Chosen is disgusted at themselves for what they're doing, they give their partner a point of mechanical leverage over them to use later on. So the game encourages the Chosen to go out, kick some monster ass, get beat up in the process, and then go find someone to screw so they heal up back to full strength. I highly recommend if you do try MonsterHearts, not to play the Chosen. This playbook intrinsically changes the style of game you are playing. The Chosen turns the game into Monster of the Week, another fun game, which i bet the lot of the hosts would enjoy. But, it turns it into a better Monster of the Week than the actual Monster of the Week.
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Post by OFTHEHILLPEOPLE on Oct 5, 2015 10:20:39 GMT -8
Just finished the podcast and heard the brief discussion regarding the End of the World Game by Fantasy Flight. They address the very topic of awkwardness about making characters based on you and then having your friends judge those stats. It is done in secret with players putting either one or both of their different colored positive or negative die in a bag and then counting them all out to determine if a stat should go up (and gaining a Trauma that will hinder them later) or down (and gaining a Feature that will help them later). So your friends saying "No, you're a fat fucker, reduce that dex" ends up balancing out by allowing you to add a Feature that will help compensate for that roll, like adding "Iron Stomach". Traumas are also at the whim of the player. You literally have to put down anything you are suffering from at the moment of character creation, but you aren't being forced by a game so say "I'm HIV positive" to your friends if that isn't you want to share. That would be a shit mechanic and the game even says so. Instead it just defers those difficult decisions regarding social comfort to the player and if they don't want to share a particularly private Trauma to add something else to the character. The book also says that if you want to just demo the game for your friends and not worry about the awkward character creation to just roll up random characters, do a brief vote on those existing stats on the sheet to further customize the characters and get the players invested, and play on. No fuss no muss no private lives peered into by Creepy Steve (that fucker). The system is really simple to run and I'm thinking of adapting it for a Con game for a Dungeon Crawl adventure. I like the idea of players not just taking physical damage from all that exploring but mental damage from being in all these hopeless dungeons filled with traumatic doom where they can fall into a coma from taking too much mental stress.
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Post by ericfromnj on Oct 5, 2015 10:27:15 GMT -8
Problem with End of the World game is I have a player who would seriously try to put fives and sixes in each stat. Every time he takes those "stat out yourself as a D&D character" questionnaires he never has a stat under 15...
I would love to try some Monster Hearts just to say I tried it. It seems interesting and due to my youthful indiscretions I don't remember most of my high school or college life anyway, so it's tough to actually "relive" it. Just as long as it is not World Wide Wrestling. I just can't get into that.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Oct 5, 2015 10:37:23 GMT -8
I have player, and I like V:tR (and the nre Gor-Machine Chronicles updates) very much yeknom. But I really don't need to see an explosion of practically identical games based on it put out by everyone and their mother. Dear god! STOP talking about sex!
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Post by OFTHEHILLPEOPLE on Oct 5, 2015 10:40:03 GMT -8
Problem with End of the World game is I have a player who would seriously try to put fives and sixes in each stat. Every time he takes those "stat out yourself as a D&D character" questionnaires he never has a stat under 15... Well, he would try but then you would call bullshit on him. As Jib said, you get ten points to spread across six characteristic and they can't go over 5 in the stat. The system is a "Roll under your stat" system so having a 6 in something means he would automatically win unless his negative die also rolled a 6, canceling it out of the pool. But back to my point, if he split his points across all stats he would have something like 3/3/3/3/2/2 because your stats always have at least 1 point in them. At that point the voting would begin and you, his "friends", would vote up or down. No matter how much of a munchkin he is and social manipulator he couldn't roll all his stats up to a 5, it's just impossible even if the players ruled to make all his stats go up by one point. Which would suck more because now he has six Traumas that will impede him. Fun for roleplaying but it will make a min-maxer go crazy. Edit: A word.
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Post by weaselcreature on Oct 5, 2015 11:04:33 GMT -8
For introducing a new player to a group: If it's an experienced player, just new to the group, make sure the contact person talks to the new player beforehand; explain the game being played currently, and explain the group dynamic. Is it an RP heavy group, is it a group that just likes to kill shit with little RP, is it a group that jokes around a lot (even if the RP is serious). Make sure the new player is aware of what they're getting into and to determine for themselves if it sounds like a good fit.
This may not be as important to a new-to-RPG player, as s/he may not understand some of this, but it would be good to explain anyway.
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Post by joecrak on Oct 5, 2015 12:51:30 GMT -8
Problem with End of the World game is I have a player who would seriously try to put fives and sixes in each stat. Every time he takes those "stat out yourself as a D&D character" questionnaires he never has a stat under 15... I would love to try some Monster Hearts just to say I tried it. It seems interesting and due to my youthful indiscretions I don't remember most of my high school or college life anyway, so it's tough to actually "relive" it. Just as long as it is not World Wide Wrestling. I just can't get into that. You both make me happy and make me sad all in the same post. Anyway, being a Jersey boy, head to one of the Conventions that take place in Morristown, NJ, MonsterHearts gets run there a bunch, even sometimes, by me. I also run World Wide Wrestling there...just in case you want to try a game you have no interest in... Edit: It's not really about reliving High School or college, as in High School and college I didn't go around gleefully killing people that pissed me off, nor did I have 'super powers' to help me murder said people. The drama though, it's such teen drama.
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Post by ericfromnj on Oct 5, 2015 12:59:58 GMT -8
Thanks for the clarification on Monster Hearts. Makes more sense now a bit.
As for WWW, I own it,but I just don't get it.
As for conventions I would try that if I ever had a weekend off from work but I make my money on the weekends.
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Post by joecrak on Oct 5, 2015 13:19:55 GMT -8
Damn and blast to both accounts. If you don't mind me asking, what about it don't you get?
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Post by ericfromnj on Oct 5, 2015 13:30:28 GMT -8
I don't get how the heck it could be fun. It is much more collaborate storytelling than role playing imo but with what seems very minor conflict.
What I need is to play in it and see how it actually runs.
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Post by joecrak on Oct 5, 2015 13:39:03 GMT -8
Oh yea, I knew there was something I wanted to bring up to Stu Venable and storkRegarding playing to playtest something. I do that every year, but the circumstances are a bit different. Metatopia is a weekend convention where the focus is entirely on playtesting. Playtesters only pay $20 for the weekend (not including hotel, the true cost sink), but the Game Designers actually pay more, because they are coming here, to get good feedback on what they have worked on. The games range from Focus groups all the way to setting playtests for finalized games. I'd love to see Moment of Truth here, but I don't hold my breath, cause plane tickets be expensive. The other thing was the mention of a LongCon, something I've brought up a bunch of times. stork you had the most audible reaction when it was mentioned how you would play the same character in 6 sessions at a convention. in my local conventions, 3 sessions is usually the max (1 session a day), but we have house cons where we do the full gamut. It's a way for players to get the feeling of a campaign at a convention. In a normal 4 hour slot, It can take a good while before you even get a good feeling for your character, and then the game is over. Knowing that you are coming back the next day, and are a part of this big plot makes it more exciting, and lead to character development and growth not normally encountered in most one-shots. KristaCon can tell you more about what I've said. It has completely changed my convention experience, and I usually check for any longcons first when per-registering. I even ran my own for the first time this past July, with 2 co-GMs, and ~12-14 players.
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Post by joecrak on Oct 5, 2015 13:46:03 GMT -8
I don't get how the heck it could be fun. It is much more collaborate storytelling than role playing imo but with what seems very minor conflict. What I need is to play in it and see how it actually runs. So..this is shameless self promotion, but this is the finale to a pretty great youtube series of videos, but everyone that has watched it has praised the first match between Joey Crak (me) vs Professor Atomo.
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Oct 5, 2015 15:41:24 GMT -8
You don't need all that anyway. Just Savage it. And... Block button, engage! I highly recommend if you do try MonsterHearts, not to play the Chosen. This playbook intrinsically changes the style of game you are playing. The Chosen turns the game into Monster of the Week, another fun game, which i bet the lot of the hosts would enjoy. But, it turns it into a better Monster of the Week than the actual Monster of the Week. Really? I quite like Monster of the Week. It took a conversation with the author to wrap my head around one or two of the moves, but it's one of my favorite PbtA games. What don't you like? I have player, and I like V:tR (and the nre Gor-Machine Chronicles updates) very much yeknom. But I really don't need to see an explosion of practically identical games based on it put out by everyone and their mother. Dear god! STOP talking about sex! Whoops. Yeah. That was totally unintentional. To be fair, I was typing in the dark on a Japanese keyboard. I would love to try some Monster Hearts just to say I tried it. It seems interesting and due to my youthful indiscretions I don't remember most of my high school or college life anyway, so it's tough to actually "relive" it. Just as long as it is not World Wide Wrestling. I just can't get into that. I'm having trouble with World Wide Wrestling too. I am just not familiar with professional wrestling enough to know what the moves are doing of how things are structured. To be honest, I always thought pro wrestling was pretty dumb. But reading the essays in the book gave me some appreciation and understanding of the skill that goes into not actually hurting your opponent, since both of you need to keep working. I'll need to watch some wrestling before I fully grok what's going on though.
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sbloyd
Supporter
WHAT! A human in a Precursor service vehicle?!
Posts: 2,762
Preferred Game Systems: Storyteller; Dresden; Mage
Favorite Species of Monkey: Goddamnit, Curious George is a CHIMP not a monkey! Stop teaching my daughter improper classification!
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Post by sbloyd on Oct 5, 2015 16:04:33 GMT -8
As far as PbtA games go, I haven't been interested, really. Until I read about Masks. That... interests me.
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Oct 5, 2015 16:15:57 GMT -8
As far as PbtA games go, I haven't been interested, really. Until I read about Masks. That... interests me. None of the other games grabbed your interest? Just a setting thing, or were you turned off by the system?
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