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Shadowrun

World of Darkness

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[NullForceOmega]

That reminds me, I've been drawing up a campaign for several years now (and it is still nowhere near complete) that is Christmas themed, I've go to do some more work on that.

[Shub-Nullgurath]

STAR WARS

Part 1 - Flight of the Sith

The SITH FEDERATION has fallen, as the REBEL
COALITION has struck out across the galaxy and
taken the vast majority of fortified positions across
FEDERATION space.

On the Sith training planet of Kalpa, COALITION forces
are tightening the noose, preventing any future insurrections
from exploding across the galaxy.

A group of trainees prepare to break free from the blockade
and continue the war against the COALITION...

-----

Link to the Campaign Forum

I'm looking for some more players for a text-based Star Wars campaign. All the info is on the link.

[Sirus]

Aaaargh
Woud love to join but I'm at work during the sessions. Hope you folks have fun!

[Neonivek]

I have no idea what is stopping me from freeken making my Dragon Ball RPG system brainstorm thread... It is like I am physically incapable inspite having an ok layout.

For example instead of Ki being directly MP... Instead characters have very little... Their Ki stat determining how much they recover every turn (as well as there being a maximum)... And regardless you don't start battles at full Ki either. What I am working with is a recovery of 1 ki a turn, and starting with 3-5 out of 10.

Next is the fact that in spite no one being a "physical" character in the series, everyone wants to make one anyway. Yet what is the point of non-ki using attacks? To break the opponent's defense and create damage opportunities.

Then there is technique and what it does is lower the ki cost of abilities, to an extent. But let me explain that.

Skills, transformations, and the like all are put together with pieces. Low, Medium, and High damage modifier is essentially free (2, 4, and 8 respectably). You can add modifiers and either pay for them with Ki or with technique, assuming it is available (Only some can.)

This is because "creating your own skills" is always considered one of the most important parts of any Dragon Ball RPG. It is something I'd like to retain. If you gain a level of technique then BOOM! you can modify all your skills (just like Krillin does)... In fact you can make modified techniques if your transformation includes an increase in technique.

Now Transformations are a bit trickier and include things like permafusions, Oozaru, Super Saiyan, and even King Kai Fist. The idea I have for them is they put a drain on your Ki recovery and have a buy in level (You don't start a fight transformed... unless that is its ability) you have to reach.

---

The techniques themselves are a huge problem with most games as they have to represent the large breadth of possible options and often bump into issues. A big issue is, for example, Destructo Disk. So what is Destructo Disk for this game?

It is a medium sharp attack. Sharp attacks deal their damage if they penetrate a character's stability (A buffer before they take damage).

Kamehameha is a Low Continuous attack. Continuous attacks don't deal their full damage immediately but rather after they strike a hit the user has an option to spend Ki to increase the damage. It is a safer alternative.

---

The issue I am hitting is how to make player's stats a bit more spread out... AND how to stop players from just wracking up overpowered combinations.

A Shadowrun priority system might help... OR putting skills into categories (Maybe Technique is a derived stat).

[highmax28]

So my party pulled the stupidest shit tonight.

The mystic told a giant boss to jump off a cliff into a river, and he missed the river. The height of the cliff caused the damage to be 97 damage total.

THEN. The most ridiculous thing ever happened.

The party had to traverse an area without mounts, which wouldn't do for the party wizard. So she says:

"Why don't I just attach the carriage to my nightmare?"

My first mistake was letting the wizard be able to tame it with an animal handling check (which she crit because she asked if she could, and a DM never says no).

My second one was underestimating the creativity of the girl I'm dating and her friend.

The cleric whips out a flying carpet and says "We can have him work with this!" And it ended up with the party taking off the wheels and the canopy of the carriage, making it much lighter, essentially making it a sled.

So they jury rig with a lot of rope and over things, a carriage stretched to a flying carpet, with both being pulled by a nightmare.

Being the dead of winter in world, I made a joke saying:

Barely even a month after the winter solstice, over the elvish woods, people saw a man driving a flying sleigh being pulled by some strange horse-like creature that led them through the cold with its reddish glow. Something was also being pulled as well, but some say it was four people huddled, others say it was a bag of goodies.

And that, my friends, is the beginning of the story of how Santa Claus was born

My party warlock said "so we're essentially acting as Santa while hunting an undead menace known as vampirism...

I forgot to mention, the party skipped not only like 2/3 encounters and a big encounter I had planned for them, but they also managed to skip the dungeon I had planned for them leading to the big bad because they can fly to the top of the tower where the boss's coffin is

[Shub-Nullgurath]

Aaaargh
Woud love to join but I'm at work during the sessions. Hope you folks have fun!

Yeah, it's my night time. :p

I'm still looking for one more player who has the ability to spell "apprentice".

[Rolepgeek]

How did I not know about this?

[NullForceOmega]

I honestly have no idea.  It does seem like your kind of thread, doesn't it?

[Cthulhu]

So what do people think about the new Exalted version?  The combat system looks fucking amazing. 

In case you're not in the know, one of the annoying problems with games like D&D is the nature of HP.  It's supposedly an abstraction, but this never actually pans out in the rules.  HP in D&D is supposed to be a mix of wounds, morale, advantage, etc. but aside from bard abilities (which just seem weird as they're the only good example) all that still just boils down to hitting each other with shit until somebody dies.

Exalted 3e uses Initiative as a sort of advantage currency with the aim of producing more cinematic combat.  You can make Withering attacks and Decisive attacks.  Most of the fight consists of withering attacks, which are roleplayed like normal attacks but OOC and rules-wise they never do real damage.  Instead, they're the attacks that put the opponent out of position, force them back, etc.  When you "hit" a withering attack, you steal initiative points from the opponent.  Then you can spend your initiative on decisive attacks which do real damage.    It leads to a more movie-style combat where the fighters dance around and fight for position but nobody actually touches each other until somebody does a spin kick and the fight's over.

The only drawback is it takes fucking forever.

[Shub-Nullgurath]

The only drawback is it takes fucking forever.

Unfortunately the case of every combat system that seems like it's a good idea.

Even RuneQuest, where combat takes about three turns at most, takes god damn ages.

[Cthulhu]

I mean D&D tends to take a long time too.  Maybe not 5e, I don't have much experience with it, but I remember 3e combat taking a few hours for two or three turns.

[Teneb]

I mean D&D tends to take a long time too.  Maybe not 5e, I don't have much experience with it, but I remember 3e combat taking a few hours for two or three turns.

5e can be fast, but it boils down to luck. Turns themselves are pretty fast, though. Roll to hit. If you hit, roll for damage. That's it.

Unfortunately for my party, half the players seem incapable of hitting anything ever, except other party members (which happens semi-frequently). Our bard is banned from doing anything except spells and bard abilities because he shot the rogue too many times.

[Jimmy]

I agree that D&D can go pretty slow. Last night's session of combat ran thus: Party retreats to rest, finds that the dread ghost respawns at the entrance of the underground necropolis every 1d4 hours, fights it twice before they go searching for its remains and break the curse, then two hours of combat ensue as they enter the underground temple in the city and kill the eight ghast kobolds and dread ghast lizardfolk cleric.

I was honestly expecting them to go a little bit faster than one room per session, considering this part of the map has a good dozen rooms in it. Of course most don't actually have enemies or traps inside, just loot or the occasional puzzle. So far they've been cannily selecting the path of most resistance.

[Nahere]

I have no idea what is stopping me from freeken making my Dragon Ball RPG system brainstorm thread... It is like I am physically incapable inspite having an ok layout.

For example instead of Ki being directly MP... Instead characters have very little... Their Ki stat determining how much they recover every turn (as well as there being a maximum)... And regardless you don't start battles at full Ki either. What I am working with is a recovery of 1 ki a turn, and starting with 3-5 out of 10.

Next is the fact that in spite no one being a "physical" character in the series, everyone wants to make one anyway. Yet what is the point of non-ki using attacks? To break the opponent's defense and create damage opportunities.

Then there is technique and what it does is lower the ki cost of abilities, to an extent. But let me explain that.

Skills, transformations, and the like all are put together with pieces. Low, Medium, and High damage modifier is essentially free (2, 4, and 8 respectably). You can add modifiers and either pay for them with Ki or with technique, assuming it is available (Only some can.)

This is because "creating your own skills" is always considered one of the most important parts of any Dragon Ball RPG. It is something I'd like to retain. If you gain a level of technique then BOOM! you can modify all your skills (just like Krillin does)... In fact you can make modified techniques if your transformation includes an increase in technique.

Now Transformations are a bit trickier and include things like permafusions, Oozaru, Super Saiyan, and even King Kai Fist. The idea I have for them is they put a drain on your Ki recovery and have a buy in level (You don't start a fight transformed... unless that is its ability) you have to reach.

---

The techniques themselves are a huge problem with most games as they have to represent the large breadth of possible options and often bump into issues. A big issue is, for example, Destructo Disk. So what is Destructo Disk for this game?

It is a medium sharp attack. Sharp attacks deal their damage if they penetrate a character's stability (A buffer before they take damage).

Kamehameha is a Low Continuous attack. Continuous attacks don't deal their full damage immediately but rather after they strike a hit the user has an option to spend Ki to increase the damage. It is a safer alternative.

---

The issue I am hitting is how to make player's stats a bit more spread out... AND how to stop players from just wracking up overpowered combinations.

A Shadowrun priority system might help... OR putting skills into categories (Maybe Technique is a derived stat).

If you want inspiration piecewise toyed around with an interesting martial arts system a while back here.

[Neonivek]

That is kind of the thing... Dragon Ball past the original isn't about Martial arts

They are martial artists but the actual punching and kicking is only there to soften the enemy.