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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[wierd]

If we're talking force powers here, why not just "Force push against the ground", and let physics do the rest?

(I mean, think about it-- If you push against the steps of the stairs with your force powers, it isn't like your force user is magically anchored in place. That energy is gonna go "least resistance", and it's gonna result in the force user getting shoved around much more than the planet being moved. That means that the force user will be shoved forward, and then the next step underneath will come into contact with the force push area-- rinse repeat.  Force user shoots up the stairs like a goddamn cannonball.)

[scriver]

Look, what's the point of having a character that can cling to a wall, and roll up it, if you don't do it!?

I mean, sure-- there's STAIRS-- but that's what people WITHOUT special powers use!

If stairs count as difficult terrain, I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty of climb speed builds where taking the stairs is inconvenient and slow in comparison. Which actually potentially makes sense, now. I'm thinking about it.

Parkour?

[Grim Portent]

I've been finding myself thinking about how to make a Bloodborne RPG again. I keep thinking the period leading up to the burning of Old Yharnam and the beast plague becoming widespread knowledge could be a really good time for a game, but I've no real idea what would serve as a good system to use as the basis.

[Cthulhu]

Maybe Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is a dark fantasy game based around an impending apocalypse (the eponymous demon lord's return).  I haven't read the book, but I think it has mechanics for the escalating disaster as the demon lord gets closer.

[Cruxador]

Maybe Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is a dark fantasy game based around an impending apocalypse (the eponymous demon lord's return).  I haven't read the book, but I think it has mechanics for the escalating disaster as the demon lord gets closer.

Kind of. Although it's a selling point, it's barely more than a plothook generator really. I was hyped for the design when I heard about it, thinking it was something more like you'd get in a board game where it leads inevitably to the demon king doing his thing, but instead the demon king is characterized as an eternally looming threat outside of creation, not something that ever comes directly into play. The progress of the demon king's influence doesn't even modify corruption roles, which conceptually is like a gimme.

[MrRoboto75]

I've been finding myself thinking about how to make a Bloodborne RPG again. I keep thinking the period leading up to the burning of Old Yharnam and the beast plague becoming widespread knowledge could be a really good time for a game, but I've no real idea what would serve as a good system to use as the basis.

My gut says to try something with World of Darkness, maybe Hunter for the... hunters, and you could try using Werewolf for the various beasts and other WoD books for various other monsters.

Call of Cthulu might also work, as BB is pretty lovecraft as it is.

[Grim Portent]

My initial lean is towards WoD stuff, but my previous experience with the system has left me rather lukewarm towards it. I could always rip some of the ideas out and mush them together with ideas from other systems I like.

I prefer d100 systems, so maybe I can modify an existing ruleset.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Maybe Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is a dark fantasy game based around an impending apocalypse (the eponymous demon lord's return).  I haven't read the book, but I think it has mechanics for the escalating disaster as the demon lord gets closer.

Kind of. Although it's a selling point, it's barely more than a plothook generator really. I was hyped for the design when I heard about it, thinking it was something more like you'd get in a board game where it leads inevitably to the demon king doing his thing, but instead the demon king is characterized as an eternally looming threat outside of creation, not something that ever comes directly into play. The progress of the demon king's influence doesn't even modify corruption roles, which conceptually is like a gimme.

And it was already done way better with the Sign mechanics from 3.5 Elder Evils, especially because you can actually fight the elder if it manifests and even still win, but then have to switch to a Dark Sun-inspired homebrew because the whole planet is ruined by it's arrival.

But for Bloodborne all of that doesn't even make sense to begin with since the cosmic horrors are actually benevolent/benign and it's all humanity's fault that the disaster happens.

[Grim Portent]

Ebrietas at least seems somewhat sinister. She's cooperating with the Choir and providing them with her blood to experiment on attempts at ascension with despite the fact it seems to involve insane levels of human suffering. I think it was implied her main motivation is loneliness, which isn't a great reason to work with mad scientists who turn people into mewling mutants.

Anyway, Yharnam was still functioning as a city at the time I want to use, a weird blood obsessed city with secret police who hunted werewolves, but still a city. The aftermath of the burning of Old Yharnam would probably be something to end on, with the focus being on a steadily increasing level of paranoia in the city, ever more and stronger beasts appearing each night, inter faction politics within the workshop and the church itself leading up to the workshop being disbanded and Gerhman disappearing.

So right now I'm thinking a D100 system, two 'corruption' tracks, one for Beasthood and one for Insight, with the latter reducing the former as it rises but revealing more Great One nonsense to the character, and Beasthood encouraging indiscriminate slaughter in exchange for raw power. Though most of the beasthood themed stuff is post burning, so maybe won't bother.

Basic ideas for character options atm is a few backgrounds, former Bergenwyrth scholars who followed Laurence, older and frailer but know more of the truth behind things, Yharnam hunters recruited specifically for the workshop from the church as the sort of normal generalists, and foreign hunters as the specialists in odd equipment.

Then options for the workshop covenants and badges, Powder Kegs as gun specialists, Saw Hunters as beast killers, Crows as hunter killers and so on.

I could easily work gun parrying in as a reaction option, a less reliable dodge skill that gives lots of damage on the next attack on the target.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Ebrietas at least seems somewhat sinister. She's cooperating with the Choir and providing them with her blood to experiment on attempts at ascension with despite the fact it seems to involve insane levels of human suffering. I think it was implied her main motivation is loneliness, which isn't a great reason to work with mad scientists who turn people into mewling mutants.

But not a malicious or even uncaring reason. The great ones don't appear to fully understand the consequences their actions have on humanity. They're bizarrely innocent entities who have an alarming tendency to do whatever a human asks them to do, once contact has been achieved. In fact, the most aggressive of them is the Orphan of Kos, partly human.

Which could be an interesting option for Yharnam in this time period. Beware of even well-meaning genies...

[Jimmy]

There's something to be said for deities that give people exactly what they asked for, and give it to them good and hard.

In terms of outcomes, I guess it's kind of like Democracy.

[Kagus]

"Kos" is also the Norwegian word for cuddles/coziness, which I thought was just a teensy bit funny.

[Telgin]

Some friends are trying to get me to try playing Chuubo's Magical Wish Granting Engine, and boy is learning this a challenge.  The game system itself seems relatively straightforward, but the rules are embedded in prose and important information feels like it's scattered around the book which is pretty irritating when using a PDF.

We haven't played yet, but they wanted to play miraculous characters, and almost all of the miraculous character arcs are... just strange.  I think they're probably somehow relevant to the setting in Chuubo's in ways that I don't fully understand, but there are examples like being able to appear in a scene because there was something that looked like your character, but then you vanish and weren't ever actually there.  Or the ability to delete a thing or concept like a character's rudeness once per scene.  That's all mixed in with more normal feeling powers like turning into Godzilla or having the supernatural ability to be the literal best at something, whatever you want that something to be.

I don't know.  I'll give the game a shot, but it just feels so weird.  Even the game mechanics are a strange combination of narrative and explicit mechanics, like the fact that you "fade" in a scene after getting XP so that by explicit game mechanics your character becomes unimportant for I think it was 15 minutes of real time.  Or how you can have Divine health levels that make you immune to almost anything, but if something blows you up enough, like a nuke or volcano, it hurts you anyway.

I suspect it's just a genre I'm really not that into.  The author is the same author as Nobilis I think, which was a similarly trippy setting with power over concepts in ways that I didn't fully comprehend and didn't really feel like I had the enthusiasm and drive to learn.

[Mephisto]

There's a special breed of gamer on Reddit who does nothing but pimp Chuubo's and anything Jenna Moran has been in the vicinity of. Common talking points include "pastoral", "no randomizers", "slice-of-life", and, occasionally, "holistic". So commonly are those repeated that it's almost like parrots repeating phrases they've been taught.

You do you, and I'd definitely give it a go if someone in the vicinity wanted to run it, but I can tell that it's just not for me.

[Telgin]

Yeah, I'll update with my feelings after playing it some.  I'm hoping it'll end up being like PbtA where I didn't really understand the point or like it before playing it, but really enjoyed it after I did have a chance to play.  But it may just be weird and I won't like it.  Time will tell.

The one thing I'm really kind of curious to see how it plays out is how it tries to incentivize that slice-of-life aspect.  As far as I can tell it does that by giving you XP for getting other people to experience emotions you're trying to evoke, or by doing things like quoting catch phrases.

That honestly feels kind of like it could turn out to be a little obnoxious.  Maybe I'm just basing it off of some irritating behaviors I've seen in other characters like trying too hard to evoke "Isn't my character just so dang cute?" or "Look just how sexy my character is!", but it applies equally to things that I've done like playing up characters who are just miserable all of the time.

We'll see.