Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[King Zultan]

Well I went and made a discord icon for no reason but I guess it's too tiny inside of discord to fully appreciate the 'beauty' of the details, so have it here.


Perhaps you'll be able to understand what's depicted. :v

That my character is gonna die first?

[Egan_BW]

No promises but it's plausible.

[Egan_BW]

Conditional actions are really quite reasonable IC, yet slightly worrisome from a workload perspective. And makes high initiative less useful, though maybe that's acceptable because Fast Reflexes is, spoiler, a highly picked trait so far. Opinions?

It might counter-intuitively be best to allow conditional reaction only to things which happen below you in the initiative, at the cost of delaying your action until after them.

[Lenglon]

disallowing conditionals and reacting to expected things happening in the same turn tends to result in some quite silly combat actions. For example shooting at things that aren't there, charging into meele with literally nothing, and attempting to perform medical procedures on teammates that aren't hurt.

[Egan_BW]

Nature of this setup is that sometimes something very unexpected will happen between you deciding what to do and you getting to act. This is an inevitability of the combination of hidden actions, play by post (not gonna do one post per player like this is a TTRPG) and handling actions sequentially rather than just kinda all at once in a huge mess of overthinking (IE, part of what made first two P&P difficult to run with any significant playercount)

As such, the "dominant strategy" for everyone would be to put a whole lot of conditionals in every action to hopefully not get flatfooted by unforeseen conditions. The furthest conclusion of that is an unrunnable game for me.

That being said, I suppose that minor conditionals won't automatically be so apocalyptic and most people will probably know they're not supposed to play that way. I'm just bringing it up proactively.

[Lenglon]

most people will probably know they're not supposed to play that way.

>.>
is a chronic poster of massive conditional actions
fair concern, and I'll try to not do that.

[Radio Controlled]

Conditional actions are really quite reasonable IC, yet slightly worrisome from a workload perspective. And makes high initiative less useful, though maybe that's acceptable because Fast Reflexes is, spoiler, a highly picked trait so far. Opinions?

It might counter-intuitively be best to allow conditional reaction only to things which happen below you in the initiative, at the cost of delaying your action until after them.

Maybe make it so that with fast reflexes you roll at advantage for determining turn order? Seems more in line with a lot of the other traits and is less powerful.

Regarding conditionals, I think it's rather unavoidable in a highly complex environment like this. Sources of uncertainty of what your teammates might do, what the enemy might do, what might be doable in the span of a turn or in general, not knowing everything about the setting, ...
Letting people ask questions might reduce the conditionals but then you have more work answering those so might just be zero sum.

That said, I'm starting to think the PvP angle might not be what you like to gm? Maybe a system in the same setting but where every mission the playerbase collectively switches sides and plays PvE might suit you more? No secrecy, you can process turns one by one like normal, perfect balance isn't as important and we still get both mechy and magey goodness. Just a thought.

[Egan_BW]

PvP means that I don't have to build whole scenarios with moving parts and thinking people... which tends to be a sticking point. I'm not sure if I'm much of an adventure designer... >.>

See: Drujiinas, where I built a whole motley crew of anarchist eldritch cultist insurgents and then felt bad when they all died horribly at the players' hands. Much easier when it's someone else's characters dying horribly~

Maybe make it so that with fast reflexes you roll at advantage for determining turn order? Seems more in line with a lot of the other traits and is less powerful.

Well, you tend to roll initiative once per fight, so if it's just advantage you might roll snake eyes and not get to use the trait at all for a mission. After the first round of combat it's that that much of an advantage either. Probably has a high pick rate more because it feels good than because it's OP.

Bit less sure about Deadly, perhaps it deserves a point cost like Competent and Professional do.

[Egan_BW]

Also, do ask me questions. but not on discord.

[Lenglon]

with a lot of the other traits and is less powerful.
 Probably has a high pick rate more because it feels good than because it's OP.

It has a high pick rate because in many fights the winner is whoever shoots first.

[Radio Controlled]

PvP means that I don't have to build whole scenarios with moving parts and thinking people... which tends to be a sticking point. I'm not sure if I'm much of an adventure designer... >.>

Hmm. The only way out of that would be to have a single person ghost-play the other side, but who reads the turn normally so you don't have to write extra. But would depend on that person just trying to play things straight and keep things fun rather than trying their damndest to win given the info advantage they hold. Not sure if that's workable.

Bit less sure about Deadly, perhaps it deserves a point cost like Competent and Professional do.

As it stands, I think the trait only kicks in when you actually roll well enough to hit first, right? Not sure if that is worth a point cost, though it's still a very good trait as it stands given that it's PvP arena combat so more killy seems important, especially since it's not context-dependent like Steady/Killer/Revengeance.

[Egan_BW]

Well, if you want to try out a PvE mission or two, I'd go for it but not abandon the idea of PvP. Just submit a suggestion for what kind of PvE you want~

[Radio Controlled]

Thing is, for me the main draw of the setting is the pitch (mechs vs mages just tickles my fancy) and the neat setting and lore. As such, whether it's PvP or PvE or even a suggestion game* matters much less to me personally.

Hmm. If I may ask, which game of yours that you have ran in the past did you enjoy the most to gm and/or which game did you find it easiest to keep up with? Perhaps that'll help us find out in which direction to brainstorm.

(*that said I do enjoy playing my own character so it's not my fave, but I'd definitely be up for a Proctologists&Pawnstars suggestion game if that's what would work for you)

[Egan_BW]

Let's see, between:

Ocean Corp. Test Game
You Are Psychic (and that's not a good thing) SG
Welcome to the Perplexiplex
Power And Pulse
It Resonates
Power & Pulse
death plane
ALBEOM
Tactical Hell
Broken Vessel
HUNTER QUEEN METAL SG
super graveyard violence
Fork SG
TOURNAMENT ARC
Winds of Joy and Sadness
Vijiriwek
An Archeologist in a Dead Land
Special Cats
Revenant
Mechal
Beyond Planar
Boring Girl Adventures SG
Voices of Suloy
eye (hold on, I finished that one didn't I? Score!)
Foul Ichor
Dungeon Primordial Soup SG
Crisis SG

I definitely love most of them and have never really had any kind of comfortable update schedule, ever. I think I got better at writing, though!

[Egan_BW]

A good proportion of those have settings I still wanna explore, too! Agg!