This is very true and one recommendation I have is that if there are kingdoms or politics you'd rather not have your players fuck up once they reach this point, give them land or realms that are more convenient to conquer. The players will not often take the path of resistance, especially if it offers less potential reward. Colonialism is often preferable than conquest, especially if they don't have to bother with logistics or nation-building. Helps to mitigate having to railroad your players away from parts of the world you'd rather exist.
Did this end up working properly?
Yes thanks to @2LtMashengo connecting to the server I now know it works, still got to find permanent hosting solution but that should not be a big problem I got an old laptop around some where I can repurpose.
Oh, almost anything from after they used up the last of the original freelancer material. I think that was their legendary runner series or whatever it was. Can't remember what it was called - was just tiny little PDFs of NPCs along a theme. Think it may originally have intended to be a free site download or something. I don't know. But yeah, anything post their departure like War!, gods help us!
I have to say, I don't really get this. In 4th, you dress appropriate for the meet and the GM gives you +1 bonus to your dice pool, in 5th you say it raises your limit by 1. In both cases a player action is reflected mechanically. I'm not edition warring, I genuinely don't get what you're getting out of these limits.
the problem is most people want/play modern dnd campaigns these days, so...
imo actions always should have consequences, otherwise the whole setting has no consistency and makes no sense (dnd or not) and there's no point. that's what I mean when the party chimps out and suddenly there's a big dude in the town they messed with. a town guard with a big number is just the most simple/inelegant solution. I wouldn't do it that way myself, but I can see why some people do.
https://github.com/Chaithi/ShadowrunGenesys (unironically)
The android netrunner campaign I played in was wild. Fun setting. We were supposed to uncover a grand conspiracy involving a bunch of stage musicians from history that faked their own deaths and were controlling earth from a moon base but accidentally ended up blowing up the moon.
In terms of like mechanical purpose, it is to keep things more subdued, to prevent insane dice results from neutralizing something by chance alone, and prevent extremely improbable events from occurring, like shooting through the armour of a HTR goon with a hold-out or a gnome out-punching a troll. This doesn't mean that high dice numbers are nullified, just means that you now reliably hit the cap, but when you really need to push beyond you pre-edge it, so you can find the chink in the armour with the streetline you had on you for emergencies, or your gnome can suddenly find the strength to barrel over that troll, but it will never occur by chance alone. Also it might seem like I am focusing on PCs, in my experience as a GM, it is just as (if not more) relevant to enemies, where in combats I have had a total jobber with a garbage gun roll spectacularly well whereas a PC rolled like shit, it prevents the PC from just eating it then and there, not getting away unscathed, but he lives another day and learns not to underestimate a ganger with a Barrens Special ever again. Generally I find the effect is that you can make better judgements, for both PCs and GMs. Want to have them fight a group of people that are threatening but unlikely to gank the PCs by random chance, give them garbage guns with 4 accuracy, enough to make the PC's day worse but unlikely to kill him outright. But if you want to really make this fight tense, you give em better stuff with better accuracy, where if they do get an insane 8 hits with that Yamaha Raiden where the PC got 1, whelp, bad luck, shouldn't have gotten hit, 19 damage, -2 AP is more than enough to kill a PC out right and probably will. Since accuracy is such a key mechanic for weapons, it also means that weapon damages are all the higher, you don't rely on generating your damage via additional successes, was something I recognized when I looked at my copy of 4A to make sure I wasn't mischaracterizing anything from 4th, damage values and AP are practically anaemic in comparison since the Condition fomulae are the same, it's BECAUSE you are supposed to be generating most damage via extra hits. This also means you can go toe-to-toe with more skilled enemies, since they are unlikely to bury you in dice, and to do damage you just need 1 more than them. If that last part is good or bad, up to you. Sorry if a bit disorganized, this was really stream of thought tbh.
Oh, it's coming back to me now. The whole 4th edition era had some of the earlier edition players going full Trump Derangement Syndrome over it. One of the obsessions was about crazy high dice pools. It was like the "Trump called White Nationalists very fine people" or "told people to inject bleach" things TDS sufferers latch onto. You could show them it right there in black and white and they'd still return to it 5 seconds later. The two bogus examples I recall the most were "the pornomancer" and "Mr. Lucky", neither of which were problems in practice.
I actually don't find it unrealistic that on a rare shot that should be possible. Armour isn't a Terminator suit from WH40K. A hold-out pistol is still a firearm and there are gaps, visors, etc. Limits that prevent this are actually making the game less realistic. But for fun here's some back of the envelope numbers on it, too:
That's a totally different thing though, skill-based limits aren't what 5th's limits are. Inherent limits are based on attributes, accuracy is a quality of the gun or sword or whatever. Have lots of skill dice? Get a more accurate gun. Want a higher mental limit? Increase your logic. It puts a focus on attributes and metatype attribute spreads more. Anyone can increase a skill to 6 in creation, 12 in career, having 10 body and 10 strength is exclusively the domain of trolls (higher if you choose some sub-types).
I don't think they're totally different. They're both ways of preventing unusually high outcomes. 4th is presented as an optional rule and has a simpler basis of just saying "no more than your skill rating x2". So a skilled marksman can pull off that amazing shot but the amateur boob cannot. As I said, I actually consider that a negative - I'm fine with some amateur pulling off the 1 in a 100 chance now and then. I find it fun and it keeps the group on their toes. Even if in practice it's more a "so there's a chance" than actually comes up. 5th edition does it in a more involved way, and it ties it to things like weapons - so the unskilled person uses a lesser gun, the skilled a more accurate one. I actually find that a bit weird, conceptually. Quite... gamey. I.e.: "I'm good enough to benefit from a better gun now".
What? It isn't gamey at all, that is how they actually work. In the hands of a mediocre shooter, a high precision sniper rifle worth tens of thousands of dollars is functionally about the same as a low cost sport bolt-action because they can't actually take advantage of the higher quality of the weapon. It doesn't matter if a gun will hit the exact spot it is pointing if the idiot doesn't know how to use it better.
That wasn't an edition war, those are far worse.
This I agree with.
I know I'm very late to respond to this post, but Delta Green is the best Men in Black simulator I've ever played/GM'd. My players aren't really ttrpg people (but they're willing to humor me) and the only system we've played with any kind of crunch that they've enjoyed is Delta Green. It's very easy to homebrew an adventure, but the premade modules for it tend to be brutally dense, at least the two major ones I've looked through (impossible landscapes and Iconoclasts) and it's much more investigating than fighting. My players are also very much not sandbox players and the official modules are clearly designed for players with a lot more agency. The best "modules" for Delta Green in my experience has been the shotgun scenarios, all of which are free online. The greenbox generators are also a really helpful resource.
Going to clarify: DM me with your matrix username and I will invite you, I cannot read your mind nor do I want anyone dropping anything in an open thread.
Make sure to include a strange floating alien or mutant with a single giant eye and eyestalks as well
Operation Eldar Sex is on hold but Operation Behold-her is a-go!
