The Bogwater Flows On
kiwifarms.net
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Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
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- Apr 25, 2020
I used to think that, too. As time went on my opinion eventually changed: most systems require too many rolls, for things the character already knows how to do and that should only take time. If you're rolling for something, it's because you're in a hurry, under severe tension, or in some unfamiliar situation and the outcome should be swingy. Dice rolls shouldn't just be a measure of your luck, they should be inflection points where something unexpected yet important could have happened.
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kiwifarms.net
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- May 27, 2021
Good system.
- Joined
- May 25, 2024
Overhated system, probably the one I've ran and played the most. I think the destiny point system is probably the best meta currency for being self balancing and making compelling encounters is really easy and fun. I've talked about it at length in other posts in this thread and don't feel relitigating them while phone posting.
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- Aug 23, 2018
It's worse than that.
The adventures (until this campaign) were published in parts. But each part had a different author and it showed. Sometimes they don't even talk to each other. Some campaigns have strong openings then shit the bed as another writer comes in.
They also tend to be railroady. In interviews, they said it's because GMs see multiple paths as wasted space. If they write 3 locations and the PCs can only visit 1, that's 2 locations of content "wasted".
Funny you mention that...
I'm running Scoured Stars, which is the last SF1e product they put out as far as I can tell. It's a remake of the first
Being the first canon campaign, I figured there'd be less homework to do, but it turns out instead of having to know everything that came before, the problem is knowing what comes after or even during, which brings me to this specific plot hole.
In short, the campaign was cut down from about 43 self contained adventures to 15 adventures that matter to the plot. One of the cut adventures is the establishment of this side villain. So RAW, you rescue the guy, and then never hear of him again. He turns traitor and is dealt with off screen. And the PCs learn this when a major NPC changes their name and they ask about it.
But, the traitor is the main villain of adventure guild season 4. Which happens to be the season where the better opening adventure takes place.
I have a week and change to decide what to do.
- Have another faction lead the attack on Starfinder HQ. I'm tempted to add either the Emerald Claw or the Dreaming Dark from Eberron for other adventures down the line, so these could be good candidates.
- Make it so the traitor isn't in the Scoured Stars and turned traitor before be left, but that would mean re-writing his motivation, and runs a small risk of fucking up the campaign later on.
- Look for/write another opening.
I always thought the Star Wars systems were hyped to hell and back? WEG and FFG in particular get lots of praise. I think it's FFG gets complaints about funky dice, but is supposedly a great system otherwise.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
I was just talking to someone about setting up a new one-shot adventure, 3-4 sessions. And it popped into my head to make this meme. It's pretty much my adult GM'ing career right there. Though I probably need another one that symbolises me finding the rare players who have never played D&D 5e, too.
No great weight to this post. Just amazing how much the "RPG Community" just drives away anyone from participating in it who isn't an awful human being.
And it's unfortunate because outside of a few minor issues with the FFG SW system, it's not bad.
Too easy to stack advantage to trigger things like auto fire and crits. Their "jedi knight level play" at somewhere around 150 earned xp(if I remember right) wasn't able to complete the jedi trials in their own book that included them. Grenade AoE range not making too much sense. By the time you get to around 400 earned xp your characters are just bonkers. They stat'd Vader(and others) who would get wrecked by a party of shitters due to action economy even if he can go twice a round. The ebb/flow power is just hilariously broken.
But, for shorter adventures that only run a few sessions each and don't continually use the same characters it's pretty decent compared to a lot of other stuff out there.
But then you've got the stupid dice that FFG loves so much and doesn't even come with enough in the pack to actually. Realistically you'd need 2 packs for enough black/red/blue/purple/green/yellow dice to just roll a dice pool in one go. But then the force die you only get 1 of per pack so you'd likely need at least 3.
The Bogwater Flows On
kiwifarms.net
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- Jan 2, 2025
The truest complaint about the system is how they sell the fucking dice.
Just give us a big pack you BASTARDS!
I'm not even sure that would do it. As it is, 3 packs is $45 in dice that you're still having to pass around the table between players. Even if they made a larger pack with 3 force dice and double the number for the rest, that would still likely be $30 and you're still passing the handful of dice around so people can roll.
At least with x-wing you only needed 2 colors of dice, and armada was 3 but you could get third party sets pretty easily. The TTRPG? 7, and they're different shapes on top of the colors and faces. It was so bad that ages ago FFG made a dice roller app, and we actually just used that at the table.
So then FFG released their generic Genesys system that's just the SW game at the core and it retained the SW dice except for the force die, but they changed the symbols again(the faces are still the same) and sold them for the same price as the SW dice with one less die in the pack.
It's not even just FFG, it's basically all of Asmodee at this point since Marvel Crisis Protocol, SW legion, and shatterpoint also use silly proprietary dice and that's Atomic Mass Games. I don't know of Asmodee thinks they'll get rich off of bullshit dice, but it's definitely annoying.
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kiwifarms.net
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- May 27, 2021
The rulebooks are also amazingly well organized which is something that isn't talked about very in general with regards to most systems but more companies should start paying attention to.
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- Sep 3, 2014
I like it, but always had issues with how often the team I played on struggled desperately for successes, since we kept getting failure results to negate the success. I remember on multiple occasions just getting nothing but advantages, which would be fine if we could fucking hit the enemy or do the task. I have three to five advantages. Can I actually hit the son of bitch with my blaster? Can the next guy?
I feel like a conversion homerule to state that with enough advantages you just get a success, and vice versa would help. Because goddamn was that fucking frustrating.
Sleazy Car Salesman
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kiwifarms.net
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- May 27, 2021
Playing a TTRPG without homerules is like baked beans without bacon.
Triumph and despair not cancelling out was also fucking stupid, so we houseruled them to cancel.
1 failure, 3 advantage, a triumph, and a despair. ffs, I just wanted to quickly climb down a ladder.
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2017
Solo TTRPG Nanoblog (where I talk to myself about talking to myself)
As an experiment I did a 100% analog one-shot using a solo notation format called Lonelog: https://zeruhur.itch.io/lonelog
Instead of using traditional tables I used a random paperback I had laying around. Worked reasonably enough, but it would probably work better if the book wasn't "The Bolshevik Revolution Vol. 1".
It's kinda quaint being an inkfag. I get jealous when I see people with doodles in their journals. Unfortunately the benefits of using digital markdown are too numerous.
As an experiment I did a 100% analog one-shot using a solo notation format called Lonelog: https://zeruhur.itch.io/lonelog
Instead of using traditional tables I used a random paperback I had laying around. Worked reasonably enough, but it would probably work better if the book wasn't "The Bolshevik Revolution Vol. 1".
It's kinda quaint being an inkfag. I get jealous when I see people with doodles in their journals. Unfortunately the benefits of using digital markdown are too numerous.
ProvokedData60
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2025
Holy shit this is quite nice. I've been getting into Solo RPGs because while I do like my friends, getting them to do any of the paperwork for ANY system is like dragging your ass on a mile of broken glass. I never knew how to properly log my actions though, but this will help immensely.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
The Starfinder 1e campaign I planned might have just collapsed. The two who did their homework and rolled characters immediately are still on board, but as hasitent to play with just two players. One bailed from the Discord server/group chat, and the rest are saying they're not interested, while being neck deep in Subnautica 2, which I suspect is the real reason.
On a lighter note, a friend of mine is a big fan of AI for generating ideas. I gave it a prompt and didn't expect much, but the result it returned was pretty good.
It gave an explaination of how to connect Starfinder and Eberron through planes and laylines, which I didn't ask it for or expect. It then laid out a pretty neat campaign outline, with a few motivation options. Two of the adventure suggestions are things I was planning on doing but never mentioned to the AI. While I wouldn't use it all the time, I can see why my friend likes it for bouncing ideas of off and digging out of holes.
Since I might not get to use it, here's a short version. I'll not explain all the Starfinder and Eberron jargon. Starfinder Society stumbles on some pre-gap ruins and recovers an artifact. They write a paper on it they plan to release to the public. Illmarrow wants this artifact to restore her dragon mark. She also doesn't want news of it going public because if the news reaches The Chamber it could fuck up her long term plans. So she starts an escalating campaign against the Starfinders.
On a lighter note, a friend of mine is a big fan of AI for generating ideas. I gave it a prompt and didn't expect much, but the result it returned was pretty good.
It gave an explaination of how to connect Starfinder and Eberron through planes and laylines, which I didn't ask it for or expect. It then laid out a pretty neat campaign outline, with a few motivation options. Two of the adventure suggestions are things I was planning on doing but never mentioned to the AI. While I wouldn't use it all the time, I can see why my friend likes it for bouncing ideas of off and digging out of holes.
Since I might not get to use it, here's a short version. I'll not explain all the Starfinder and Eberron jargon. Starfinder Society stumbles on some pre-gap ruins and recovers an artifact. They write a paper on it they plan to release to the public. Illmarrow wants this artifact to restore her dragon mark. She also doesn't want news of it going public because if the news reaches The Chamber it could fuck up her long term plans. So she starts an escalating campaign against the Starfinders.
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2024
Funny, I actually found a video on Lonelog not too long ago back when it was called Solo TTRPG Notation:
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
I'm still shocked by this. I've had players show up for games and be confused because I'm setting up for a one-shot that we all discussed at the end of the last session. I'm on session four of a one-shot right now (which I should write about later...), and I've been happy that players are remembering what has happened between sessions.
I've learned that the trick is to treat players like children and not overwhelm them with any names, even normal ones like "John". I'm also careful to make sure that things don't go slow enough that they have enough time to get sucked into their phone, but also keep it slow enough that no more than two important things happen in a session. Anything more than that will also be overwhelming and they may lose their memory of the session entirely.
Rapier Ape
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2019
There's a really good Jrpg series called Star Ocean that you could pull some inspiration from.
2 and 3 are absolute masterpieces.
There's an anime series based on 2 but they pulled the plug and went off the Canon in the last few episodes.
Good stuff though.
I plagiarized 2 back in the early - mid 2000s.
The game was a bit obscure and 2d sprites in the budding 3d era so no one in the core group or guests had any idea.
I got a phone call from one of the players some years back because he gets bored and watches lore videos for background noise.
He found out that i wasn't some galaxy brained DM but a dirty thief lol.
In the words of Mr.Whelch.
If you're going to steal.
Steal from the best.
Hey it kept them busy for like 2 years though.
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2024
Aw hell yeah, that and Phantasy Star were pretty big parts of my life.
Must have been a fantasy campaign, wish I had DMs that would steal from good media and make a campaign from it...guess I have to do it then. I'll probably do Till the End of Time since you did 2. Did you ever tie in Blue Sphere?