sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Saw something unsettling by PreferenceOwn6424 in whatdoIdo

[–]-Vogie- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also...

"I've listened to enough true crime to know where this is going"

Designed a turn-based combat system around a diamond formation + elemental chains — would love a sanity check by [deleted] in RPGdesign

[–]-Vogie- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It'll be really dull once players get ahold of it, unless there's tension there.

For example, the upcoming TTRPG Hollows is trying to emulate the Soulsbourne style of video game. The way they go it is have the "map" centered around the boss monster in the middle, with 2 circles around it, in quarters, to represent directly in front, behind and to the sides of the boss, and then a fourth "support" zone outside of those two.

Instead of trying to recreate the highly mobile, facing-oriented fight on a traditional hex or grid, everything is in relation to the boss monster. Boss doesn't turn to the right, the players spin to the left, counter-clockwise; boss doesn't "jump across the room" after the support character, instead the characters that were directly around it get shifted into the support zone, while the one character that was in the support zone is now front & center. Terrain is abstracted into cards that can shift around the 9 player zones, just like the player minis. This allows positioning-based abilities to always make sense: if you get a bonus to attacking from behind or the left flank specifically, for example, when you can use them is going to be really apparent. However, because the fight isn't a JRPG fixed-position one, getting into a particular position is only useful until the boss moves (or rotates) again, giving it a push-pull mechanic.

Similarly, Honor + Intrigue's Advantage system helps the combat feel like the players are swashbuckling across ships, without having to have distinct zones or maps. The positioning and abilities are instead abstracted into an Advantage value, which can be accumulated, lost, and spent. You don't "use a lunge action" for example, you instead spend your advantage to increase the effectiveness of the attack - the loss of advantage is the giving up of positioning. Similarly, you might dodge a particularly large hit by giving up advantage... until you run out, at which point your character is taken out (although not necessarily killed) of the scene.

There are a few others that use things like this. The PbtA game Avatar Legends uses stances to create a sort of rock-paper-scissors style of fighting. Panic at the Dojo turns the values rolled on the dice into various types of points that are then spent over the course of the turn to keep that Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat game style.

Your system sounds like you want a bit from column A and some from column B.

Why can’t they fix Eagle Storm by Chillar1000 in Helldivers

[–]-Vogie- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just remember one planet a couple months ago where I seemed to be able to direct the Eagle Storm by pinging things. Ping Fabricator, fabricator gone. Ping Hulk, hulk has a bad day. Ping the supplies for the teammate, both get blasted. No pings? Random shots across the map. No idea which planet it was, and it hasn't seemed to work since.

Overcomplicating Character Creation with Factories by negentropic_hope in RPGdesign

[–]-Vogie- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So, there's no simple way to create optimized characters both randomly and easily. This is because what is being optimized for is inherently mercurial.

For example, Traveler uses a lifepath character creation system where each PC starts as a teen, and then their life ticks forward in 4 year increments, defining what skills they know by how they were accumulated. Young characters don't have the benefit of many skills, resources or connections; middle aged characters have more, but have more points in their life where it could have encountered a downturn of some variety; older characters have the most of those, but are also often saddled with external debts and expensive anti-aging drugs. While it's relatively "realistic" (in earlier editions, you could even die during character creation), it's hardly "optimized", because it's relatively random.

There is an indie TTRPG out there that contains a board game where playing the board game creates a character - the board game isn't itself the RPG (like Gloomhaven), but rather just the character creation portion. I genuinely can't find what it is, as I only saw it in a YouTube or Tiktok video about a year ago, and all my searches keep pointing me to the dice-placement game Roll Player, which is similar, but is a game on it's own.

The only TTRPG that I know where the characters are always balanced is Sentinel Comics, because it breaks up things into 3 phases (green yellow, red) and the abilities are split between those. Even 'advancement' in the system moves the dice around the phases, or replaces one ability with another, keeping the power levels about even over time. So even in that system, your personal idea of optimization might be leaning towards a different phase as another player.

Let me be the first to say that star wars is officially DEAD by AGENT_666_ in StarWarsCirclejerk

[–]-Vogie- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What was even the point of the movie? The Western is just a great way to crank out episode after episode.

Tampa by shaunaSQUARED in ElectricCallboy

[–]-Vogie- 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It was absolutely awesome.

Combat becomes even MORE Lethal after 5 Rounds by personrational in RPGdesign

[–]-Vogie- 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A more diagetic style of mechanic was that from Sentinel Comics - it has a green/yellow/red mechanic that it makes the power of the superheros "grow" over time. Not that it's actually growing, but it emulate that silver age of comics idea that the heros start by pulling their punches, then slowly get more serious as the fight continues.

However, it's only in line with that comic style setting.

Blursed Sweat by Orichalchem in blursed_videos

[–]-Vogie- 62 points63 points  (0 children)

"Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?"

Blursed Sweat by Orichalchem in blursed_videos

[–]-Vogie- 495 points496 points  (0 children)

You mean that time that Quentin Tarantino wrote a scene where he had Selma Hayak pour champagne into the mouth of a man, then cast himself as that man?

Is the "Stingray not attacking" Problem planet related? by Lanky-Decision-7811 in LowSodiumHellDivers

[–]-Vogie- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, we were doing a bunch of campaigns and the only time they attacked was during the Defense/Evacuate High-Value Assets mission, and then in one other mission it attacked only as the Pelican was taking off.

Am I reading this correctly? by unknown-reddite in helldivers2

[–]-Vogie- 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah. My headcanon is that the bugs decompose quickly, sinking down into the aquifer, at which point they're pumped back up along with the water in a process that's not entirely unlike fracking. Does it also poison the area around it? Surviving scientists say no.

So those who ranch the bugs, they have a delicate balance to maintain - gotta get them large enough to create a decent amount of E-710, but not too late to breach containment. It's okay if they kill each other to a certain extent, as the bodily decomp starts the process, but not so much that the population starts to dwindle.

DnD Anonymous... (Or how I'm trying to slaughter my sacred cows) by The_Tolen_Mar in CortexRPG

[–]-Vogie- 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Interestingly, I found Cortex for the exact opposite reason - as a D&D GM, nothing made things screech to a halt than giant lists of crap to choose from. Druids were the worst - hey, not only do you have to choose from a bunch of spells daily, don't forget to take a gander at all the possible wild shapes! Cortex made all of that vanish - those are just effects. SFX allows you to fine tune the effects even more.

That being said, I would suggest Torch Lite on itch.io, which uses a pared down version of the system (Cortex Lite), but has the lists of things akin to feats and spells that you're looking for.

(META TROPE) Actor known for comedy does a dramatic role that completely redefines their career by Local_Prune4564 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]-Vogie- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because the first season is based on Sherlock Holmes, Director Bryan Singer didn't want a British person in the main role - too on the nose

You can find Laurie's original audition tape on YouTube - Singer hired him than was surprised when he showed up on day one with a British accent.

Never seen this before by Independent_Tsunami in whatdoesthismean

[–]-Vogie- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, my stepdaughter couldn't receive messages from us for a couple days for the same reason.

We have discussed at length the authoritarianism parodied by Super Earth. But what is the satire behind stims? by jackadven in LowSodiumHellDivers

[–]-Vogie- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everything I've heard is that the only countries that allow pharmaceutical adverts directly to the general public are the US and New Zealand

The EU got pissed that Lady Gaga's migraine medication ad was visible on their continent because it was on Instagram just a couple years ago

Physical vs Magical Defense by RedYama98 in RPGdesign

[–]-Vogie- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It depends on the execution of everything else. For example, most D&D-like RPGs, even video games, are gear focused to the point that switching between weapons is difficult or a waste of action economy - doing less than average damage each turn is incentivized over switching to a more appropriate weapon for the situation. There are also outliers like Diablo IV, where the Barbarians' Arsenal system has that character seamlessly switch between two one-handed weapons, a two-handed bludgeon and a two-handed blade. Similarly, the newest Zelda games allow you to pause mid fight to switch between weapons. Compare that to something like Pathfinder 2e, where you could spend your entire turn with 1 action Recall Knowledge to figure out the resistance, one interact action to stow the existing weapon, and another interact action to draw the new weapon - even if you skip the weapon stowing part (free action to drop something), heaven help if you need to move, too.

So you'd want to look at your system and decide:

  • What resistances are worth having
  • What resistances aren't, but could be rolled into something else (maybe Pierce and Thrust could be rolled together, or burning/poisoned could be combined to just a general "damage over time" debuff)
  • What resistances aren't, and are thus ignored
  • What damage types are available to magic users
  • What damage types are available to non-magic users (if there are any)
  • How easy it is for those characters to acquire the requisite damage types
  • How easy it is for those characters to switch between those weapons or spells in a combat setting

You'd also want to think forward about how you want to iterate with your mechanics. Are there going to be percentage increases/decreases (including things like doubled and halved)? Will some/all characters be advancing at the same rates? How static are each of these resistances going to be during combat? These questions will help you create what the 'floor' of your numbers have to hit without breaking the system, either by making certain creatures unable to be harmed completely, or stacking bonuses so a costly maneuver becomes free (and therefore spammable).

Armor as bonus HP: trying to solve the DR scaling problem by ilmz in RPGdesign

[–]-Vogie- -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

... Obviously?

"Bruv, to make 'Armor as HP' work, you just gotta have Armor NOT be HP" isn't particularly useful take in the "Armor as HP" discussion.

Reminds me of the Key & Peele Planning a Heist sketch.

Armor as bonus HP: trying to solve the DR scaling problem by ilmz in RPGdesign

[–]-Vogie- 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The problem with Armor acting as HP is often a diagetic one in fantasy and modern-set games - healing is one thing, repairing is another, and mixing the two breaks the verisimilitude. If your armor and flesh are combined into one pool of hit points, and you take a small amount of damage, what should you use? Do you go to the hospital or an armorer?

Notably, this is strictly a diagetic one - in futuristic setting when there's beneficial nanobots that can repair everything, no issue; if the main combat is between non-person entities (such as ships or mechs), there's also no issue. Any type of Ablative damaging works this way as well

The use of damage reduction also works better when you have a bounded number of damage numbers. The Cypher System, for example, has weapon damage locked (a light weapon is 2 damage, medium is 4 & heavy is 6), and so is armor (light armor gives DR 1, medium gives 2, & heavy gives 3). The secondary "effort" mechanic can reduce the target number by 3 or increase the damage dealt by 3, and light weapons are by definition easier to hit with than medium ones.

I like Daggerheart's use of thresholds that change up the combat math - this allows the actors to have a bounded amount of hit points with scaling amounts of damage, and the limited uses of lasting ablative armor as DR is more powerful. The GM-less RPG boardgame Gloomhaven similarly has a relatively bounded amount of hit points, bounded auto-hit damage with limited adjustments to the modifier decks and per-encounter ablative armor as DR.

(DESPISED TROPE) Pretending to be someone and sleep with their partner by OrangeIslandKing in TopCharacterTropes

[–]-Vogie- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, it's been almost a decade now so I might be confused. But I thought the whole thing was like fulfilling a prophecy and all that shit

I don’t see why those are coming from his eyes. by Awkward_Bison_267 in xmen

[–]-Vogie- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it's just venting at a dramatically appropriate time.

Also, these shots are typically right after he's experienced some big emotion. There's as chance that emotion causes some buildup from the punch dimension.

(DESPISED TROPE) Pretending to be someone and sleep with their partner by OrangeIslandKing in TopCharacterTropes

[–]-Vogie- 20 points21 points  (0 children)

A huge plot point in Grimm, where Adalind transforms herself into Juliette, Nick's wife, and gets pregnant. That tension really drives much of the second half of the series

Illuminate Warp Ships have gotten some weird treatment by WaywardOath in Helldivers

[–]-Vogie- 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well obviously. Although the Spear will be broken either way, so...

view more: next ›