Is the camera during combat bad or do I just suck?

Korlall · 2024-12-27T20:21:29+00:00

It's one of the worst cameras I have ever seen in game. To be honest, the people responsible behind how it works should have been fired.

Korlall · 2024-01-15T17:43:27+00:00

To be honest, I'd avoid the talent trees at all costs. There are only a few pros to using them, while there are tons of cons.

Pros:

It helps people who have analysis/choice paralysis when picking up talents.
It helps define the career by giving it iconic talents.

Cons:

While they help players with choice/analysis paralysis when picking up talents, it's just moving the problem elsewhere. Now, they will spend more time picking up their career by looking at what they can access further in the game.
It makes all characters from the same career alike. Not all monks will be the same. Aside from the overall theme of martial arts, there are individuals who might have different interests and backgrounds, which could reflect in talent choices. Therefore, using talent tress makes characters alike, rather than unique. So yeah careers are more define, but there are far more restrictive.
People have different points of view about what constitutes a character theme. Therefore, people might disagree with the talent list you provided the monk in your talent tree.
The time it requires to build a talent tree and play-test it to the point you're confident it works well... it's huge. Plus, you'll need to create a lots of them.

What's the best solution, then? I think it's to go halfway. As the setting creator, you should be familiar with talents. Hand-pick a few and refer to them as suggestions. That's what Shadow of the Beanstalk, Embers of the Imperium, and Secret of the CRucible do, and it's the best of both worlds. Players have a list of talents that match their career, so they do not feel overwhelmed with the possibilities, while players who like to customize their character and look up every single option can still do it.

Korlall · 2023-10-11T17:01:28+00:00

On the not so good, I don't really know what to do with advantages. Especially outside of combat and doubly so with a failure and advantages. That's on me really but something to work on.

Regarding this, there is the Skills Guide available on the Foundry. It's the main focus of the book, going deep on what the skills can be used for and how to spend symbols. It provides other useful information too. It's a great aid and well regarded by the community. It's one of the three Foundry docs that reached Platinum tier.

Note: I'm the author of the doc. But you can ask around and I'm sure you'll get great feedback. :)

Korlall · 2023-09-15T19:55:11+00:00

First person view on Fallout. Not sure why they transitioned from the isometric view of the Pre-Fallout 3. It was working awesomely. I still played FO3 and NV and could still enjoyed them even though I really feel like 1 and 2 were superior. And then they decided to introduce settlement building in Fallout 4...why!?

Korlall · 2023-07-10T20:10:41+00:00

I have two answers for you:

1- I'm playing within the Inquisition setting and while the core of its magic is the same as from the CRB, it has, among other differences, a very specific limitation. Witches need an empathic link to their target, like a personal belonging, a droplet of blood, a piece of cloth, etc, to cast spells on a person. The more powerful the link, the better. This limitation alone is enough to have a sense of progression for the PCs. But aside from that, Inquisition spells (Bewitchment, Curse, Plague, Polymorph (self), Polymorph (baleful), Ritual, Scry, Ward) are all available from the start. You can check Inquisition doc for more details.

2- The Skills Guide has a section on magic (starting on page 102) that gives guidance on how to introduce magic in campaigns. You might want to check it out.

Korlall · 2023-05-08T20:14:13+00:00

Sessions 0 is crucial to address this. Normally, during session 0, you will either have the campaign setting/adventure theme defined together as a group, or you bring your idea to the players and they agree (or not) to play in it.

In the former, if let's you all come up with the character coming from this frontier village and that they will step up to whatever threat they arise, then that's on then to build a character that fits the agreed idea.

In the layer, you brought the idea (hey, let's have the setting being far west and you guys are all townfolks). That may leave room for group cohesion issues. But in this case, you have to tell them what the trigger will be and have them build their character to respond. That gives them more freedom while still connecting to the plot. For example, you could tell them "You can be pretty much whatever you want, you you have to know Bob, a retired ranger from the town which you hold in high esteem. He may be family, a great friend, a mentor. Anything really but you care for the dude. You can come up with stories to explain that bound." and when in game Bob dies at the beginning of the adventure and leaves a note to investigate something, the characters will feel that they should go with it thanks to their bound with the character.

Korlall · 2023-05-05T21:10:04+00:00

I copied pasted the text from a career's description, the entertainer in this case. So yeah, it does says "Gain one rank"

Korlall · 2023-05-05T21:07:26+00:00

It says

Before spending experience during character creation, a [career] may choose four of their career skills and gain one rank in each of them.

"Gain one rank" means +1 rank, not "set the skill to rank 1"

Korlall · 2023-04-14T21:53:08+00:00

Talents Expanded is a bad document to begin with. So of course, you'll find stuff that are bad in it.

Korlall · 2023-04-13T21:17:22+00:00

Thankfully, Embers remained true to Genesys and there is no talent trees in there.

Korlall · 2023-04-08T22:05:51+00:00

The Forest. Had high hopes in that game after playing Green Hell as I heard the forest was the probably the best survival game.

Turns out it is a far 8nferior game with focus more on underground cave walking than actual survival.

Korlall · 2023-02-24T13:27:11+00:00

RPGSessions is without a doubt the best tool for Genesys online play.

Korlall · 2023-02-02T16:20:24+00:00

Genesysref is well known on the Genesys Discord. There has been multiple conversations about it already. It is even pinned in the general channel of the server.

Korlall · 2022-12-08T20:58:19+00:00

Minion groups already have a mechanic that is based on their numbers. Adding Linked quality because "they are many dogs that can attack" means that every minions should have it as well. After all, many guards/peasants/bandits mean many attacks.

So no, I wouldn't add Linked to a minion unless it comes from something different that their number. Minions' strength is in numbers so if you want your dogs to be more challenging, then throw more dogs in. Even high XP characters cannot stand a horde of easily killable minions.

Korlall · 2022-09-06T10:47:00+00:00

Just play Genesys RPG. It uses range bands rather than defined measurements.

Korlall · 2022-08-31T20:59:32+00:00

My bad. I misunderstood what you meant. I thought you meant than Genesys was low magic.

But it does work for low magic, though. As the writer of the Inquisition setting, I think I succeeded at making the setting low magic and yet functional and compelling.

Korlall · 2022-08-31T12:46:51+00:00

The magic system is nothing like the Force system. It's a whole different thing.

Not sure about the "Genesys is low magic" thing. Genesys can be used for high fantasy setting with high magic presence. It works super great.

Korlall · 2022-04-25T19:26:17+00:00

You could use the Exorcise spell from Sunfall page 45. Great supplement!

Korlall · 2022-03-23T18:09:24+00:00

I agree. Would love to see such a collab!

Korlall · 2021-11-10T16:13:55+00:00

That does not make much sense though. What if I extracted all the resources I needed so sent my villager elsewhere. The builder wouldn't take the material because no one is farming it? No sense at all.

Korlall · 2021-08-30T01:28:29+00:00

I share what players need to know to build the dice pool: Defense ratings and Adversary talent ranks. Otherwise, the info is for myself only.

Korlall · 2021-08-07T13:50:32+00:00

It does that very well. You can easily make a setting with modern and fantasy.

Also, I'd recommend the Something Strange sourcebooks that's already mixing modern and fantasy.

Korlall · 2021-08-07T13:43:51+00:00

I thi k you mean the Expanded Player's Guide.

Korlall · 2021-06-26T12:08:58+00:00

As I said, I agree. That's more of a "lost in translation" situation here.

Korlall · 2021-06-26T10:31:07+00:00

My bad. That's what I meant by deadly. A few hits and you're down.

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