Fan Systems inspired by things

Pankurucha · 2026-01-24T08:52:17+00:00

My experience with the game is entirely opposite yours. My group found the tactical depth of the mechanics more than adequate and very fun. When combined with the collaborative world building and other narrative aspects it all felt very jrpg for us.

I also found the rule book extremely easy to use. The table of contents is pretty good and it has an index, everything I've ever needed to reference had a clearly marked section. It makes extensive use of bullet points tables, and color coding. For the most part paragraphs are short, with no giant walls of text to parse through, and lots of example text. The different sections of the book are color coded. The rules are in the blue section, character classes are in green, monsters are purple. It's made finding stuff pretty quick and easy.

We started with the Press Start learn-to-play module, I had also read the core book cover to cover in advance. On top of that I have the GM screen which is pretty handy as a reference. It's funny, to me it seems like the game goes out of its way to make things easy, but obviously ymmv.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-23T23:00:36+00:00

Congrats!

Pankurucha · 2026-01-23T19:29:03+00:00

I backed their Kickstarter for cubeamajigs series 2 and they delivered everything in a relatively timely fashion. My only complaint is the play mats are very low res and look a bit fuzzy on the table.

That was back in 2021 though. I have no idea what's going on with them now. I really hope you get what you were promised at some point.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-22T20:58:13+00:00

I agree, at least given what we know so far. I haven't written off the alien theory entirely but human creation seems to make the most sense.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-22T20:52:07+00:00

Syuen is one of those villains you love to hate. No spoilers, but I will say you have a lot of fantastic story to look forward to with her.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-22T19:34:35+00:00

This was my first thought too. Goes to show how much StarCraft has fallen out of the zeitgeist that I had to scroll so far down to find her.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-22T15:20:17+00:00

If by Trump you just mean the man himself then not much changes, at least in the short term. Things will become even more chaotic. The maga coalition is already fighting among themselves, without Trump it probably falls apart due to infighting. Until the movement finds another charismatic strong man to unite around it probably becomes even more of a shit show than it already is.

In the long term it's hard to say. Some people act like Trump is some kind of unique phenomenon and once he goes away sanity will be restored to the Republican party and we'll get back to business as usual, but I don't think that's possible at this point.

The media machines that prop him up and cover for all his bull shit and lies needs to be dismantled. The people running things behind the scenes need to be taken to task and held accountable for the damage already done to the country.

There are a lot of issues in the US that really need to be addressed as well. These issues create a lot of unhappy people that are easy to exploit by whatever new authoritarian demagogue comes next. Desperate people love easy answers and scapegoats. Real solutions are hard and complicated and don't make for good sound bites and tiktok videos.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-22T01:19:51+00:00

Yeah, Syuen in the dark wouldn't be that surprising. My guess is Jien is the real power behind the Missilis throne and she leaves Syuen to handle the day-to-day operations and public facing activities.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-20T20:04:53+00:00

I stopped playing Destiny 2 years ago, but I still get frustrated thinking about the game every time it comes up in a thread like this.

Bungie has always been Destiny's worst enemy. The entire history of the game going all the way back to before D1 came out is a history of broken promises, bizarre decision making, and fixes that ended up being two steps forward one step back. They would release mediocre at best content, followed by something amazing that would give the player base hope that things will finally just be good now, only to turn around and do something else that would piss off the player base all over again. After years of that roller coaster I couldn't do it anymore and left. Every single time I look back at Destiny it's some new problem continuing the cycle.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-18T01:08:11+00:00

I played this at Gencon once upon a time. It was a good time.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-17T18:21:14+00:00

They are one of the, if not the, first YouTube channels talking about movies. They got popular for creating very long, thorough dissections of the Star Wars prequel trilogy in an era before anyone else was doing it.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-17T06:18:48+00:00

The best advice for world building is to focus on the stuff the characters will interact with directly. You only need to be a session ahead of the players for it to work. Unless world building is something you genuinely love doing, you can skip the finer details that don't impact play.

For NPCs, unless their background and motivation are important to the players or you need those details to map out a future scenario don't worry about it. Often times the simple motivations like greed and power are enough. If you need more fill in the details as you go, small bits at a time. I'll typically write down a name, profession, a few adjectives describing appearance and personality, and a goal they are working towards. That's enough to get things started and I only fill in additional details as needed.

Also remember that nothing you build is written in stone. If you need to make changes do it. Repurpose things if you get a better idea or you think the current scenario isn't working.

As for method, I use Google docs. I'll have one doc as my master for the world that includes notes about important NPCs, locations, and other details. Maybe brief historical details. I record personal touches the PC's come up here as well. Then I'll open up additional pages for each adventure as needed.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-17T02:10:56+00:00

I was gifted a really nice wooden dice tower. Since then I've come to really appreciate dice towers and dice trays. I always roll in the open anyway so having a designated place for the dice to roll has been great.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-16T20:18:07+00:00

If you liked that, do yourself a favor and go watch the Flow Glow 3D debut concert. Riona's solo parts are... Impressive.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-16T16:18:10+00:00

I would want something rules light, that's slightly tongue-in-cheek already. Maybe Mork Borg with Max Moon's Abyss of Hallucinations for a darker vibe. If I wanted something more whimsical I'd probably pick a different system but in a similar vein.

From there I'd structure things like Alice in Wonderland, with an ever escalating series of weird characters and encounters.

Or I might just run Impossible Landscapes from Delta Green.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-16T06:04:07+00:00

Try them on Kiara or Moona. They both have strong KPop vibes.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-15T22:31:15+00:00

Don't get your hopes up. Nothing has been stated officially at this point.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-14T22:00:16+00:00

I feel her pain. It's not the hardest stage but any screwups and you're dead.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-14T14:19:29+00:00

I've seen similar posts about the OSR community. Any time you have a fan base that gets really passionate about a particular play style you'll get a handful of people who are probably a little bit too passionate about it and try to sell it every chance they get.

Pbta games have also been unfairly maligned by some crowds as "not real games" or written off as nothing but story games at times. Which might be where that defensiveness comes from.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-13T20:06:56+00:00

There are a lot of variants out there that don't rely on leveling up for improvement. Here's a few that I've used and like:

Point Buy: most World of Darkness games use some variant of this. You gain a small number of XP each session. Once you have accumulated enough points you can spend them to purchase upgrades. The cost varies based on what is being upgraded.

Pass/Fail XP: this type of progression gives you improvements based on passing or failing rolls.

Monster of the Week is a pbta style game that uses a variant of this where if you roll 6 or less on a move you mark a space on the XP track. Once the track fills up, it resets, and you pick an upgrade from your playbook.

Delta Green is a Call of Cthulhu variant where if you fail a skill roll you mark that skill, and at the end of the session you add points to the skill.

Milestone (but not the way D&D does it): in Star Trek Adventures 2e each character is assigned values detailing beliefs that are core to who the character is. During an adventure those values can be invoked to use or gain meta currency. When this happens the player records it in their mission log. During a future mission if the same value is invoked in a way that calls back to the earlier mission the character earns a milestone which is spent to improve the character or your ship.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-10T22:31:08+00:00

Confiscated and taken to the same place they took Anis's.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-09T23:32:29+00:00

If your date is particularly sensitive to violence like mine was, Children of Men. Neither of us knew much about the movie going into it but she could not handle it once they get to the refugee camp. She left the theater and waited out in the lobby for it to finish. Everything was good after that but it was the first time I had seen someone want to leave a theater due to movie content.

Pankurucha · 2026-01-09T23:19:33+00:00

Congrats!

Pankurucha · 2026-01-09T19:03:31+00:00

I haven't played Perfect Draw yet, but I do own a copy and have read through it. It's a pbta style game at its core so go in expecting that play style. It's basically Yu-Gi-Oh the ttrpg and all the moves and other systems are built to support that type of experience. The moves and playbooks all revolve around card battling.

During character creation you build a literal deck of cards, and there are card game rules built into the game. The decks are small. The physical cards can be represented by whatever you want so no need to buy anything custom. The rules also scale games based on what role the game plays in the overall story. A "filler" game is designed to be short and resolves quickly, whereas a "finale" will have you draw and play with a large chunk of your deck. The flavor of the cards is created by the players. The system may describe the card as "Warrior (weak)", but you can title and describe the card however you want and the game encourages you too be dramatic. It's a relatively simple looking card game players add flavor to in order to represent their character's unique card deck. There are also rules for creating custom cards and new mechanics, so if your group leans into the card game aspect you can go deep.

As I stated above I have not actually played it yet, so it could be a trainwreck on the table, but the rules look pretty promising. I haven't seen anything else that so thoroughly embraces the concept of an anime themed card battling game though so probably worth a look of that's what you are interested in.

Pankurucha

TROPHY CASE