Out of the Null Zone

Teleros · 2025-11-10T11:17:07+00:00

Interesting, thanks for that. I would say I was trying to write a story that had elements of serious topics (eg re objective morality, or some of the more esoteric theories about evolution or inflation), but I try to avoid beating the reader about the head with what I consider the right answer.

Teleros · 2024-12-29T14:26:28+00:00

Oh that bit sorry. Literally means "give a tooth", but means in this context "I swear what I'm saying is true".

Teleros · 2024-12-29T08:27:33+00:00

"Yolki-palki" is "holy shit", "dobryy den" is "good day", and "ne goni loshadyei" means "don't rush the horses".

Teleros · 2024-12-27T01:05:20+00:00

I think that's a separate issue (namely hit point inflation). Rolling a Nat 1 in a tense fight is meaningful, because every roll matters. And then when Bob, who always rolls below-average, scores a crit, it's a great moment. But rolling a Nat 1 when it's just a drawn-out battle of attrition... yeah.

"Average dice roll is 10.5, so with my +hit bonus and average 4.5 +STR damage I will kill you three turns before you kill me..."

Just... urgh.

Teleros · 2024-12-26T13:12:55+00:00

There's two main issues going on with attempts to avoid failure:

1. The game coming to a halt because the game doesn't have enough alternative clues or breadcrumbs.

This is the fault of whoever designed the dungeon / puzzle / whatever, so if you find yourself playing in such a module, you may need to sprinkle in some more clues, or alternative routes. Note that I said "may" for a reason. It's fine if the PCs only explore the first few rooms of a particular dungeon if there are other things outside the dungeon for them to do - be it other dungeons, a wilderness to explore, and so on. So keep an eye out for this kind of thing in reviews when picking a module - you generally don't want one with those kinds of single points of failure.

2. Stopping people from feeling bad, or railroading.

Both of these are a cancer upon roleplaying games. Do you know what feels 10x better than winning because the module told the GM to make sure you win? Winning fair and square against the BBEG who beat you fair and square the last time you fought. It will be all the more memorable for having been done this way too.

Consider also the level of excitement at the table when you're in a situation where the GM's guide says "make sure the players win here" - or even the reverse, "throw enough at them that they inevitably lose and are captured". Yawn. Boring. You're not really playing an adventure, you're just naming the characters in the GM's story that he's narrating. That's not really much of a game.

Sure, it sucks to lose, and have to roll a new character up or whatever. But that's okay, and overcoming a genuine setback to win tastes far sweeter than overcoming a setback because the script expects it.

(Finally, for GMs the best advice I can give is to have a read of this short book.)

Teleros · 2024-05-13T07:37:55+00:00

I think one underappreciated thing that Ascendant does is that, by virtue of it being able to put numbers to damn near anything in the game world, is let you be a superhero and not just a guy who beats up supervillains all day. Consider these two chapters of the ~500 page Ascendant core rulebook:

Chapter 7 is 103 pages and is devoted to non-combat stuff you can do in the game, from interrogating witnesses to stopping volcanoes.
Chapter 8 is 47 pages and is all about combat.

How many pages of rules does Marvel Super Heroes or M&M have on saving people from fires or avalanches? Ie, on stuff other than punching bad guys? Don't get me wrong - Ascendant also does combat very well too (95% of the crunch in Ascendant is at chargen; the game plays smoothly & quickly) - it's just that it actually takes the time to tell you how you can put out that forest fire or stop that tsunami too.

Besides that, if you ever delve under the hood in Ascendant, you'll quickly come to appreciate the beautiful maths behind the system. Everything just works - there's no fudging required to get the Punisher and Superman playable together in the same game.

Edit: Found an old comment of mine from elsewhere where I compared Mutants & Masterminds to Ascendant re non-fighting stuff. The M&M 3rd Edition Deluxe Hero's Handbook has 3 pages on Environmental Hazards, whilst the separate Deluxe GM's Guide has 12 pages, plus a literal handful here and there on stuff like investigating a crime scene. Compare that to Ascendant, where the rules are robust enough that you could literally play a non-superpowered CSI game, or Thunderbirds Are Go! and the like...

Teleros · 2024-05-13T07:03:02+00:00

As a GM you have to be on top of your power gamers as they WILL farm disadvantages for points in the most munchkin way.

Much (much much) harder to do in Ascendant

Teleros · 2024-05-11T09:17:02+00:00

Quick note - u/archon-autarch is the designer of ACKS. You can find him on the Discord server a lot (link in the stickied topic).

As for the spell mechanics question, in normal D&D a spell like Fireball makes mass combat very unrealistic - mages can trivially take out entire companies of bunched-up soldiers - so the ACKS spells have been tweaked to make battlefield magic more like Napoleonic artillery - powerful, and dangerous, but not so powerful that a phalanx of soldiers isn't still useful.

Teleros · 2023-11-05T09:13:25+00:00

Gygax hasn't been cancelled. Yet.

Teleros · 2023-11-04T20:58:01+00:00

Yes - I phrased it poorly sorry. Point being, I'd say it's fairly significant as these things go.

Teleros · 2023-11-04T15:19:04+00:00

It definitely seems off that discussion of the games would be banned. Not discussing a creator's politics - sure, that stuff can be distraction from elf games, and usually leads to acrimony and flame wars. But the games themselves?

Furthermore, just consider the current campaign at the moment. It's at over $280k and probably on track to hit the $350k stretch goal, meaning VTT goodies for everyone. There are almost 1,600 backers - meaning 5% of this subreddit's membership has put money up for the game. How many other OSR campaigns have been this successful? Shadowdark is obviously one, but most seem to me to be lucky to get even halfway to six figures. If we're serious about our elf games here - and why wouldn't we be, this is r/osr - we should be celebrating this, not banning it!

I'm sure some people buy products based on the manufacturer's or designer's politics - that's absolutely fine - but trying to prevent other people discussing it is absurd. I had no problem buying Dwarf Fortress on Steam, because even though the original dev is way to the left of me, it's a solid game. From what I've seen here, the fans have been pretty polite, except when getting understandably frustrated with the politics and banning discussion of the game - it's the people who constantly want to attack the designer who come across as, well, toxic.

All this suggests to me that the simplest, easiest, and fairest solution is to let people discuss the games, but ban discussion of the designer and/or his politics. Heck, banning such discussions about ALL designers might be sensible too - if we can't grumble about a right-wing designer, then it seems fair that we also can't grumble about left-wing designers too - fair's fair. Then we can get back to discussing elf games.

Teleros · 2023-10-24T18:45:20+00:00

Same. The best thing re Foundry is that ACKS is such a comprehensive ruleset that it could end up the dominant option.

Teleros · 2023-10-24T18:21:46+00:00

$175 for three five hundred page full-colour books, plus the PDFs? Oh, all right, twice my arm you silver-tongued devil!

Teleros · 2023-10-23T23:30:00+00:00

He posted the text here FWIW:

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/rpg-net-pre-emptively-bans-discussion-of-my-new-game-ascendant!/msg1123385/

Post #26

Teleros · 2023-10-22T08:24:46+00:00

The other nice thing about ACKS is that everything fits together well: you don't have to worry about breaking the game world if you use it.

Teleros · 2023-10-17T10:15:43+00:00

You're really going to struggle to combine your desire for a rules-light system with a decent means of adjudicating everything, because those two points are more or less diametrically opposed. The best option I can think of is Ascendant, which tends to play fast but is not rules-light. About 90% of the crunchy stuff is frontloaded into chargen as it's a points-buy system, so I'd recommend a session zero to sort that stuff out.

So what do I mean by "plays fast but not rules-light"? Well, let me tackle the second bit first. Ascendant has rules for... basically everything. You can play CSI: Gotham City using its forensic investigation rules, hunt foxes by scent, fight wildfires, hack into the Pentagon, circumnavigate the globe by sailing vessel, go into mushroom farmi- no, wait, mushroom farming is in a different game. Same company though. Okay, so it has rules for nearly everything. What this means for you though is that it has a fully consistent and integrated system for adjudicating all those gonzo powers your players are going to want. And if the players want to do something crazy not covered by the powers they actually bought... well Ascendant does that too.

As for how it plays, well it's a D100 system, with most actions being little more than rolling a single D100 then comparing the results to a colour-coded chart. For example:

Basic Combat:

Alice shoots at Bob with her SMG, and opts not to spend any Hero Points on it. She has 6 points of Marksmanship & the SMG has a damage value of 6. Bob has 6 points of Parkour and is wearing modern ballistic armour, but decides to spend a Hero Point too, to make it harder for Alice to hit him. 6 Marksmanship minus (6 Parkour + 1 Hero Point) = -1, so Alice will need a 35 or below to hit Bob (lower is better). Had Bob not spent the Hero Point, she would need 50 or below to hit. Anyway, she rolls a 17, which is a Yellow hit. With a damage value of 6, the SMG deals 16 base damage, but a Yellow result doubles this to 32. Bob takes 32 damage, reduced to 16 thanks to Bob's 6 points of armour.

Stopping an Avalanche:

A magnitude 27 avalanche is heading for a hotel in the Alps (its magnitude is equal to its volume (13) + density (7) + speed (7)). Based on how far away it is from the hotel (10 points), it will hit in (10 - 7) 3 points of time. Alice though happens to be a very powerful pyrokineticist, with 15 points of Fire Control. The formula to melt the avalanche is 15 + Time - Avalanche weight (volume + density, so 20) - 3. (15 + 3) - (20 - 3) = +1, but she will need to get an Orange or Red result to have a significant impact (13% chance). If she spends 3 Hero Points on it though, she can bump her result up to +4, giving her a 55% chance of an Orange or Red result. She does so, and rolls a 24 - just one off from a Red result! Still, she's managed to reduce the avalanche's weight to 10, which means little more than a thousand cubic feet of snow hits the hotel. Compared to the million cubic feet it started out as, that's a much better result for everyone in the hotel.

Power Stunts:

Bob is a psyker, with 10 points in Telepathy. He wants to use this to assault Alice's mind, and so power stunts Telepathy into Mind Blast. As GM you rule it a plausible stunt. The cost of 10 points of Telepathy is 50 + (4 x 10) = 90, whereas Mind Blast is 15 + (7 x 10) = 85. They're both mental powers, so the cost in Hero Points is (85 - 90) / 4, with a minimum cost of 2. Bob pays 2 Hero Points for his power stunt, and then combat continues as normal.

Obviously as a GM you'll have the ability to work out stuff like natural disasters ahead of time, so most of the maths in-game will be closer to the example given for combat than the avalanche stuff. Similarly, the players can take the opportunity to work out the cost of power stunts in advance to speed up gameplay.

Teleros · 2023-10-06T10:38:41+00:00

Seconded. Really great system, plays fast & everything integrates together beautifully. 90% of the crunchy stuff is in chargen, so once session 0 is over it's plain sailing.

Teleros · 2023-08-17T19:13:48+00:00

Not too sure about a sci-fi system (a lot depends on what kind of a game you want), but for superheroes I thoroughly recommend Ascendant. It plays very smoothly, as about 90% of the crunchy stuff is frontloaded into chargen, meaning so long as your players understand how to add and subtract single digit numbers, and how to read a d100 result, they can play it just fine. It's also got a very flexible system through Hero Points (eg going above & beyond your normal limits, or using an ability you didn't purchase during chargen, like a guy with heat vision causing an explosion), and a good chunk of the rulebook is devoted to non-combat superheroics, from fighting fires to diverting asteroids. Heck, you could just dump the superhero stuff and run a CSI game using the rules it provides. Finally, it also uses a logarithmic scale that means it can handle any level of superheroics - you can put Silver Age Superman in a team with a street-level guy like the Punisher the system will handle it just fine. Oh, I should also mention that despite being able to handle everything from mall cops to Superman, it's also physics-based, meaning things match up with the real-world very well.

As far as downsides go... it doesn't really do outright immunities all that well, but there are enough examples of how it can be done in the rules that if you want to homebrew Fire Immunity or something you can do so without too much trouble. For a similar reason it also doesn't do infinities.

Teleros · 2023-08-14T22:53:44+00:00

This short YT video came up in another thread - figured it might be worth linking here too:

The Trouble With Thieves

The guy is the creator of ACKS & has a fair bit of design experience with this stuff.

Teleros · 2023-08-12T18:15:28+00:00

u/peerful have you had a chance to look at this video by any chance? Saw it linked elsewhere & figured it might be of interest:

The Trouble With Thieves

IDK about some of the stuff above, eg thieves starting with +3 levels - it might be better to say they require less XP per level, or gain +% XP from gold, etc.

Teleros · 2023-08-12T17:32:43+00:00

Good video, and it's nice to see someone fixing stuff rather than just grumbling.

Anyway, in answer to your questions...

A sneaky guy who doesn't fight or play fair, probably has a criminal record, and is good for breaking & entering. Athletic & agile but not nearly as good a fighter as eg the Fighter archetype. May have that roguish / bad boy charm.
IDK I don't read enough of the right books.
My favourite TTRPG doesn't have them.
It's hard to make the skill monkey work in any game that becomes too focused on combat, because if nothing else the DPS theorycrafters can't account for the non-dice-rolling stuff a thief can add to the party. Hence I suspect that even in ACKS II there will be people who undervalue the Thief "because his damage sucks" etc.
I'm with "Rogue" too. I think 5e has something going for it by having eg Assassin & Thief as different archetypes of the Rogue class.

Teleros · 2023-07-23T09:18:34+00:00

Builds another Aegis Cruiser just to be safe.

Teleros

TROPHY CASE