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  1. Campbell

    Daggerheart 1.3 playtest dropping Tuesday.

    If it is an issue, I'm not sure why the solution must be to make the game more like D&D and less like Apocalypse World instead of the other way around. It's not just that people seem to be locked in it's that people seem bent on making the game a worse experience who like the game as constituted.
  2. Campbell

    From Bespoke to Universal: Let's Talk About TTRPG Systems and Themes

    Not at all. Just that would result in a game that plays nothing like Monsterhearts in the same way the Cortex Plus Exalted hack plays almost nothing like Exalted Third Edition (and that stuff is by design).
  3. Campbell

    Daggerheart 1.3 playtest dropping Tuesday.

    I hope the optional rules stay optional. For the most part I like the structural changes, though I would like failure with fear to be GM Move + Fear while retaining it being a choice for Success With Fear. The environment statblock are a very cool tool. I am a little disappointed that the...
  4. Campbell

    What Games do you think are Neotrad?

    I tend to view neotrad play as play that primarily either reinforces the players' conceptions of their characters and/or puts a strong focus on the individual stories of each character in a GM directed fashion. The games I think most encourage this sort of play are Legend of the Five Rings...
  5. Campbell

    From Bespoke to Universal: Let's Talk About TTRPG Systems and Themes

    A full 3 out of 6 Monsterhearts basic moves (Keep Your Cool, Lash Out Physically and Run Away) cover what you would need for action scenes pretty well (and I think cover the sort of dynamics you generally see when facing antagonists in its source material). I do think there's room for peripheral...
  6. Campbell

    From Bespoke to Universal: Let's Talk About TTRPG Systems and Themes

    I'd have to know more about what you mean. We likely have very different reads on Monsterhearts. Like Monsterhearts (from my vantage point) is not really all that much about being a monster except in the way that all teenagers can be monsters. It's much more a game about messy teen romance and...
  7. Campbell

    From Bespoke to Universal: Let's Talk About TTRPG Systems and Themes

    What I would say is that you can play a game featuring emotional teenage superheroes in Mutants and Masterminds, but still will not be Masks. One is not like a replacement for the other. The core loops of play, the things the mechanics reinforce, the focus on the characters' sense of identity...
  8. Campbell

    From Bespoke to Universal: Let's Talk About TTRPG Systems and Themes

    I think the idea that game X is bespoke whole game Y is more general relies on a flawed conceit - that the sole purpose of a roleplaying games rules is only to represent a type of fiction well. In that view a Mutants and Masterminds game where you follow the adventures of a young superhero team...
  9. Campbell

    MCDM Update: The Power Roll

    I was comparing the special abilities available to each splat given we're also talking about special abilities here. Here's an Embed from Demon - The Descent Here's a Discipline power from Vampire - The Requiem: Also, not that it particularly matters, but Dramatic Failures happen when you...
  10. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    Say we followed the advice that is being offered here. Does anyone think that you could have a meaningful dialogue wherein every time someone wanted to refer to a soft move they had to instead say a telegraphed threat or danger presented to the player characters that the GM presents to elicit...
  11. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    I'm not going to dig into the details of 5e (it's a game I'm willing to play but not run) but in the trad games I have played and ran the assumption that our groups have taken it's in the GM's prerogative to make rulings about what a character does and does not know about the setting and that...
  12. Campbell

    MCDM Update: The Power Roll

    Basically, we're just talking about special ability writeups that are going to look pretty similar to Chronicles of Darkness (Critical Success, Success, Failure, Dramatic Failure), Pathfinder Second Edition (Critical Success, Success, Failure and Critical Failure) or Powered by the Apocalypse...
  13. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    You are attributing malice to what was an expression of an opinion here. My personal experience is that games like Deadlands, Shadowrun, D&D and even sometimes L5R/Exalted/Vampire are pretty much run and played in almost the same way. Just like games like Brindlewood Bay, The Between and...
  14. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    How would you propose we go about talking about these conceptually complex and novel approaches then? Don't talk about them is not really a suitable answer.
  15. Campbell

    Grade the Forged in the Dark System

    I think this critique belies a certain level of executive function that is like not universal. Stuff like faction clocks, relationship maps, fronts and Apocalypse World threats are very useful to me to help organize and reason about offscreen things. When I run other sorts of games I often lean...
  16. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    Sure, but at that point you are saying you are not interested in the conversation rather than making a critique about the best way to bring a given game's play model forward. You're basically saying don't say GM Move yet not providing an alternative framing to talk about the concepts involved...
  17. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    Sure. Scope of comparison is a thing. In the scope of area control games Battle For Rokugan and Twilight Imperium vary significantly. In the scope of board games in total they play remarkably similarly.
  18. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    My experience is that the core gameplay of many of these games does not significantly vary. Different sorts of fiction, but at the end of the day we are dealing with teams of specialists going on adventures presented to them by the GM. In the grand scheme of things playing Shadowrun, Legend of...
  19. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    Would you have interest at all in learning a game that requires you to learn how to run roleplaying games in a different way than you are used to or that are structured differently than you are used to? Do you actually want to learn a new game or just play basically the same game with minor...
  20. Campbell

    How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

    We have gotten into this before. Stuff like kickers/fronts/GM Moves are conceptually complex enough that you do not want to have to reexplain what they are in everyday language every time you need to talk about them, particularly given the impulse some have treat them like things that have some...
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