Does Anyone Care? (Cosmere RPG)

[Ruin Explorer]

I sub to a service because they produce something I like. That's...pretty much it. No other criteria matters to me unless I'm in a finances crunch and have to let something go.

Netflix produce almost nothing I like these days. And that which they do produce tends to be 1-2 series then cancelled. Almost all their movies are D/E/F-tier (occasionally reaching C with an non-comedy action movie). That Ryan Reynolds/Rock/Gadot thing was physically painful to watch.

The only reason I am likely to resub to them in future is to catch up on shows they didn't produce but licence from someone else in the UK, like Only Sunny In Philadelphia.

It's interesting to me because for like, what, over 10 years I was solidly sub'd to them. But they've absolutely ditched any reason to stay subbed for me. Especially as their recommendations and findability of anything you might want to watch has also gone to hell (and yes I have tried the various tricks people suggest here).

 

[Parmandur]

including those that showed a diverse people in a diverse land

Not to belabor this, but it is relevant tot hw Stormlight stuff actually precisely because these books and this RPG are extremelydiverse: very few characters in the stormlight books are "white" and the main characters are darksinned and Asian coded. He has expressed concern that Hollywood would whitewash the cast of Stormlight Archives, in fact.

I found an early quote from his reaction to the diverse cast:

"The WoT casting looks good to me. It's more than it doesn't bother me; it's more that I actively like how these people look as the characters. Granted, I have information others don't have. I've read Rafe's scripts, I've read his treatments, and I get what he's doing with the series--and in almost every case, I like the choices he's made."

"Deciding to do the Two Rivers with a variety of skin tones but a unified cultural identity is cool to me because I think it expresses some of the broad themes of the Wheel of Time. Themes that might be difficult to get across otherwise without the text, the internal monologues, etc."

And his exact words on the end of the show recently, even as he was frustrated with a lot of how it turned out:

"Then I heard nothing for 2 months. Then learned this from the news like everyone else. I do think it's a shame, as while I had my problems with the show, it had a fanbase who deserved better than a cancelation after the best season."

 

[zakael19]

Haven't had the chance to run it yet (I want them physical stuff to run it, just studying the books so far).

So, yes, completely non-combst oriented characters, like a merchant or a scientist, instead exist in these rules and contribute, largely because the game has types of "Scenes" outside of combat, namely Social encounters (which involce a sort of social combat that is gameified with the Cognitive Stats and Focus points) and "Endeavors" (which are basically Skill Challenges ala 4E but fully baked). Endeavors, in particular, allow for the ramifications of narrative elements like mass combat between armies or heists (Mistborn is going to play with Endeavors pretty heavily, apparently).

So, at merchant who is completely useless in a knock down drsg out fight can dominate a Social scene, or the master Strategist might be able to deftly maneuver through an Endeavor centered on a siege. Both of which are roles and types of narrative that D&D isn't really built around: you can build a super-magic warrior dude who can dominate combat in Stormlight, but that's not the only thing the game is about. D&D remains an attrition based war game about Dungeoneerijg, which is fine for what it is...but the Plotweaver system can accommodate a lot more.types of character and narrative.

So I went through the Demiplane free content and unfortunately it seems to have very little about the actual mechanics of the Endeavors. One problem I had trying to do Skill Challenges in 5e (even using Giffyglyph's Darker Dungeons framework) was that between Expertise + the deeply varied skill bonuses + bounded accuracy it was difficult to consistently hit a satisfying easy/normal/hard DC set unlike 4e's perfectly managed by-level tables. How does the guidance to the GM for this game around that, and the actual mechanics work to facilitate Endeavors? I saw some stuff regarding Expertise in the free rules, but that seems like just fictional permissions to know details about the world?

Does a "non combat specialized character" just mean somebody who has put more skill points (?) into abilities without direct combat uses?

 

[Campbell]

So I went through the Demiplane free content and unfortunately it seems to have very little about the actual mechanics of the Endeavors. One problem I had trying to do Skill Challenges in 5e (even using Giffyglyph's Darker Dungeons framework) was that between Expertise + the deeply varied skill bonuses + bounded accuracy it was difficult to consistently hit a satisfying easy/normal/hard DC set unlike 4e's perfectly managed by-level tables. How does the guidance to the GM for this game around that, and the actual mechanics work to facilitate Endeavors? I saw some stuff regarding Expertise in the free rules, but that seems like just fictional permissions to know details about the world?

Does a "non combat specialized character" just mean somebody who has put more skill points (?) into abilities without direct combat uses?

Characters are going to be fairly diverse because you really cannot hyper-specialize. At character creation skills are capped at 2 ranks and the cap only increases when you go up a tier. Until you get to level 6 (where the cap goes up to 3) skills remain capped at 2 ranks and you get 2 skill ranks each and every level so it's mostly going to be horizontal progression.

You can specialize your talents to be less or more combat focused, but that won't really impact the character math so much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Netflix produce almost nothing I like these days. And that which they do produce tends to be 1-2 series then cancelled. Almost all their movies are D/E/F-tier (occasionally reaching C with an non-comedy action movie). That Ryan Reynolds/Rock/Gadot thing was physically painful to watch.

The only reason I am likely to resub to them in future is to catch up on shows they didn't produce but licence from someone else in the UK, like Only Sunny In Philadelphia.

It's interesting to me because for like, what, over 10 years I was solidly sub'd to them. But they've absolutely ditched any reason to stay subbed for me. Especially as their recommendations and findability of anything you might want to watch has also gone to hell (and yes I have tried the various tricks people suggest here).

Fair enough. You mentioned corporate shenanigans as part of your reasoning.

 

[zakael19]

Characters are going to be fairly diverse because you really cannot hyper-specialize. At character creation skills are capped at 2 ranks and the cap only increases when you go up a tier. Until you get to level 6 (where the cap goes up to 3) skills remain capped at 2 ranks and you get 2 skill ranks each and every level so it's mostly going to be horizontal progression.

You can specialize your talents to be less or more combat focused, but that won't really impact the character math so much.

Ok, so the bonuses to rolls are far more capped than in 5e? Stat + a couple? Does the Endeavor portion have a table of suggested difficulties or the like?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Fair enough. You mentioned corporate shenanigans as part of your reasoning.

I did but I'm only talking about as they impact my viewing (i.e. by cancelling shows prematurely etc.), unless they're really bad. Apple TV+, for example, doesn't really seem to "just cancel" shows.

The nepotism one was really bad, because I nearly became an archaeologist, I have most of an archaeology degree, I'm really offended by fake conspiracy guys masquerading as archaeologists, but Netflix gave one of those two entire series (again, solely because his son was in charge of the documentary department lol).

It's like, if you were a lawyer, and Netflix paid money to some Admiralty Law/Sovereign Citizen conspiracy theorists to do a show about that, I think that'd be a pretty good justification for cancelling Netflix.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I did but I'm only talking about as they impact my viewing (i.e. by cancelling shows prematurely etc.), unless they're really bad. Apple TV+, for example, doesn't really seem to "just cancel" shows.

The nepotism one was really bad, because I nearly became an archaeologist, I have most of an archaeology degree, I'm really offended by fake conspiracy guys masquerading as archaeologists, but Netflix gave one of those two entire series (again, solely because his son was in charge of the documentary department lol).

It's like, if you were a lawyer, and Netflix paid money to some Admiralty Law/Sovereign Citizen conspiracy theorists to do a show about that, I think that'd be a pretty good justification for cancelling Netflix.

I can see that being a problem for some people. For me, fiction is fiction.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I can see that being a problem for some people. For me, fiction is fiction.

Documentaries shouldn't be fiction (opinion, perspective, sure, but fiction? Ideally not!), I think you'd concur. The problem was that Netflix was paying someone to make ones that were!