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Fantasy heartbreaker mechanics…
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8890793" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>For me, Fantasy Heartbreakers tend to be defined by having interesting, passionately expressed ideas, but particularly where those ideas will also ensure the game is barely played by anyone.</p><p></p><p>I kind of feel that's the case with Shadowdark, the upcoming RPG from The Arcane Library. The Arcane Library writes adventures INCREDIBLY WELL, like WotC's adventure writers should be forcibly sat down and made to see how writing a proper adventure is done. Everything they routinely screw up (100% including Chris Perkins, he's one of the worst), she gets right.</p><p></p><p>But Shadowdark, goddamnit, is the most Fantasy Heartbreaker RPG I've seen for like, a decade or more.</p><p></p><p>It's just chock-full of mechanics that cool on a certain level, but I definitely wouldn't want to actually use when I think about it, like "Real time passed = game time passed" (this is very poorly explained and inconsistent in the playtest, basically ending up as "Well I guess ignore it if it seems hard", but it's like, no explain it properly)/torch timers, randomized advancement tables (shades of early WFRPG, and not in a good way), an OD&D-but-much-worse mandatory alignment approach, an equipment system that's very neat, but also very simplistic and doesn't seem to fit great with the "back to the old school" vibe (though it does have a certain Fighting Fantasy/Lone Wolf charm to it), and so on.</p><p></p><p>The art is pretty cool though!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8890793, member: 18"] For me, Fantasy Heartbreakers tend to be defined by having interesting, passionately expressed ideas, but particularly where those ideas will also ensure the game is barely played by anyone. I kind of feel that's the case with Shadowdark, the upcoming RPG from The Arcane Library. The Arcane Library writes adventures INCREDIBLY WELL, like WotC's adventure writers should be forcibly sat down and made to see how writing a proper adventure is done. Everything they routinely screw up (100% including Chris Perkins, he's one of the worst), she gets right. But Shadowdark, goddamnit, is the most Fantasy Heartbreaker RPG I've seen for like, a decade or more. It's just chock-full of mechanics that cool on a certain level, but I definitely wouldn't want to actually use when I think about it, like "Real time passed = game time passed" (this is very poorly explained and inconsistent in the playtest, basically ending up as "Well I guess ignore it if it seems hard", but it's like, no explain it properly)/torch timers, randomized advancement tables (shades of early WFRPG, and not in a good way), an OD&D-but-much-worse mandatory alignment approach, an equipment system that's very neat, but also very simplistic and doesn't seem to fit great with the "back to the old school" vibe (though it does have a certain Fighting Fantasy/Lone Wolf charm to it), and so on. The art is pretty cool though! [/QUOTE]
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