MuttonchopMac
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Posts posted by MuttonchopMac
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2 minutes ago, BlindSamurai13 said:
Really?
Well, then again, this is Star Wars; it pays for itself.
Yup. It was like $15-20 for a beta book, which came with dice stickers, but only certain local game stores elected to buy shipments of beta books, so good luck getting one...
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3 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:At least to me its more of a hassle to jump between the core and update to read missing and changed info then to have a page number that a page or two off.
Fair enough. I'm not defending the PDFs by any means - just trying to be positive.
llamaman88 reacted to this -
7 minutes ago, shosuko said:idk - I like that it was released as a companion piece so we can see ONLY the changes without going through the entire book... but they should have simply released this side-by-side with an updated document with the changes included. It shouldn't be difficult to re-author the original file with the changes included so there is still a single "core book."
A big thing to consider here is that adjusting the text can lead to rules shifting pages, especially where large cuts or additions (like reworking Strife / Unmasking) are concerned, and now every single rules reference page number has to be re-evaluated, or the document will get harder to navigate.
Personally, if the I was on a team that was trying to handle art, design final PDF layouts, mod rules, scour the forums / feedback, and write fluff text, then making the free beta PDF nice would be the least of my worries.
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32 minutes ago, GhostSanta said:Almost every playtester has complained about the books layout being horrible and unwieldy.
Now we have the same horribly laid-out book and -another- book with half-rules and updates as a companion to reference.I've not had many issues thanks to the linked Table of Contents at the start of the book.
Also, if it's so bad it need major layout changes, I'm sure the layout people are working hard on that, rather than working on merging rule changes into a crappy old version of the pdf that they're not intending to use.
EDIT: I would also note that the Star Wars beta was a paid beta, so even if the PDF is a little crappy, be happy it's free to participate in the beta.
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4 hours ago, AtoMaki said:Death Before Dishonor
This is freaking genius.
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Where is the update found online?
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1 hour ago, tenchi2a said:The problem here is that the dragon bushi school is about dual-wielding a mechanic that is not supported by any of the current schools.
You could try out the Spinning Blades Style technique as the school ability and see if it feels balanced. That's about dual-wielding. Granted, it's a rank 2 technique, but it doesn't seem too overpowered on a starting character because of the Opportunity requirement.
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This discussion has drifted a lot from the original topic (modifying the sides of the dice) and may warrant a new thread to discuss the order of mechanics and narrative and the idea of dice exploding differently.
sidescroller reacted to this -
1 minute ago, tenchi2a said:The reason for my response was not just to attack you,but responding in kind to Saito just enflames the issues.
Well I apologize to him for that. I've gotten a bit frustrated seeing a lot of responses that are pure criticism regarding the dice, tone, etc.
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44 minutes ago, shosuko said:There doesn't have to be 1 path only, but I think it is quite appropriate to disallow a direct attack to defeat something so the players can actively explore creative solutions rather than fill in the blanks with random opportunities after the fact. It's great to have this random flavor added to rolls, but do you really think its foolish to challenge a player to actually come up with a solution to a problem first, and roll second?
That's not narration; that's blindly rolling direct skill checks and filling in the blanks like some kind of MadLibs RPG. It removes a player's active role play from a scenario and replaces it with "oh I got lucky, lets say something cool happened." Its lazy narration and, while fun and useful in its own way, it doesn't replace genuine creativity and active narration.
I will admit that it can lead to players saying, "I'll attack," and then treating the dice as a narrative slot machine... But - and my experience with this narrative flow model is the Star Wars narrative dice - I find that my group and I have an easier time narrating the results of a roll rather than some elaborate attempt, and that it's more satisfying. We avoid the narrative slot machine attitude and it works out well for us, but I do get that this could be problematic for your play-style. It works for us because we negotiate ideas to find a cool way that the zombie is slain (decapitation, slashing certain tendons to disable it, etc), and it all has to be GM approved, and the player who rolled is still contributing creative solutions.
4 minutes ago, shosuko said:Exactly - the goal should be to allow both! You should be able to call out an exceptional success desire before the roll, or fill in extra effects after the roll. That is an important consideration in the way I propose the dice be run.
I agree here. FFG should consider something more in the vein of classic D&D, where some stuff is called before the roll (fancy feats) and some stuff is determined afterwards (criticals) to strike a better balance.
Maybe a called effect is cheaper in cost than one turned up after the roll somehow? It would take some restructuring, but I could get behind a modification like this. Thoughts?
26 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:This type of talk needs to stop. Its not helpful and just promotes argument that are not productive. This is a beta not the final product, and FFG needs to hear all side. Plus from the forums it is plain to see that there as many who don't love and have many issues with some of these rule. does that make them right, no, but it also doesn't make you right. Both are opinions, not fact.
This beta needs only one type of criticism - constructive criticism - the rest isn't helpful to anyone. A statement of disgust is not constructive criticism; it is insulting and disrespectful to the people who made the game, and doesn't help them make a better game. Hence my remark to Mirumoto Saito.
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1 hour ago, shosuko said:Another situation I want to point out which motivates my concept for the dice re-work is probably one of the most anti-climactic situations I experience in the current game.
Only Success explode - but you don't need more than a certain amount of success. I've had rolls in my game that went to 3-5 explosions, it was awesome! Except they only needed a TN 2 or 3 for their task, and the rest were worthless. Having exploding option facets which can be either Success or Opportunity would remedy this so that explosions were always a good thing.
I would be all for an Explosive Success earning you an extra Success or Opportunity (player's choice) instead of rolling another die. The fact that you can explode a die and roll a blank seems like a glaring flaw to me...
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1 hour ago, shosuko said:Its not about being more mechanical, or even making things more difficult. Its more about letting characters find a way to "solve" the situation. Like the Zombie example they can find that wounds do not work but that cutting the head from the body does. Its still an attack roll, its just a called shot.
The game already has mechanics for called shot - Air stance + Crit + Martial Skill Opportunity. That's 2 success and 3 opportunity to do a called shot such as "cut off its head" to end it quickly. This is a tough check considering dice only have a 33% chance of rolling an op anyway...
If I just say its TN 3 or TN 5 that simplifies the test... but then diminishes the importance of approach, kata, and opportunities that are supposed to be how such a thing happens. There is no "+1 TN for called shot" in the book.
This "solving" sounds a lot like a game of "guess the GM's specific path to success." It's like a GM deciding that the party will not move forward until someone specifically says they try feeling for a hidden switch inside a desk drawer, and it's very much reminiscent of say, old video game boss fights, where you had to figure out the one weird trick to actually win - clearly if the boss is in huge armor, we must remove the armor piece by piece until it's vulnerable to attack, and clearly this requires a certain stance and Opportunity cost! This robs players of any agency except to keep guessing until the GM finally congratulates them on reading his mind.
That's not story, at least to my group; that's a mechanical roadblock to story happening. The story of a fight is in the narration, the dramatic stakes as set by the plot, and see how far the players will go to fulfill their duty.
1 hour ago, Mirumoto Saito said:Ah yes, the root of all my problems with the system. This backwardness of the rolling process is precisely what I detest about these "narrative" dice.
The "backwardness" helps remove the super-cautious play of 4e, where players did chip damage to an Oni while trying to get a feel for the TN to hit the thing and calculate how many Raises they could afford to call without missing too much. Dunno about your experience with 4e but I felt that Raises sucked because they made you less likely to accomplish ANYTHING AT ALL unless you wanted to do a lot of math.
If this change is too much for you to bear, you're welcome (as always) to keep playing 4e instead of this. Many of us love it.
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Definitely behind kkuja on this one. Blades in the Dark is a fantastic heist game that boils heist planning down into a super simple question and answer:
What is the first critical part of the heist? This varies by heist a lot, but if you have a 2-3 step plan provide by the players, it's enough to go with. In the original Mission Impossible, the first important point is when they enter CIA Headquarters in disguise. The next is likely drugging a poor sap who will get in their way. Last is the actual infiltration of the room.
Just have players grab some gear, and then roll some skill to see how things are going at the point when the action picks up. This could be good or bad. Then from there on out, if they need to cover a bit of planning (acquiring a critical piece of gear they didn't have) then they flip a DP, narrate a bit, then roll dice to do the thing. If they fail, it costs them two DP to have accomplished the thing, or they accept the failure and narrate why it suddenly doesn't work during the actual heist or some other complication. EXAMPLE: Say they need to have drugged a guy to make him sick and get out of the way. They flip a DP to have the drug, and roll for acquisition. They fail. Now they can choose between flipping another DP to force a success or narrate how say, they got the drug but it doesn't affect Rodians (oops), or it works but they had to promise the dealer a cut of the score and that will come back to bite them.
The reasons this model works so well are that it plays out like heist films (non-linear structure), and avoids the marathon 6-hour planning session that is plagued by analysis paralysis.
An one other pro tip from a long time GM: Failing a Stealth check doesn't mean you were caught with your pants down - it probably means you didn't make any progress towards your objective. A 3 Threat might mean someone is coming to investigate a noise (do something risky, quick!), and Despair is actually being spotted quite clearly, but don't ever hinge the whole heist on one flubbed roll.
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13 hours ago, shosuko said:Conceptually Opportunities are roughly equivilant to raises. The check is for the basic action "I attacked them." The opportunities drive the effects "I attacked him AND cut a weak point in their armor (Striking as Water to cut resistance)" or "I attacked him AND cut his eye out (crit severity 8-9 in water stance)." I don't think its in character for the game to simply raise the TN for this - or else I should be able to raise the TN to cut the weak point in their armor without buying Striking as Water.
Simply raising the TN is potentially problematic with this new game as TN's of 4-6 are really tough. The dice only have a 50% and 60% chance of rolling a success, if you need success, and only success, not some combination of success + opportunity, then a lot of the dice facets are effectively blank. Its tougher if you need a lot of opportunity because there is no explosive opportunity, and only 33% chance of rolling an opportunity on either die type...
This really sidelines some of the more narrative driven story-fights where you actually have to do something to win, not just deal damage. I really enjoyed posing these challenges to players because it allows me to give them a challenge, and then have that challenge become easier as they catalog their knowledge of their opponent's weak spots. It also gets everyone into the game more because they aren't looking at simple numbers, stats, and die rolls but actually thinking of what they should do, and how they should do it. Cutting off a Zombies head, cutting between armor plates, disarming ect are all great ways to let players learn the world and become invested in their character.
I kinda hope they do something to let you purposefully perform a certain thing better as the Success + Opportunities combinations feel very chancy... I'm no statistician but maybe someone can cook up the odds of getting 2 Success and 2 Opportunity with some dice combos so we can see what we're really looking at? The dice only have a 50% and 58% chance of rolling success, and only a 33% chance of rolling an op.
You missed something important: you talk of "I attacked him AND cut a weak point in his armor," when my whole example was that the attack be hanged, I'm doing something else BESIDES attacking the guy here and that is the whole goal of my roll, as much as if I were rolling to climb a wall in the midst of a combat scene. My approach embraces the "narrative driven story-fights" that you want, and lets players set aside dealing wounds out for being part of the story and world. This is a much more narrative-focused approach than your mechanics-focused approach.
Opportunity has nothing to do with Raises in my mind because I'm coming from Edge of the Empire's Advantage and Triumph, which is quite a bit more nebulous and flexible, where they give bonus effects to the roll, rather than measuring success / failure. The reason that tying Opportunity up in success / failure seems silly to me is that the rules never imply this anywhere, as far as I've seen. Opportunity is always just a bonus effect in addition to the roll AFTER the roll; otherwise players should have to call that they're swinging for a critical hit BEFORE the roll, which is not how the rules work. If you can point me to an example in the rules where it says you need Opportunities or the roll fails, I'll gladly switch to your side on this.
Also, what do you actually want of "chancy" rolls? You're apparently interested in having them by requiring Opportunities above and beyond Successes, but you're also complaining that it's too hard to get a crit, so I don't get what you actually want. TN 3 to do a fun, narrative, non-attack thing is far more likely than TN 2 and 2 Opportunities because you only need to keep 3 dice, rather than 4, and yet you're claiming this is harder to achieve, which I just don't get...
I really don't want to be just another argument on these argument-laden forums, but I'm genuinely confused about your standpoints, which I just can't find rules to back up. Please understand that I'm trying to be clear with the large paragraphs up above, not antagonistic.
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My game group used to cry, "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" about once per campaign when my character shot the psyker (Dark Heresy). It was well-established that other players played super power hungry psykers, and that I tended to make characters that tried to be the group's moral backbone (or totally lacked a backbone), and when all else failed, I generally wound up shooting the psyker for various reasons, good or bad.
The table was totally cool with it, and regularly joked about it, even to the point of me asking the GM if there might be a more dramatic moment for the betrayal in the future.
That's a really hard thing to judge about a table though. I might suggest that you make the offer to the player at the table towards the end of a session (cliffhanger!), and then look to the whole group on how to proceed. Be open about it, and if they're OK with the player turning on them, go for it. PvP action can be fun, and having a new character ready to go for the betrayer could be wise. If not, maybe establish some narrative about the character being conflicted and agreeing to it, with the promise that they won't actually start shooting the other PCs because his conscience will get the better of him.
Secrecy will hurt feelings. Openness and conversation breed great stories and laughter.
Cannibal Halfling reacted to this -
23 minutes ago, shosuko said:The current system is like "I attack them *rolls* oh cool and I crit too!" and that's great! Many people already used a type of "post roll raise" system to reflect amazingly lucky rolls. It doesn't suit the situation like "You've found that you must cut the head from the zombie to actually kill it." though, and I think that is equally important to have in the system. The current system favors the first situation where cool stuff can happen b/c luck, but it fails on the part where you need specific things to happen b/c challenge. Changing Strife to be an optional success or opportunity helps the RPG fulfill the fantasy properly both ways.
Interesting. I would handle the aforementioned zombies by saying that you can drop it by wounds (the thing is in several pieces and can't mount any reasonable attack) or by a single critical (the head is removed). If speed was ever a requirement, well, combat initiative sorts that out instantly, so in narrative-context, I'd say the TN is based on time. I.E. An artisan is trying to make a beautiful piece of calligraphy to give to his daimyo, which may also make a poignant statement and change his mind about say, declaring war. But time is important because it needs to be made before the daimyo commits to war. Thus the TN is at +1 because the artisan is rushing, and a failed roll indicates that the calligraphy was not completed on time, though it may still have been completed.
To chuck out one more example, if a player wants to do some special thing and that is the highest priority (We're fighting and I need to knock this guy flat on his back) then the most important element sets the TN. The player rolls, and success means the target is prone, not that damage was dealt. Maybe extra opportunities could deal some chip damage.
To me, opportunity is never about success / failure; it's about expanding upon the roll after the fact. Success is governed by successes only. Please bear in mind that this is all my opinion and how I would handle it at my table...
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15 minutes ago, shosuko said:I'm not saying a new character should be able to hit + crit every time, what I'm saying is that even rolling 7k4 it might be tough to get 2+2 because you might get too many success, or too many opportunities, and putting them together might let a skilled samurai fail in the worst way - which is to say too much success, or too much opportunity, which may result in a failure. I think a wild-card symbol can help players achieve their desired results - which also means a GM can require a more specific result on a check to challenge more advanced characters.
I'm all for a shift in general perception of Strife, but you're also shoehorning an additional rule in. One thing that might help (it worked for me - your mileage may vary) is to viewing the die rolling process backwards.
Almost all RPGs approach cool bonus effects on rolls as things you have to call before the roll that make it harder. "I'm calling three Raises for a extra damage and a feint!" "I'll trigger the Power Attack feat for -2 to hit and +4 damage!" ... The Star Wars narrative dice and this game (as far as I can tell) work backwards: you roll with some specified intent, then find out about cool bonus effects.
The former approach is loosely: Narrative (I swing my sword at the bandit), Cool Stuff (AND I'm calling three Raises for extra damage and a feint), then Roll, and quite often, Disappointment because the Cool Stuff leads to a failed Roll. The latter approach is loosely: Narrative (I swing my sword at the bandit), Roll, then Cool Stuff (AND I got two Opportunity to boot for a critical hit!), and less often, Disappointment because the Roll failed and the stakes were high, but not because the Cool Stuff made you fail.
If you're looking at the system as the GM sets TN and minimum Opportunity to achieve the desired result, then you're putting the Cool Stuff before the Roll and setting stuff up for disappointment.
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2 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:@MuttonchopMac Dark Heresy wasn't written by FFG; it was by Black Industries originally, and when BI got inundated with fan-wankerism, they talked GW into outsourcing the rest of the line...
I'll note that EotW characters are usually mechanically moderately competent.
Twilight Imperium RPG Characters were not great but not horrible.
I've not got a grip on Grimm nor Fireborn.Good catch - Dark Heresy 2e got most of my play time.
Do you feel like starting characters in L5R 5e are competent enough? They seem just fine to me, but my group loves them their bumbling Dark Heresy characters because failure is interesting to us.
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2 hours ago, shosuko said:My problem is that if I want to hit and crit a character I need 2 success and 2 opportunity.
Maybe FFG designed the game such that with a Ring 3 + whatever Skill roll, you need decent explosions to hit and crit, meaning starting characters ("unproven samurai") only crit once in a while.This could be incredibly deliberate, and similar to how calling a Feint for two Raises in 4e required a -10 to your total, putting it beyond a lot of starting samurai. There's an important difference, however, in that in 5e you're not reducing your chance of hitting in the first place to maybe be more destructive.
FFG rarely ever (in my experience with all Star Wars / Warhammer RPG incarnations) paints starting characters as hyper-competent. Edge of the Empire starting characters are alright, Dark Heresy, Only War, and Warhammer Fantasy starting characters outright suck. The exceptions that I've noted are Rogue Trader, where you're at least decent at several things, and Death Watch, where you're a godlike space marine.
There's a super simple fix to make you and players at your table feel more like BA samurai: dish out some bonus XP at the start. More XP can quickly lead to more consistent critical hits and less Strife.
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1 minute ago, deraforia said:My initial reaction to seeing the dice was that I would consider changing the explosion symbol to represent double success instead. I'm not as concerned about the explosive success anymore, but that would be an option to try if you were interested, instead of physically altering the dice.
I'd call that a decent idea to test. Edge of the Empire had the coveted Triumph symbols, which were a Success and always something great to boot. Here a player might take an Explosive Success / Strife die over a Success die to gamble for more Successes and then roll a blank.
You might even say an Explosive Success counts as a Success, plus another Success or an Opportunity, to put some player choice into it and help out with the critical hits.
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@GhostSanta, this is what the Approaches table is for - it gives concrete things you can do with each Ring, to remove players BSing to paint every test as applying to their best stat. You can't trick someone in a social situation without using Air, so the Air 1 / Earth 4 Hida Bushi wouldn't be able to say, "No I'm tricking him in an um... earthy sort of way." He's stuck with rolling Air.
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On 10/18/2017 at 9:21 AM, AtoMaki said:Also, I'm watching now a session that forfeited the Strife/Outburst mechanic. Surprise (or not so), but the game is going on without a bump, and there are some pretty darn awesome things happening at the table.
Here's a FATE-ish thought. Not suggesting it for the beta, but if Strife isn't a table's thing, the table might ignore Strife altogether and keep Outbursts similar to FATE compels.
In FATE, any player or the GM can offer another player a Fate Point (read Void Point) to do something in accordance with their traits that is a bad idea (read have an Outburst).
This immediately gives incentive to Outbursts, and keeps them, without the tracking of Strife as written.
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Just to chuck this out there, I don't think FFG tried to model the the probability curves of 5e to match 4e, just like they weren't trying to model any d20 Star Wars probability curves when they created Edge of the Empire. If you approach the new dice with the assumption that they're wrong because they don't match the old system's percentages, then you'll never be anything but dissatisfied because that's not the intent (to my knowledge).
Which is not to say that you can't approach the new dice without assumptions and still go away dissatisfied. That is totally within your rights, in which case 4e may be more your cup of tea, or Oriental Adventures, or The Blossoms Are Falling by Luke Crane, or Blood and Honor by John Wick, or Bushido... There's no shortage of feudal-Japan-esque role playing games that may suit your table much better, just as you may prefer Star Wars d20, Star Wars Saga Edition, or Star Wars d6 over Edge of the Empire.
But please, give FFG some respect for trying to innovate (successful or not - your call) and then find the game that suits your table, rather than saying they're bad at making games because the game isn't all you hoped and dreamed.
SideshowLucifer and sidescroller reacted to this -
5 hours ago, jmoschner said:The biggest killer of fun at the table has been strife. The concept is great. The execution is, in my group's opinion, an utter failure.
This mechanic isn't working. Everything you say you want strife to do; it doesn't.
The fact that you can gain more strife trying to arrange flowers than letting your father's killer go free is a problem with the game mechanics.
The mechanic quickly becomes a mini-game of trying to keep strife low or manage it to use an outburst like a power up. Either way , strife is more bookkeeping than a tool to inform roleplay.
It also makes players feel like they are being punished for succeeding.
The mechanics requires a certain level of trust between players and gm and the module writer. If you already have that level of trust at your table, then you probably don't need the mechanic to inform your roleplaying.
Strife needs to be de-coupled from the dice and tied to the actions/choices of the characters.
The idea that pushing yourself requires emotional investment is great. Tying that to the dice themselves isn't. It would be better having strife be something you voluntarily take on to add successes or opportunities to a roll. For instance take on 3 strife per resource gained, limited by when reach an outburst then done using strife like this for the rest of the scene. Dice would need some tweaking. This would also help make the strife that occurs outside rolling have more impact.
You don't have to keep dice equal to your Ring. Your last request, that you voluntarily take Strife to add Successes and Opportunities is literally how the game works. I roll to make a barbed comeback to another courtier, and the GM says TN 3. I've got 2 Successes, a blank, and a Success with Strife result, and I get to keep 3. Now I can keep the 2 plain Successes and buy the remaining with a point of Strife, but if I don't want the Strife, I can choose to fail by keeping the 2 Successes by themselves or even no dice at all. Because you're not required to keep any dice, you're quite often presented with failing calmly or doing great at a cost.
The useful distinction between the system as-is and your suggestion is that the Strife being on the dice means that players can't game the system and succeed 100% of the time, right up until they outburst.
llamaman88 reacted to this
Really?
First update
in Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game Beta
Posted
I had forgotten this excellent point.