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What is your preferred system?

Any D&D/D20
Shadowrun
World of Darkness
Palladium
Other (feel free to post about it)

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Author Topic: Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: COBRA!!!  (Read 825310 times)

Trekkin

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6645 on: February 18, 2019, 09:55:55 am »

Narrative-heavy systems are not for everyone or every group. If you look at the game as a contest against the DM that you have to win, of course you’ll find ways to abuse it. You don’t have to force yourself to play these kind of games if they’re out of your comfort zone - I like DnD and crunchy RPGs a lot too, maybe more than narrativeish games, but I can dig both.

True, though it's funny how people who dislike narrative games always assume an infinitely permissive GM and other players willing to go along with whatever nonsense they're proposing to "break the game." Yes, you can ignore all the parts of TechNoir that deal with the logic of using certain vectors for applying certain adjectives. You can also play Pun-Pun in D&D. Every system is ultimately an agreement between everyone at the table; if everyone wants to do stupid things, no rule is going to stop them.
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scriver

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6646 on: February 18, 2019, 12:22:44 pm »

Past. Listen. Maybe we're... joking around?
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Mephisto

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birdy51

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6648 on: February 27, 2019, 09:27:46 pm »

Crikey. No. Hard pass, no.
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MrRoboto75

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6649 on: February 27, 2019, 09:44:55 pm »

Crikey. No. Hard pass, no.

But that's 10 cents per page!
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Cruxador

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6650 on: February 28, 2019, 12:53:45 am »

Crikey. No. Hard pass, no.

But that's 10 cents per page!
More pages doesn't necessarily mean more value, it typically just means worse editing. Especially if that's for the core system.

And since it's Monte Cook, it'll somehow manage to be bizarre without being interesting.
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6651 on: February 28, 2019, 04:53:38 am »

It claims to be a roleplaying game of surreal fantasy, but the most surreal thing about it is the price. The description just seems kind of vague and unclear, with lots of goofy-sounding terms and nothing to really draw you in deeper. Is there a novel or two included in those thousand pages? I can’t imagine there being enough interesting content for all that.
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Jimmy

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6652 on: February 28, 2019, 05:53:45 am »

Skimmed the pictures.

Tentacles. Tentacles everywhere. Lady's umbrella? It's got tentacles. Hedge maze? Surprise: it's full of tentacles. Ghost? Tentacle feet. Dude sitting in a chair? You think it's tentacles, but actually it's snakes! Gotcha!

Bet there's a way to play a character that's composed of a statistically improbable percentage of tentacles.

Hey, what do tentacles and companies that charge $99 for PDFs have in common?

They've both got suckers.
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Trekkin

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6653 on: February 28, 2019, 06:35:03 am »

And since it's Monte Cook, it'll somehow manage to be bizarre without being interesting.

Having read the preview, that's more or less what we've got: it just throws weirdness at you until you go numb to it, then brags about how cool and surreal it is, but it never quite hits the mark because there's nothing normal to contrast it with. It's all so alien that it becomes boring -- and that's a huge problem in an RPG, because it means the players are deprived of common reference points to figure out what they can do in the game.

See, if you were to sit down at my table and I handed you a sheet and said "You're playing an archer. There's a dragon attacking the town you're in. What do you do?" you have at least some existing sense of what you can do; there's buildings to take cover in, the thing flies and breathes fire, and your best bet for fighting it is probably with a bow. It may not be clear mechanically how to take cover or draw a bow, but there's at least a clear starting point for what you might want to do in the narrative. If, on the other hand, I tell you you're playing a vislae who's had their vertula kada misaligned from their Crux Qualia by the !8'^_^'@#-287 [a dozen other new terms] you're going to need explanations of all of those before you can figure out if that's even good or bad, let alone what to do about it. That's going to suck up time like crazy, and the explanations here only raise more questions -- which sounds great, but it's still just me talking. There's no gameplay yet.

The up-front cost of playing this thing would be untenable in reading time even if it were free.

EDIT: Incidentally, the physical version costs $252. It has a statue in it. I have no earthly idea who needs 30 pounds of stuff to play an RPG. I also don't want to know who needs to spend $216 more to have a campaign written for them (well, "customized" for them.)
« Last Edit: February 28, 2019, 08:27:59 am by Trekkin »
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pikachu17

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6654 on: February 28, 2019, 02:08:42 pm »

Hey, in a world where there are goblins, elves, dwarves, and kobolds, but humans don't exist, what words would they use instead of "humanoid", "humane", Etc?
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Trekkin

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6655 on: February 28, 2019, 02:34:07 pm »

Hey, in a world where there are goblins, elves, dwarves, and kobolds, but humans don't exist, what words would they use instead of "humanoid", "humane", Etc?

[race doing the classifying]oid, presumably. Elfoid, dwarfoid, etc.
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Egan_BW

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6656 on: February 28, 2019, 02:37:11 pm »

Or just say fuck it and use humanoid.
You're not playing the game in the same language as the characters are supposed to be speaking anyways, so you may as well use words you're familiar with.
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IcyTea31

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6657 on: February 28, 2019, 02:55:52 pm »

Go up a taxonomic rank and call them primatoids? Or if you want a less scientific word for your fantasy setting inhabitants to use, maybe something like "thinking beings" or even just "folk"?

Edit: further ideas: "two-leggers", "ones who speak".
« Last Edit: February 28, 2019, 03:07:33 pm by IcyTea31 »
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Kagus

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6658 on: February 28, 2019, 03:52:05 pm »

Bipeds, if you wanna use something dumb and nonspecific. Or you could pull a Diogenes and call them plucked chickens.

Telgin

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #6659 on: February 28, 2019, 04:07:34 pm »

Folk or just people would be the obvious choices.  If you want to get sophisticated, sapients or sophonts are words you could use.
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