The Gaming Den

Blade, I think you may be conflating playstyle with fictional genres and themes. D&D don't emulate any genre as far as I know. It is it's own thing. A good example is Vampire the Masquerade. I remember it selling itself as personal horror back then... but struggling to actually deliver it at the...

I was very excited for FF15 at the time... and forgot it completely when I tried Nier Automata.

I'm reading Masks: a New Generation, a teenagers supers game about "coming of age", and it's interesting how it promotes that theme naturally through it's rules. There's no need for players to make a conscious effort to make it happen, as long as they engage with the rules gameplay becomes...

Another way to see it is "Playbook vs Activity" -oriented play. Monsterhearts and Apocalypse World pertain to the former, where playbooks function as narratives to be explored, and where play change significantly depending on the choices of playbooks. While the likes of Dungeon World and M...

Been reading a bunch of books on structure for movies, writing, Campbell's heroes journey and so on. It's not a divine commandment to follow but it's good to have references to reflect on what one's got. Designing a one-shot, a campaign, something in between, any of you have some guidelines for tha...

SaithorthePyro, The PvP in this case is not physical though (at least not predominantly), but social. So say, in Masks you're caught between the Legacy putting duty above everyone else, the Bull being rude and putting everybody down, and the Delinquent playing tricks at the wrong moment and disrupti...

High-level Masks characters are capable of unlocking access to one or two "adult moves." One of them is this: When you wield your powers with precision or grace, roll + Freak. On a hit, choose one. On a 10+, choose two. • take hold of something vulnerable to you • create something useful ...

The fact that it's a system that has been adapted for so many genre's without issue point more to PBTA having that problem than not. Each individual sub-game may flesh it out to a degree, but the base itself has to suitably generic for it to have been used so many time for different genres. Interes...

Well, lack of identity is not a problem PbtA have. On the contrary, they're so focused in their scopes that's hard to adapt them to anything else. Thus my question about mature heros with Masks. The answer is probably NO, but.. who knows.

Just popping up to say I've got Masks and finding it one of the strongest implementations of the engine. It's like a more buffed Monsterhearts, in that it also "funnels" (thanks Shinimasu) players into genre tropes and sitches only here you get a lot more gears moving. Btw, a question: do ...

I think ten years ago I cared about great mechanics and a big, dynamic system to cover all the bases. Now I care about the table time taken and how easy it is to get a new player/gamer into a particular game. As you get older, your play time shortens and the pool of people you are willing to play w...

Are the races in the left making sense D&D-wise, and do they appear fun to play? I'm not much of a D&D player, and know the setting more from the Torment videogame (though I do have the PS box and a couple supplements here).

Basic moves and Planes moves: done. The "Enter a plane" move leads to the individual planes effects.... which are basically a negative modifier in the form of Conditions together with a carrot in the form of xp gaining prompts. Ie: "when in Ysgard you're Enraged. Also, when you face a...

More playbook previews on the first post. Only updated the art and factions blurb. Tried to mix Diterlizzi with Amano. I'm liking the results so far...

...except the Dustman. If anyone has a suggestion, I'm all ears.

Thanks for the help. That Cant link will be very useful. About Planar moves, I think we could delegate them to an "Advanced moves" sheet to complement the Basic Moves one. This way players could default to some very basic move like "When you enter a plane of opposing alignment, you're...

Without the basic move list, it's impossible to evaluate characters in a meaningful way. Writing your basic moves is the most important part and the hardest part and you should do that first. You're right. I'm still thinking about that. I don't want to stray too much away from default AW at first b...

Perhaps instead of rolling on a big table of arbitrary effects and having to figure out how to resolve it, you roll up a random move to take immediately but flavor it with Wild Magic effects instead of the standard flavor? For instance, if your result is the Xaositech's Ratcatcher move, you could f...

Okay, how about this for a Wild Mage move? Wild Mage You've learned how to channel the chaotic energies that churn within you in the form of spells. When you do it, first choose a spell and a target. Then roll with Chaos: On a 10+ it releases in it's normal form. On 7-9 it releases in it's wild form...

Since the end of the 2000s, I've seen "modern design" used to describe rules-light games compared to "old-school design" games that had these huge rulebooks full of more or less complex mechanisms. Yep, this is certainly a modern trend. Streamlining, pick-up-and-play, etc. Somet...

Considering now "old is new again", my answer to "what's modern design" would be: neckbeards. True playtests? Math? Same-game tests? Notions of actual game design? Now THOSE are out of fashion, bringing those to the discussion is what gets you laughed out of the room these days....

Wild Magic varies across editions, but the basic gist of it is that you can invoke a wholly random effect (Rod of Wonder is a good sample). Many editions try to do a lesser version, where you just cast a regular spell that is randomly more or less powerful than normal (ideally in a manner to encour...

"Focused design" seems to fit what bot you and I say, JigokuBosatsu. Makes sense?

These days I'd say it's faster, simpler designs with solid emulation of genre or theme like Fate, PbtA, Cortex+, etc. The recent(ish) wave of OSR and the more simpler and loose D&D5 are also examples of this trend imo.

No, you're right. I also have mixed feelings about Diterlizzi art. It's too on the light/childish side for me, not reflecting at all my vision of Sigil and the factions (which is the focus of this hack). Do you have suggestions? I thought about Amano Yoshitaka too. His style has something of the dir...

By the way, I want to swap that "Street Artist" move by "Wild Mage", but I'm not sure how Wild magic works in D&D. If someone can explain, I'd appreciate!