#role-playing game mechanics

[legionofmyth]

Palladium Books: Are dated gameplay mechanics holding these games back?

Are Palladium Books' game mechanics stuck in the past? ⏳ In this video, we explore the debate on whether these classic RPG rules need a modern update. Join the conversation and see if it's time for Palladium Books to evolve with the times. Click to watch and weigh in! #PalladiumBooks #RPGDebate #TabletopRPG #TTRPG #RPGCommunity

Beyond the Supernatural 2E – PDF Dead Reign – [PDF]Palladium Fantasy RPG (2e) – [PDF] This video examines the game mechanics in Palladium Books that players argue are dated and in need of modernization. Ready to explore whether it’s time for Palladium Books to evolve? Dive in and watch the video! Palladium Books has been a staple in the tabletop RPG community for decades, but as the gaming world…

[ruporas]

trigunned the hades or hadesed the trigun (id in alt)

[i-am-rano]

I believe this might have been already said by someone at some point, but I feel like what I have to say is tangentially related to the recent trends in online ttrpg spaces and so I'm going to say it anyway.

When writing a TTRPG YOU CAN EXPLAIN WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A CERTAIN MECHANIC. It's legal. You won't go to jail for that. It's so helpful. Please do it.

I'm running early beta tests of my own ttrpg and all of my testers find it so surprisingly useful. The fact that the little explanation next to your rule has a little "this is to facilitate X amongst the players" or something like that at the end is of great help to the players and of even greater help to the GM, and I can't stress this enough.

[greatgoddyke]

some bobbles (+ two unfinished things)

[cyanomys]

Hey TTRPG Nerds

I’m back on my bullshit again. What are some indie games with unique systems that aren’t D&D, PBTA/FitD, or Fate-based?

How do they use unique mechanics to accomplish cool stuff?

Story games, OSR, you name it — all welcome!

[hybbat]

Not fond of how dependant on wikis a lot of indie games are these days. Maybe this is a hot take but I think your game should be playable without looking up external resources, and I don't like having a wiki for whatever game I'm playing up all the times just to casually play it because the game couldn't be bothered.

[whetstonefires]

Fanfic meme: questions 1 & 11, for a fic of your choice.

Oh no vikings, it's so much harder when I have to pick which one! 😭 What if I praise myself for a fic nobody likes or something?

I'll roll dice. I will...okay online rng rolled a 165 sided 'die' and came up 69. Which is not at all a sexy fic I regret(?) to tell you. 69 fics back is and amber is ageless, the Earth-3 Ultraman pov fic where he adopts a kitten.

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

Hah! Well, for one thing, my actual kitten that I found in a bush. Provided me with a lot of detailed inspiration about the minutiae of taking in and settling down a diseased little feline who'd been through the wringer, made that part basically effortless. I'd already decided Ultraman kept a cat in the Fortress, because he is so isolated and despite it all he's a version of Clark Kent and doesn't like too much alone, but drawing on recent personal experience made that part fun and easy to write.

The other 'this way' is 'from Kal's pov with only a dim self-awareness wrt how much he sucks' and that's harder to pin down. Lotta factors.

It's the second Ultraman pov fic I did, but the first one was only a little for the sake of his perspective and mostly to get outside pov on a Jokester & Alex Luthor interaction and showcase the hammer I'd lifted from the Countdown to Final Crisis earth-3 Jokester design. And I'd done his backstory as Lois breaking down her research for Alex. Because this setting is deliberately structured to focus on its own heroes, since canon mirrorverses get hung up on the evil version of their protagonists.

So part of it was I wanted a place to really dig into what makes him tick. The way Ultraman is a product of his upbringing in the opposite direction from Superman, but also the alignment flip I gave the world left him predisposed to dickishness in a way Superman is predisposed toward being considerate. Superman is always choosing to be good, largely as a result of the person the Kents raised him to be and the bedrock emotional security associated with that self-identity.

Ultraman is the opposite and I wanted to really get on the page how much insecurity in all senses plays into that.

Because I'd done Owlman and he is extremely uh. Strange person. Weird priorities. Possibly compelled by a variety of monomanias he believes to be purely rational. Sincerely convinced of his own supremacy, although also just vulnerable enough to doubt on this subject that his need to validate his own ego is still an exploitable weakness, in the way of supervillains.

(Superwoman can be baited this way only by the prospect of losing a head-to-head physical fight, but is much more easily distracted than Owlman because she cares about enjoying herself more than increasing or showing off her naturally enormous power.)

And the thing with Kal is that he's not. Not really strange. Does not really qualify for any kind of personality disorder. Psychologically he's mostly a pretty standard product of trauma and bad life decisions, the kind of guy who resents everything because he's so unhappy but can't conceive of a way to change his life to make him happier beyond hollow external models of 'success' like getting the girl. Who just so happens to have godlike power.

Of course it's not just so happens, because he was tough and strong from early childhood and accidentally killed his parents in a fairly normal grade-school tantrum, ruining his own life.

Which like. Definitely inspired by the old superbaby comics where Jonathan Kent is constantly stressing about the baby giving away his secret identity and it's like. Your life is in danger this toddler does not know how to not kill you.

Anyway he came up through the Kansas foster system having a bad time, and not having a much worse one only because of powers he kind of hated and felt freakish for because again he accidentally killed his own parents and only got away with it because no one knew he had super strength so lying about a 'big monster' smooshing his parents with the dining room table was more plausible. A huge part of his personality is based around the inadequate coping mechanisms he developed to cope with this formative trauma.

The idea that he was a Superior Existence (who was alone in the universe for reasons that were not his fault) was delivered to him when he went back to the old farmhouse, recovered the Jor-el materials, found out he was an alien, and set up the Fortress, and for him supervillainy is very much compensating for his underlying lack of self-worth and repressed guilt and vague sense of dysphoria, because when you feel like A Very Normal Guy who is also A Freak that's what happens. I think finding out he was an alien helped a lot with hating his own body, his body which was also himself and his chief asset considering he's an orphan who got a shit education.

Kal is both the one of the Big Three villains in this setting who is the most normal and whose behavior can be most accurately attributed to 'mental illness' as such, which I think is a neat dichotomy.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

I think I might have already covered this, whoops! Lmao it's definitely the effect I got where Kal is Just Some Guy who like, feels entitled to the girl he likes and thinks shitty misogynistic things when resenting other people's happiness. And whose gruesome fantasies of violence in reaction to minor inconveniences hit the beats of the average person's sense of aggravation but are backed by the fact that he really could put his hand through someone's face on a whim and has been known to do so.

But who also just. Is capable of being charmed by the attitude of a stray cat and wearing a leather glove to protect it from his skin when it keeps biting.

I think the technical element I'm most satisfied with is how I linked his reaction to Matchbox's defiance with his complicated Thing for Lois. I feel like I built up to it and showed it happening in a natural way, rather than just being like 'the kitten reminded him of Lois Lane.'

[wardensantoineandevka]

I really should make one of those "it's been 0 days" memes for "it's been 0 days since people treated the characters as real people", but that would definitely be bad for the fandom environment, so I'm reduced to thinking to myself "it's been 0 days since—" constantly

[lacklusterhero747]

Strategic Simplicity

I've spent several posts now talking about the game world that my players and I are building, but I thought it might be nice to take a bit of a side track and talk about why I'm so taken with Fabula Ultima as a game, which as the title suggests, is in the simplicity of it all. But this is not to suggest that the game is necessarily without depth to it's mechanics. Rather, I find that there is more depth in the doing.

Take this snippet from one of the pregenerated characters as an example:

The game only has four stats, weighted from a d6 to a d12, and an array of status effects that can be inflicted on your character that have both narrative implications (how you're feeling, how you might behave) and mechanical implications (in so much as checking one of those boxes makes the relevant stats behave as though they were one step lower.

The stats are essentially everything, as far as the game is concerned. Your hit points are derived by adding your level to 5 times your character's base Might die size and the same is true for your Mind Points, though using your Willpower die size instead, and that's really it as far as math goes. Beyond this, there is no extensive list of skills into which you must invest points. No stealth or diplomacy. Instead any test you might wish to make is going to based on rolling some combination of two of those above stats and comparing the total against a Difficulty Level, hoping for the best.

Where I find this becomes the most interesting is when we reach the intersection of Intent and Task.

What I mean when I say this is that when it comes time to make a roll (specifically outside of combat at least), the game really asks both the player and the GM to determine what the character is hoping to accomplish (the intent) and by what means (the task), because this is going to inform what you might roll and what the difficulty level should be.

The book suggests that Moving Silently might be DEX + DEX, but in a slightly different situation, you might roll DEX + INS instead, to represent tailing someone without being spotted. Intimidating someone with brute strength might be MIG + WLP, you you might try to demonstrate your martial ability instead and be called upon to roll DEX + WLP instead. Only once you've determined what you're going to roll does the GM set the difficulty level, and this is where another key to character creation enters the picture.

Every character has an Identity, a Theme, and an Origin, all working together to create the core of what your character is. Where is the character from, what is their driving emotion or ideal, and how does the character present themselves to the world. You're actually told to decide these three things about your character before you even decide where to assign your stats because they matter more than the numbers in a lot of ways. The book makes a point to say that background, context, and circumstances are the most important parts of determining how difficult a check should be.

"An aristocrat will have little to no trouble securing an invitation to a court ball but a heavily armed mercenary with no past experience with courtly intrigue might."

These details that you flesh out in character creation could mean the difference between a Difficulty Level of 7 or 13. Or, perhaps, if your background is particularly slanted in one direction or the other, you might not even have to roll! Perhaps you simply have what you need to succeed unchallenged (and you are encouraged to help narrate how and why) or you might find that you simply cannot take the approach you were trying. All because what might be settled by points invested into skills in other games is instead determined by the background you've created for your character.

The game assumes the Player Characters are Heroes. It assumes that they are capable of accomplishing the things that their backgrounds say they should. You are simply asked to consider "would this character actually be good at this task?" and then set the difficulty accordingly.

Of course, all the above is really just me gushing about the very wonderful way in which the game embraces fiction first game play outside of combat. Once the swords come out, that's why the game's mechanical depth emerges, and the reason is say the game is strategically simple.

The combat side of the game includes 15 classes in the core book alone, along with the necromancer which was published for free on the game's website, and a further 11 classes if you include all the play test material that one can find for the game. 27 classes, all with varying amounts of spells and abilities that you can choose to learn for your character as you level up, mixing and matching what you want to fit your particular vision, and wide selection of Heroic Skills you can learn upon mastering one of the classes to top it off.

There is so much depth of customization about how your character plays in combat that it creates an interesting mechanical mirror to the free form nature of the rest of the game. You only drill down into the nitty gritty for the life and death moments of conflict in Fabula Ultima, and even then the game is still played without grids or miniatures, instead asking you to describe what you're trying to accomplish and how cool your actions look before you pick out just the right attack skill or spell and make the appropriate roll to see if you succeed or not.

There's certainly a lot more I could say about the system (and probably will say) but I hope this gets my point across. I think this game just keeps gnawing at my brain because I find it's approach to game play refreshing in the same ways I found Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games refreshing. Fiction Matters. Backgrounds Matter. The depth, at least to me, is in the doing.

[dreampearls]

colleis personality functionally being left to the ether because her webtoon iteration is at such fundamental odds with her game iteration that any attempts to temper between the two just range so dramatically

[fogaminghub]

https://www.fogaminghub.com/post/follow-vuscav-navigate-the-ocean-in-visions-of-mana-s-chapter-4

🌊✨ Follow Vuscav in Visions of Mana Chapter 4! After losing Hinna, Val and the Alms venture across the ocean to reclaim her corestone. Get ready to summon Vuscav with your Ferry Flute and explore an ocean full of secrets and battles!

[legionofmyth]

Palladium Books: Are Palladium’s rules cumbersome and how do you fix them?

Is your game getting bogged down by complex rules? 🧩 In our latest video, we dive into the Palladium Books mechanics that many players find overly cumbersome. Discover why these rules might be slowing down your gameplay and how to navigate them effectively. Don't miss out on this essential discussion! #PalladiumBooks #TabletopRPG #RPGMechanics #TTRPG #RPGCommunity

After the Bomb Heroes Unlimited 2E Rifts Ultimate Edition This video dives into the rules and mechanics of Palladium Books that many players find overly cumbersome and challenging to navigate. Are you ready to unravel the complexities and discover why some of these rules are slowing down your game? Watch now! In the vast world of tabletop RPGs, Palladium Books has always been known for its…

[changeling-rin]

So. In game, Ocarina relies on Navi for L-targeting. In the battle against Ganondorf, Link cannot do any L-targeting because Navi is prevented from getting close because of Ganondorf’s ‘evil aura’ or something.

And without L-targeting, quick aiming at enemies can be tricky.

THEREFORE, in DL, does Ocarina (and potentially Mask as well) have a hard time focusing on the enemies because he doesn’t have Navi there to spotlight the enemy?

Hmm... interesting point

I'm gonna say that it's not so much a focus thing as it is an attention span thing. Ocarina can absolutely focus on his target, but he is only about nine years old. He gets distracted by a lot of stuff. And in a fight, where there's a lot of stuff to get distracted by, it's hard to keep his attention on the enemy and not, say, all the fire his enemy is spewing.

Mask, being older, has mostly grown out of this problem, and will actually subtly act as an attention-target for Ocarina in order to direct him at the opponent. But nothing works quite so well as a glowing ball of loudly-shouting fairy floating above a target's head and keeping all the attention where it needs to be

[lordofthemushrooms]

Hey do any experienced LARPers have tips on the most efficient way to read a rule book. Like yeah obviously read all of it sure but like what do you think is best to look at first/best to focus on. It’s overwhelming.

[chalk-homunculus]

I've been once again maining Klee throughout this Veluriyam Mirage questline a nd while exploring the mirage, both because I did get her skin, but also because it cheers me up so much to see her having fun.

[artemissoteira]

i’m really loving the fantasy flight games star wars rpg system! i think it’s a combo of things, not all inherent to the system itself, but it’s deffo the one i’m having the most fun with out of my solo games. i’m also genuinely impressed by the adventure modules i’ve played so far, which all have lots of useful sidebars highlighting good places to customize things to challenge your PCs’ unique emotional strengths and weaknesses, which are also built into the mechanical morality system.

speaking of, i also really like?? the morality system?? in a star wars game lmao. ttrpg format is just so much better equipped for it than video games that always wind up boiling down to “did you help this person? good! did you murder several civilians? evil! were you mean about it? even worse!” like the rulebook itself posits that the core of star wars stories are meant to be the moral question of good and evil in relation to a person’s choices in a difficult universe, and it so includes various tools for how to build a story around your PCs exploring that with direct mechanical impact and support.

maybe it’s just the contrast to the absolute lack of gm guidance in certain other games but it’s been very approachable and surprisingly fulfilling and interesting, even playing alone!

there’s also a frankly obscene number of modular xp advancement tree options available which will always always be my jam. and i’m going to hit the ceiling of the (also obscene) optional crafting system *fairly* soon but the great news about playing solo ttrpgs, as always, is that I can just do absolutely whatever I want