Oh and as for tomorrow, I presume that the two regulars are still in? It's mostly going to be discussing the next game and getting the housekeeping out of the way, which coincidentally makes it an ideal time to join our group as a new player if you were holding out.

Just a reminder that the Saturday discord session is live. I'm going to start properly at half past (0630Z) to allow people to filter in. If you're interested in joining in at this timeslot on the regular, now's the time to jump in.

>>37403
Ah shit. I'm sorry, I thought this saturday was off for some reason. Maybe I misunderstood what you said in discord. Feel free to pick any other day of the week for a replacement session.

>>37457
It's all good mate. We handled some other shit. We think that for the next game we're gonna run some Knave, try some fantasy to mix it up a bit.

It's a really simple system designed to be playable by literal children, so don't fret about the new ruleset.

We can set you up in a flash next time. We'll probably talk some more tomorrow. If we do end up having a chat, I'll make another post here so that if you're around you can drop in. If not, we'll just do it next week.

>>37458
Alright, I just had a quick read about Knave and it sounds rad.
I'm on board and I'll try to be there tomorrow. Any time planned for the
meeting?

>>37462
Nah, no time planned. It's more of an informal thing where we'll just start talking at some point than a meeting that we've set up.

So I got the updated Dark Stars pdf today from the kickstarter I backed. This is essentially Bodycount's big brother. Same setting, but considerably more rules heavy. Don't know when the hard copies of the books will start coming through yet.

First up, the book has been cleaned up a bit. Most of the editing errors in the first run are gone, which is a big relief and some things have been reworded to be a little clearer. This is excellent since the first rulebook was sometimes bordering on guesswork. The cover to me is a slight downgrade. It's 99% the same, but the text block at the bottom wasn't there before and the cleaner cover looked nicer. Minor gripes but I'll say it anyway. Inside, they cleaned up the contents, this was a big one where some editing errors existed previously.

The introduction to the setting is expanded somewhat, but I still think that it's a little forced at times because it tries to fit everything about the setting into the two pages instead of just the big pieces. The background generator remains there, and is actually very good for generating space cyberpunk characters. It's very powerful but it's something that I wouldn't want to use at the table since it generates a bit too much backstory for my liking. It's easy to strip down though and at that point it's a lot better.

The character creation is reworded to make more sense, since the class system is a bit odd compared to many other rule sets. It's again a bit complex, but makes up for it with power. The way the game works means that an AI player character works very differently to a human one despite using the same rules. They are not just small, cosmetic differences like you see a lot of the time.

The core d100 mechanic remains simple and explained on two pages, this is great. I like it a lot. It can be a bit fiddly if your players aren't bothering to pull their weight and remember how to use their character sheets (from experience there) but with people who are actually trying I don't forsee any issues. Combat is interesting. Initiative is rolled by dice pool based on an initiative attribute, and then the totals are noted, with characters able to act every 5 sections of time. It adds a big advantage to seizing the initiative which feels quite elegant. You also have hit location which can cripple or kill depending on where you're hit, which may make getting cybernetics not only a nice thing, but a priority to restore full functionality, and it might not be cheap, necessitating risky corporate raids or whatever. Again, an elegant mechanic that reinforces the themes effectively. Vehicles are similar with a few tweaks.

Hacking is something I'm not feeling. It's better than it used to be but it's still convoluted and falls into the trap that a lot of games do where a hacker just ends up playing a different game on their turns, and doubles the workload. If I had someone wanting to be a hacker, I'd be making them do far more of their own rules work than the others because it really is something of a subgame. The big advantage though that they've done well is that all forms of combat take place in the one game area, and while it creates complexity, it's also the mechanic that allows for the very interesting gameplay of AI characters who function as software rather than as characters in the usual sense.

There's a small but robust system for mental ailments if you're wanting to do horror games, or if your PCs find themselves in a warzone in horrific conditions, it is also capable of breaking them. A nice touch. The rest is equipment and setting information which has been expanded and cleared up a bit, nothing super notable if you haven't used the old book.

Overall it's a solid update that adds a lot more clarity to the rules that were previously worded less than ideally. I'm looking forward to my print copy and the expansions. I'm going to go somewhere between 3.5 and 4/5. There's a lot to like but the bits that drag it down a bit like hacking are both pretty weighty and also tied pretty tightly to what makes it good, so are hard to modify.

>>37464
Alright, we sat down and created my character. Lots of fun, really. I'm going to play a deceitful yet serene beggar with flowery speech and luxurious hair in rancid clothes. The athletic body might be a bit in contrast to my poor strength and dexterity, though :-DDD

Alright lads, posting this as a reminder that tomorrow, Saturday the 8th is game time, starting at 0600Z. If something comes up and you can't make it, it's no stress. Shit happens.

>>37739
It's going to be very difficult for me to make it at 600Z, I'll try to be there around 700Z but no promises. Sorry guys.

>>37755
All good my man. It's a non-issue.

Thought I'd get in early this time and see if Saturday 0600Z is happening this week or if we're looking at doing it another day.

>>37995
I plan to be there.

>>38007
Sweet.

>>38007
Sorry guys but I won't be there tomorrow. I've got an exam next week and am
already lagging behind, so the next 5 days will be nothing but studying for me.
I could go on another adventure on friday earliest.

>>38284
All good. Brick has got something happening too. I was thinking of postponing it anyway.

Just a heads up that I won't be able to make it tomorrow. If you guys were wanting to play this week, I can do sunday however.

>>38513
Sunday is a better match than saturday for me as well. I'll be there.

>>38519
Sounds good. I may be slightly hungover but I'll be in a fit enough state to run the game.

>>38524
Are we "go" for today (in about 1 hour)?

>>38605
Oh. Yeah. Was just having a nap before we started. Can push back to 0700Z if it works better.

>>38607
Regular time is best for me, I'll be there in 20 minutes.

I got a surprise coming up tomorrow for those who enjoy product reviews. It'll be an expansion of this review here >>37494

Today I got the first lot of Dark Stars physical product from the kickstarter. That is the initial run of the Core Rules (I opted in to get the spare copy as a beater for lending to players or whatever, even though it was rejected for build quality reasons). They also sent out the hardcover version of Off the Rack, essentially a book of goodies to buy. Big ticket items like vehicles and starships, combat drones and extravagant medical insurance plans or bioengineered gadgets etc. This one is to my knowledge the final build of that book.

What'll be interesting here is that I have got both currently existing print versions of those products. There's a third of the core book which is the full-quality final production run but it's not been sent out yet. Finally, there was an extra surprise in there. So Morgan Lean, the guy behind this game did do a fantasy game called Legend Quest. Generic as hell name that says nothing, but flipping through it, I am quite pleasantly surprised. I'll go into more detail in the full post but let's just say that it is pretty usable which is actually a bigger compliment than you might think in the indie RPG world.

>>38644
Please, do go on. I admit I'm not good at actively partaking in discussions lately, but my interest for reading posts like yours is still there and I would like to read your review here.

Btw, something I've wanted to ask before: Have you seen Dan Harmons live roleplaying show? HarmonQuest it is called and I can say that at the time I honestly enjoyed watching these people create their shared adventure.

>>38694
First bit is written up but it's short. Nothing special. Just recharging my phone for some comparison photos.

Then I'll make a post about Legend Quest because it's one of those moments where you open a book and get wowed by the thought that went into the product design.

>>38694
Also no. I don't really watch actual plays. One reason is that I find RPGs a lot more fun to actually work with than they are to watch but also I like to just stick a podcast on in the background.

It isn't a gameplay podcast, but something that might interest you if you like reading me ramble about game design is a podcast called Helmets and Halberds by a Swiss guy by the name of Alex Schroeder. He basically just goes section by section through his personal retroclone and breaks down why it is the way it is.

I dunno how well these will come out because they're off my phone but in both cases, left is new, right is old. The colours look darker in the new one but the colours are also richer and look less flat. Both books here show the stylised approach to art I will refer to later.

>>38644
So first up I'll look at the two Dark Stars books. As I said, to my knowledge, Off the Rack is the final product and the Core Rules are the rejected version.

First up the Core Rules. I've already addressed the rules in the first review I did of the pdf so I won't reiterate that here. In comparison to the old print on demand version there are advantages and disadvantages. I'll start negative and finish positively. The new book is stitched instead of glued like the POD version. This makes it easier to read, and more importantly use at the table because it sits flat where the glued binding does not. However the stitched binding doesn't feel particularly durable, the cover seeming like it's barely holding on to the pages. I'm sure it's tougher than it seems but it's fairly easy to see why this production run was rejected here. Furthermore the pages have a bit of bleedthrough where they've been folded a bit off. For a beater table copy to pass around to players and lend out, it's fine.

On the positive side, as I said, the book sits flat, which makes usability better. The colours are also more vibrant which makes it more pleasant to look at, and the paper inside is a nice thick glossy paper and not the (nice not not great) paper that the POD version uses.

The Off the Rack hardcover is similar-ish save for finish. Off the Rack was a POD softcover that had some editing issues. A couple of repeated passages and shit like that. The new version seems to have eliminated it, and added some new vehicles and art to boot. Furthermore, it's now a stitch bound hardcover. The cover seems tightly fixed to the pages and thus the book feels very solidly built. Like the core rules, the art is much more vibrant than it was previously, though like Dark Stars in general, it does suffer from being an indie RPG, where consistency of art is not always there. I'd have loved for all of the art to be in the very stylised manner like on the cover, and exists in a lot of the art but it isn't all like that probably due to budget constraints. It's understandable and I give it a pass because of the small studio creating it.

In terms of content for Off the Rack, it's weighted towards the higher end stuff that's either restricted by virtue of being heavy military equipment like tanks, or in terms of it being more of a boutique item than you would typically associate with a Cyberpunk setting's bread and butter mean streets. It also has more detail on ships both commercial and military as well as more mundane things like Medical Insurance that can be used as an elegant way of enforcing genre conventions. Since Dark Stars makes it quite easy to lose limbs to heavy damage, making replacements obscenely expensive makes engaging with the corporations in a grey manner, being a consumer but also actively hostile to them an interesting gameplay choice. There are also different levels where if you are rich enough, they might even refrain from throwing you out of the clinic before your injury is healed, and you get a certain amount of freebie genetic modifications per year. It's not a thick book, but it certainly does add a lot of flavour to the glitzy side of Cyberpunk for this setting.

Mostly just a little look at the physical products here rather than anything about mechanics but if the quality of Off the Rack is indicative of what's to come, then I'm impressed. Next time I'll post about the third book that came.

Oh yeah, and this got posted on their facebook. Looking noice. There's also a big adventure book at a similar level of development, but no cover yet. Also a Corporations book in the works but I dunno when that'll get done. The campaign is a little confusing because I don't know if the adventure book is considered an expansion or if Off the Rack wasn't considered because it was already completed. I backed it for the Base Game Hardcover, and I quote, 'All three hardcover expansion books'. Thing is that including Off the Rack makes four expansions. If it turns out I can only get one of either Colonisation and Corporations, I'll probably pick up the other at extra cost. It's not a perfect system but it's fun and perhaps more importantly, made in straya.

Review to follow. Again, phone photos are all I got.

Alright, Legend Quest. It's by the same people who created Dark Stars and Bodycount and you can see the influences. There are some similar design choices in particular with Bodycount that I like a lot and manage to do similar things without feeling just like a reskin. Overall I'd consider it a pretty good introductory ruleset that suffers from there being better ones out there. It's also a book where a lot of thought went into page layout and text design for usability. On to the review proper.

One of the first things that I really like is that it straight up tells the GM to give only something of a shit about the rules, and explicitly tells them to modify them as they see fit as an almost expectation. While it's common knowledge, it is worded here much more firmly than a lot of games do which is cool to see. They also give a few little details about how they designed the game, and it's intended to be high power high fantasy where they know there are busted combinations and players are encouraged to use them since the mechanic allows enemies to scale indefinitely if required, meaning that while average joes will fall by the dozen to the heroes, the big bads and their lieutenants can still probably put up a good fight.

Mechanics wise it is very similar to Bodycount, but doesn't use generic mooks with a single stat like Bodycount does. The similarities between the systems would make it exceptionally easy to port the mechanic over, but it's not rules as written. Character creation is pretty much identical save for a few tweaks to equipment since it now uses money instead of fiat. There are also some more skills, as well as races and classes. I don't mind this change since it doesn't add too much complexity really. Races and classes are more about generating the starting boosts you get since they simply determine what talent trees you get your starting talents in, so a rogue starts off with more rogue talents but is free to spec elsewhere as they develop.

The game is also designed around a randomly generated hexcrawl which is neat. Even if I never run this game, there are some nice random tables here. Funny thing about the basic setting is that it's fairly generic European style fantasy. It gets the job done and that's all that's really needed. Especially for a game designed for a sandbox since you'll be filling it with your own shit anyway, so the less that's there to work around the easier your life will be. It's a common misconception that kitchen sink fantasy is played purely straight all the time. Most of the time it's there so that you aren't having to do mental gymnastics to do whatever it is you're trying to do with the material.

That's the big thing that sets this game apart for me. Usability is king. They've put a lot of work into making the game easy to use at the table. The pages are clean with nicely spaced text that is larger than most books which makes it considerably easier to quickly find something you need in a hurry. Plus you can glance down at a page and not need to squint past art or whatever. Furthermore, the art has been chosen (since a lot of it is stock art) to look consistent. A little touch but one that adds a lot of classiness to the game and makes it feel less like a garage project. It's also unintrusive which is a big plus too.

A lot of the issues in Bodycount do raise their head again here. It's not a system that does many things well. It does action/thriller movies well. It can be difficult to really (conventionally) threaten a player once they get some progression under their belt, but considering that the game's intent is for extremely powerful characters going forth to become legends, I think that just like in Bodycount it's working as intended to abide by genre tropes. I can respect that and while it's not my game style, it may be someone's.

The build quality is also high. A couple of editing errors aside, the hardcover is solid and not flopping about, and the stitched binding once again adds that little extra bit of usability at the table. I think that's the big thing to take away here. A lot of what gets me excited about this game is that it's beautifully put together as a product. The rules themselves are fine and I do enjoy Bodycount and will probably enjoy this. However, the thing that makes Legend Quest special is how the usability of the book in play seems to have taken far more importance than fancy aesthetics which is something that a lot of people in the industry could learn from, even the big dogs.

Some shit's come up tomorrow and I'll have to run the game on Sunday again if that works for you guys, assuming you feel up to playing this week at all. Sorry about being off two weeks in a row.

>>38709

>dat British guy ogling the Chinese girl
>colonisation source book

Fucking lol I wonder how fully intentional that was

>>38760
It probably wasn't intentional, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were. These guys know how to have a laugh at the expense of 'muh realism'. Case in point, this is official artwork from the game.

>>38756
It won't work for me this week at all, sorry. I won't be home until thursday, I think.

>>38763
All good my man. I'll just do some other shit. Still ironing out some kinks in an adventure I'm working on so I'll probably do that instead.

Alright, so something I've been waiting for has just recently come out. Satana Station, an official splatbook for Machinations of the Space Princess. I picked it up and have run a couple of sessions with it and have a feel for how it plays.

I'll start with the short version. It's evocative and full of fun ideas, but for a product designed around a location there isn't much detail on the meta level (how the place is laid out) and it hurts the playability of the book as written if you are looking for a plug and play product. Long version is a little more complex and will follow now.

----------

So for starters, the context of the game. MotSP styles itself as a mix of vices in space. It's the kind of game where mercs hang out in hooters, and snorting space cocaine off of a three-titted whore isn't going to raise an eyebrow. On the other side you've also got space westerns, plain old space opera and all that too. It's got a lot of Heavy Metal/2000AD DNA in it too. Example here is that the first piece of art in the book proper is a topless waitress.

The first section describes in broad strokes the area you're playing in, the Remilitarised Zone. You get a brief description of Satana Station's metaplot, and maybe a dozen or so planets in the Zone with plot hooks. Following that you get some alien races native to the area (this is not as big a thing as it might sound since the race system in Machinations is pick n mix to begin with). After that, certain elements of Satana Station's location and some of its elements like the AI and how it's constructed are explored in a bit more depth.

After that, you get a bunch of little locations presented as vignettes. They are numbered 1-100 which is something I'll come back to. You also get random encounters and a pile of NPCs, with some ship designs at the end. It's a decent amount of content that comes in at around 150 pages.

The downside is as I said in the short version, that it's not really a location. It's a bunch of ideas for a location but it's not really given to you in an assembled form. Satana Station is described broadly in a certain way but in terms of actual play, there is no layout given, and spatial relationships between all of these things aren't apparent. If you want to run this book, you need to do the work to make it yours. This is further supported by the fact that locations are numbered. I guess you could take a hex map and make a crawl by rolling up several locations from the list (using d100), and then just dropping a party in, or use the ideas that you like to build your own station as you see fit. This is, in spite of the fact that it's designed to be easy to randomise, a strike against it to me because even though what's there is usually pretty good and gives you decent hooks or things to play around with, it's not ready to go out of the book, and typically when you use premade material, it's so that you don't need to do the work yourself and just run something fun and decently made.

Also if the cover and game it's made for don't make it abundantly obvious, if you aren't into something that asks you to get your mind in the gutter, then it's not going to be of any use to you. Even if you do like that kind of thing, you'd have to run it by your players and be comfortable with broaching the subject with them.

Not sure how to rate it. I do like a lot of the content but it's really lacking in the out of the book usability. Maybe a safe 3/5. Decent to pretty good locations and hooks let down by the lack of anything that's immediately playable out of the book in terms of adventure for something that is explicitly designed as an adventure location.

>>40423
Okay, I recognized you by the style of writing, I think... why are you in Romania? Are you actually doing your trip through Jurop right now? Or am I mistaken and you aren't the Aussie at all?

>>40485
I'm the Aussie. Due to lockdown I'm doing a lot of jolly sea captaining so I'm VPN'd up. Sometimes I forget to turn it off before posting.

>>40501
Also, now that things are coming together with paying my bills, I think I can start up gaming again soon. Going to have to do a different day because my other group moved to Saturday since then, but I think our schedules were pretty open to begin with.

One of the things that has always bugged the shit out of me is that Tzeentch is depicted as a retarded fucking bird for some reason. Like why? Why the actual fuck would they even do that? It's inexplicable. Meanwhile Nurgle is depicted as a fat guy with stag horns because...again fucking why? Do elk spread black death or something? Or cyclopses which I mean at least I guess it still looks rather chaos-y but it's split just so completely fucking stupid when quite clearly if any god of chaos is going to get a bird, it is Nurgle. perhaps this really is the true form of Nurgle and it's some sort of obtuse plot for Tzeentch to have fooled everyone into believing he looks like Nurgle to conceal his true form while convincing everyone else that Nurgle actually looks like the average /tg/ poster instead

>>40591

>Tzeentch

Birds are culturally associated to visions of the future and omens, etc. Think Odin's association with crows or a plural of Raven being a conspiracy.

>Nurgle

Corpses bloat and stags are associated in the British isles with old forest and pagan mysticism. I guess this might be different in America because of Skinwalkers.

That, and the Chaos Gods are associated with the 4 elements because when you get down to it Warhammer is pretty basic in lore. Nurgle has to be Earth because he's an elemental representation of life, Tzeentch has to be wind because he's constantly changing and shaping the world.

I looked into the antlers and disease and ended up reading about CWD before bed. Fuck that.

>>40606
Nonse prions are a fabulous before bed read. I was reading about them when I was a wee lad. Which come to think of it probably says a lot about me that I was reading about BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease before hitting puberty.

Semi related but I've decided this is the most lurid picture I've seen all week. Suffering for your work and helping others, passion, just bruising from general duty is absolutely Citizen.

So what's your favorite prion? I think mine may be CJD but Kuru comes in a close second, probably for the means of transmission that brought it to popular Western consciousness.

>>40606
Birds were also used for omens in Rome, most famously the Sacred Chickens, and had state-religious positions called Augurs and sometimes Auspices whose job was in good part watching birds for omens.

>>40617
Better example of cruising for a bruising for the job.

>>40626
You're very much a John Henry kind of a man aren't you

>>40628
Nah mate, Joe Hill. I do like John Henry though. My parents were both in the factory in certain capacities, and I move in working class circles that get no respect. Mostly I'm just getting tired of the healthcare narrative around here. You'd be forgiven for thinking that being in that industry makes you a first class citizen in my country right now. How well do you think the ones making all the gear are getting treated on their lines? I guarantee it isn't as well as the nurses and doctors, and they won't get any of the thanks neither. I kind of want to do a labour movement adventure in Gangbusters tbh.

https://youtu.be/n8Kxq9uFDes

>>40630
Also, normally I'd be happy that they're getting publicity, a victory for one is a victory for all, but they're not showing solidarity themselves, but are just eating it up when they've got a perfect platform with this attention to raise these issues as a class wide problem. I have a workmate who has had his dominant hand out of action for 6 months (couldn't even close it fully) due to work and it's not an isolated case, but nobody gives a shit.

>>40631
Class character of dogtors is a little different. In USA a substantial minority are petite bourgeois themselves. And the ones employed by hospitals are so well paid that, although they are technically selling their labor, they don't have much in the way of common interest with sparkies or plumbers.

One thing I do kind of appreciate is that people are showing a little more appreciation for grocery store workers in view of the pandemic, but it's not as if they can eat applause. The least we could do is give cashiers and shelf stockers considerable hazard pay and healthcare coverage.

>>40632
More talking about nurses. Doctors are all six figure salaries here. Anyway, kontra for off topic.

>>40633
Doctors make six figure salaries in Romania? that can't be right

>>40632
I wouldn't call nurses that. Believe me I dated one. Nurses are just as apt to be stripping on the side to get by. Hell one thing not getting publicity is the hospitals particularly in Chicago were ordering nurses not to wear any PPE while the arrogant useless bloodsucking fucks that ran the hospitals were walking around their offices in respirators. Trust me RNs themselves are one of us.

>>40630

>labour movement

You have my axe. And my hammer and sickle :-DDD

>>40634
See further up. There is an occasional Romanian poster, but most of them are actually me.

>>40635
We were using chemicals corrosive enough to eat through steel every day in our kitchen, but we weren't supplied with safety glasses, gloves or masks. Pretty sure I might as well have taken up smoking with how much that vapour has probably damaged my lungs :-DDDDD

Also, it'd be a pretty sweet game tbh. Gangbusters is all about the Roaring 20s with Prohibition, Mob Violence and all that good shit, but then you add in Labour unrest, strikes and strikebreaking, and the seedy side of both, and you start to get a very cool adventure background.

Uh, not today for me, sorry. But next week I'd be game again. Then with a little reminder of where we were last, please, I seem to have lost my magic tome of rpg-notes somewhere...

>>40795
I think we were lost in the ancient ruins of moon people, drawing incorrect maps, and stopped upon discovering a room with a waterfall and reflecting pool, which, while probably pretty, didn't have our objective.

>>40795
>>40796
Yeah, you're right about where you were roughly. The waterfall was technically outside but basically correct.

Also, if we do end up playing, I'd have to do it on a different day from Saturday. That day has been eaten up by other things. I'm largely free otherwise though so if you lot figure out what day works for both of you, I can make it work too.

>>40800
Basically any day is fine for me in theory, though there are factors outside my control... the next semestre is supposed to start on monday but students are not allowed to gather at the uni, so everything has to be done online but so far (2 days before the supposed start of all courses) I have not received a single mail detailling the process for any of the four courses I am subscribed to. So yeah, I won't be able to tell you how I'll have time with any guarantee until... sometime next week (maybe?).

>>40800
Also, that is one impressively cozy painting.

>>40801
All good. Tell us when you know.

>>40808
Story time: Every single course failed to deliver in the first week. End of story.

So let's just do this whenever, I'm free every day except mondays.

>>41033
Alright then, so we're on for any day other than Monday and Saturday. What about you, Brick? You have any preferences?

>>41036
Any day is fine for me.
Although, lately I haven't been able to get any quiet time due to quarantine. Everyone's at home, and I've become a personal assistant to my mom' who's been tasked with recording video lessons for the school.

Just give me the day and I'll make time for it I guess.

>>41057
Alright then, how does Friday night sound for now? that gives me some time to get my shit back together before we play, and we can fine-tune days for next time then.

>>41057
Oh that actually seems kinda comfy, recording video lessens with your mom. Obviously awkward and annoying at times but also homey in a way that some people would love to have.

Did I ever mention that I taught my mom to rip CDs to (almost EAC-log-perfect) Flac instead of using iTunes to buy everything again? Also, she's using Linux for 5 years now thanks to me. For some reason I feels slightly proud of that.

>>41078
I am okay with friday. 6:00Z again?

>>41087
Yeah 0600Z sounds good for me too.

Also that feel when more computer illiterate than Germanball's mum.

Alright lads, just a reminder that tomorrow we've got our session lined up for 0600Z. If that's no longer going to work just let me know ahead of time.

i kinda feel like shit lately
maybe we could do sunday instead?

>>41261
I can do that. No problems.

You're actually busy smashing kapital on International Workers Day aren't you, gommie? :-DDD

>>41264
Oh good, I came here asking for the same because I woke up feeling ill.

>>41261
Get well soon, mate.

>>41293
Things worked out well then.

I've also got a treat coming up in the next few months. I've got another zine that just got kickstarted to show you guys. It's pretty great, for one of those weird as hell arthaus games which is themed all around black metal and/or satanism.

Downside to OSR zines is that they are sometimes hard to get your hands on physical copies of (I'd like to get physicals of The Undercroft, but most of the early ones are impossible to find), so getting in on a brand new one is a good time. Pretty hyped to share this one with the thread when it comes.

So just a reminder that we're currently on for tomorrow, but if you still feel bad, I'm more than happy to call it off. I value the lads feeling good and having a good time far higher than any amount of gaming time postponed.

>>41363
I'm feeling fine now, probably can make it for tomorrow. The last few days were the peak of the depressive cycle when I start having literal body malfunctions, once that's over, it's basically ok for a few more weeks.
Although, I may have lost my discord account and need to make a new one, so a new invite link might be required.

>>41294
Dang, that artwork is sick as hell. Looks like something scribbled in ms paint, but the bold color choice and strong aesthetic makes it work.

>>41365
That's good. I remember the time you're talking about. Just wanted to see if we were still go. I think the link in OP is a permanent link anyway. I'll double check tomorrow and if it's not, I'll post a new one.

Regarding artwork, yeah. Mörk Borg has fucking sweet aesthetics, check out this shit from the rulebook. It reminds me a bit of Scrap's work on Veins of the Earth (pic 4). Arthaus OSR is not always my cup of tea in terms of content, but their sense of aesthetics are peak.

>>41369
tfw alone in discord with diceparser-bot. I suddenly feel much younger, reminds me of the time before I had a life with responsibilities :-DDD

>>41420
Hold on, am I actually an hour early here?

>>41423
Yep, you are.
I might be 10-15 minutes late, I have some chores to do.
also, still need that invite link if possible. If not, I'm going to have to scour my burner emails to find my old login.

>>41425
I'll probably be 5 minutes late or so. Got to fix a couple of things around the house before we start.

Link:
https://discord.gg/ZGmpJe9

It says that it has an infinite expiry date, so it should still be active. Hit us up if it's a no-go.

I'm gonna embark on a journey outside my usual comfort zone. I've decided to look into Pathfinder 2e because I've heard interesting things about it. It's very much a product of the new school, but I don't necessarily dislike new school design, I'm just often left questioning whether all of the mechanics listed really needed to be there. I'm someone who is not opposed to crunch if the crunch does something interesting. If your crunch is boring, then I'll call it bloat.

However, it's good to look outside your usual wheelhouse, so I figure that I may as well give it a swing. Acquired a pdf of the core rules and will now study them. I'll report back later with results. This one might be particularly interesting to those who would like to get into RPGs at the moment because it is one of the big dogs. I believe it is the second largest seller on the market right now, so after breaking it down it sounds interesting to you, it should be pretty trivial to find a game, even online.

>>41511
Alright, not feeling it. I can see why it's appealing. I can see that it's actually got some clever twists on PF1 that make it less of a clusterfuck but it still fills a niche that I just don't find particularly interesting. Character creation is really not my jam. Those who have read my thoughts on gaming know that I value mechanical simplicity and a more grounded power level to fantasy superheroics. PF2 is a big step towards simplifying PF1 but it's still designed for that high power adventure style. The first big thing that raised an eyebrow for me was that the basic way of generating attributes is insanely generous. Everything starts at 10 and is then modified by racial and background bonuses and maluses. This creates very powerful characters with big ability scores in most cases. There are options for randomly generating them, but even then they say to use 4d6k3 (roll 4 keep 3) which is again pretty generous.

Classes are again just not the way I personally like classes to function. I like Classes to be niche protection that enable you to have a wheelhouse where you have distinct advantages but you are not the only one capable of doing that thing. In the case of PF2, it sometimes feels like classes exist to give you a wheelhouse that no other class can touch, which to me encourages the cancerous mindset of 'every man an island' instead of teamwork. Starting power levels are also way too high for my liking, and I've never been a fan of cantrips which still abound, even as racial bonuses into characters that have no real business having spells.

I'm willing to flex a bit on that if it's done in an interesting way, like most rules. But in this case it reads more as 'stuff to do' rather than an interesting take on an idea. Compare something like a Fey-Touched Gnome in PF2 which can just take a cantrip no matter their class, essentially being a part of a build, to the Elf of Dolmenwood, a Racial Class which includes fae magic but the entire class is built around the assumptions of a fae in the mortal realm with the boons and banes that brings. Plus it has prerequisites so nobody can just pick it unless they've got some good ability scores.

The mechanical spine is simple but like its predecessor just codifies too much instead of trusting a GM to be able to just make a game function. I understand why it's like that, people nowadays like their rules tight, and complain about 'vague' rules instead of seeing them as a feature like the OSR school of design does.

It's definitely better than PF1 in my eyes, but it's a long way from where I stand in terms of what I find engaging gameplay. There doesn't feel like much risk because characters start so powerful, and the codification of everything, including mundane matters makes it feel bloated on the rule side. As I've said before, bloat is only a thing when the rules aren't interesting. I can see the appeal, but the target audience is not someone with my tastes.

hol up, is the game now officially scheduled for sundays or what?

>>41594
I figured it was. I can still do today if you wanted to though. I should be able to finish my prep in a couple of hours.

>>41532
Hey man, you've expressed an idea I've had as a vague feeling for some time now but never as a conscious thought; thanks.
I'm talking about the "every man an island" vs. teamwork.
It's something that has lead to me disliking various viya RPGs in the past without me able to pinpoint what exactly.
On the other hand, a system where characters start differently but could just overlap or travel the same exact path due to development if you want to (though often the defaul paths are mostly separate to ensure skill-diverstiy for players who don't care for spread-sheet-planning) felt much more "free" to me. As in: I am better able to express the roles I am meaning to play in this role-playing game.
A good example of this where balance was well achieved was Divinity: Original Sin (as well as Divinity II).
Sadly this game has a bad side, something that I consider the worst in RPGs of any kind: Near-Inifite inventory + monetary-economic treatment of items. About half the time I spent in Divnity was standing around and managing my inventory for economic value or alternatively feeling unsatistfied with my progress due to missed oportunities. It ruined gameplay enough for me that I eventually stopped playing; even though I honestly enjoyed the characters, story and especially the fighting and dialogue aspects of gameplay.

>>41598
Shit no, I am not prepared. Sorry, was assuming sunday as well.

>>41599
Glad you liked it. It's something that I've come across a lot just from running games. There are advantages to the island style characters. If you're going for that kind of game, often described as fantasy superheroics it works well because superheroes have their thing that nobody else can do.

For my games, I use classes as things that guide play rather than limit it. You have niche protection because nobody outside of your class is going to be able to do what you do to the same level, but at the same time the game doesn't turn into "you can do something cool while everyone else stands around with their finger up their arse" which is just kind of boring.

I'm torn on classless. In theory it's a very cool idea and enables some interesting gameplay changes. It's why I use Knave for our current setting, it doesn't really play the same way if we use any of the default rulesets (OD&D, AD&D, BECMI). It's downside is that players need to respect their niches or it is too easy to step on each others' toes. Knave plays best when you have jacks of all trades masters of one, which is similar to how classes work in the second category of this post.

I think talking of video games is a good choice here too, because for example Skyrim is an excellent example of the best and worst aspects of classless gameplay. Ignoring the difficulty issues and the weird world setup and general jank. It actually has a novel, fairly interesting idea.

>Adventurers by their nature have to be a certain level of tough, smart and agile to even survive the wilderness.

With this, it does away with the traditional sacred cattle of ability scores, and the idea that wizards must be frail and so on. Tough but weak wizard is as playable as weak but powerful wizard. I don't think it's entirely necessary in all cases to remove this aspect, but I welcome new takes that don't just do what those in the past did. It then posits that one's actions are what define the direction of play rather than one's class. A martial character and a stealthy character can both be archers, so let the player decide how that is going to work.

On the other hand, it's also very easy to have a bland character with no real identity because you can simply be good at everything. It requires more player buy-in to be successful than either hard classes or soft classes.
This post partially inspired by an article in a zine I read recently about converting the spirit of Skyrim's mechanics to BRP

I'm so sorry you had to read this autism.

>>41602
No worries, I enjoyed this post. Also, I'm used to much worse levels of autism on wildly less interesting stuff; having studied CS for 999 semesters.

>>41598
>>41599
That's okay because I kinda feel not ok today either. Not too bad, but I think I ate something bad yesterday, woke up with only 3 hours of sleep from mad acid reflux, and generally feel a bit crappy now.

Don't drink kefir if it tastes kinda funny lads, even if you kinda like the taste because you're from a culture that consumes fermented dairy stuff all the time. not all bacteria make your food taste good, some of them make you sick.

>>41606
Man, I read this incorrectly since you posted it and it only just now stuck out that it wasn't that kefir tasted weird, but that specific kefir tasted weird. Yeah, not drinking sour dairy is generally a good idea :-DDD

Hey guys, sorry but I won't be there tomorrow. Started feeling ill today and it's not getting better towards the evening. So I'm going to sleep in tomorrow and hope all is well again come monday.

>>41669
All good. If you still want to hang out and talk shop for a bit though brick, feel free.

Decided to take another stickybeak on their facebook because they don't post everyhting on kickstarter.

Fuggen noice. Feels good man. Expect a review.

Just doing a last-ish minute check to see if you lot are still on for today.

It's all good if you aren't, so no pressure. Just want to see where I stand with deciding what my evening is going to look like.

>>41978
Sorry, I didn't reven realise it's sunday. Just woke up and have the rest of the day planned as "learning for the upcomming exam".

>>41979
All good mate.

>>41980
So, I don't think I'll be able to play tomorrow, I'm terribly sorry but the upcoming exam is eating up pretty much all my free time while regular classes take the non-free time :<

>>42257
Dang it.

Maybe me and aussie can do a brainstorming session, or do a solo game. Or we could restart the atomic space cowboy thing, since I'm out of depression, and we have approx a few weeks to capitalize on my lucid time :-D

>>42257
It's all good mate. Real life before elfgames every time.

>>42259
Yeah, show up if you like. I'll find us something to do.

>>42277
So, I'm game for tomorrow, though I am a bit confused about the time. I'm UTC+1 here, so 6:00Z should be 7am for me, right? Unless Zulu doesn't include summer-adjustment.
I guess I'll try to be there 7am local time based on my ntp synchronized clock, which sais this right now:

> Local time: Sat 2020-05-30 22:15:16 CEST
> Universal time: Sat 2020-05-30 20:15:16 UTC
> RTC time: Sat 2020-05-30 20:15:16
> Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam (CEST, +0200)

>>42567
I use military time as shorthand for Universal times that don't change for summer times, daylight savings etc.

So 0600Z is equivalent to 0700A for Germany, 1200F for Eastern Kazakhstan and 1600K for me. So if you have something showing pure UTC, those are what you're looking for.

Dark Stars Colonisation has been put in the post. I think that Tales From the Block is with it too, since neither of those have pdf versions yet which explains why they said the latter was finished but I haven't seen hide nor hair of it. The final print quality version of the core rules are also currently at the printers, so they shouldn't be far off neither.

Feels good man.

shidd guys, me and moms have to go to the city and buy some household stuff. I won't be able to make it today.

>>42599
No wukkas. I'll probably go run some errands too then :-D

>>42590
You know, it's actually not that hard to get this right, but I might just have
a trauma from having to deal with clock_gettime(2), gettimeofday(2),
strptime(3) and strftime(3) in a project:

https://linux.die.net/man/2/gettimeofday
https://linux.die.net/man/2/clock_gettime
https://linux.die.net/man/3/strptime
https://linux.die.net/man/3/strftime

Time is just... an unsolved problem in programming to this day, as dumb as that
sounds. And now, whenever I need to convert between timezones my mind just goes
blank and refuses to even try.
To give you an idea of the potential headaches time can cause for a developer
of lower level system stuff I will name one of several things that caught me
off guard:

>In your code, you should not assume that a minute is longer than a second

There are a bunch more of those pitfalls that can do your head in but this one
I remember vividly from having been fucked by it.
The short explanation is: As soon as people start to virtualize operating
systems within other operating systems all your guarantees go out the window.

Sorry for textwalling, I am not yet fully awake :-DDD

>>42601
I still dun get id :-DDD

Weird code things may do your head in, but you computer eggheads do my head in :-DDD