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Messages - Sanctaphrax

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1
I think they did a great job with Fate, personally.

Not familiar with Tomb Raider, though. What's wrong with the tabletop version?

2
Thing is, manpower's limited. If your people are writing Fate Core books - and there are a lot of Fate Core books - they aren't writing DFRPG books.

3
DFRPG / Re: Q for EvilHat, or those who follow the company/numbers, etc
« on: February 12, 2024, 08:41:32 PM »
I don't know for sure, but I blame Fate Core. It was a big success, and it's just different enough from DFRPG to be incompatible.

4
Natural Weaponry is mostly just an expanded version of Claws and Breath Weapon, so the homebrew here doesn't change much. Really, this is a question about the balance of the base game.

And yes, if you just want to do as much damage as possible as fast as possible you can't beat Evocation. But the various spellcasting downsides you list are very real.

Overall I'd say the balance is imperfect; spellcasting is probably a bit too strong. But it's not so lopsided that a melee fighter isn't worth playing, even alongside a blaster.

One change to consider: in Fate Core, Fists and Weapons are merged into Fight. It's a noticeable buff to anyone who uses either skill; I think there's a lot to be said for importing that change to DFRPG. Natural Weaponry would of course want an upgrade once a big chunk of its baseline usefulness has been made part of the skill list.

5
DFRPG / Re: A Nevernever Thing
« on: June 08, 2023, 06:13:36 PM »
Actually, I may have to rewrite part 1, at least the latter half. If you have any suggestions of what you find "in-character to a fault" that would be really helpful.

The Traveler Pro-Tips don't seem very usable for a player; they're the sort of thing a character might want to know, but I'm not sure how to use them at the table.

6
DFRPG / Re: A Nevernever Thing
« on: June 05, 2023, 07:04:58 PM »
Honestly the tone is pretty new to me. It's not in my usual style, just something I was convinced to try out. That'll take some adjustment, but I'm pretty much outvoted since I'm the only one who doesn't love it, so I guess it's here to stay.

Well, writing isn't a democracy. In the end, what you say goes.

7
DFRPG / Re: A Nevernever Thing
« on: June 05, 2023, 07:09:48 AM »
Alright, I read through.

I like what you've done here aesthetically; it's really quite a pretty pdf. And the tone is fun. But I'm not sure how game-able it is. I'd have a hard time actually applying this at the table.

Part 1 is in-character to a fault; most of this is advice for the PC, not for the person playing them. So I'm not sure how it's meant to be used.

Part 2 would really benefit from some examples. Maybe a full worked example of play. I'm not clear on how we're meant to assemble the various descriptors into a Way, and some of these descriptors are perplexing in and of themselves. Also, probably better to use fudge dice for the tables. I've had some luck with triangular random tables where the top left corner is all zeroes, and you move a step right for each + and a step down for each -. Not my idea, but I can't find the original post.

Part 3, I think, needs to explain its numbers more. What does it mean if Accessibility is Good or Danger is Superb? Also, I'm not sure it's advisable to have single entries for such vast and varied regions.

More specific comments:

Quote
Since we all have a brain, eyes, a limited
number of senses, but more importantly, a tragic lack any kind of
omniscience, it isn't really possible for any of us to really wrap our
heads around the impossible strangeness of it all.

Missing the word "of" after "lack", I think. Also, it's just a bit of a clunky sentence.

Quote
Conversely, Lurkers are entities who roam the Ways and prey
Travelers.

"on" travelers, I think.

Quote
You won't be surprised to hear that most stables outdoor skills,
gear and survival kits will serve you well out Wayfinding.

"stables" can't be the right word. Maybe you were going for "staples"? But that would still be questionable grammatically.

Quote
Before you even think about crossing a Way, you have to find one
first. For most folk, that presents at least a Good (+3) challenge to
Scholarship, upgraded to Great (+4) if you want to go somewhere
specific.


Scholarship seems like the wrong skill. Also, if I want to find a Way, how many stipulations do I get to make? Can I roll to find a Way to The Outer Gates? To the Statue of Liberty, through the Nevernever? From my house?

Quote
Living long enough to retire as a Wayfinder is all about
knowing how to read the signs. There's no universal language for
this stuff, so it has to be learned from experience. My advice?
Find someone who cares about you enough to teach you. Not
me, mind, but someone.
Looking for Wayfinder signs is usually a Great (+4) challenge to
Investigation, though it can be higher or lower based on how
frequently Travelers go through the Region. If a place looks
outright deadly, it probably is, and it isn't likely to have any
Wayfinder signs no matter how keen-eyed you are.

There should probably be some mechanics for interpreting signs, since it's clearly not a universal ability. Perhaps a stunt?

8
DFRPG / Re: A Nevernever Thing
« on: June 04, 2023, 05:26:03 AM »
Huh, interesting stuff. I'll give this a proper read-through, and some feedback, as soon as I have time.

In the meantime, have you looked through the Travel Guide section of our wiki?

9
DFRPG / Re: Precision Hexing
« on: May 17, 2023, 04:44:28 PM »
Deliberate hexing is in the game for a reason; it's meant to be a useful ability. The game will even charge you Refresh for it, in the form of Mana Static!

Not that anyone actually buys Mana Static, but you know what I mean.

10
DFRPG / Re: Tell me about your games
« on: April 17, 2023, 12:39:10 AM »
I don't have a strong preference, power-level-wise. This is just what I ended up running.

One nice thing about high-Refresh play is that you can hit your players with all kinds of crazy stuff and just assume they'll be fine. I once had the largest non-nuclear explosive in the world go off next to an unsuspecting PC, and it actually made for a great scene.

On the other hand, there's a natural tendency for the bookkeeping to pile up. Character sheets get long, and hordes of mooks demand a lot of dice-rolling. Would be a bigger problem if the game wasn't PbP.

11
DFRPG / Re: Tell me about your games
« on: April 16, 2023, 05:03:54 AM »
I've played in a number of games, but by far the largest and longest-running is Enduring the Apocalypse. As the name suggests it was originally about PCs trying to survive the gradual end of the world, but the focus has shifted massively over the years.

It started back in 2010. Wasn't my idea, actually; someone wanted to play an ultra-high-Refresh game and I got talked into running it. It was set in Berlin, and the basic concept was that the players were the morally-mixed power players of the city trying to deal with the post-Changes world. The PCs weren't a team, exactly, but the German government's magical intelligence service brought them all together to address imminent crises like an army of demons preparing to descend upon the city.

A lot has happened since then. Many players have left, and none of the original participants are still in the game except me, but the current three PCs have been stable for a long while. I've been using former PCs as villains, and honestly some of them make more sense in that role than they did as protagonists.

We recently finished a major story arc, which was about a G8 meeting where the spooky sides of the world's major governments hashed out an agreement to cooperate. The PCs were involved in the diplomacy, and also carried out a secret mission to decapitate the CIA so that the Library of Congress could take over the American side of things. They were very successful, but the summit ended on a down note as a now-villainous former PC managed to talk the various nations into letting him wriggle out of the consequences of his earlier misdeeds.

Since the game started at 18 Refresh, it naturally tends to go very big. Fight scenes with small armies of participants, people claiming dominion over regions of the Nevernever, weapon 10+ attacks being thrown around left and right, people casting rituals with massive complexity, high-stakes arguments with a whole bunch of independent sides. That kind of thing. The system has held up remarkably well under some pretty intense pressure.

It's not a particularly subtle story, but we've managed some interesting character arcs. One character recently half-died and came back, and is now on the path to picking up a Sword of the Cross after a deathbed conversation with Uriel.

I could go on and on and on, but it's probably better to let you ask if there's anything in particular you want to know.

12
DFRPG / Re: Original Dresden RPG vs. Accelerated
« on: April 15, 2023, 03:48:37 AM »
That's a shame. I've seen some interesting Dresden Files games on Obsidian Portal, but that's about it. Oh, well.

Well, activity feeds on itself. I'm posting now because you're posting; if you'd like to revive the forum a bit, starting some threads would go a long way.

13
DFRPG / Re: Original Dresden RPG vs. Accelerated
« on: April 11, 2023, 06:38:15 PM »
The site is barely active.

Some people are still playing, though. Myself included!

It's been a while since I looked at DFA, but as I recall the short version is that it's simpler.

14
DFRPG / Re: Precision Hexing
« on: February 22, 2023, 04:27:59 AM »
According to the hexing rules on page 259 of Your Story, this sort of thing is mostly not allowed.

Quote
Hexing cannot be used to manipulate technology - only destroy it. You cannot use hexing to do maneuvers unless destroying the device is precisely what justifies the maneuver. So if there's an advanced filtration system in a building keeping gas out of a room, you could hex the control panel to put the Aspect FILLED WITH GAS on the room, but you couldn't selectively control the gas flow in any way.

Despite that, I would be inclined to be flexible with hexing maneuvers. Seems like it'd lead to more interesting gameplay.

15
DFRPG / Re: Learning the system and campaign prep
« on: February 14, 2023, 04:44:58 AM »
Evil Hat moved on to other versions of Fate, including another Dresden-based version of Fate. And the book series isn't what it was. So the local population has dwindled.

It's a shame, but it could be a lot worse.

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