Would you believe I had no idea we could @ each other on here?
Ehehe. Like Feather said, I’m familiar. Actually our Lancer campaigns were part of the inspiration for Heavensfall.~
3 Likes
I started with 5e as a player like almost 10 years ago now (oh god time flies fast). I unfortunately had pretty toxic groups before landing on a homebrew system of roleplay for a few years in the MLP fandom. I met my wife through that and eventually joined a homebrew system for Mobile Suit Gundam that switched over to LANCER with @GrayKitsune. I’ve run my fair share of 5e, BFRPG, and just random OSR bits and bobs and now I’m really into indie systems since they seem to really get the chill table vibes but interesting enough to really scratch that itch. I’m dying to run a few games from Dreamware press like Snow’s Songbirds 3e and Charlotte’s Daisy Chainsaw!
2 Likes
My online group will probably play lancer sometime in the distant future. We got on discord to rewatch pacific rim two months ago and when the movie ended we were talking about how cool it would be to play a mecha rpg. It ended with one of us buying lancer on the spot.
He still has a draw steel campaign on his sleeve that is scheduled to start in march tho, so lancer is gonna have to wait
1 Like
It’s nice hearing this much love for lancer. I also just remembered that apparently, while trying to convince us to play, none of us cared for it being compared to a gundam like world, but all of us were instantly on board when titanfall 2 was mentioned.
2 Likes
I don’t care for Gundam either but my wife does and it was originally her group of friends. Honestly though? The major issue I have with all games when running them is battlemaps. I don’t like sorting through premade ones and I hate making them with a passion but unfortunately from what I’ve experienced, it seems to be the mark of a “good GM” now and theater of the mind turns away a lot of prospective players.
That’s so cool, can’t wait to see more of Heavensfall 
3 Likes
I always enjoyed the GM I had that just had a blank canvas, drew some vague shapes on it and bam, battlemap. Easier than to have nothing, and still enough to not get constant “But can I hit that one?” and “Wait, how many enemies are left?”
I’m half-tempted to just put up a LFG, open up owlbear, and go old school with a white background and a hope that my mouse drawings are good enough just how it would be in real life. I guess it’s part confidence that I need to get over.
1 Like
Apologies for bringing this up in spite of the thread moving on to other things, but I just wanted to say thanks for the recommendation! I’ve quickly looked into it and it sounds like something I could be interested in!
my pleasure, i think it’s an outstanding game, always happy to talk about it
Yeah, kind of. Let me give an example: let’s say I have a character who is witty and quick on their feet, but isn’t always aware of their surroundings and doesn’t make very good choices. Their setup might look like this:
PERCEIVE – 3 – PROJECT
ENACT – 5 – ASSESS
If this person tried to spot something far off, they’d have to roll 3 or under. If they wanted to lie their ass off, they’d have to roll 3 or higher. If they wanted to backflip away from an enemy, they’d roll 5 or under. If they needed to figure out a puzzle, they’d roll 5 or higher. I still don’t have an idea what to do when you roll exact value.
These four traits can be placed on either end of either axis and assigned any value from 2 to 5, so it looks a lot more complicated than it should be. I’m the above example, having the below axes would be effectively identical to the one above:
PROJECT – 4 – PERCEIVE
ASSESS – 2 – ENACT
The idea was to let players pick two overall approaches that they are better at, and two they are less good at.
There’s one last aspect to this system idea that I haven’t brought up yet, which I hope is what will make everything come together: Revelation. The idea is that characters start with very little defined characteristics, and players are encouraged to figure out and reveal those characteristics during play. They would have tokens such as playing cards that they would cash in when a roll is called for to establish and invoke a new trait or characteristic. For example:
Rhea is about to kick down a door, bursting into a room. Before she rolls for Enact, she drops a token and tells the table “did I mention I’m fuckin’ jacked?” flexing her biceps. This new trait, “fuckin’ jacked”, is now an established part of her character. She gets an extra die to roll for her Enact, and can invoke that trait on future rolls to get a bonus die at GM’s discretion.
PERCEIVE
ASSESS
PROJECT
ENACT
REVEAL
That’s P.A.P.E.R. baby
2 Likes
This new trait, “fuckin’ jacked”, is now an established part of her character. She gets an extra die to roll for her Enact, and can invoke that trait on future rolls to get a bonus die at GM’s discretion.
that’s cool! Dogs in the Vineyard has a similar way to invoke new backstory/traits into the fiction, I really like the idea of building your character as you go. That game also has the same mechanic but for relationships - that is to say if you arrive in town you might spend a relationship die to say “my cousin Philip works in the Post Office here”, helping your character tie themselves to the fiction and giving you a little extra investment in the world.
Shit, that’s a really good idea.
1 Like
I never get to play anymore but I still buy all the books and pretend I will get to again someday. Right now I’ve been going through the Alien and Blade Runner RPGs. My longtime favorite is Call of Cthulhu. I got into playing in middle school along with AD&D, and the White Wolf games.
1 Like
I’m interested in this expac they’re coming out with, here. Never played Starfinder. Most of my experience is a couple years of Lancer and not much else since I don’t have any IRL groups. I personally like Warframe’s world a lot.
@GrayKitsune @feathertheradiant Fancy seeing you two here. I was also part of that Lancer game, some of the best experience I had playing as a balls-out crazy merc that survived a colony drop.
1 Like
Sup dude! Yep Luna’s forever immortalized in @GrayKitsune’s game (she let me know about the forum). I’ll be real, I don’t care for Paizo’s games but I recognize that they have an appeal. I do more old school stuff when I can (I attempted to get a 0e one shot going and it went nowhere).
Just come across this:
https://paulczege.itch.io/two-raw-morsels
Do you like to write?
Do you wish you did?
You’ve taken a dangerous journey through time and space in hopes that consuming a piece of the titan Prometheus will give you the insight you need to change something in your life.
And you’re not some imagined character like in other games. You’re you, the person reading this right now. What do you so wish to know that would change your life?
And are you and I so different from the people of other times and places in the world who might have also come with their own hopes?
Two Raw Morsels is a journaling game that gets you caught up in unconscious truths about life and who you truly are.
1 Like
It’s funny how that works, GMs are in terrifyingly short supply but half the people willing to learn don’t feel safe and secure enough to try it out and to get better at it.
I’ll admit that might just be me projecting though.
(I’ve also heard a decent chunk of complaints of GMs in the post-Critical Role world where some new players expect that level of production value, which is just wildly unrealistic)
2 Likes
The 5e shortage is more or less over by now but it has been subsumed by another problem: the 5e lifestyle brand. There’s a lot of people now who want to play 5e and 5e only even if there are better systems to handle what they want to do. They’ve bought all the books, played for years, started with it, supported 3rd parties, consume live plays and they don’t want to leave from it which is fine for them. The issue has been that many only know or care about D&D, any issues D&D has doesn’t cause them to check out other systems just stop playing because that group consider D&D as the whole space. Trying to convince the people in the life style to try something easier like White Box has been an uphill battle.
And unfortunately yes, I have run into CR expectations which is what originally burned me out lol!
1 Like
I’m very glad I ended up not in that hole myself, I’ve gotten somewhat into TTRPGs before CR and the likes were really a thing and my GM had a strong opinion so the first system I ever used was PF1e, which while hilarious at times was also a pain to play. (I’ll always miss you, Terry the Beyblade)
Ever since most of my GMs have been interested in multiple systems and even after my original dislike for the W40k universe I ended up being really happy I was willing to jump into a weekend long in-person short campaign of Only War.
I just wish people had more interest to trial out things and be interested in learning new and different systems. There’s so much cool stuff out there with a myriad of variety and not everything needs to be forced into the 5e style of doing things, which definitely doesn’t fit everything.
I do also know someone that only plays 5e, and only plays paladins and I just can’t understand that myself.
For myself I do absolutely hope I can find a place where I feel safe and secure enough to learn to GM while also having people interested in trying a bunch of random systems, I have so many digitally gathering dust that all bring something unique and interesting around that I’d love to play around with.
2 Likes