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Messages - Reef Blastbody

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1
Discussion / Re: Doom Fall of mars
« on: August 30, 2012, 10:37 »
X-com style game set in any universe would be absolutely fantastic.

My own personal pet project over the past couple of months has actually been a pen and paper tabletop game that is a loving homage to X-Com and Syndicate; it kind of plays like Delta Green.

Basically a similar premise to X-Com in that aliens have attacked and they need to be neutralized, but in this setting, the aliens have attacked after Megacorporations have already taken the place of most forms of government, and instead of X-Com being created, each corporation has financed and outfitted their own PMC. Players are new recruits for a PMC of one of the various corporations, and can augment their body ala Syndicate. Enemies other than aliens include rival PMC Operators, and weirdo androids.

It's basically crammed full of things I like. I'm not a programmer or an artist, so I went the route of a pen and paper RPG. Most resultion is based not on 1d20 (or even 2d10), but 1d8+1d12 (it gives a more even distribution).

tl;dr, X-Com/Syndicate meets Delta Green/Dark Heresy/Shadowrun.

Nothing in it is *directly* from the settings, just inspired, kind of like Forever War being Joe Halderman's answer to Starship Troopers.

There is also a moon colony, but it's not really Doom-inspired; more along the lines of 2001 Space Odyssey. No fancy video game unfortunately though! It'll just be a PDF file, and I am eventually going to shell out some money to commision a cover and a few page spreads of artwork for the inside.

Didn't mean to go off on a tangent, but everyone talking about X-Com made me spill.

2
Play-By-Forum / Re: [OOC Thread] The Lesser of Two Heresies.
« on: August 29, 2012, 06:59 »
Warboss Silhar.

"Oi, clear out youse gitz! Quit muckin' around; I'm da boss!"

3
Play-By-Forum / Re: [OOC Thread] The Lesser of Two Heresies.
« on: August 28, 2012, 11:24 »
Awesome, thanks.

I started laughing so hard at

 
So far, we managed to:

- Avoid drowning in a hangar full of leaky pipes;

Just because it reminded me of Metal Gear Solid 2, when Raiden calls the Colonel on his CODEC and and is totally pumped.

"Colonel! We've managed to avoid drowning!"

4
Play-By-Forum / Re: [OOC Thread] The Lesser of Two Heresies.
« on: August 28, 2012, 10:27 »
Could someone do up a cast/synopsis of the game so far? Nothing novella sized, just like a little intro to a play.

Example :

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge Prince Hamlet exacts on his uncle Claudius for murdering King Hamlet.

Klear - Hamlet, son of the former King, and nephew of the current King
Sylith - Claudius, King of Denmark, and Hamlet's uncle
Esther - Polonius, Lord Chamberlain

Except, y'know, for The Lesser of Two Heresies.

5
Play-By-Forum / Re: Wasteland Mechanic Ideas
« on: August 28, 2012, 09:55 »
I'm not trying to discourage you; homebrew and mechanics are one of my most frequently indulged in hobbies. I love getting into the nitty gritty and figuring out averages, what works best, etc.

I just caution against trying to start a game and inviting players in when you don't have the mechanics ready yet!

Usually you build the mechanics and "acid test" them; this is rolling them out yourself to make sure they work and make sense. Doing some mock combat examples, skill checks, etc, by yourself. Then you do a playtest with some people to work out the kinks, then you layer your story and background on top, and then you open chargen to potential players.

It's a lot of work, which is why I'll usually just crib someone else's system if doing a PBF, instead of a new engine each time.

Lesser of Two Heresies, for example, is run off of a modified version of the Dark Heresy table-top game's mechanics; they didn't need to invent a plausible method of resolution for combat and skills because one already existed.

As it stands, your system most closely resembles the Open SRD for d20, so don't stress yourself out trying to re-invent the wheel! You might want to take a look at it :

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/msrd

They already have mechanics for Modern and Future as well. I willl say that d20 is good at being easy to learn and pick up, but the resolutions can be a little wonky in terms of "stability"; for a lot of prior and current gamers, d20 was the first engine they learned (unless they're old school and started out on 1e or 2e, or possibly Traveller), but not the one they stuck with. Tabletop RPGs are a lot like programming languages apparently; once you learn one, it's easier to understand the other ones!

6
Discussion / Re: Original IP roguelike for the Chaosforge?
« on: August 28, 2012, 09:26 »
Well, at the very least it looks like the average RL-player has had their fill of medieval fantasy from the rest of the RL community!

Sci fi with a small but early lead is a little surprising, but awesome.

7
Discussion / Re: Optimization, the Wiki, and more!
« on: August 28, 2012, 09:24 »
I'll do Weak/Strong pistol testing in main and off hands next before I move on!

8
Play-By-Forum / Re: Wasteland Mechanic Ideas
« on: August 28, 2012, 09:20 »
I think what people are trying to get at are what kind of guidelines and limitations do these mechanics follow.

For example. If I put 10 points into Medical Training, what exactly does this correlate to in-game? Do I get a +10 bonus on my roll, ie, roll 1d20, add 10 to my result? Do I get a +1 for every 2 points in a skill? Do you need to beat a certain "score" when rolling to achieve success, or is it against an opposed roll?

Can I just put 50 points into Medical Training and become Blackjack and House rolled into one? Is there a hard cap? etc.

It's all well and good to make mechanics, because it helps future homebrew, but no one knows exactly how things are interacting yet.

We have 50 points for 5 Skills, and we have Strength, Vitality, Intelligence and Dexterity, but how are those determined? Do we spend part of the 50 points on the stats too?

You did state that the more points you put into something, the more expensive it becomes to use, which I take to mean that each additional "level" of said skill or stat costs more points than the one that came before it, which makes sense too, however there is a clear point where the extra cost is not worth the +1 gain, and it would be fairly easy to determine an optimal build.

No one is trying to bust your chops or anything, but I believe Silhar was looking for more concrete mathematical answers to his questions instead of abstracts. It is my personal experience that play by post games work a lot better with very rules light systems / point based resolution or something like Amber Diceless. It is entirely possible to do a mechanically full bodied campaign but it is very, very slow and will take a long time, especially if confirming dice rolls, and having players roll, wait to find out if they succeeded or not, and then post their success or failure accordingly.

Just my two cents!

9
Requests For Features / Re: New unique items
« on: August 24, 2012, 13:36 »
Id like to see a Flamethrower

You should try AliensRL!

10
Discussion / Re: Original IP roguelike for the Chaosforge?
« on: August 24, 2012, 10:01 »
Although Lovecraft will likely be protected by an SEIP field as well, this background will probably not be eligible either, but it gives a good idea of what flavour I'd be looking for.

Actually, this is a little bit weird. All of Lovecraft's works are old enough that they're open domain, which means you can legally use them to do whatever you want. The problem however lies from the fact that Lovecraft himself borrowed liberally from fellow authors, several of which whom still have their works copyrighted and trademarked.

The same applies to licensing for specific names; "Call of Cthulhu" is trademarked by Chaosium, for example. August Derleth is an author who took the reins after Lovecraft died and he injected the series with a lot of stuff people commonly assume was Lovecraft, like Hastur, which would also be off limits. Basically, anything Lovecraft vaguely eluded to in his stories is fine, but when you get down to the official naming and additions later on, it's a no-no. Many Lovecraft fans are familiar with dimensional shamblers or byakhee but Lovecraft never actually named these creatures; that was Derleth/Chaosium/etc., so using those names is forbidden but not the descriptions/what they are.

You could do a Lovecraftian RL, but you would need to navigate through what is okay and what is not okay to use first, which is somewhat of a headache. I could likely produce a list of "safe to use" Lovecraft mythos if given enough incentive (ie at gunpoint).

I'm still hoping for a Roadside Picnic themed game, but that's and IP as well, probably.

Roadside Picnic itself is indeed protected as IP. STALKER however, was created without any licensing or funding paid to the creators, because it is a bit sticky as to how much it "heavily borrowed" in terms of themes, as opposed to directly referencing/using names/characters/etc.

You can't exactly copyright the idea of a dimensional rift/magnetic field that causes weird crap to happen, so they were able to get away with it.

11
Discussion / Original IP roguelike for the Chaosforge?
« on: August 24, 2012, 08:16 »
I was on the IRC server, and a few people were talking about IPs and the Chaosforge. For anyone that may not know, IP is short for Intellectual Property; it's more commonly known in the video game/movie/etc business as a franchise.

Doom, for example, is the IP of id software, which spans Doom books, movies, etc. To date, all of the publicly released Chaosforge games (as far as I know) are based on existing IPs; Doom, Berserk, Aliens, Diablo. All of these games are indeed awesome and a lot of fun, but as a result of being based off of other peoples' IPs, it limits the Chaosforge on their marketability.

I am not a member of the Chaosforge, nor do I work for them or represent them in any capacity, informal or formal. I am just a fan and player of these games. However, I wanted to poll to see what kind of interest the forum community had in an original IP, even just the idea.

If the Chaosforge made their own IP (in essence, a roguelike game that was not based off an existing franchise/license), then they would be eligible to get additional funding from Kickstarter (not that everyone isn't awesome for donating or pitching in, but more funding sources = more possibility). And, even though this is continuing on the same "what if/theoretical tangent", once completed, a game that was wholly the product of the Chaosforge would be eligible to be sold on something like Steam and actually generate revenue for the Chaosforge. As I said, I am not a member, I have no idea if they have any intention to branch out into being a business, or if the whole point of the Chaosforge is merely producing some of the best fan-based games known to man. There's no mission statement of any sort I could find.

If you're still with me, thank you for reading all of that, and that brings us to the poll I've made. If the Chaosforge was going to take a stab at making a roguelike of their own IP, what would you like to see? Or, if you don't like that idea at all, that's also an option on the poll. I apologize if there's been a similar topic in the past or some discussion of the same nature; I wasn't able to see anything laid out as point blank as this and I was curious.

Thanks.

12
Discussion / Re: Reasons for text-mode interface
« on: August 23, 2012, 13:03 »
Maybe I'm the odd man out, but I don't know exactly what you mean.

Raw text mode is like running a roguelike from the bare code?

I understand that running it "pseudo-console" means it'll still look the same as playing it with only ASCII characters (ie classic style), and that graphical tilesets are "console mode" but what is the real difference?

Does running things open in raw text mean people can monkey with stuff or it crashes more or what?

As a gamer, I admittedly know little about the programming side of things, other than what I am forced to in order to install/get a game running/use other people's mods (which DoomRL has made easy).

Frankly, if I came across a roguelike and I can launch an .exe and play it, I don't feel like I've lost out on anything. I really only ever used TelNet for MUCKs/MUDs, I doubt I would for a roguelike.

I may be wrong, but I think the only reason people use TelNet with Nethack is so that anyone playing on the same server automatically shares bones files to have their dead adventurer's corpse/angry ghost show up in your game.

Rather than why it is an issue for us on the player side, what is the advantage for you to make all future releases console-only? I'm curious now!

13
Nightmare! / Re: [N!|93%|YAVP] Elite diamond
« on: August 23, 2012, 07:03 »
Quote
He played for 10 hours, 54 minutes and 49 seconds.

My body is not ready for such intense concentrations of DoomRL in one sitting. 

14
Discussion / Re: Optimization, the Wiki, and more!
« on: August 21, 2012, 13:56 »
This. Also I like to be able to utilize more ammo types for some reason.

I do not. Hahaha. That's one of my biggest problems mid to end game; an inventory full of shotgun shells, 10 mm ammo, power cells, and rockets. They take up too much room and I start weighing what needs to be dropped or not when I start finding mods, medkits, etc.

It's my own fault for being a pack rat.


15
Discussion / Re: Optimization, the Wiki, and more!
« on: August 21, 2012, 07:57 »
Oh, no worries. I'll have everything ready just in time to have to change it all when DoomRL updates versions, hahaha.

...without sharpshooter, knockback becomes less of an issue.

What do you mean? Like if the storm bolter damage wasn't maxed by Sharpshooter, it wouldn't be causing as much knockback? That's likely true, I just assumed Ss was the best place to try a storm bolter because you only need one maxed gun. It may be viable in a dualgunner build but you're gonna need a lot of mods to get two storm bolters! (Technically you don't need two but the OCD would kill me!)

I'll definitely add it on the list.

Speedloader pistol is currently next though. Also energy pistol testing. I rarely see people making energy pistols in their mortems; whether this is because power cells aren't as readily available, or if the ignoring half armor offered by energy shots simply isn't enough to outweigh the effects of getting 5 mods instead of an assembly + 1 mod.


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