A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[tkdguy]

I have seen luck dice in play watching a few solo games on YouTube, mainly for avoiding death or adding damage to a strike. I may use it in my solo games, but I'm not totally sold on it. I definitely could have used that idea a few decades ago. My solution was to use a "three strikes, you're out" rule. A character in my games could escape death or permanent injury twice, but the third instance stuck. 

 

On a different note, there are a couple of gaming-related things I need to do while I have the time, in no particular order:

 

* Take stock of my resources. I have a lot of maps, modules, supplies, etc. I bought a lot of them and crafted a few more. I haven't even used some of the stuff. I need to look at what I already have so I don't end up buying stuff I don't actually need.

 

* Finish my projects. I have a bunch of ideas, but I haven't had much motivation in completing my projects. My workspace is a mess, and I've got too much junk lying about. Time to finish what I've started and clean up a bit.

[Rich McGee]

If you ever accomplish even one of those goals you're doing better than I am.   

[Ninja-Bear]

9 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

If you ever accomplish even one of those goals you're doing better than I am.   

Me too!

[Ninja-Bear]

Hey a quick Battletech question. I’ve checked my old Rulebook and you only assign critical space to a Heat Sink if you have more than the 10 free ones. Now with the Introductory rule you have a formula to determine how many are free critical space wise and how many you need to assign. So you could still have 10 free at no cost but have to assign 4 on the sheet. Does anyone happen to know when this rule was changed? I like it btw, just wondering when it got changed or we did it wrong all those years ago.

[Rich McGee]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I like it btw, just wondering when it got changed or we did it wrong all those years ago.

I'm not sure exactly when it was changed, but it's been quite a while - over a decade, at a rough guess.  Probably a post-FASA change but I won't swear to it.  The early editions gave every engine regardless of rating the ability "hide" all 10 weight-free sinks in the engine so they didn't take up crit slots, but now anything above or below a 250 rating can fit more  (up to 12 for 300-rating engine) or less, although even with a huge engine you have to pay the weight cost for sinks beyond ten.  Which is a little convoluted, but not terribly so by BT standards. 

 

So you were doing it right once upon a time, and then the rules changed.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Rich McGee Battletech puts the fiction in science fiction. But it’s all good. The thing is we have some of the old Records sheets but technically they’ve incorrect. 

[Rich McGee]

They won't be hugely wrong.  Mechs with 275 or 300 rated engines will gain a free crit slot or two as long as they have at least 11 or 12 sinks, and mechs with engines below 250 will have a crit slot eaten up for every 25 engine rating below 250.  Has the most impact on light mechs, especially slow ones, but they rarely struggle with not having enough crit slots for their weapons, and you'll never lose more than the "base ten" slots (and only lose all ten if you your engine rating is below 25 - less than even a Flea or Urbie).  On the table the main impact will be lights tending to lose heat sinks to crits and limb/torso destruction where they didn't before, so they won't have all ten weight free sinks lingering till the end all the time.  That can make a big difference on some builds, but by the time you're losing limbs or side torsos on a light you aren't long for the world anyway.

 

The BT franchise's record sheet tax is something I've pointedly ignored for its entire existence, and I will never pay to have someone tell me where to distribute my heat sinks.  That sort of thing should have been in the TROs, not in a separate cash-grab product.  That's as sleazy as day one DLC in a PC game in my book.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Rich McGee, I don’t know how much of a tax grab it is. I think it is a major oversight that the TRO:3039 didn’t mention of adding in Heat Sinks. I only caught the rule when I went over the Construction Rules in the Introductory box set. Now the sheets that came with the box set has them filled in already. It’s not a big deal but someone dropped the ball. And I wonder because the TRO: 3039 has all the old records before the rule was changed that they didn’t want to change the sheets to save on production? They still should’ve noted it in the TRO.

[Rich McGee]

My general complaint is that the TROs tell you where the weapons are officially slotted, there was no reason they couldn't have done the same for the heat sinks.  Been like that forever, and for real sticklers it makes the record sheets almost a must-buy.  That might have been reasonable back in the old days with limited home printing and minimal-to-no online community or software, but these days selling record sheets separately feels like a tax, even with all the variants.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Rich McGee, yup I agree the newest TRO should have Heat Sinks slotted. I think it’s bad that they didn’t even mention it in the newest TRO that they might have to be accounted for. I’m sure that someone must’ve looked at the Commando and asked why are his Heat Sinks listed on the record sheet but not in the description. Perhaps I missed it earlier in the intro rulebook but I only caught it the Construction Rules and also Fan made Record sheet Programs. Well at least my friends aren’t that much of sticklers that it won’t matter.

[Cygnia]

[Rich McGee]

Wish more people remembered that.  No wrong way to paint miniatures as long as you enjoy yourself doing it - which made doing commission work kind of a poor choice for me in the long run.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Rich McGee

[Ninja-Bear]

Doing a bit of a dive on Battletech. I’m just realizing the bigger impact that lawsuit on images had on Battletech besides just calling them the Unseen. 

[Rich McGee]

The whole legal situation with Harmony Gold and the Battletech IP is a convoluted mess, especially when you move beyond the tabletop games and onto the more lucrative PC and console games.  It's a deep rabbit hole when you start really getting into it, with a lot of dubious claims from some very shady people.  FASA's founders are probably still regretting the decision to license art for Battledroids rather than pay for original work to this day, but that Warhammer sure did make for a striking cover.

[Cygnia]

 

[Rich McGee]

Good advice from Seth as usual. 

 

Although in defense of people who struggle to preplan their turn, when things go wrong and a plan derails, six seconds can be a little too much time pressure to compensate in game systems where the mechanical part of resolving actions is very quick and doesn't give you as much time adjust plans on other folks' turns.  It might be narratively satisfying as a moment of impulsive panic once in a while, but if it happens too often it'll shift to feeling like missed opportunities to save the day just because you were rushed pretty quickly.  Also runs the risk of snowballing a minor disaster into a major one as something goes wrong, your hasty response makes it worse and leaves less time for the next PC to think, then they fail to adjust in turn, etc.  

[Ninja-Bear]

Hot take coming in. Anyone else seen this that “Min-Maxers aren’t so bad”? Now I agree that being a Min-maxer doesn’t automatically make you a bad roleplayer. I just think that though most min-maxers I’ve come across aren’t worried about roleplaying.

[Rich McGee]

6 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I just think that though most min-maxers I’ve come across aren’t worried about roleplaying.

I'm not sure I'd go as far as "most" but I'll give you "many" based on my experiences. 

 

On the flip side, I've seen a fair number of people who throw together characters who are just plain burdens on their fellow PCs in many circumstances (eg can't survive a fight, or can't deal with any but the narrowest social situations, or are otherwise totally lacking some capability the game engine/setting expect some competence in) and do so in the name of it making for interesting roleplaying.  It might be interesting for them, but unless at least some of the other players are okay with being crutches for them it's pretty inconsiderate.  You certainly can have a good time with it - look at Runequest Glorantha, where having a truly pacifist Chalana Arroy worshipper in the group often works out fine because they're rarely just pure healers - but it requires some group buy-in that you don't always see from...whatever the opposite of a mini-maxer is.  It's at least as Not Okay as a mini-maxed combat machine who refuses to engage with anything else but fighting is without that.

[Cygnia]

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

I'm not sure I'd go as far as "most" but I'll give you "many" based on my experiences. 

 

On the flip side, I've seen a fair number of people who throw together characters who are just plain burdens on their fellow PCs in many circumstances (eg can't survive a fight, or can't deal with any but the narrowest social situations, or are otherwise totally lacking some capability the game engine/setting expect some competence in) and do so in the name of it making for interesting roleplaying.  It might be interesting for them, but unless at least some of the other players are okay with being crutches for them it's pretty inconsiderate.  You certainly can have a good time with it - look at Runequest Glorantha, where having a truly pacifist Chalana Arroy worshipper in the group often works out fine because they're rarely just pure healers - but it requires some group buy-in that you don't always see from...whatever the opposite of a mini-maxer is.  It's at least as Not Okay as a mini-maxed combat machine who refuses to engage with anything else but fighting is without that.

 

I tend to minmax my characters for durability and versatility, because being useless in a situation is no fun, and being unconscious or dead is usually pretty useless.  Of course when I did this in Shadowrun I kind of overdid it and wound up with a character who was so impervious to damage it encouraged some relatively ridiculous interactions...

[Rich McGee]

29 minutes ago, Old Man said:

I tend to minmax my characters for durability and versatility, because being useless in a situation is no fun, and being unconscious or dead is usually pretty useless.

Sure, minmaxed or not you're not going to be doing any roleplaying when you're dead or KO'd - well, barring a game of Wraith or something.  Being useless is bad if it happens too often, but having gaps in your competencies that come up sometimes is fine.  Lot of good stories can come out of finding a way to shift a situation from one you can't deal with to one you can, especially if it involves more that just sudden violence.

[Dr.Device]

I tend to min-max the combat/actual-game-play part of my characters so that they can have whatever off-the-wall or irrelevant  abilities/traits [1]  I want, but still be viable. For example, I like playing smart characters. In most of the Hero  games I've played in, a high Int is not worth as much as the sam points spent in strength or dex. I also like to play attractive characters, is I'll tend to pay those points, but I've never used any mechanical benefits from that in the game. Then there are the skills that will never be game-relevant that I need to buy to match my concept. So, then, when I get to the game relevant stuff, I do my best to squeeze the remaining points to get a character who can actually be an asset to the team.

[1] Take Emily. She has autokinesis, which means, logically as I envision her, she effectively has prehensile hair. So I pay for the extra limb, despite the fact that she keeps her hair shoulder length and it never, in the years of playing, came up except for her lowering her sunglasses to glare at someone while her hands were full.

[Rich McGee]

1 hour ago, Dr.Device said:

[1] Take Emily. She has autokinesis, which means, logically as I envision her, she effectively has prehensile hair. So I pay for the extra limb, despite the fact that she keeps her hair shoulder length and it never, in the years of playing, came up except for her lowering her sunglasses to glare at someone while her hands were full.

What, you never got grappled and used your hair to poke 'em in the eye - or steal their glasses/goggles/rebreather mask/earbuds?    Getting a mouthful of squirming hair would probably make most folks let go out of sheer surprise too, even if it's kind of gross for everyone involved.

 

Corner case abilities are good for surprises.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Rich McGee, I have created many a burdensome character because I went by Hero Benchmarks. 😂 If Speed 4 is top human then I should only take 4. This was in a Dark Champions game where everyone else had Speed 5 and that’s acceptable on that game. So I learned about the “character tax” where sometimes you buy things up higher than you are “supposed” to.  To be like what Old Man said, playable. Btw I got to play in a 600 pt ish game once and yeah I felt bored. I want to be competent but I don’t need to be Silver Age powerful either.

[Duke Bushido]

19 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Hot take coming in. Anyone else seen this that “Min-Maxers aren’t so bad”? Now I agree that being a Min-maxer doesn’t automatically make you a bad roleplayer. I just think that though most min-maxers I’ve come across aren’t worried about roleplaying.

 

12 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

I'm not sure I'd go as far as "most" but I'll give you "many" based on my experiences. 

 

 

I am willing to accept Ninja-Bear's claims for several reasons, most significantly being that historically, he's not given to flights of fantasy, and because he includes the very valid disclaimer "in my own experience."

 

It certainly doesn't hurt that his experiences with min-maxers mirrors my own. 

 

now I have no misunderstandings that these are the guys who prefer the tactical side of the game; it's just not my favorite part of them game.

 

and I also admit that to some degree, we have all bumped up "efficiency effectiveness" here and there even if it was only because we to shave points to buy "just one other thing."