Spore
2018-10-21, 02:33 AM
We still play Degenesis, a kind of art project that evolved into a fully fledged RPG that sometimes infuses great gameplay, and sometimes plays like someone built your jeep out of cardboard because a full on human collision wrecks it but let's the human not die just fall over and be really grumpy. It is a - WoD style - dice pool system using d6 (4-6 is a success, DCs are measured in needed successes, easy difficulty for something trained is 2)
I have talked about it in this:
So I drove our party's pick-up over a slaver and now we are captured... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511233-Post-Apo-So-I-drove-our-party-s-pick-up-over-a-slaver-and-now-we-are-captured)
Playing a big brute - how to make him stand out? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545931-Playing-a-big-brute-how-to-make-him-stand-out)
Semi-realistic post-apocalyptic body-building (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?555357-Semi-realistic-post-apocalyptic-body-building)
The DM and his wife decided to switch places in our new group that we do via discord. We get a lot of ruined audio - and some people insist on video chat which strains the connection even more, so we have to work out the technicalities. I like the group but now comes the kicker. While I like the DM I don't like parts of her style. She likes survival RP, which is great in post apocalypse. But are a few things that make this system woefully unchallenging.
1) More than half of our checks are perception so almost everyone has pumped it, allowing us basically to pinpoint deer from three miles away. The only thing challenging is a decently stealthy NPC (who has nicked a few items at night already).
While it is true that attention is key, for hunting traps, mutated wolf ambushes or finding food, it is tiresome to roll perception all of the time.
2) She currently has no idea how to adapt combat to our strength. It is honestly a cakewalk. I have a big bad bruiser that I planned so I can stack armor (basically damage reduction) so the umpteenth wolf ambush does nothing to my health. She needs to step up her game for that, and we obviously don't engage in fights we don't have the upper hand in. My character has dumped intelligence (and charisma) and even HE knows not to pick a fight.
We have three combat ready characters, my tanky bruiser, a sniper with a high tech rifle, and a doctor with combat toxins and chemicals.
3) Character challenges: On the flip side, we have our tech gal, who is woefully underequipped for combat and refuses to use lethal options. She runs around with a net (that she can throw about 5 feet but she is terrible at melee, or even dodging, defending or armor since she is too weak to effectively wear armor).
We have a doc and his hired mercenary who have a blast actually wandering around, collecting tissue samples and whatnot. But the other three characters are rather singularly interested.
The male prostitute was forced by her boss to collect electrical equipment (basically the player made a character for city RP and we got a wilderness campaign). He is good with locks and decent with a gun but that is about it. There is no ingame reason why he should hang around (other than the tacked on love interest that comes from scrapper girl).
Scrapper girl lives for the building stuff part. She doesn't care so much for rifling through the rubble of destroyed civilisations to actually get the material for her stuff. She's the second character unsuitable for wilderness RP.
And then there's my character, the bruiser. While I AM fine with wilderness RP, where my low charisma and intelligence does not matter as much, I basically built him to be a combat beast and have almost nothing to do out of combat.
So it's not just the DM that has to rethink imho.
3) When the plot slows down or the DM is out of ideas, she pads our play time with unnecessary skill checks. "Survival this, perception that." mostly picking her encounters from a table, she has a very simulationist approach, rather than trying to tell a story. Don't get me wrong, I often say "scene transition" rather than "can we move on" because I feel the other campaign feels very scripted a lot of times and I enjoy the randomness. But you cannot roll for interesting stories.
4) While she appreciates constructive criticism, she is also easily burned out on stuff. She quickly gets a headache from seemingly minor things. She has had burnout quite a few times during her professional career, so I don't want to strain her with a slog of critique, but it has to improve because for every 15 minutes of fun the campaign provides there are 2-3 hours of utter boredom.
You got any ideas?
I have talked about it in this:
So I drove our party's pick-up over a slaver and now we are captured... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511233-Post-Apo-So-I-drove-our-party-s-pick-up-over-a-slaver-and-now-we-are-captured)
Playing a big brute - how to make him stand out? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545931-Playing-a-big-brute-how-to-make-him-stand-out)
Semi-realistic post-apocalyptic body-building (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?555357-Semi-realistic-post-apocalyptic-body-building)
The DM and his wife decided to switch places in our new group that we do via discord. We get a lot of ruined audio - and some people insist on video chat which strains the connection even more, so we have to work out the technicalities. I like the group but now comes the kicker. While I like the DM I don't like parts of her style. She likes survival RP, which is great in post apocalypse. But are a few things that make this system woefully unchallenging.
1) More than half of our checks are perception so almost everyone has pumped it, allowing us basically to pinpoint deer from three miles away. The only thing challenging is a decently stealthy NPC (who has nicked a few items at night already).
While it is true that attention is key, for hunting traps, mutated wolf ambushes or finding food, it is tiresome to roll perception all of the time.
2) She currently has no idea how to adapt combat to our strength. It is honestly a cakewalk. I have a big bad bruiser that I planned so I can stack armor (basically damage reduction) so the umpteenth wolf ambush does nothing to my health. She needs to step up her game for that, and we obviously don't engage in fights we don't have the upper hand in. My character has dumped intelligence (and charisma) and even HE knows not to pick a fight.
We have three combat ready characters, my tanky bruiser, a sniper with a high tech rifle, and a doctor with combat toxins and chemicals.
3) Character challenges: On the flip side, we have our tech gal, who is woefully underequipped for combat and refuses to use lethal options. She runs around with a net (that she can throw about 5 feet but she is terrible at melee, or even dodging, defending or armor since she is too weak to effectively wear armor).
We have a doc and his hired mercenary who have a blast actually wandering around, collecting tissue samples and whatnot. But the other three characters are rather singularly interested.
The male prostitute was forced by her boss to collect electrical equipment (basically the player made a character for city RP and we got a wilderness campaign). He is good with locks and decent with a gun but that is about it. There is no ingame reason why he should hang around (other than the tacked on love interest that comes from scrapper girl).
Scrapper girl lives for the building stuff part. She doesn't care so much for rifling through the rubble of destroyed civilisations to actually get the material for her stuff. She's the second character unsuitable for wilderness RP.
And then there's my character, the bruiser. While I AM fine with wilderness RP, where my low charisma and intelligence does not matter as much, I basically built him to be a combat beast and have almost nothing to do out of combat.
So it's not just the DM that has to rethink imho.
3) When the plot slows down or the DM is out of ideas, she pads our play time with unnecessary skill checks. "Survival this, perception that." mostly picking her encounters from a table, she has a very simulationist approach, rather than trying to tell a story. Don't get me wrong, I often say "scene transition" rather than "can we move on" because I feel the other campaign feels very scripted a lot of times and I enjoy the randomness. But you cannot roll for interesting stories.
4) While she appreciates constructive criticism, she is also easily burned out on stuff. She quickly gets a headache from seemingly minor things. She has had burnout quite a few times during her professional career, so I don't want to strain her with a slog of critique, but it has to improve because for every 15 minutes of fun the campaign provides there are 2-3 hours of utter boredom.
You got any ideas?