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Post by WildKnight on Mar 21, 2012 9:10:06 GMT -5
I'm looking forward to Civil War, and my players will almost certainly make me run Age of Apocalypse.
Anihilation I think I can get away with skipping, thankfully.
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Post by kito on Mar 21, 2012 9:39:59 GMT -5
ill probably just get them all even if i dont run them imedaetly i might alws need them for a differnt group and extra cads and rulz are never a bad thing.
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Post by WildKnight on Mar 21, 2012 10:15:44 GMT -5
I suppose if you have infinite funds to throw at RPGs, that's a fine way to go.
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Post by roxolid on Mar 21, 2012 12:59:45 GMT -5
The PDF price point is absolutely spot on. Whatever other Issues I have with the game (the main one being play by post difficulties/obstacles) I have no problems with the PDF price. Another nod for MWP, assuming the price for the other books is the same as the 'not in any way core book even though it has all the rules you need'. I've seen some crazily priced PDFs recently (the Hackmaster bestiary book at $40 or whatever it was - for the PDF - springs to mind. If it opened to the sound of angels singing and projected in 3D from the screen it still wouldn't be worth 40 bucks)
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Post by WildKnight on Mar 21, 2012 13:22:11 GMT -5
I'm not talking about price points. Whether something is "a value" is up to the individual consumer to decide.
Some of us have very limited budgets, period, and any money spent on luxury items has to be very carefully weighed. So while the price may be "fair" (I hate that word), that doesn't mean I can afford to buy something I don't necessarily want all that much.
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Post by roxolid on Mar 21, 2012 14:38:30 GMT -5
I agree with the points you make - as a married man with kids I have a fraction of the spare cash I did 10 years ago, so most of my purchases are through ebay/second hand these days for gaming stuff, computer games, gadgets etc. I just think the pricing is fair for a PDF of a licensed product, and the printed book seems reasonable value as well (or at least it would if it ever turned up. They must be shipping them from Mars...) Ultimately, value is decided by the cost you paid and the amount of use/enjoyment you get from it, and so I suppose at the moment, it's 'low value' from that perspective for me. Until I fully digest the rules, house rule them to make it work online, play them, I've essentially paid for nothing, bytes on a hard drive. If funds are limited, the Legend (Runequest 2 without Ducks or Glorantha, thankfully) PDF is also what I'd term as good value for a PDF. It's $1 at the moment on DrivethruRpg. I haven't read it yet but for what, 69p or whatever it works out at, it was a no brainer ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png)
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Post by Kaimontfendo on Mar 21, 2012 21:03:32 GMT -5
Any book with the Operations Manual included in it (beginning with the Basic Game) has all the rules you need to play. We abandoned the idea of a core book in order to provide a way for folks to pick up a single Event Book (the Premium version includes the OM) and have all the rules they need to run it. So there are gonna be "Premium" and "Regular" editions of every event book? On one hand, I like the idea of finding say, a Secret Wars book, buying it, and having all the rules I need right there. (I certainly hate the thought of buying a role-playing book, opening it up and finding those annoying words "Core Rulebook Required." That's happened to a friend of mine before.) But it still seems unnecessary and wasteful. I'm wondering how many of those premium event books are gonna sit on shelves because a bunch of gamers already got the Operations Manual with something else, and wanted to save a few bucks by not buying it again. On the other hand, I suppose there will always be people new to the system, ready to pick up a set with all the rules they'll need.Wow, that's quite a list. (Here I had been worried that I'd only find 8 heroes or something.) And that's just the good guys. I think I counted 32 villains earlier in the thread, so that's actually MORE characters than the ol' MURPG Core Book. Nice. Quite a good selection, even if it doesn't have all the big names I'd usually hope to see. Complaint withdrawn. I think I'll be picking this up once I get paid in about a week.Thank you Cam, that was quite informative. Although, I'm still wondering: why start the series with The Breakout? Marvel's had several big crossover-type stories throughout its history. Why not start with Civil War, Age of Apocalypse, or Secret Wars?
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Post by cambanks on Mar 21, 2012 22:36:27 GMT -5
Breakout is one of my favorite story arcs, I am a huge Bendis fan, and it's the perfect "let's form a new team" kicker. Civil War is too huge for an entry book, Secret Wars is frankly too old (and if we do SW, it's going to be tricky since the art's not digital), and Apocalypse is an alternate history. Those are all good for big Event projects. I wanted something immediate, iconic, with plenty of cool heroes and villains and a lot of D-listers to have fun with. Plus, many fans of the Avengers cartoon recognize the story. It's a win-win.
Cheers, Cam
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Post by roxolid on Mar 22, 2012 15:23:26 GMT -5
Any plans to do the Ultimate universe, or is it all 616? That said, the Ultimatum event more or less killed my interest in that universe (along with most of the characters).
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Post by Jet on Mar 23, 2012 15:20:40 GMT -5
Im running a test drive tommorow and my players insist on creating their own characters. I tried times and again to explain that I'd rather use the pre-made ones and concentrate on actually PLAYING the game instead of taking few hours figuring out a system that doesnt support "proper" character creation (as in- have some rules other then "take whatever you want"), but nooo, goddamn roleplayers. Rant over.
So, any tips for character creation? I have the most problem with Distinctions, Milestones and custom powers: 1. What can I do to limit players being wiseasses and instead of proper distinctions write something like "beating bad guys" or "true superhero", as in being able to use them in pretty much any situation, thus limiting their creative minds? (aside from saying "no" and wasting time arguing) 2. The same about Milestones- what to do with people who chose milestones like "stay with the team" or "fight the bad guys", being too generic to actually be a challange? (aside from changing the story in spite of them) 3. Custom powers are by far the hardest to harness. One player asked for "Time Manipulation" and while I dont like the idea of that power in any game period, what about other powers that arent about adding dice? Like Copying Superpowers, Magic in general or luck (that isnt about jusr re-rolls).
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Post by WildKnight on Mar 23, 2012 15:23:55 GMT -5
Mimicing powers and Magic are both covered in the book in the Power Sets section.
Basically, there is nothing in this game that doesn't ultimately come down to letting you roll more dice in a specific situation. For instance, there's no real difference between Dr. Strange encasing someone in magical energy, Iceman freezing them in a block of ice, and Colossus knocking them into another zip code... All of those things are represented by Complications that you put on the opponent.
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Post by cambanks on Mar 25, 2012 14:51:52 GMT -5
If they want to make their own characters, tell them to choose Distinctions and Milestones from the book. Same goes for power traits; have them choose the ones from the book. There are plenty of excellent options in there, they don't have to give you grief.
Cheers, Cam
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Post by WildKnight on Mar 25, 2012 15:02:36 GMT -5
they don't have to give you grief. But being players, they definitely will.
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Post by Jet on Mar 25, 2012 18:07:07 GMT -5
And they did. I had three players, two of which belong to my regular Wolsung/Scion group (if you dont know Wolsung- I highly recommend it, even if I dont like steampunk in general) and we all managed to make all characters in two hours, although it would've been faster if it wasnt in a club with plenty of people bothering us once in a while. Players and their character, along with problems I encountered:
1. Obsidian- a girl with power that is something between a symbiote and the Thing, covering herself in organic armor and being able to shapeshift it into simple creations. Power wasnt really a problem, since everything was out there to rip off from others. The problem were distinctions and Milestones, dear lord. I blame that on my player- even though he already used that character back when I ran MURPG, he STILL didnt know anything about her personality or story. It was one of the most painful to create and play with, mostly becouse her distinctions were kinda like "I dont give a damn" type of a character. Yeah, love having characters who dont give a crap about my game. Also, choosing SFX consisted of this: 1. Checking similiar heroes. 2. Looking at the list. 3. Complaining that this system is easily broken. 4. Complaining that some SFX are way too good for what they do. 5. Complaining some more. And for some reason, he's one of the better people I hang out with.
2. Guardian Angel- normally Angel, but I named him differently to avoid confusion. Amnesiac paragon type of hero whose one and only mission is keeping one woman safe. That woman happens to work for Daily Bugle, so I had a damn good plot hook for any story I could come up with. As for powers, we just copied Sentry, right down to SFX, but changed limit to "Power set weaker by one when he's not protecting Jane". Worked well, mostly becouse Jane was always nearby when they fought. The only problem was with Distinctions, as there's only so much he can write about protecting one person, but we managed somehow.
3. Drone- player I knew for shorter while, but he's a pretty cool guy, his biggest flaw was being a little too big of a fan of Robotica, one of the most infamous RPG's in Poland (but hey, Im a big MURPG fan, so we get along just fine). His character was, to put it mildly, an android based somewhat on terminator, minus "kill all humans" plus internal weapons. He was the first one to make a character and we had some problems as there wasnt a single android in the Basic Game, so most stats were ripped of Iron Man, but with less raw strenght, but more agiliy and speed. For a character that was a satire of a polish RPG webpage, it was the most sensible and thought-out character, whose only flaw was not fitting in the setting (he literally jumped here from Robotica setting via interdimensional portal).
The problems that all players encountered (aside from not having a single thing limiting them, aside from me): -thinking out distinctions, some of them changing them even in-game. Not becouse they couldnt decide, but becouse they didnt get the idea what exactly a distinction is supposed to be like. Once they started actually rolling dice, they figured it out -Milestones. Oh boy, were we in a pickle. We looked over all characters, compared noted and finally after series of arguments, I decided that they should just pick ONE milestone, and the other they'll get from the scenario itself. Once again, Obsidian turned out to be such an aimless character, he couldnt think of anything that made sense. Guardian Angel took "Protecting Jane" and Drone took "Finding a way home" (1XP for learning something new about dimensions, 3XP for taking a step in the right direction, 10XP for either getting back or deciding to stay when he had the chance to escape). -SFX- mostly becouse they had no idea what they were supposed to represent, aside from the obvious ones like Area Effect, Rerolls or Unleashed. Maybe its becouse they didnt read the entire book and only parts about general mechanics and hero stats, so it could be their fault. Not that I had it any easier. -Limits- this one wasnt all THAT bad, picking them out was easy, but during the game we constantly forgot about them and they ended up not being used at all. Not even when they faced Carnage and SHOULD know his weakness.
That about covers the character creation. I expected something a lot worse, but it ended up working out, somehow. One thing I expect to see in future books is an actual manual, with rules and limitations (not to be confused with Limits). Heck, an optional point-buy system would be cool, even if it was a simple one.
Now for the game itself, I decided to run Breakdown, if only becouse I had no idea how to manage Unlockables/Milestones etc. I read the actual New Avengers first six issues to see how it worked out in comics (gotta admit, it was a pretty good start) and expected everything. More or less, their entry was kinda like this: -Guardian Angel was, once again, protecting Jane as she ventured to Raft in News Helicopter which was struck by lightning and he had to save her and her crew. This was the first roll in the game, and against starting Doom Pool. He got onto the roof and met with Maria Hill and her motley crew. Soon after they were attacked by a mob led by Graviton. -Drone teleported into a powered-of Raft straight from his dimension and had no idea where he was. He found empty cells, Jigsaw and few inmates killing few guards and taking their weapons, whom he talked to but it didnt ammount to anything (they treated him like another inmate, still drugged and useless to them). He later met Sentry in his cell, but having no motivation or knowledge to break him out, he just talked and left. When he was getting near the exit, he was ambushed by Carnage and thrown outside where others were fighting. -Obsidian didnt have any reason to be on the Raft and neither of us could think of anything. But she did get there via chopper and landed next to SHIELD's and Guardian Angel. Soon after, a fight broke out.
The fight itself was rather onesided, but even if I did threw more of them, there wouldnt be any problems becouse I had bad rolls and they barely ever rolled 1's. Long story short, this was the longest scene, took almost two hours, by that time I wanted to throw in another villain, but decided against it (Jigsaw never came back). They had fun with dice, rolling at the same time more then ever and having fun combining them and messing around with PP's. The weakest point was actually the scenario- none of the characters had anything to do with Sentry so they ignored him completely (cant blame them- I hate him myself, but at least I tried to get him involved), once the battle was done none of them was interested in finding Electro or even identifying Karl Lycos, so yeah, there goes the second part.
All in all, it wasnt all that bad. The Breakout event doesnt work on custom made characters, rolling dice was fun, going back and forth between pages to get stats for Graviton and Carnage wasnt fun at all (why are they spread apart so much? And why are Inmates located in the Savage World part of the scenario?), character creation felt a little too open for actual gaming and we never figured out what happens to Watchers opportunity dice. I read about it, but when I actually rolled one, I couldnt find any information anywhere, not even on cheat sheets I printed out for this. So yeah, Im not impressed by what I wanted to be impressed, but at least rolling the dice was fun, even if all we ever did was describing actions that used the biggest and most of them, which is why every single one of Obsidian's roll was about creating a bladed weapon and hitting with it, even though she was originally supposed to be more of a puncher.
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Post by cambanks on Mar 26, 2012 0:05:40 GMT -5
Did you check out the Example of Play we posted at www.margaretweis.com? I also included it in the PDF download package (updated the package in the process). Players may activate a Watcher's opportunity to create push dice, stunts, and resources one step higher than normal. Several SFX also allow power traits to recover when you activate an opportunity. Activating one requires a PP in each case. I'm not sure which inmates you're talking about; the big section of inmates for the Raft is for the escaped prisoners you can use in the first Act. They're not part of the Savage Land arc. Cheers, Cam
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