The Ghost Dog RPG is almost unknown, but an excellent game for a GM and single player.

Quote from: kythri;1090604How does the English translation of The Dark Eye hold up?

I have to preface this with the fact that I am involved with the English translation since about 2 month ago.  What has come out is pretty solid, the Aventurian Almanac has won a Silver ENine for best setting. There are some complaints that there has not been very good errata support for the last year. I can say this will change very fast. There is currently a Kickstarter running for the Magic rules (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ulissesspiele/the-dark-eye-magic-of-aventuria).
There are very few games that can match the quality across rules, supplements and modules.  Funny thing, they also have some Choose-your-Own-Adventure-Style modules for solo play. (Though its only two in english at the moment, one out already, one in the Kickstarter)

I have been trying to promote this since it was released and ran games at GenCon and local conventions. I will run 34h of it at Origins next week, and then again a bunch of games at GenCon.

Interesting.  Was Paizo involved in any way with any part of the import/translation?  The way they were hyping it, it really seemed like more involvement than just being a seller/distributor of the book.

I ask, because some of the fonts look similar - most noticeably, the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and Dark Eye Core Rulebook, the specific font for CORE RULEBOOK.

Quote from: Dan Davenport;1090478Beyond Human is just sitting on George's desk waiting to be edited, and will stay there for the foreseeable future. I don't think RPGs were always a sideline for the Eden guys, but they definitely are now.

Thanks for the info, Dan!

Quote from: kythri;1090696Interesting.  Was Paizo involved in any way with any part of the import/translation?  The way they were hyping it, it really seemed like more involvement than just being a seller/distributor of the book.

They were only the distributor at the beginning. In Germany, Ulisses publishes all the Paizo products in their German Versions though (though they also translate and publish D&D, Battletech, Savageworlds, World of Darkness and some other systems).

Quote from: Vendolis;1090683Funny thing, they also have some Choose-your-Own-Adventure-Style modules for solo play. (Though its only two in english at the moment, one out already, one in the Kickstarter)

I did not know this. Added 'em to my to-buy list.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1090049Absolutely. Love the setting. Never got a chance to play it because every time the subject is broached it becomes a talk about how busted the system is. And I've read the books, it's busted as hell.

Agreed, the Fading Suns setting deserves so much more than the kludgy Victory Point System, which put me off running the game for 17 years.  I finally broke down and converted it to the Barbarians of Lemuria engine.  Not a perfect hack (still a work in progress), but it was wonderful to actually adventure in the setting.

Quote from: nightlamp;1090926Agreed, the Fading Suns setting deserves so much more than the kludgy Victory Point System, which put me off running the game for 17 years.  I finally broke down and converted it to the Barbarians of Lemuria engine.  Not a perfect hack (still a work in progress), but it was wonderful to actually adventure in the setting.

My group tried to hack it with OVA (that's an anime style narrative game for you purity assholes) and it worked for everyone but me.

I want a game where a bullet, laser beam or plasma blast mean different things and different armors react accordingly. But without 600 pages of minutia like how to tread water with nine pages of modifiers thereof.

Genesys comes the closest, but doesn't fully scratch the itch.

Does Fading Suns d20 have any redeeming qualities, over the Victory Point system?

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1090952My group tried to hack it with OVA (that's an anime style narrative game for you purity assholes) and it worked for everyone but me.

I want a game where a bullet, laser beam or plasma blast mean different things and different armors react accordingly. But without 600 pages of minutia like how to tread water with nine pages of modifiers thereof.

Genesys comes the closest, but doesn't fully scratch the itch.

Not familiar with OVA or Genesys.  In my BoL-ish hack, I tried to address the weapon vs. armor issue by using Dungeon World-style "tags" for damage and soak types.  I ended up not really putting it to the test though, since only slug weapons were used in the adventure I ran.

Quote from: kythri;1090958Does Fading Suns d20 have any redeeming qualities, over the Victory Point system?

I never played the D20 version (and heard nothing but bad things about it), but I guess one possibly-redeeming quality is that you could easily reskin D&D monsters as aliens.

Quote from: kythri;1090958Does Fading Suns d20 have any redeeming qualities, over the Victory Point system?

No.  Any Fading Suns book is best seen as fodder for your sci-fi system of choice.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1090952I want a game where a bullet, laser beam or plasma blast mean different things and different armors react accordingly. But without 600 pages of minutia like how to tread water with nine pages of modifiers thereof.

Genesys comes the closest, but doesn't fully scratch the itch.

Wait, how does Genesys have different damage types interact with different armors? I'm familiar with the FFG SW game, and it has almost nothing on this apart from some odd armors that might give an extra point of Soak against Blast weapons or something similar. I own Genesys, but I have never played or run it and have only read over the book lightly. Did I miss something?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1090968Wait, how does Genesys have different damage types interact with different armors? I'm familiar with the FFG SW game, and it has almost nothing on this apart from some odd armors that might give an extra point of Soak against Blast weapons or something similar. I own Genesys, but I have never played or run it and have only read over the book lightly. Did I miss something?

Genesys has weapon tags like Accurate, Pierce, Breach, etc, that determine how weapons behave, and with the exception of accurate how the weapons damage interacts with the targets armor.

So in FS terms, you could have a pistol equivalent of a .45. Eyeball it at dmg 6 (I'd have a 9mm at dmg 5) medium range because it's a pistol and a standard crit requirement of 3. No tags, so armor interacts normally, unless you mod the weapon, which we're not getting into here.

A laser pistol might be dmg 5 for sake of argument, still medium range with the same crit. But give it the Accurate tag so you get bonus dice to hit, and Pierce so it ignores some damage reduction. So in the end it's easier to hit with (and crit possibly due to the extra die) and better dmg.

A Plasma pistol would have higher dmg, likely an 8, a lower crit requirement at 2 or 1 with the same range. Breach means fuck your armor and your toughness, you take all the dmg and Vicious means crits hurt even more.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1090952My group tried to hack it with OVA (that's an anime style narrative game for you purity assholes) and it worked for everyone but me.

I want a game where a bullet, laser beam or plasma blast mean different things and different armors react accordingly. But without 600 pages of minutia like how to tread water with nine pages of modifiers thereof.

Genesys comes the closest, but doesn't fully scratch the itch.

I get why OVA may've not scratched that itch for you, but treating weapons as customized attacks can get pretty close. But yeah, how health and endurance works mitigates that somewhat. Totally unrelated, I used MERP critical tables to spice combat up and yeah, it worked. Damage value alignment was close enough.

Quote from: Eisenmann;1090985I get why OVA may've not scratched that itch for you, but treating weapons as customized attacks can get pretty close. But yeah, how health and endurance works mitigates that somewhat. Totally unrelated, I used MERP critical tables to spice combat up and yeah, it worked. Damage value alignment was close enough.

We actually got a lot of use out of OVA for other things, just not that.