I can see how it could work for players who are into it and not balking or milking the meta system in silly ways.

Sounds like it's not even the same type of thinking as literal-mechanic games.

I also notice that it seems like the way things happen is by spending points for success, giving points to the GM (or GM to players) for success, or seeing how many success points you have and THEN choosing what you were doing (e.g. choosing how to spend already-rolled success points - "hmm now I know I have X success points, shall I take a hit location, extra damage, hit a mook, or let my friend use the extra success?"), as opposed to saying what you are trying to do and THEN seeing whether you succeed or not. Not to mention the part about saving up success, building up doom or dark symmetry, etc. And again, I can see how this really could simplify and lead to faster play, less player stress/frustration, and a feel much like certain not-so-realistic action movie genres, and so be enjoyable in that way, while being clearly an entirely different sort of cause & effect from simulation games, realism, etc.

Quote from: Spike;940602Thanks for giving me another reason to be annoyed at the ubiquity of Savage Worlds. Now I can't even use a perfectly good adjective without people assuming I'm talking about it... sigh.

From your statement here, I thought you were about to discuss how annoying the Ubiquity System was

Quote from: David Johansen;940627See, I've made dozens of characters and run the game and it kinda starts to make sense.

Quote from: David Johansen;940627Part of the problem is that the book isn't clear and easy to use.  It just isn't.

Quote from: David Johansen;940709Okay, so that's a mouthful and plays cleaner than it reads.

This is such a common observation when it comes to 2d20 that I'm not sure Modiphius is doing enough to address it.

Quote from: David Johansen;940805I have to admit that group momentum is a bit bizarre.  It's like carrying over the excess damage to the next goblin in D&D except you also get to add another player's excess hide in shadows.

Quote from: Skarg;940884Since success is transferable, could someone shoot an HMG for 8d20, and then give the extra successes to other PCs to do any sort of other action? So if some PC wants to accomplish some task they normally can't do, they could have their friend shoot at someone with full auto, and borrow the extra success points for whatever? Are they at least limited to combat successes being used for combat stuff, or can you have one PC who wants to buy one of those impossibly-priced used cars get on the phone with a used car dealer, and then have another PC fire with full auto on something to get extra success momentum for the other character's purchase?

Quote from: David Johansen;940885As far as I understand it you could indeed dump all that momentum into the group pool.  In practice, there should be enough enemies that it's not an option.  One thing I've had to re-think significantly is encounter design.  You need around three times the number of PCs plus a boss to keep the pressure on.  And an HMG is too expensive to abandon when you're out of ammo but pretty sub optimal as a single shot weapon.

Technically yes, you can use it this way, but there's nothing preventing you from restricting its use to ways which make sense in the narrative. For example, I can totally see how autofire can make noticing someone more difficult, and even how it might make a car dealer more likely to sell you a car, but not how it would make hacking a computer easier.

2d20 is also very sensitive to the number of players you have because of how that affects resource generation. Very sensitive.

For example, the new Star Trek Adventures Alpha1.2 has a cooperation rule which allows every player to contribute one die to a Task for their action. So 6 players (which is the standard number of bridge crew on a Galaxy class ship) could potentially generate upto 20 Momentum or 13 Threat for a single Task, and upto 60 Momentum or 48 Threat total for individual Tasks. And that's not assuming the Momentum pool is constantly maxed out, which isn't hard to do with that many players. Smaller groups on the other hand will either encounter a far less exciting game, or be trounced due to lack of resources and encounters intended for larger groups.

In theory it's supposed to be self balancing. In practice it isn't.

Yeah, balance is over rated. Mostly I want games to avoid having any one choice that is absolutely better than anything else.  I want everyone to be able to contribute.  But I don't really care about balance.

Quote from: David Johansen;940956Yeah, balance is over rated. Mostly I want games to avoid having any one choice that is absolutely better than anything else.  I want everyone to be able to contribute. But I don't really care about balance.

Then you care about balance.

Quote from: David Johansen;940885One thing on the Assets system.  It's not as bad as Spike makes out.  You roll Lifestyle to find what you're looking for and you roll Thievery to find one that's not nailed down.  Then you roll your income to essentially see if it's in your budget this week.  Assets are like your savings.  Really, it's just saying we aren't tracking anything smaller than a gold piece and you can roll to see if it fits into your budget.
.

Not as bad?

Let me run the numbers right here and you say that again, Dave:

The cheapest peice of junk pistol in the game has a cost of 4, or the same cost as a spear. The cheapest thing I could find in the game (possibly discounting some cheap rags for clothes, I didn't check) would be a simple wooden stick to beat people, with a cost of three, or the same as our cheap pistol if you risk being hung for it being black market (or your a Mishiman).

The highest you can get your Earnings is five, despite text to the contrary under status. This is "Elite", its the gold plated bathtubs level of wealth.

If, and ONLY if you succeed at your skill test to acquire a cheap piece of junk pistol or a wooden cudgel... and mind you that you do NOT get a bonus to buy cheap pieces of shit or sticks just for having gold plated bathtube levels of wealth... then you can actually TRY to buy one.  

Assuming you succeed the difficulty test, you then must buy one.  

So you roll your wopping five dice. If you have no assets then the only results we want are 1 and 2. Three through five are worthless, and with no Assets, a 6 actually puts us into the poorhouse until we get an asset to pay off each six.

So on average your typical gold plated bathtube having millionaire MIGHT get a 1 and a 2 on his five dice (statistically speaking), but is just as likely to get a six and be driven into the poorhouse... and thus be able to afford... at best, a random wooden stick or a stolen or black market piece of shit pistol, possession of which... I'll remind you, the game actually tells us can get him hung.  

A used car? The ONLY way he can get that is to roll at least 4 twos (or three 2's and two 1's) on that same Earnings test.  I was going to work out the exact probability of that, but I think its sufficient to ball park it to single digit chances out of 50,000, with something like an 80% chance (or four out of five... ballparking here) that at least one 6 is going to come up and drive him into the damn poorhouse.... which remains true even if he doesn't actually buy the car (because he couldn't get 8 successes on 5 dice).

Again: Gold Plated Bathtube level of wealth.

So he absolutely needs assets.  Only thing is: Where is the rule for generating assets?

Right now, according to Modiphius, Donald Motherfucking Trump needs to go out and shoot some gangbangers to buy a fucking baseball bat without going into debt.


Now: Even if you obey the Status part of character creation, and not every other part, and allow people's earnings to rise above five, how high do they have to go before you don't risk destituition for buying used cars?  


So, please: Tell me how to earn assets taht doesn't involve shooting people in the face to take their briefcases full of drug money, and why rich folks who spend half a million bucks on a golf vacation need to steal drug money to buy one at all.

Or at least point out the serious flaws in my example. Because from where I am sitting, I don't have to SAY how bad the system is, the examples speak for themselves.

I think assets are the key issue rather than earnings.  Just hand out lots of assets.  Sure, player characters start out a bit poor, if they didn't you'd have to have their heretic butler steal their assets just to get them to leave the penthouse.

And we're not worlds apart in our opinions.  I think it could be a much better game.  It could certainly fit my tastes better.  But I've run it, it's been fun.  Really I have a harder time selling the players on the setting than the game.  Which seems really weird to me but hey, players are weird.

Quote from: David Johansen;940974I think assets are the key issue rather than earnings.  Just hand out lots of assets.

Again: By having Donald Motherfucking Trump shank drug dealers for their cash.

The wealth system, of which Earnings are a key part, is broken. Its broken because things cost too damn much for even the very wealthy to buy. Remember, Donald Motherfucking Trump has a great chance of affording a baseball bat, but only if he accepts an 80% chance to go into debt for it.  That is broken, at the very least it is broken pricing.

Handing out lots of assets only works as a patch, it doesn't address the flaws in the system.  Hell, I'd accept even something as lame and simple as earning your Earnings in Assets every month (or... um.. aventure? sure... I don't recall Modiphius as being so stupid as to insist on pages and panels and shit to name the passage of events.) would be a drastic improvement.

But, again: Why am I fixing, even in such a simple and lame way, something so broken in such a big, fancy, expensive, book? Why did Modiphius work so damn hard to strip out a perfectly relatable cash system already in place to give me a system I HAVE to fix just so the entire setting doesn't come to a screeching halt because a giant corporation spanning half a dozen planets can't afford a big mac?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;940962Then you care about balance.

I suppose, but I expect it's on a sliding scale and there's many types of balance.

So which balance don't I care about might be the right question.

I like the rules to apply equally to everyone, that's a kind of balance.

I like the kind of balance where a knife between the ribs or a gunshot wound will kill anyone, that's a kind of balance.

I don't like the kind of balance where everyone has the same numbers and just writes down different names for them.  I'm looking at you Hero Quest.

See, here's two potential Traveller characters:

222222 1/2 term Army
Rifle - 1

FFFFFF 6 terms Scouts
Pilot-6,  Engineer-6, Jack of all Trades

They're balanced.  They both had all the same chances and options in the beginning.

So, I suppose when I say I don't care about balance, I still care about fairness but I'm not sure that's the same thing.

Quote from: David Johansen;940980So, I suppose when I say I don't care about balance, I still care about fairness but I'm not sure that's the same thing.

Fair enough, but what I'm saying is that scaling between different numbers of players isn't automatic. If you have two players you're gonna need to make drastically different decisions than if you have six. But the idea behind the economies seems to be that they should automatically scale between those variables.

Well, a GM should be able to drop more goons to balance out party size.

I can't stress enough how important it is to keep the pressure on the whole party.  You can't just give them a break or let up.  So far that seems to be the only way the game works right.  Constant pressure forces decisions like using all the momentum to kill wave after wave of zombies.  You also need to be tough with the difficulty levels.  Don't be afraid to stack up difficulty levels.  If you let them make a lot of difficulty one actions they'll stack up the momentum.  The GM doesn't need to go easy on the PCs here.

Quote from: David Johansen;940980I suppose, but I expect it's on a sliding scale and there's many types of balance.

So which balance don't I care about might be the right question.

I like the rules to apply equally to everyone, that's a kind of balance.

I like the kind of balance where a knife between the ribs or a gunshot wound will kill anyone, that's a kind of balance.

I don't like the kind of balance where everyone has the same numbers and just writes down different names for them.  I'm looking at you Hero Quest.

See, here's two potential Traveller characters:

222222 1/2 term Army
Rifle - 1

FFFFFF 6 terms Scouts
Pilot-6,  Engineer-6, Jack of all Trades

They're balanced.  They both had all the same chances and options in the beginning.

So, I suppose when I say I don't care about balance, I still care about fairness but I'm not sure that's the same thing.

Well, yeah, it's not an either/or situation.  And the biggest problem is that everyone seems to think that 'balance' means 'sameness', which it doesn't.

We're not arguing here, we're agreeing.

I have a talent for arguing with people who agree with me.  It lets me reroll 1d20 on persuasion tests and inflict an additional dark symmetry die of mental damage for one dsp.