So many RPGs. Some guy just wants to write a story and somehow doesnt figure out that they can write it on their own without needing a random party of 4 suckers.
I self-published once and sold 6 copies. One of them my gf at the time bought by accident. I have occasionally wondered if I should try to write an adventure module. I am suddenly and preemptively ashamed, but thankful for the lesson
@@CharlesJohnson-tp7qq it'd be a lot easier if the folks without a hotsim just bought some gloves and goggles for some scrubby backup in cyber combat. Totally the scapegoat for the grinding halt that was spirit projection. Otherwise you had a great system that clearly inspired later genres; but the murder hobo game winds up being what actually gets made. Yes there have been "Shadowrun" games, but they always either never follow suit or they use fourth edition rules that for the most part are inferior toilet paper.
@@DB-pn3yb literally in Shadowrun even the mage could do cyber combat as cannon fodder that can't die due to a lack of a hotsim replaced with gloves and goggles; it was just magic stuff that was bulky but meant to be used sparingly. I recommend Shadowrun 3rd edition; Cyberpunk can try but there's a reason why it was a sleeper until CDPR made 2077.
well he only asked what he was supposed to roll after Zee told him he had to Initially he knew damn well that he didn't need to roll, so when Zee said he did, Larry called him out on it and asked him to prove it, which he couldn't.
@@DarasilverdragonThat's called being a shitbag about it. To expand, in my opinion it's pretty childish and intentionally drawing out the issue to demand to know what to roll if you perfectly understand the system. If you understand what's going on better than your DM does and that is obvious you should be helping not proving how much smarter you are
@@tzimiscelord8483 Nah, that's the best way to avoid arguments about rules. "I don't need to roll" "Yes, you do need to roll!" At this point, you can ARGUE about how you don't have to roll and the GM can ARGUE back at you, which might then turn into a back and forth. Or you can just ask them to show you the rules, plain and simple.
@@asthmeresivolisk3129 there's more than one way to be right, The second it became clear that the DM didn't understand there should have been a civil discussion about the rules. This dude was a douchebag about being right, crossing his arms like a little kid and demanding to know what to roll so he could bait the DM, when he fully understood why and could civilly explain it
Totally! I used to be 'that gm' that would torture his players with nonsense names and words for the sake of immersion only to learn that the more the players connect common knowledge to the setting, uh...the more they're connected to the setting. D'-uh.
The most realistic (and painful) part of this is how the dystopian RPG slaps you with a barrage of future slang so dense it practically counts as its own conlang.
"What happened?" "We were jacked into the 'trix. However, Mon Lickens got derezzed by some fragnards. So, we decided to 23 out of there. However when we unjacked, we found Mon had been zeroed and her conpan was bricked!" "What does any of that mean?"
“Oh boy, I’m so glad I got a simple breaking and entry job in this Cyberpunk dystopian world, I sure hope this seemingly simple job doesn’t drags me into a grand global conspiracy.”
@@KHMakerD Every game of Shadowrun ever (But particularly the Dragonfall video game). XD There is a legend, many people say it, that if you ever utter the words "Milk run" on a job, someone is about to die in the next 15 minutes, and your entire crew will end up pursued by an evil conspiracy for the rest of their lives. ...Well, I say "legend" but really, it's a well known phenomenon. :P
Okay, but that's a foundational trope of Cyberpunk, ripped straight from Neuromancer, next you're going to complain about the corporate suit who hired you's sudden but inevitable betrayal
@@madmanwithaplan1826 Gunnery and Sensor Targeting, which specifically mentions the skill "Infiltration" which tips their hand that they just cut and pasted for a previous edition without remembering they renamed that to "Sneak"
Well when a system runs on dice it's literally all luck no matter what perks, skills, class or race you have you could always run a game or two where everything either go's all right or all bad so... Eliminate the need to rely on said system and... I lost focus and forgot where I was going with this... Something about no need to worry about failure...
@@twicedeadmage Always have a second or third or even fourth set of eyes run past the rules. There's a reason I can't publish a paper without usually three peer reviewers look over the thing. I might be a professional, and well educated on the topic, but I'm too close to the project as well. You need multiple people trying to find the flaws. Which is also really painful because you've worked hard at it, but it does help create a better product. Usually.
I love how the first fluff segment is great, gives you enough future-lingo to inform you on stuff. And then every subsequent one just gets worse and worse, and suddenly it's practically a different language.
@@feyntmistral1110 Should only occur for attacks, crit failure might be in a homebrew/module but in base rules it's often only crit failure for attacks and not ability checks. But each to their own
"Was designed by a failed novelist who has tricked you into reading his micro-fiction" me totally not coming back here to watch the micro fiction for the twelfth time, "you know I think he has a point"
Gotta give the min/maxxer props though, the commitment to go through and make a munchkin build that never has to roll for anything, *just to prove the game is broken*, is a lot of work for something that petty
he didn't do that to prove the game is broken, he did it because he wanted to win as hard as possible and would have done it in any case. That's what min/maxing is for. Discovering that the game is absolutely broken is a side effect of that
Min/maxxers usually have a lot of extra time on their hands :) On the other hand, we've all done it. When the topic of "are people that only play mobile app games "gamers" I always as the proponent if they've ever min/maxed anything, lol.
The most unrealistic part of this video is that it's a d20 system when realistically such a game system would probably be asking you to roll 15d6 or something.
Only if you clup into the blobtrix. That's why his frajitar (Zee was pronouncing that wrong, it's a soft J) let him roll a d20 instead of the d6 pools. It's quite simple, David!
"Please roll the customary d100, then break out the d33 just for fun. Just in case you have those, d12. If any 1s come up you die instantly because the only story that matters is mine"
that odd dawning realization where you look a little closer or stop and think about it and realize that actually, it does just suck and it's always sucked.
I love that once you cut through the batshit dystopian slang, you find that yes, indeed, Larry is correct, the only way he could fail is with a -2, but what's especially hilarious is that even if he didn't use the dub-dub to bring his fragitar rating from 4 to 8, the DC would still be so trivial that he's basically rolling for whether his background music for the scene is gonna be Darude Sandstorm or Yakety Sax.
Friend of mine is writing an RPG system, and while everyone else they talk to is talking about the themes and style and such, I'm the one nerd who is harping on formatting and clarity and rules overlap cause that's the easiest thing to kill a mood
Helping a friend of mine with his own RPG, doing the same thing and making sure that every system stays simple and sane. Slight asynchronous gameplay among the players (certain playstyles use dice as a resource differently in combat) but it's all understandable and memorable with the only table look ups necessary during the one place it should be required: Character creation/leveling.
Those things are SUPER IMPORTANT! If you're writing an RPG please, PLEASE re read it before you run it. Have other people read it Force your friends to be editors And if you find a conflict, or something is confusing FIX IT THEN AND THERE if you can
Shadowrun is deceptively easy to play once you get past the miasma of option frontloaded onto you. It is literally just 2 stats added together:ability score and skill, and that is the number of d6's you roll. After that is how many fails, aka how many d6's got 1s, vs how many successes, aka how many 5s and 6s you got on your d'6s determining your success. For the best experience, I'd say 4th and 5th editions are the best ones.
@@Irishcrossing Definitely skip 4th. 3rd (the last of FASA's offerings) or 5th are the options to go with. Since Catalyst has literally scoured all 5E books from stores to promote people buying into 6E though, you're best sailing the high seas to find them.
@@Irishcrossing I mean you say that, but that still leaves out everything else. I played a bit as a rigger, using software to order the computer to shoot a mounted gun, manually targeting the mounted gun, jacking into the vehicle and shooting the mounted gun, and jacking into the vehicle and ordering the mounted gun to fire were all separate skills
@@ratbaby3107 I think your loremaster has been making you use a lot of skills that aren't necessary compared to what a rigger can usually do. Jumping into your own vehicle is not a skill. You just need a control rig for the vehicle and for your brain. Auto fire relies on the mount's sensors and firing skill, not yours. Manual fire relies on the sensors and your firing skills. Giving orders relies on your specific request and what software you put in. It also depends on the edition, i guess as well. I know decking is confusing as fuck and I have never wanted to deck as they generally are the weakest and more than often become a liability than support.
It's not a real cyberpunk RPG if it's easier to find a story about how Frizz krumped those Freakos like it was a game of 5-odd rudejack than HOW DAMAGE IS DONE
I wonder... Will leaving those lore-blurbs out make the book easier to comprehend (as in, easier to find/read the rules) but leave the book bland or uninteresting? Some games do well without the lore-blurbs tacked on, but from personal experience those are usually licensed games that expect you to already know the lore or the game is so simplistic rule-wise it's only a thin pamphlet. What if each segment of the book had a paragraph lore blurb related to what that segment is about, followed by the segment just being about it? Like chapter dividers kind of? For example; Segment 4 - explosives - lore blurb paragraph of someone using explosives creatively - next 5 pages are just rules and mechanics about explosives, with maybe addendums to cross reference other segments with overlapping rules/ mechanics if necessary.
@@darthskarr8975 I find that Turnip28 actually did a good job with lore-bits. The lore at any point is relevant to the rule it accompanies, only a few sentences long at most, and in a distinct style (italics) so you know if you're reading rules or lore.
Mage: The Ascension, and pretty much any White Wolf game, needs to have a bland rules book instead. I am sick and tired of going through sixteen pages of the story of how a Mage struggles with his Avatar just so I can find the rules on how much power a starting mage actually has.@@darthskarr8975
My favourite part is how, even though Zee needs to muddle through like 4 pages to find the right segment, his friend just knows it off the top of his head. Truly you must know your enemy as you know yourself.
I am a real-life Larry. I have been in his position. Just because you have painfully, painSTAKINGLY picked through a system and understand how it works...does not mean you think it's good. Also conversely, just because you think it has merit, or is good, does not mean you think it's well laid out or designed.
@@LashknifeTalon Yeah, same, I mostly GM but that means that when I play I am a total problem player. Last time I palyed Lancer, I was using an stealth build, the GM was smoking that he could simply shot everyone except me because I was sneaking and that impeded him for getting me for a target, he then asked me what could take me out of the sneaking status. ''Well, if I engage someone, attack or get out of cover''. He then smirked and moved one of his grunts adjacent to me, ''well, now you are engaged, so I can attack you''. ''Well, no, while I am sneaking, I can choose to engage or not when I get adjacent to enemies, and they can't engage me while I am sneaking unless I say I want to engage then as an reaction'' ''Pffffft that canot be true'' Almost ten minutes of him scrolling trough rules ... ... ... ''Fuck you are right''
@@gustavoaraujopenha8463 Tell him to use barrage and indiscriminate bombing in an area. There's also scan, which is well used by Witches and Priest type NPCs which can easily reveal most sneaking players, and arguably less bullshit than being bombed. Lemme guess, you were running full AGI SSC, right?
@@chrish4439 It was not exactly metagame because the status is described as the enemies knowing you are there just not your exact location, they can even pepper the area with area damage. just can't use single target attacks against sneaking characters.
This was literally my Shadowrun 6 experience. All the rules were mixed in painful to read exposition paragraphs, and my one friend who purposefully makes the weakest possible characters as something of a challenge accidentally made a naked fisticuff man who punches harder than grenade explosions.
funny little anecdote, in one of the older editions there was a german publishing studio that said 'these rules are a mess, we can't publish this' and rewrote the whole core book to make things clearer and add exra explaination. it was so good some people started demanding english translations of the german translation of an english book.
SR5 was...maybe a little better, but still terrible. My group felt it was more effective to work through a dense 3rd party app to make our characters, and I believe we were correct. If you ever want to do Shadowrun in a way that feels closer to the idea, then, as Zee obliquely mentions, less crunchy systems can be really good for that. My favorite is a hack of The Sprawl, an Apocalypse engine game, but Blades In The Dark is good for different players, albeit hard to make into a setting other than Blades's own.
@@LollipopKnight2 My group tried to get into Shadowrun 5e once and HOO BOY. Building a character from the book was a nightmare. Eventually I (sorta) had my character up and decided to do the homework and figure out how to, y'know, play. Purely from the book, I could not figure out to resolve a single attack action in combat. (For both what the player and what the target must roll) Things were on completely different pages. We scrapped that and instead moved on to Starfinder.
@LordZaayl I'm not going to advocate for shadowrun 4th edition here, but that is one thing it has over 5th. Making a character was at least a simpler process. The rules everywhere else though...
I've been making a gritty cyberpunk bloodsport campaign and Hallelujah Jack is totally making an appearance as an announcer and possible boss. *REPEEEENT! FOR AAAALLLLL HALLOWS EVE IS AT HAAAAYUUUUNNNNDDDD-AAH!*
I was trying to place it, since the cyberpunkdystopomancer RPGs in the bookshelf cannot, even generously, be called crunchy. There's some games there that are definitely more crunch than fun, but they are all "more elves, elves with tails, elves with horns, elves with horns and tails" types. So thanks! I've never played or even held a SR TTRPG. So closest I got was HBS's take on SR.
@@AyarARJ IF you're interested in SR, I highly recommend 20th Anniversary Edition (aka 4e with all the rules cleaned up). Earlier editions have better style, but overly-complicated rules; and 5e/6e are very, very poorly edited.
My worst nightmare is publishing something like this. Spending hours, testing, redoing, retesting game mechanics, until I can say that an action can be represented with a dice roll, only for the added complexity to suck the fun out of the game, is the single most terrifying thing I can imagine.
As an idiot designing his how TTPRG I can assure you that balancing the systems is absolutely a pain in the ass. One mechanic worded weirdly, a great idea implemented in a way that works fine at face value but breaks the moment you dig in a bit, etc are all things I've stumbled into and even a simple game can be shattered rather ruthlessly.
From years of designing my own RPGs, I've come to realize that the best way to allow any action to be represented is to do less, not more. Blades in The Dark is an excellent example of this. The game doesn't even include a distinct "combat system", because combat, like everything else, is implied by the core mechanics. Once you know how to do "an action" you know how to do basically any action you can imagine.
Do you have anyone who can help you playtest? Even a group of friends who will sit down and play your game for a few hours might help you find problems you’d otherwise miss.
@@VoroxPete I grew up playing a lot of videogames. The concept of missing most of the time only came to me when I started playing D&D. When is it ever fun to just miss and do nothing with your turn? Then I got into Warhammer 40k, and realized that rolling to hit in D&D comes from tabletop war games, but instead of controlling an entire army where you're making like 60 attacks in a turn you're making...1 (sometimes 2-3, but it still has a very different feel) If I ever got back into trying to develop my system I have no roll to hit. It's more about the choices made either ahead of time, or in reaction.
This reminds me of back in the 00s, my friends and I tried to play some game like this. It was called Cyberchaos or Cybermayhem or something like that... We all argued over interpretations of the really complex rules the whole session. "Your score is within this tier, so that means you get the Gun Success Check Passive Ability until the end of the Initiative phase when your attack speed is determined!" We didnt find out until after the session, that we all had different editions of the game and they were all wildly different...
The glasses guy on the left does not change emotions at all. Not a single thought it going on in that mind. While the middle bystander was wondering why the hell he’s here up until he sees Larry call out this terrible game.
@@NeoDMC I know the pain of both. I've had games where I've played something like a Solo in Cyberpunk and had to sit and watch as the Decker was fumbling through 2 sessions of trying to hack stuff while on the other side I've watched people who played purely combat build characters with zero charisma/social ability and then they are stuck sitting there for 4-6 sessions because due to the parties decisions its nothing but social interactions and thus the Warlock, bard, rogue etc are just talking to a bunch of people and doing all manner of bullshit while the fighter is sitting in the corner grumbling to themselves because they have a -7 in CHA x3
"If you look closely at my character sheet you will note that I will not have to roll a single die the entire evening because this game was designed by a failed novelist who has tricked you into reading his micro-fiction." AMEN, holy CRAP. This pierced right through my soul. But this big nosed fella... he's cleva. Fantastic writing (just like the micro-fiction, I'm sure, contrary to the actual system)
I love how Larry isn't just an annoying, pragmatic neckbeard, but an annoying, pragmatic neckbeard who a lot of the time is right because his annoying pragmatism is often rooted in facts and logic.
Jesus Fragging Christmas this is my EXACT experience with Shadowrun! It's my favorite setting, but finding rules is like sifting through a paper shredder's basket.
As someone who loves Dragonfall and Wrath of the Righteous, I can't imagine how different these systems would be with a computer doing all of the crunchy bits.
@@monstermoo4191idk Wrath of the Righteous, but I can say that the Shadowrun videogames use the same _concepts_ as the TTRPG, but they are mechanically entirely detached from it. The devs realized that they were better off remaking the rules from scratch.
As a soon to fail novelist, this gives me hope! ETA: I WAS BEING FACETIOUS! I am fully confident my novel will be the next global phenomenon! And no, I am NOT going to dox myself. Nice try, tho ;)
@@bartz0rt928 Finishing it and not being repulsed by what you have added to the world i'd say, but being able to live off your art is what i'd call a real acheivement, considering how few actually can do it.
This is so freaking relatable to anyone that have tried to dive into the indie TTRPG scene. The universes/settings are always great, but dammit the systems are a nightmare to understand and piece together.
I treat most of the indie TTRPGs I come across as inspiration and idea fodder at this point and just sit there wondering, “now how can I put this into a system I know.” There are some gems though to be found… just not too often.
You are getting into the wrong indie games 😅 there are those who look at DnD, Pathfinder, CoC, Cyberpunk, etc and think "this need more rules!"......and then there is the bunch that thinks "I just want to do cool things and have my players do cool things". Go for the later!
@@ramirocarnicer2503this is why I like GURPS I've had entire crunchy breakdowns of entire systems I also ran game where everything just congested rolls shits so variable
I'm working on my own TTRPG at the moment and my goal from the start was to make the game that I wanted to play, and for it to be as simple as possible whilst also being interesting and tactical. It turns out that it's *extremely* hard! Even the most simple and elegant of systems take months or even years to be that way, and I have a new appreciation for systems that go "fuck it" and just let the rules get away from them haha
Yeah, it is something you notice once you start doing for any game. Granted some genres, do enable that goal easier than others. It's just a matter of how deep you want in certain mechanics, especially for fighting. At that point, though, you just make sure that the rules are straight to the point and flow right. You don't want to be hitting warhammer 40k 9th ed wargaming levels of rules bloat hahaha
I feel this. Making my own system now also and damn... It is so hard to keep things simple, varied, engaging, tactical, complex, and easy to learn. So many contradictions. At 120 pages of rules and it just keeps going.
Oh god, tell me about it. I tweeked my system for months, simplifying away rules and accounting for everything I could think of, before I realized, I hadn't written a rule for JUMPING!
@@sockylogic2014 I've been running an active playtest for my usual D&D group every other week and have a few other GMs running their own games... I swear every time we play, something else broken rears its head and I have to rewrite large sections! The last update I made to it stripped out some of the mechanics I was really proud of and happy with that had been in the game since its conception, just because they were infeasible in reality... it hurts, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and chop your beloved creation into bits all over again.
I just had session zero for a Shadowrun campaign with my group and Shadowrun fifth edition is literally this. Nobody in the group has read the book yet, so everyone was immediately confused when there was a short story in the middle of the book, and any relevant information to character building is split up by the short story.
Flipping through the rulebook, trying to find the simplest thing which is inexplicably hidden in a random section, was my group's experience with Shadowrun.
Especially when in between the prose is something like "turn to page 54 and see the sidebar for rules on how werespider bites work" and it's straight-up not there.
I played a session with the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook (puny humans, Stranger Things style) and we had fun. But boy, was it the worst editing I've ever seen in a rulebook! The entire ruleset was literally based on flash forwards!
That face of pure glee when he bought the module is all our faces when we get finished reading an awesome kickstarter module and impulse buy to max tier lol.
"the enemy just disengaged with you, so you can't attack them without engaging them." "Ok, how do I do that, none of my character abilities or basic actions have the engaging property" Flips through the entire game system rulebook "Damnit"
This just tells me that the mechanics of every dystopian RPG are as opaque as my characters alignment who's a cyber outlaw of the frontier future with mastery over lethal theatre improv
Your degree of correctness is murky, but I won't say you're wrong? But on the other hand, the people who tend to flock toward the cyber dystopian RPG landscape also tend to be the people who like to eat diamond encrusted rulebooks, so take that as you will.
For those looking for easy alternative RPG systems to get into: * Powered by the Apocalypse - Quite a straightforward system and is setting-neutral so can be attached to many different settings. * Fiasco - Inspired by films like "Fargo" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" where you set up a scene and it's outcomes before roleplaying it rather than worrying too much about heavier mechanics. * Dread - Great for thrillers and horror games. You just roleplay and every time you try to do something dangerous you pull a block from a jenga tower. If the tower falls your character dies. Then rebuild the tower for the remaining players and keep going. * Ten Candles - The game ends when all the ten candles go out. When they all go out, all your player characters die. So you won't survive no matter what, what you do before then is the important part. Your character is generated by a mix of character cards written by you and your friends that slowly get burnt away throughout the game. You also have a fistful of d6 that slowly gets smaller. A good tense horror RPG. * Alice is Missing - a TTRPG done entirely via text. Each player is a friend of Alice, who has gone missing, and are texting each other trying to uncover the mystery of her fate. * The Witch is Dead - a one-page RPG which only needs a d10. You are animal familiars to a dead witch trying to avenge yourselves upon the witch hunter that murdered her. * For the Queen - You roleplay as the retinue of a fantasy Queen. You just draw prompt cards that ask questions about the Queen, her motivations, her relationships with you and the others, etc. Slowly you craft a story. Finally, a "The Queen is Under Attack" card is drawn and how each of your characters choose to respond to that based on how the story has gone and their individual relationships to the Queen can be very different and alter the ending. * Goblin Quest - Go without a GM as you all play goblins trying to achieve a goal without meeting a grizzly fate. Roll a d6 for everything and fail in hilarious slapstick manners when you roll poorly, building new goblins quickly to replace you dead inept characters. A very fun and silly little game.
@@AlgaeNymph There are more TTRPGs out there than I can possibly mention in a post. Never played this one but I'll take your word for it being just as accessible as the ones I mentioned and HAVE played.
@@almightyk11 A TTRPG is only ever as shallow as the people playing it. If they put in zero effort they won't get a lot out of it, following the outline only and not contributing anything themselves. But there are loads of ways to be extremely creative within these systems.
"no, see, there's some cool mechanics in here, like..." is 100% me with shadowrun. It's crunchy, each revision confuses me more, but god damnit it has rules for explosions in confined spaces and how that means everyone in said space becomes red mist.
I felt this... The only unrealistic part is ordering a kickstarter and getting it within a year and a half so you actually know what it is when its delivered. I got a board game once that was YEARS after the kickstarter, I forgot all about it.
I view kickstarter as buying Future Me presents. There's no way I'll ever remember what the fuck I kickstarted by the time it delivers, so occasionally things show up at my door, specially curated by someone with exact knowledge of my taste.
This is why I roll my eyes when my friends try to write RPGs. I had a buddy who made a game where every roll is 2d12, 13 was a critical, and you had to roll again to figure out if it's a crit success or crit fail
Ok in fairness, confirming crits is not all that unusual if you wanna nerf critical hits a bit. Pathfinder 1E has that as a way to keep crit fishing builds in check.
@@webbowser8834 "roll again to figure out if it's a crit success or crit fail" just in case you missed the couple of words after the line break like I did initially. So 13 is a crit *something*, and the next roll determines whether that's good or bad.
One of my friends writes ttrpg-systems, and its a great deal of fun. Sure, it is broken, but never boring. And since we play and fix along the way, each new System is somewhat of an improvement.
As a semi-retired "novelist" I gotta say, ouch. Anyway I got called out enough for this that I design clothing now. Yes, my nerd clothing line has a narrative.
I love how the other two players in the background are just sitting there with frowns while the GM and Larry Bicker, they obviously have had to deal with this drama before.
@@bthsr7113I have the 6e rulebook. It's dogshit. Status effects are listed before cgaracter creation, magic is listed before basic combat rules, I can't find the fucking grenades, actions lead you across pages, it's a nightmare. Plus, I'm not a native German speaker, so it's even worse for me. Also, the first 35 pages are just lore
Most of the time designers are not great writers and writers are not great designers. I am butting heads with one of my friends who is letting me proof read their own RPG Book... I suck at writing narrative, but can spot mechanical jank from a mile away. Meanwhile my friend is basically a writer who has ideas first and tries to shoe horn mechanics into their stories. They are all like, "Hey so I thought up a cool new species and put it in this chapter!" and I'm just like, HOLY FUCK YOU STILL HAVEN'T MECHANICALLY FLESHED OUT OR BALANCED THE LAST 3 YOU INTRODUCED!"
@@kid14346 I have a friend who did the opposite, mechanically things are relatively simple and fit together quite well. Lore and story wise it's quite a mess and he often doesn't see the implications behind certain names for things. The one that sparked the most debate "Dark Stamina."
In fairness, reading an adventure ahead of time and creating a character specifically to trivialize said adventure would be considered a jerk move at most tables.
Its interesting how much this showcases the different ways a system can earn the description "crunchy". First, its immersion breaking because its so hard to look things up. A well organized book would have had the GM flip right to the needed section. Second, this amount of jargon hurts immersion rather than helping it. Players need to memorize what a game's new words mean and most are only willing to memorize a few. A few novel words can make a setting come alive. A ton leave everyone confused. Third, there doesnt seem to be any advice on how the game mechanics provide engagement. Maybe being a hacker is supposed to make hacking effortless, and thats supposed to make the player feel like a badass. But if thats whats intended, this is never explained in the book. This is the story of a person unable to find the instructions for their screwdriver, unable to understand the instruction, and never being told their screwdriver is actually a hammer. All before we even try and tackle the question: "is it any good as a hammer?"
I have recently learned that “grognard” is in fact not a made-up future slang word, but it actually has a real-world agreed upon meaning. Given the context of this video, I genuinely thought it was made up the first time I read your comment.
Except any kind person would've let the GM know ahead of time, instead of bringing it up mid-game to show off how smart he is. XD You can't win with Larry. Even when he's right, he's wrong. (and vice versa)
@@TheGerkuman But he's not actively refusing to play the game, nor is he trying to stop them from running a campaign. He's simply playing efficiently. What's he supposed to let him know in advance? That he's using a hacker class with standard perks from the player handbook?
I thought a lot about this video at PAX, because I kept coming across demos that were more cutscenes than gameplay. "You are just tricking me into watching your student film"
Ok, just taking a second to say that I LOVE the face animation with the kickstarter, both the expresion and the way it morph add shows the layers of excitment of being tricked into those kind of projects.
@dtyn8MC other than having the annoying weird hacking mini game only one player can participate in Cyberpunk is pretty solid. It has mechanics and they work.
@@Dtyn8 hacking and armor are glaring issues but workable. It absolutely is written in a very colloquial style, but still in the service of being a rulebook. Like there's a line after you decide your starting money based on your job where its like 'oh, one more thing- roll a d6. On a 5 or higher, you just got fired. Tough luck' or something to that effect. Its more cute than obtrusive most of the time.
@@Dtyn8 No, this is directly mocking shadowrun, which is cyberpunk cocaine addicted older brother, who is currently kicked out of rehab for snorting molly off the jesus statue.
I love the ENERGY of this video, both in the opening and even just in the discussion at the table. It's great! Really brings it all to life and ties it together with a great flow. Keep it up! Your stuff just keeps getting better and better!
as a fan of a lot of different TTRPGs and have a shelf of them. This feels sooo real. the amazing part is getting a party to play something aside D&D or Pathfinder xD
"Failed novelist who has tricked you into reading his micro-fiction" hits so close to home. Great job as always
I read that book!
So many RPGs. Some guy just wants to write a story and somehow doesnt figure out that they can write it on their own without needing a random party of 4 suckers.
@@Zr0din I think most Game Masters have read that book. 😆
@@Zr0din I've played those games!
I self-published once and sold 6 copies. One of them my gf at the time bought by accident. I have occasionally wondered if I should try to write an adventure module. I am suddenly and preemptively ashamed, but thankful for the lesson
The most accurate part of this is that it's the hacker and the GM talking the whole time while the rest of the party does absolutely nothing.
Absolute facts, my man
I've started playing as a Street Sam and did almost nothing the first two sessions because we were just too sneaky. Still fun though.
Ah yes, I remember when the group played Shadowrun.
I got a good amount of reading done those sessions. 😜
@@CharlesJohnson-tp7qq it'd be a lot easier if the folks without a hotsim just bought some gloves and goggles for some scrubby backup in cyber combat. Totally the scapegoat for the grinding halt that was spirit projection. Otherwise you had a great system that clearly inspired later genres; but the murder hobo game winds up being what actually gets made. Yes there have been "Shadowrun" games, but they always either never follow suit or they use fourth edition rules that for the most part are inferior toilet paper.
@@DB-pn3yb literally in Shadowrun even the mage could do cyber combat as cannon fodder that can't die due to a lack of a hotsim replaced with gloves and goggles; it was just magic stuff that was bulky but meant to be used sparingly. I recommend Shadowrun 3rd edition; Cyberpunk can try but there's a reason why it was a sleeper until CDPR made 2077.
I love how Larry understands the rules perfectly but still asks what he's supposed to roll and lets the gm struggle with the book.
well he only asked what he was supposed to roll after Zee told him he had to
Initially he knew damn well that he didn't need to roll, so when Zee said he did, Larry called him out on it and asked him to prove it, which he couldn't.
@@DarasilverdragonThat's called being a shitbag about it.
To expand, in my opinion it's pretty childish and intentionally drawing out the issue to demand to know what to roll if you perfectly understand the system. If you understand what's going on better than your DM does and that is obvious you should be helping not proving how much smarter you are
@@tzimiscelord8483that's called being RIGHT!
@@tzimiscelord8483 Nah, that's the best way to avoid arguments about rules. "I don't need to roll" "Yes, you do need to roll!" At this point, you can ARGUE about how you don't have to roll and the GM can ARGUE back at you, which might then turn into a back and forth. Or you can just ask them to show you the rules, plain and simple.
@@asthmeresivolisk3129 there's more than one way to be right, The second it became clear that the DM didn't understand there should have been a civil discussion about the rules. This dude was a douchebag about being right, crossing his arms like a little kid and demanding to know what to roll so he could bait the DM, when he fully understood why and could civilly explain it
The in-game slang and noun replacement was the truest thing. Hearing a sentence full of it is like a sack of bricks to the head and is hilarious
I had to turn on subtitles because I thought I was having a stroke
Totally! I used to be 'that gm' that would torture his players with nonsense names and words for the sake of immersion only to learn that the more the players connect common knowledge to the setting, uh...the more they're connected to the setting. D'-uh.
Now i know how my parents feel, when I use game terms. I didn't understand a thing
@@swagner7767same
I'm too used to it. I read Dune and manga.
The most realistic (and painful) part of this is how the dystopian RPG slaps you with a barrage of future slang so dense it practically counts as its own conlang.
Whaaat, you don't have a molobolo that you corclap into the bazingatron in order to smorpas the klulkl?
I literally didn't understand like 90% of what was being said.
@@DuskEalain simlish
"What happened?"
"We were jacked into the 'trix. However, Mon Lickens got derezzed by some fragnards. So, we decided to 23 out of there. However when we unjacked, we found Mon had been zeroed and her conpan was bricked!"
"What does any of that mean?"
@@a.dennis4835 What you said literally made more sense then what was said during the skit.
“Oh boy, I’m so glad I got a simple breaking and entry job in this Cyberpunk dystopian world, I sure hope this seemingly simple job doesn’t drags me into a grand global conspiracy.”
Name one time B&E has ever led to a grand conspiracy. 😌
@@KHMakerDWatergate
@@KHMakerD Every game of Shadowrun ever (But particularly the Dragonfall video game). XD
There is a legend, many people say it, that if you ever utter the words "Milk run" on a job, someone is about to die in the next 15 minutes, and your entire crew will end up pursued by an evil conspiracy for the rest of their lives.
...Well, I say "legend" but really, it's a well known phenomenon. :P
@@asahearts1 My first thought too, but I wouldn't say that was global.
Okay, but that's a foundational trope of Cyberpunk, ripped straight from Neuromancer, next you're going to complain about the corporate suit who hired you's sudden but inevitable betrayal
My favorite thing about Definitely-Not-Shadowrun is that the rules for grenades are intuitively hidden away in the section for vehicles
What, you don't travel by grenade? What is this, the 1860s?
Chunky
Salsa
Effect
I laughed, and then I realized that this isn’t actually a bit, is it?
@@antiscam2468no its not. And i dont remember what rules come after crossbows but i remember being fucking mad it was there.
@@madmanwithaplan1826 Gunnery and Sensor Targeting, which specifically mentions the skill "Infiltration" which tips their hand that they just cut and pasted for a previous edition without remembering they renamed that to "Sneak"
Larry learned his lesson from the possessed dice, now he'll just do builds where he doesn't have to roll.
Well when a system runs on dice it's literally all luck no matter what perks, skills, class or race you have you could always run a game or two where everything either go's all right or all bad so... Eliminate the need to rely on said system and... I lost focus and forgot where I was going with this... Something about no need to worry about failure...
@@koopaking6148 Just play as Goblin Slayer, that is literally his build.
to this day i am tempted to make builds like those
the wizard's curse is very real and wizard is my favorite class...
Interesting...
@@koopaking6148 But as Dwarf Fortress teaches us, Failing is Fun.
Larry’s tendencies toward minimaxing and pettiness would make him a great game tester
Yep, I've been trying to make my system and being a minimaxer has stopped a lot of terrible rules from being included.
@@twicedeadmage Sometimes you just straight up miss stuff, though. Never hurts to run it by another minmaxer to see how they could break it.
@@twicedeadmage Always have a second or third or even fourth set of eyes run past the rules. There's a reason I can't publish a paper without usually three peer reviewers look over the thing. I might be a professional, and well educated on the topic, but I'm too close to the project as well. You need multiple people trying to find the flaws.
Which is also really painful because you've worked hard at it, but it does help create a better product. Usually.
Always good to run a few stress tests. If something breaks, better to know it early on rather than late.
Shit, is that all you need? Where do I apply?
I love how the first fluff segment is great, gives you enough future-lingo to inform you on stuff. And then every subsequent one just gets worse and worse, and suddenly it's practically a different language.
"So I roll a D20 and I need to get more than a negative 2."
Killed me
I've literally had this in D&D, but the "a 1 will still fail" issue keeps coming up.
@@feyntmistral1110 Should only occur for attacks, crit failure might be in a homebrew/module but in base rules it's often only crit failure for attacks and not ability checks.
But each to their own
@@saintpres4ge533 Depends on the edition
Look, even if every face of the die means the same thing, you should still roll because the rules say you roll for it. :p
@@eclipserepeater2466 and also because dice are pretty and I like to roll them. Lol.
The dystopia isn’t the setting.
it’s the rules.
Always is.
take my upvote you ape
As much as I want to like this, it’s currently at 666 likes and I can’t ruin that.
Buuuuuut .. shouldn't the rules and the setting reflect each other .. for the sake of immersion and all that XD
In the grimdark future, there is only bullshit rules.
No wait, that's just the how the law works right now.
Larry is both the antagonist and the hero of this story.
Larry is the hero this city needs, but not the one it wants
Pretty cyberpunk of him
The protagonist can also be the villain. The protagonist is simply who the story is about, not necessarily the hero.
So he is a cyberpunk character. Twisting the broken system he is forced into so he can stick it to the guy in charge.
@@Alizudo He's not the villain protagonist, he's the hero antagonist
"Was designed by a failed novelist who has tricked you into reading his micro-fiction"
me totally not coming back here to watch the micro fiction for the twelfth time, "you know I think he has a point"
Same, I've watched this ten times over two months I think. The writing of this video is just great. I wish he would do more somehow.
Once you’ve klumbed into the blumtrix, there’s no going back.
"I grabbed my toaster... and clubbed into the blobtrix"
this made me laugh way more than it had any right to
'A failed novelist who has tricked you into reading his microfiction' is now going to be the name of my autobiography
Gotta give the min/maxxer props though, the commitment to go through and make a munchkin build that never has to roll for anything, *just to prove the game is broken*, is a lot of work for something that petty
It takes a real broham to support and break you in the same sitting.
he didn't do that to prove the game is broken, he did it because he wanted to win as hard as possible and would have done it in any case. That's what min/maxing is for.
Discovering that the game is absolutely broken is a side effect of that
Min/maxxers usually have a lot of extra time on their hands :) On the other hand, we've all done it. When the topic of "are people that only play mobile app games "gamers" I always as the proponent if they've ever min/maxed anything, lol.
i once did it, was pretty fun for a short while than became boring
Sometimes you just have to prove a point.
The most unrealistic part of this video is that it's a d20 system when realistically such a game system would probably be asking you to roll 15d6 or something.
Only if you clup into the blobtrix. That's why his frajitar (Zee was pronouncing that wrong, it's a soft J) let him roll a d20 instead of the d6 pools. It's quite simple, David!
@@TaurususYou type like your keyboard is encrusted with gemstones
"Please roll the customary d100, then break out the d33 just for fun. Just in case you have those, d12. If any 1s come up you die instantly because the only story that matters is mine"
@@liambrown500 I feel like that would significantly impact the actuation displacement.
Or d100s
" No there are some cool mechanics in here like the uh... Hmm. "
This emotion does not have a name, but we all have felt this before
disappointment does have a name.
that odd dawning realization where you look a little closer or stop and think about it and realize that actually, it does just suck and it's always sucked.
german probably has one
defeat
"Well, I've been had."
I love that once you cut through the batshit dystopian slang, you find that yes, indeed, Larry is correct, the only way he could fail is with a -2, but what's especially hilarious is that even if he didn't use the dub-dub to bring his fragitar rating from 4 to 8, the DC would still be so trivial that he's basically rolling for whether his background music for the scene is gonna be Darude Sandstorm or Yakety Sax.
Yakety Sax??
I don't think I'm capable of effectively communicating how much I absolutely loathe that I understood every word of this comment.
@@BrunoMaricFromZagreb Also commonly known as "The Benny Hill Theme", Yackity Sax is a classic comedy background tract for any goofy chase scene.
Arin how does Darude's Sandstorm go?
@@webbowser8834 HUH,I've never actually heard the name.I now have a word to put to all those goofy chase sequences in Hannah-Barbera productions.
Dang. One of those rare times when Larry is entirely, 100%, over the top correct, and makes it *known* . Well DONE, Larry! XD
Well to be fair Larry may be the expert when it comes to sci/fi genre settings and games and most table tops are fantasy
@@nickfulton8173 Most sci/fi settings are fantasy, too.
@@jamespryor5967 every novel is fantasy
It's like that Onion article, "When the worst person you know makes a valid point."
Larry is always 100% correct and that's why he's every GM's nightmare.
Friend of mine is writing an RPG system, and while everyone else they talk to is talking about the themes and style and such, I'm the one nerd who is harping on formatting and clarity and rules overlap cause that's the easiest thing to kill a mood
Helping a friend of mine with his own RPG, doing the same thing and making sure that every system stays simple and sane. Slight asynchronous gameplay among the players (certain playstyles use dice as a resource differently in combat) but it's all understandable and memorable with the only table look ups necessary during the one place it should be required: Character creation/leveling.
What you are doing is going to prove _invaluable_
You are saving lives. Godspeed, stranger.
Those things are SUPER IMPORTANT! If you're writing an RPG please, PLEASE re read it before you run it.
Have other people read it
Force your friends to be editors
And if you find a conflict, or something is confusing
FIX IT THEN AND THERE if you can
doing god's work.
I love shadowrun.
I'd hate to play it some day.
Shadowrun is deceptively easy to play once you get past the miasma of option frontloaded onto you. It is literally just 2 stats added together:ability score and skill, and that is the number of d6's you roll. After that is how many fails, aka how many d6's got 1s, vs how many successes, aka how many 5s and 6s you got on your d'6s determining your success.
For the best experience, I'd say 4th and 5th editions are the best ones.
@@Irishcrossing Definitely skip 4th. 3rd (the last of FASA's offerings) or 5th are the options to go with. Since Catalyst has literally scoured all 5E books from stores to promote people buying into 6E though, you're best sailing the high seas to find them.
@@Irishcrossing I mean you say that, but that still leaves out everything else. I played a bit as a rigger, using software to order the computer to shoot a mounted gun, manually targeting the mounted gun, jacking into the vehicle and shooting the mounted gun, and jacking into the vehicle and ordering the mounted gun to fire were all separate skills
@@ratbaby3107 I think your loremaster has been making you use a lot of skills that aren't necessary compared to what a rigger can usually do. Jumping into your own vehicle is not a skill. You just need a control rig for the vehicle and for your brain. Auto fire relies on the mount's sensors and firing skill, not yours. Manual fire relies on the sensors and your firing skills. Giving orders relies on your specific request and what software you put in. It also depends on the edition, i guess as well.
I know decking is confusing as fuck and I have never wanted to deck as they generally are the weakest and more than often become a liability than support.
As a person who’s never heard of that system I’m happy that I’m ignorant
"I got a great idea for a game!"
"Okay, hit me."
"Once upon a time--"
"That's not a game, it's a story."
I love the running joke about finding flavour stories instead of the rules you’re looking for. Oh god it hurts but it’s real
It's not a real cyberpunk RPG if it's easier to find a story about how Frizz krumped those Freakos like it was a game of 5-odd rudejack than HOW DAMAGE IS DONE
I wonder... Will leaving those lore-blurbs out make the book easier to comprehend (as in, easier to find/read the rules) but leave the book bland or uninteresting? Some games do well without the lore-blurbs tacked on, but from personal experience those are usually licensed games that expect you to already know the lore or the game is so simplistic rule-wise it's only a thin pamphlet.
What if each segment of the book had a paragraph lore blurb related to what that segment is about, followed by the segment just being about it? Like chapter dividers kind of? For example; Segment 4 - explosives - lore blurb paragraph of someone using explosives creatively - next 5 pages are just rules and mechanics about explosives, with maybe addendums to cross reference other segments with overlapping rules/ mechanics if necessary.
@@darthskarr8975 I find that Turnip28 actually did a good job with lore-bits. The lore at any point is relevant to the rule it accompanies, only a few sentences long at most, and in a distinct style (italics) so you know if you're reading rules or lore.
Mage: The Ascension, and pretty much any White Wolf game, needs to have a bland rules book instead.
I am sick and tired of going through sixteen pages of the story of how a Mage struggles with his Avatar just so I can find the rules on how much power a starting mage actually has.@@darthskarr8975
@@darthskarr8975 That's more or less how Chronicles of Darkness does/did it, but it was still pretty hard to grok
My favourite part is how, even though Zee needs to muddle through like 4 pages to find the right segment, his friend just knows it off the top of his head. Truly you must know your enemy as you know yourself.
I am a real-life Larry. I have been in his position. Just because you have painfully, painSTAKINGLY picked through a system and understand how it works...does not mean you think it's good.
Also conversely, just because you think it has merit, or is good, does not mean you think it's well laid out or designed.
@@LashknifeTalon Yeah, same, I mostly GM but that means that when I play I am a total problem player. Last time I palyed Lancer, I was using an stealth build, the GM was smoking that he could simply shot everyone except me because I was sneaking and that impeded him for getting me for a target, he then asked me what could take me out of the sneaking status. ''Well, if I engage someone, attack or get out of cover''. He then smirked and moved one of his grunts adjacent to me,
''well, now you are engaged, so I can attack you''.
''Well, no, while I am sneaking, I can choose to engage or not when I get adjacent to enemies, and they can't engage me while I am sneaking unless I say I want to engage then as an reaction''
''Pffffft that canot be true''
Almost ten minutes of him scrolling trough rules ...
...
...
''Fuck you are right''
@@gustavoaraujopenha8463 Tell him to use barrage and indiscriminate bombing in an area. There's also scan, which is well used by Witches and Priest type NPCs which can easily reveal most sneaking players, and arguably less bullshit than being bombed. Lemme guess, you were running full AGI SSC, right?
@@gustavoaraujopenha8463 I love how his solution was to just meta game as the GM and then got confused when that wasn't allowed 🤦♀️ lmao
@@chrish4439 It was not exactly metagame because the status is described as the enemies knowing you are there just not your exact location, they can even pepper the area with area damage. just can't use single target attacks against sneaking characters.
The Fragitar hacks across the firewall like a blobzelle and whispers " your malware was to weak to save you."
This was literally my Shadowrun 6 experience. All the rules were mixed in painful to read exposition paragraphs, and my one friend who purposefully makes the weakest possible characters as something of a challenge accidentally made a naked fisticuff man who punches harder than grenade explosions.
funny little anecdote, in one of the older editions there was a german publishing studio that said 'these rules are a mess, we can't publish this' and rewrote the whole core book to make things clearer and add exra explaination. it was so good some people started demanding english translations of the german translation of an english book.
@@oscarlove4394 I would to, i've played the game and honestly unless I had someone guiding my through it I probably still couldn't make a character.
SR5 was...maybe a little better, but still terrible. My group felt it was more effective to work through a dense 3rd party app to make our characters, and I believe we were correct.
If you ever want to do Shadowrun in a way that feels closer to the idea, then, as Zee obliquely mentions, less crunchy systems can be really good for that.
My favorite is a hack of The Sprawl, an Apocalypse engine game, but Blades In The Dark is good for different players, albeit hard to make into a setting other than Blades's own.
@@LollipopKnight2 My group tried to get into Shadowrun 5e once and HOO BOY.
Building a character from the book was a nightmare. Eventually I (sorta) had my character up and decided to do the homework and figure out how to, y'know, play. Purely from the book, I could not figure out to resolve a single attack action in combat. (For both what the player and what the target must roll) Things were on completely different pages.
We scrapped that and instead moved on to Starfinder.
@LordZaayl I'm not going to advocate for shadowrun 4th edition here, but that is one thing it has over 5th. Making a character was at least a simpler process.
The rules everywhere else though...
You gotta admit though, the picture of Scorn grumming those chisel freaks looks pretty badass.
I believe what you meant to say was "Yu'goto confis, tha picord of Scorn grumming dem chisel freaks opti beuanice adassa."
I am definitely stealing Chisel Freaks for my games. To good to pass up.
but not surprising
And 'fore thume first casing spun globe-side, no less
@@888Dagonbeau prosen dere my droog, now I finna see Cyberpunk Nawlins fr fr
All jokes aside though, Hallelujah-Jack is one HELL of name and the design he came up with looked sick af.
It has a Borderlands Boss feel.
I'm basing my first Penumbra City character on him as soon as the handbook arrives. :D
Yeh tbh that what we kinda sold the game on
Feels like a direct satire on Halloween Jack from SLA Industries.
I've been making a gritty cyberpunk bloodsport campaign and Hallelujah Jack is totally making an appearance as an announcer and possible boss.
*REPEEEENT! FOR AAAALLLLL HALLOWS EVE IS AT HAAAAYUUUUNNNNDDDD-AAH!*
Oh man that punchline hit me right in the wongus bobule. 😂😂😂
Every Shadowrun player is in deep personal pain from how accurate this is.
Dammit Opti!
This applies to every Cyberpunk RPG. Shadowrun is just the prime target.
I was trying to place it, since the cyberpunkdystopomancer RPGs in the bookshelf cannot, even generously, be called crunchy.
There's some games there that are definitely more crunch than fun, but they are all "more elves, elves with tails, elves with horns, elves with horns and tails" types.
So thanks! I've never played or even held a SR TTRPG. So closest I got was HBS's take on SR.
honestly its not that bad, you just gotta do your homework
@@AyarARJ IF you're interested in SR, I highly recommend 20th Anniversary Edition (aka 4e with all the rules cleaned up). Earlier editions have better style, but overly-complicated rules; and 5e/6e are very, very poorly edited.
My worst nightmare is publishing something like this. Spending hours, testing, redoing, retesting game mechanics, until I can say that an action can be represented with a dice roll, only for the added complexity to suck the fun out of the game, is the single most terrifying thing I can imagine.
As an idiot designing his how TTPRG I can assure you that balancing the systems is absolutely a pain in the ass. One mechanic worded weirdly, a great idea implemented in a way that works fine at face value but breaks the moment you dig in a bit, etc are all things I've stumbled into and even a simple game can be shattered rather ruthlessly.
From years of designing my own RPGs, I've come to realize that the best way to allow any action to be represented is to do less, not more. Blades in The Dark is an excellent example of this. The game doesn't even include a distinct "combat system", because combat, like everything else, is implied by the core mechanics. Once you know how to do "an action" you know how to do basically any action you can imagine.
Do you have anyone who can help you playtest? Even a group of friends who will sit down and play your game for a few hours might help you find problems you’d otherwise miss.
@@VoroxPete I grew up playing a lot of videogames.
The concept of missing most of the time only came to me when I started playing D&D.
When is it ever fun to just miss and do nothing with your turn?
Then I got into Warhammer 40k, and realized that rolling to hit in D&D comes from tabletop war games, but instead of controlling an entire army where you're making like 60 attacks in a turn you're making...1 (sometimes 2-3, but it still has a very different feel)
If I ever got back into trying to develop my system I have no roll to hit.
It's more about the choices made either ahead of time, or in reaction.
This reminds me of back in the 00s, my friends and I tried to play some game like this. It was called Cyberchaos or Cybermayhem or something like that... We all argued over interpretations of the really complex rules the whole session. "Your score is within this tier, so that means you get the Gun Success Check Passive Ability until the end of the Initiative phase when your attack speed is determined!"
We didnt find out until after the session, that we all had different editions of the game and they were all wildly different...
"WHY IS IT IN THE BACK!?" God that hit me right in my soul.
The bystander at the table between Zee and Larry is SUCH A MOOD. Better turn up the anti-wungus rating on my bobule.
The two background characters are also at the table in the Jump animated spellbook video, I think they were in a few more like at the game store.
The glasses guy on the left does not change emotions at all. Not a single thought it going on in that mind.
While the middle bystander was wondering why the hell he’s here up until he sees Larry call out this terrible game.
Bro obviously rolled Street Samurai, and hasn't touched his dice all night.
@@NeoDMC I know the pain of both. I've had games where I've played something like a Solo in Cyberpunk and had to sit and watch as the Decker was fumbling through 2 sessions of trying to hack stuff while on the other side I've watched people who played purely combat build characters with zero charisma/social ability and then they are stuck sitting there for 4-6 sessions because due to the parties decisions its nothing but social interactions and thus the Warlock, bard, rogue etc are just talking to a bunch of people and doing all manner of bullshit while the fighter is sitting in the corner grumbling to themselves because they have a -7 in CHA x3
This has to be the most accurate video you have ever done. Fucking spot on.
just wanna say I love your pfp lil sqek dude
I just realized that Zee ordering the book had no grey in the beard, but after getting the package he does. It's a nice touch.
He does you can see it for 2 frames before his hands cover it up in excitement
The fact that the GM was so hooked-up he already got the official t-shirt of the game really add to the uneasiness of the situation 😅
"If you look closely at my character sheet you will note that I will not have to roll a single die the entire evening because this game was designed by a failed novelist who has tricked you into reading his micro-fiction."
AMEN, holy CRAP. This pierced right through my soul. But this big nosed fella... he's cleva. Fantastic writing (just like the micro-fiction, I'm sure, contrary to the actual system)
Zee's beard gets more dense and angular every video. I'm convinced it's carved from wood.
just had shadowrun flashbacks with all the book flipping. "That was a great 5 hour session guys, a whole hour of game play! new record"
this is why, Game Design is it's own thing
asking a Writer to Game Design is like asking a Physicist to Engineer
As someone who wants to be writer but has only taken game design classes so far, this hits too close to home.
And when they collaborate, something great is created. Terrible, but great!
But what if you have a degree in engineering physics? 🤔
@@santiagoserrano9709 I think the profession where you engineer physics is called 'being a god'.
Nah, it's like asking a paint job guy to engineer
I like the shift towards episodic, relatable content. This feels like an early Adult Swim commercial for the RPG experience.
I love how Larry isn't just an annoying, pragmatic neckbeard, but an annoying, pragmatic neckbeard who a lot of the time is right because his annoying pragmatism is often rooted in facts and logic.
Larry just wants to play Waterloo, but no one in his friend group knows how or wants to know.
except the time he got mad Zee cleaned his shirt
larry going straight for the throat with 100% accuracy
He should of let jump work, or else none of this would happen.
Jesus Fragging Christmas this is my EXACT experience with Shadowrun! It's my favorite setting, but finding rules is like sifting through a paper shredder's basket.
I don't blame them for hiding what they're no doubt ashamed of.
4е anniversary is okay. Mainly
I got all the PDF's through a bundle my brother bought for me somewhere. It's super nice to just Ctrl+F whenever I need a specific rule.
As someone who loves Dragonfall and Wrath of the Righteous, I can't imagine how different these systems would be with a computer doing all of the crunchy bits.
@@monstermoo4191idk Wrath of the Righteous, but I can say that the Shadowrun videogames use the same _concepts_ as the TTRPG, but they are mechanically entirely detached from it. The devs realized that they were better off remaking the rules from scratch.
Flashbacks to trying to navigate Shadowrun 5 and 6 sourcebooks.
Going from DND to Shadowrun combat literally made half the table quit.
I love Shadowrun 5e with all my heart, but my god those books needed another editor or something.
I remember rolling 19d6 for a sniper rifle and I needed 2's to succeed. That was when I started questioning why we're playing a bad game.
similar blades in the dark experience
@tristeneagles9154 if 5e was bad, try 4e and bellow, literally un readable. 5e at least takes you to the right page.
The little gasp of joy that Zee does before immediately pledging to the kickstarter...ooof, man...I feel that.
As someone who loves Shadowrun, this is 100% accurate.
As a soon to fail novelist, this gives me hope!
ETA: I WAS BEING FACETIOUS!
I am fully confident my novel will be the next global phenomenon!
And no, I am NOT going to dox myself. Nice try, tho ;)
How do you measure failure in a creative endeavor anyway? I'd argue success means finishing it. Sales are just gravy.
Don't worry, my friends. I will read your micro-fiction... and you'll barely even need to trick me into doing so.
@@bartz0rt928 Finishing it and not being repulsed by what you have added to the world i'd say, but being able to live off your art is what i'd call a real acheivement, considering how few actually can do it.
@@bartz0rt928
I'd say for myself where even my friends who said they'd read it don't would count as failing on my part.
don't give up! It took Brandon Sanderson 10 years and 13 failed novels before he was finally able to publish his first book!
This is so freaking relatable to anyone that have tried to dive into the indie TTRPG scene.
The universes/settings are always great, but dammit the systems are a nightmare to understand and piece together.
I treat most of the indie TTRPGs I come across as inspiration and idea fodder at this point and just sit there wondering, “now how can I put this into a system I know.” There are some gems though to be found… just not too often.
You are getting into the wrong indie games 😅 there are those who look at DnD, Pathfinder, CoC, Cyberpunk, etc and think "this need more rules!"......and then there is the bunch that thinks "I just want to do cool things and have my players do cool things".
Go for the later!
@@ramirocarnicer2503wait coc you mean that coc coc2 or the og
@@ramirocarnicer2503 I mean, some people like their games more crunchy.
@@ramirocarnicer2503this is why I like GURPS I've had entire crunchy breakdowns of entire systems I also ran game where everything just congested rolls shits so variable
I'm working on my own TTRPG at the moment and my goal from the start was to make the game that I wanted to play, and for it to be as simple as possible whilst also being interesting and tactical. It turns out that it's *extremely* hard! Even the most simple and elegant of systems take months or even years to be that way, and I have a new appreciation for systems that go "fuck it" and just let the rules get away from them haha
Yeah, it is something you notice once you start doing for any game. Granted some genres, do enable that goal easier than others. It's just a matter of how deep you want in certain mechanics, especially for fighting. At that point, though, you just make sure that the rules are straight to the point and flow right. You don't want to be hitting warhammer 40k 9th ed wargaming levels of rules bloat hahaha
I feel this. Making my own system now also and damn... It is so hard to keep things simple, varied, engaging, tactical, complex, and easy to learn. So many contradictions. At 120 pages of rules and it just keeps going.
Oh god, tell me about it. I tweeked my system for months, simplifying away rules and accounting for everything I could think of, before I realized, I hadn't written a rule for JUMPING!
@@sockylogic2014 I've been running an active playtest for my usual D&D group every other week and have a few other GMs running their own games... I swear every time we play, something else broken rears its head and I have to rewrite large sections! The last update I made to it stripped out some of the mechanics I was really proud of and happy with that had been in the game since its conception, just because they were infeasible in reality... it hurts, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and chop your beloved creation into bits all over again.
@@abrr2000 Thanks for reminding me to add jumping rules to my own system lmao
I just had session zero for a Shadowrun campaign with my group and Shadowrun fifth edition is literally this. Nobody in the group has read the book yet, so everyone was immediately confused when there was a short story in the middle of the book, and any relevant information to character building is split up by the short story.
I swear, Larry is the grognard, super critical side of of Zee. There to ground him and stop him from getting too excited.
your choice in music is impeccable as always.
Anyone know what song this is?
edit: song is
Aftertime · Humans Win · Zach Foty
was actually able to shazam this one
@@AWanderingmage Hell yeah brother
Got a mate whose made his own sci-fi ttrpg and this is hitting all the marks! Good job
Oh no
I loved this. Especially how the fiction got subtly more jargon incomprehensible over time. Would love more TTRPGs-in-general videos
Flipping through the rulebook, trying to find the simplest thing which is inexplicably hidden in a random section, was my group's experience with Shadowrun.
As a world of darkness main, this felt like a stab in the heart.
Especially when in between the prose is something like "turn to page 54 and see the sidebar for rules on how werespider bites work" and it's straight-up not there.
@@kamikage9420 What I'd love to see is a cut-down, crunch-exclusive version of the rules formatted like the Mothership RPG books.
I played a session with the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook (puny humans, Stranger Things style) and we had fun.
But boy, was it the worst editing I've ever seen in a rulebook! The entire ruleset was literally based on flash forwards!
Whats wrong childe? Having trouble with your disciplines? Ill take you back to elysium lickity split with my celerity so you can sip on some vitae.
I’ve ST’d 8 sessions of VTM 5e and still barely have a clue how the system works
That face of pure glee when he bought the module is all our faces when we get finished reading an awesome kickstarter module and impulse buy to max tier lol.
"the enemy just disengaged with you, so you can't attack them without engaging them."
"Ok, how do I do that, none of my character abilities or basic actions have the engaging property"
Flips through the entire game system rulebook
"Damnit"
Shots fired.
And accurate.
Well no kidding it's accurate, he needed a -2 to hit after all. lol
I can't stop laughing at "chisel freaks" just coming out of nowhere 😂
"Skorm grummed 'ose chisel-freaks 'fore thume first casing spun globe-side... and I... wasn't surprised." 😂
This just tells me that the mechanics of every dystopian RPG are as opaque as my characters alignment who's a cyber outlaw of the frontier future with mastery over lethal theatre improv
Your degree of correctness is murky, but I won't say you're wrong? But on the other hand, the people who tend to flock toward the cyber dystopian RPG landscape also tend to be the people who like to eat diamond encrusted rulebooks, so take that as you will.
For those looking for easy alternative RPG systems to get into:
* Powered by the Apocalypse - Quite a straightforward system and is setting-neutral so can be attached to many different settings.
* Fiasco - Inspired by films like "Fargo" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" where you set up a scene and it's outcomes before roleplaying it rather than worrying too much about heavier mechanics.
* Dread - Great for thrillers and horror games. You just roleplay and every time you try to do something dangerous you pull a block from a jenga tower. If the tower falls your character dies. Then rebuild the tower for the remaining players and keep going.
* Ten Candles - The game ends when all the ten candles go out. When they all go out, all your player characters die. So you won't survive no matter what, what you do before then is the important part. Your character is generated by a mix of character cards written by you and your friends that slowly get burnt away throughout the game. You also have a fistful of d6 that slowly gets smaller. A good tense horror RPG.
* Alice is Missing - a TTRPG done entirely via text. Each player is a friend of Alice, who has gone missing, and are texting each other trying to uncover the mystery of her fate.
* The Witch is Dead - a one-page RPG which only needs a d10. You are animal familiars to a dead witch trying to avenge yourselves upon the witch hunter that murdered her.
* For the Queen - You roleplay as the retinue of a fantasy Queen. You just draw prompt cards that ask questions about the Queen, her motivations, her relationships with you and the others, etc. Slowly you craft a story. Finally, a "The Queen is Under Attack" card is drawn and how each of your characters choose to respond to that based on how the story has gone and their individual relationships to the Queen can be very different and alter the ending.
* Goblin Quest - Go without a GM as you all play goblins trying to achieve a goal without meeting a grizzly fate. Roll a d6 for everything and fail in hilarious slapstick manners when you roll poorly, building new goblins quickly to replace you dead inept characters. A very fun and silly little game.
But what about Roll for Shoes?
@@AlgaeNymph There are more TTRPGs out there than I can possibly mention in a post. Never played this one but I'll take your word for it being just as accessible as the ones I mentioned and HAVE played.
Thank you for this! These seem really cool!
A shame they are as deep as a pudd;e
@@almightyk11 A TTRPG is only ever as shallow as the people playing it. If they put in zero effort they won't get a lot out of it, following the outline only and not contributing anything themselves. But there are loads of ways to be extremely creative within these systems.
Holy shit, Larry actually won an argument.
Without a threat, that is.
Didn't he already win the one about dices?
(Or the one about old-style critical fails : P )
@@drakegrandx5914 no, because in the end he had his shirt cleaned because he's "not superstitious" and was proved wrong about his dice ghosts
Gotta give zee credit to the character in the back reacting to the train crashing in slow motion as larry continues
"no, see, there's some cool mechanics in here, like..." is 100% me with shadowrun. It's crunchy, each revision confuses me more, but god damnit it has rules for explosions in confined spaces and how that means everyone in said space becomes red mist.
As a Shadowrun DM, i feel that on every level possible.
Shadowrun DMs need a support group, man
I felt this... The only unrealistic part is ordering a kickstarter and getting it within a year and a half so you actually know what it is when its delivered.
I got a board game once that was YEARS after the kickstarter, I forgot all about it.
Yeah, I got a board game 8 years after I backed it, I legitimately though it'd been delivered to the wrong address.
I view kickstarter as buying Future Me presents. There's no way I'll ever remember what the fuck I kickstarted by the time it delivers, so occasionally things show up at my door, specially curated by someone with exact knowledge of my taste.
@@Corzyawas it any good?
This is why I roll my eyes when my friends try to write RPGs. I had a buddy who made a game where every roll is 2d12, 13 was a critical, and you had to roll again to figure out if it's a crit success or crit fail
Hey maybe he just wanted a high crit rate lol
Ok in fairness, confirming crits is not all that unusual if you wanna nerf critical hits a bit. Pathfinder 1E has that as a way to keep crit fishing builds in check.
@@webbowser8834 "roll again to figure out if it's a crit success or crit fail" just in case you missed the couple of words after the line break like I did initially. So 13 is a crit *something*, and the next roll determines whether that's good or bad.
@@protip9727 ohhhhh, fair enough.
One of my friends writes ttrpg-systems, and its a great deal of fun. Sure, it is broken, but never boring. And since we play and fix along the way, each new System is somewhat of an improvement.
I sometimes come back to this video simply because the intro is so fire...
Same. Thats why im back
@@degreeskelvin3025'We don't know it yet, but we're about to die' WHY IS IT SUCH A GOOD QUOTE AARGGH
The Larrys of the world have done a tremendous job at causing others to rediscover the value of single-player games.
As a semi-retired "novelist" I gotta say, ouch. Anyway I got called out enough for this that I design clothing now. Yes, my nerd clothing line has a narrative.
This made me realize I'm even nerdier than I previously thought because I find it surprisingly cool
okay well now you gotta plug your shop, lambasted by the video or not I wanna hear about a clothing line with a narrative
most t-shirts have a narrative already!
and run a wonderful blog!
link me up boi
I love how the other two players in the background are just sitting there with frowns while the GM and Larry Bicker, they obviously have had to deal with this drama before.
2:33 "So I roll a d20 and I need to get more than a -2" Me trying to optimize my concentration saves 🧘
If anyone was wondering, the song in the beginning is Aftertime by Humans win
Why did I have to scroll so far to find this?
The audio in this is great! didn't see anyone else say anything about it, so I wanted to! GJ!
As a long time Shadowrun GM this makes me laugh and cry at the same time.
Are the rules really that poorly laid out?
I run 5th edition. Yes. Yes they are.
@@bthsr7113I have the 6e rulebook. It's dogshit. Status effects are listed before cgaracter creation, magic is listed before basic combat rules, I can't find the fucking grenades, actions lead you across pages, it's a nightmare. Plus, I'm not a native German speaker, so it's even worse for me. Also, the first 35 pages are just lore
@@silverthedruid4754 Isn’t Grenades In vehicles
@@mousesteam7882 might be. I'll look into it. Eventually
"Did you read the adventure?" dang really testing Larry's friendship there.
The pains of trying to find a thing with amazing flavour *and* cool and balanced mechanics.
Most of the time designers are not great writers and writers are not great designers. I am butting heads with one of my friends who is letting me proof read their own RPG Book... I suck at writing narrative, but can spot mechanical jank from a mile away. Meanwhile my friend is basically a writer who has ideas first and tries to shoe horn mechanics into their stories. They are all like, "Hey so I thought up a cool new species and put it in this chapter!" and I'm just like, HOLY FUCK YOU STILL HAVEN'T MECHANICALLY FLESHED OUT OR BALANCED THE LAST 3 YOU INTRODUCED!"
@@kid14346 Yeah that's the difficulty
Your friend might be better off using a universal system as a basis for their rpg rather than creating one from scratch.
Graft the flavour onto a game you already know how to play.
@@kid14346 I have a friend who did the opposite, mechanically things are relatively simple and fit together quite well. Lore and story wise it's quite a mess and he often doesn't see the implications behind certain names for things. The one that sparked the most debate "Dark Stamina."
Love that the one guy in the background is skeptical of the game but doesn't seem to be pissed till Larry reveals that he read the adventure.
In fairness, reading an adventure ahead of time and creating a character specifically to trivialize said adventure would be considered a jerk move at most tables.
Its interesting how much this showcases the different ways a system can earn the description "crunchy".
First, its immersion breaking because its so hard to look things up. A well organized book would have had the GM flip right to the needed section.
Second, this amount of jargon hurts immersion rather than helping it. Players need to memorize what a game's new words mean and most are only willing to memorize a few. A few novel words can make a setting come alive. A ton leave everyone confused.
Third, there doesnt seem to be any advice on how the game mechanics provide engagement. Maybe being a hacker is supposed to make hacking effortless, and thats supposed to make the player feel like a badass. But if thats whats intended, this is never explained in the book.
This is the story of a person unable to find the instructions for their screwdriver, unable to understand the instruction, and never being told their screwdriver is actually a hammer.
All before we even try and tackle the question: "is it any good as a hammer?"
This is just a hitpiece on Shadowrun and I am here for it.
This has so much work and effort gone into it-
also this better be a real kickstarter.
Now you can see why he keeps Larry around, having a grognard at the table has its advantages sometimes.
I have recently learned that “grognard” is in fact not a made-up future slang word, but it actually has a real-world agreed upon meaning. Given the context of this video, I genuinely thought it was made up the first time I read your comment.
@@talongreenlee7704lol, it's older than anyone living even.
Except any kind person would've let the GM know ahead of time, instead of bringing it up mid-game to show off how smart he is. XD
You can't win with Larry. Even when he's right, he's wrong. (and vice versa)
@@TheGerkuman But he's not actively refusing to play the game, nor is he trying to stop them from running a campaign. He's simply playing efficiently. What's he supposed to let him know in advance? That he's using a hacker class with standard perks from the player handbook?
@@deathpyre42 he's purposefully trying to rile the GM.
I'm reading Neuromancer right now, it reads EXACTLY like this
I thought a lot about this video at PAX, because I kept coming across demos that were more cutscenes than gameplay.
"You are just tricking me into watching your student film"
I got a good chuckle out of this, even though the dialog made me feel like I was going to have an aneurysm.
Ok, just taking a second to say that I LOVE the face animation with the kickstarter, both the expresion and the way it morph add shows the layers of excitment of being tricked into those kind of projects.
counterpoint:
shut up i love this novel, it even came with a free ttrpg
Absolute gold. Immediately sent this to everyone at my Cyberpunk table
Aw man, is Cyberpunk like this? That's on my to-play list and I was really hoping it had good design...
@@Dtyn8 Not at all. I just run a cyberpunk setting and joke about all the funny cyber-terms.
@dtyn8MC other than having the annoying weird hacking mini game only one player can participate in Cyberpunk is pretty solid. It has mechanics and they work.
@@Dtyn8 hacking and armor are glaring issues but workable. It absolutely is written in a very colloquial style, but still in the service of being a rulebook. Like there's a line after you decide your starting money based on your job where its like 'oh, one more thing- roll a d6. On a 5 or higher, you just got fired. Tough luck' or something to that effect. Its more cute than obtrusive most of the time.
@@Dtyn8 No, this is directly mocking shadowrun, which is cyberpunk cocaine addicted older brother, who is currently kicked out of rehab for snorting molly off the jesus statue.
I love the ENERGY of this video, both in the opening and even just in the discussion at the table. It's great! Really brings it all to life and ties it together with a great flow. Keep it up! Your stuff just keeps getting better and better!
As someone with a rough draft of an RPG system *and* a separate novel in the works, this fills me with so much anxiety 😂 Great video!
as a fan of a lot of different TTRPGs and have a shelf of them. This feels sooo real. the amazing part is getting a party to play something aside D&D or Pathfinder xD
I think we're going to need more Hallelujah Jack content
Larry 100% went through that exact process and is trying to ward off others from the same mistake.
I'm very glad the Closed Captions are accurate to the in-game lingo, but even having it written out doesn't help much.