Crafty Seminar

[waterdhavian]

Uploading the videos to youtube.  Should be complete by this evening. 

[meadicus]

Uploading the videos to youtube.  Should be complete by this evening. 

Huzzah. You're the dude 

[MistbornDave]

Uploading the videos to youtube.  Should be complete by this evening. 

When you get it finished can you post a link too?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Can someone tell me what this "Crafty Seminar" is?

[Big_Jim]

It's pretty self explanatory.  A question/answer/what we're planing to do next session with the crafty guys.

Edited for sounding too snarky.

[Psion]

Can someone tell me what this "Crafty Seminar" is?

Two hours at gencon with a Q&A session with Alex & Pat, a few product announcements and teasers, and a little of Crafty getting the audiences' thoughts I various things.

[waterdhavian]

Heres the url for the playlist with all 7 parts. I apologize for the shakycam, couldnt fit a tripod in the row of seats.  

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCCFB8A6D9EDEF449

[Mister Andersen]

Thanks dude

[glimmerrat]

Initial thoughts:

(click to show/hide)

1) They mentioned Spookbusters, and people laughed. Not sure what to make of that...
2) Someone asked about Vow of Silence - yay!

[Mister Andersen]

I just realised that Spookbusters -- and I'm sure I'm not the only one who hopes Kylie has an analogue in there -- is the only SMC segment I haven't contributed something to. I seriously can't wait to see Stone Sentinels in print, particularly the gorgeous cover art.

(click to show/hide)

Micromange or theme?

It depends on duration of play. If I'm starting at first level and progressing upwards, I'm far more likely to tailor my build to the narrative demands of the game as they arise.

If I'm starting further in, then I'm definitely a theme chaser because I have a much greater freedom to assemble what I need, especially if I have to follow a suboptimal path to get there: it's a lot easier to eat that when you don't have to play through it. This is especially true when you're starting play at level 4 onwards and entry to an expert class is either something already achieved or the inevitable next step of your progression as soon as you level.

A good example is Divia and Annie from Krensky's Runelords game; if we'd started at even 2nd level I would have started my build with Explorer instead of Captain.


Stress Damage?

As it stands, its implementation is too fiddly to make as attractive a tool as it ought to be.


Subdual?

Pummel and its x3 multiplier is frequently the only reason to use subdual damage. Hammers as written fail the simple logic test; that 20 pounds of metal breaks your body just as efficiently as a sword.


Vitality?

Absolutely a timer, but I don't mind that so much because I'm used to actual low physical damage capacity from point-buy game models like Storytekker and I like the feel of people being worn down until they start taking real damage.


Standard/Special?

Specials should be reserved for Mastermind/Henchman plot-level characters. Just being generally significant in a narrative sense doesn't mean you shouldn't be built using a standard NPC model


Combat?

Grindiness to me is as much as not being able to land a hit as it is whittling down the vitality/wound/damage pool once you do.

I think combat would be made better if rather than doing points of damage leading to one or more damage saves which may or may not be failed, standards functioned puely on "it takes X number of hits to go down" model. Sort of a combination of mook and tough. Whittling down point pools should be something reserved for specials.


Dice?

While there's a point in getting players to RP social interactions, to a degree it misses the point of having a character who may be better or worse at such things. Especially if the player is reserved/shy.

I've rarely had a GC for this system who gave out enough new AD to encourage more rapid spending of them as a player; again, the quieter members of the group tend to suffer as a general rule, and it sucks when you've done something you think is cool and warrants a bonus AD and the GC just blanks you. Conversely as a GC, I honestly don't bother giving myself more AD when I hand out bonus dice because to me it's just more needless bookkeeping and I rarely seem to spend more than my starting pool anyway.

I've actually been thinking of introducing an AD pool for the table; rather than individuals getting bonus AD for cool stuff, the players receive it as a common resource they can draw on once they've expended their own pool.


Hypothetical gear system?

The assumption of possessing the basics I like. The signature items + GC preselecting the majority of your gear for you only works with the characters as subservient members of an organisation but it does work well; if it showed up anywhere else I would likely want to kill it with fire.

I don't think it's the having to choose that people mind so much as it's the extremity of options they're being made to choose from: so many people would be happy with a narrativist "Do you want a big handgun or a small handgun that you can tweak" rather than a simulationist "here, choose a handgun from this selection of over 100 often very similar options!"

Hopefully we'll never see options differentiated by gear type again; I know a number of people including myself who really hated that aspect of 2.0

[Agent 333]

First of all: YAY SHADOWFORCE ARCHER! 

Second, this relates to the whole vitality grind vs crit-death discussion:
In every FC game I've played so far, the only time that Special NPCs die of vitality damage is when they're immune to criticals or have a half dozen grades of Tough (though even that wasn't enough to save one Special...). Every other time it was crit-death. Which wouldn't bother me quite so much except....
Characters with a high defense are more likely to be critted to death than easier to hit characters. This isn't necessarily obvious, but the math works out that if you need an 18 to hit the guy and you're using an 18-20 threat range weapon, every hit will be a threat. No exceptions.
I've also found that what abilities let you activate threats cheaper (such as Most Deadly) basically mean that you don't have to worry about AD economy anymore, and then you end up using the AD to boost the crit's damage, which further ensures that the vitality is meaningless. Note that I wouldn't mind Most Deadly quite so much if it were just free crits on Standard NPCs, which any Soldier should be able to dispatch with ease anyway.
While we're on the Crit subject, has anyone else found the Casting B/M/S tree to be a little over powered? Casting Supremacy gives your Spellcasting checks a 17-20 threat range AND makes activating those threats free. On any other skill that wouldn't be a problem, but when that skill is also used as an attack roll for highly damaging spells, it becomes an issue. The fact that they're spellcasting feats (and thus increase the Save DC of those spells) is just icing on the cake.

Which brings us to my next point: You asked what could go and I wouldn't miss it? Spell Defense. Many (if not most) of the abilities that grant it don't grant enough. If your regular defense is higher, then it basically is worthless. If they're casting a high enough level spell at you that the casting DC is higher than your Spell Defense (which is likely, again, because you never have a very high SD and casting DC scale fairly quickly) then it's worthless. It bugs me that SD makes getting hit with a magic missile more difficult but does next to nothing to a Searing Ray. Take Abide in Darkness for example. At level 7 (the level Mages are casting 3rd level spells), in dim or no light it gives you a Spell Defense of 21. The casting DC for Searing Ray is 22. A level 7 character can easily have a Defense of 23 or higher. So what does it actually do? Prevent you from easily being hit by Magic Missile. Even at that, an TL 7 NPC with a rating V (as in average) Spellcasting skill can still hit that 21 on a 9 (not even counting any Int bonus). In bright light that drops even lower, in direct sunlight it's lower than the casting check to cast a 0th level spell. And that's a feat who's only benefit is Spell Defense. Feats that give you a little spell defense on the side might as well not give you any at all. Take Fire Elder for example. In order for the Spell Defense it gives you to matter (looking at the first printing, I apologize if it got fixed in second printing), your Intimidate bonus has to be better than +13 just to stop 0th level spells. By the time your Intimidate is that high, the enemy caster's bonus to spell casting is just as high. I understand it's supposed to be only a minor benefit of the otherwise awesome feat, but to me it might as well not be there. Taking the Spell Defense out of that feat entirely would make me more likely to take it because I wouldn't feel like it had a useless benefit.

Sorry for the length of the rant.

[mathey]

Thanks for the YouTube post, waterdhavian!

Giving it a watch...

[MikeS]

Dice?[/b]

I've actually been thinking of introducing an AD pool for the table; rather than individuals getting bonus AD for cool stuff, the players receive it as a common resource they can draw on once they've expended their own pool.

Warhammer RPG 3rd has a good mechanism to address this: everybody starts out with their own pool of 3 dice, but when anybody does something cool, the GM puts a die in the group pool, and when the group pool reaches a certain threshhold (typically 3), then everybody gets their personal pool refreshed. This encourages more teamwork, and it also makes players blow through their own pool faster, since you don't get any benefit from hoarding the dice, all the while attempting cooler things that move the story along.

[Mister Andersen]

Oooh, I like that quite a bit.

[mathey]

Micromanage or theme?

Personally, I tend to lean heavily on the system to provide me with a theme via Origin/Class. I don't like multiclassing, either, and I tend to get fairly locked into the most literal take on the Class as possible. So, I guess its sort of crunch-informed-theme.

My players, however, tend to be Theme oriented all the way. They get a concept based on what I tell them about the setting, then ask for help getting the "right" stuff to do the things they imagine their PC can do. They almost never spend time micromanaging.

Stress Damage?

I got burned out on Stress damage in SpyCraft 2.0 running a Survival Horror game in PBP. Being literal-minded meant I was rolling for that stuff every round when monsters appeared, and the numbers got kind of crazy.

I did a little bit of stress damage in FantasyCraft, but tend to steer clear of it unless its player initiated. I appreciate what its there for, but find it a little too roll/chart intensive for my taste. I think I'd be more into it if it just had a pool with simple conditions or penalties tied to amount of damage taken.

Subdual?

As with Stress Damage, I get the idea here, but I don't know if I like using it very much. Being able to incapacitate enemies rather than just killing them is great; having to roll a few times beyond normal combat resolution to do it isn't so great. I'd say I use it MORE than Stress though - but I think I just like any excuse for a fist fight.

Vitality?

Vitality for PCs seems to work good; it lets players know when they're close to getting really hurt. I like that built in suspenseful danger tracker.

Vitality for NPCs I have doubts about. As mentioned in the seminar video, it does seem to boil down to getting that one Crit when facing NPCs with big Vitality pools.

Something I've never loved - the idea of Fatigue when you run out of VP. Its just another condition to have to cross-reference and track, and having your WP exposed seems to be enough of a penalty on its own.

Standard/Special?

I like to mix it up with NPCs, though I'd say I prefer Standard ones in most scenes. They're just easier to work with, even if one notes that Damage Saves aren't as fast as they are meant to be. I get flummoxed by NPCs with lots of Qualities or PC-based abilities, personally. Any time I have to open the book and flip to an index to do something with 'em, I feel like I'm wasting time - ESPECIALLY since they can drop with one lucky shot.

NPC creation for both types is a breeze, in any case. Its just the running part where the slow down can happen. If you can make them flavorful but not quite so index-reliant, I think it'd help.

Combat?

Combat (in FC, anyways) can be very flavorful and fun - if your PCs are into reading the book and you spice it up with description. I've had some experiences where people who don't care about all those options just use one Action over and over and over, however, and that can be grindy even with flavor text.

There's a lot to be said for letting players choose how deep they want to go with tactics, but I almost wish the system forced some PCs to change it up more frequently.

Funnels?

Why, Alex? WHY?

Dice?

I prefer to roll dice Actively rather than Re-actively. It seems to fit in with the idea of PCs as the primary motivating factor in the game, plus it tends to mean less rolling. I'm one of the heathen kind who like static defenses ala 4th Edition, but I won't bawl if we still have rolls to save in MasterCraft. Actually, M&M3 has both; 10+save for most situations, then saves based off the same bonus for special cases.

Action Dice as a team pooled resource is a good idea, especially if the genre/premise encourages teamwork. Another thing WF3 does that I like is give the team a "type" which effects how their sharing of resources work. In other words, you get a "party class" in addition to your PC class. That could be a way to handle the varied approaches to espionage/crime/policing we see in genre fiction. One team template could be for "paramilitary", another for "long con", another for "rotten scumbags", etc. Perhaps they could multiply/explode more for particular types of skill checks or conflict actions?

Hypothetical gear system?

I like the idea of archetypal gear. I also like the idea of GM provided equipment to prevent the "no parachute" scenario.

I suspect many people will miss getting to pore over lists of gear, however. If your options allow for both extremes in one team (perhaps cuing off extra options with feats/abilities, as mentioned in the seminar), I think that'd be ideal.