@Anaphory@wandering.shop avatar

Anaphory

@Anaphory@wandering.shop

Geek of computer models; Consumer of speculative fiction; Armchair anthropologist through role playing games.
For science: over at https://scicomm.xyz/@anaphory

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Anaphory, to worldbuilding
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I am thinking about running an exploration game in FATE, where we explore not just geography, but also cultures. I want to draw on my players' ideas, the Hainish stories by Ursula Le Guin, some of Ian Banks' Culture novels – or on the game side, @JoshuaACNewman 's Shock: Human Contact. Most other games I know focus on one culture or on the inside perspective. Can anyone recommend strategies for cultures compatible with the Brainstorm mechanics from Atomic Robo?

Anaphory,
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@nyrath @JoshuaACNewman @bradjmurray I might have a copy of Diaspora flying around somewhere on my hard drive from when I played a few sessions of it several years ago. Now this is a good impulse to start digging, it might have other interesting things for me, too.

Quick review of the game system (wandering.shop)

A bit negative, but I kind of agree that combat should probably have less emphasis in a Solarpunk RPG. I remember from the old days that the Paranoia RPG had a similar situation where combat really wasn’t the focus of the game, so they pretty much kept it out of the rulebook and left it to the game master to flesh out if...

Anaphory,
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@poVoq @JacobCoffinWrites Yes, it is a matter of weight. The website says that role-playing combat “doesn’t work. It’s completely subjective. It takes an incredibly skilled GM to make it interesting or coherent.” And I just think the same holds for social dynamics, economy, moral choice or research. But due to the history of how role playing games came about, often we have combat mechanics (they just seems like a must have for RPG), and rarely is there even advice for those other topics.

Anaphory,
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@andrewrgross Pretty much! To be clear: I'm not saying that all of these need rules, but that trusting the GM/the group to make searches interesting, but not fights, is a massive design choice. Somebody mentioned that wants to be an OSR game. For that kind of game, “rules light outside fights” is totally a sensible&obvious design. So I guess I'm just very surprised overall that a Solarpunk game would want to go Old School instead of creating rules for new types of narratives.

Anaphory, to solarpunk
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When there's a new RPG on the block claiming to do , I'm obviously interested. Recently, @FullyAutomatedRPG made its way to me via @fiction so I'm giving it a look. What does it want to do? It wants to be a kind of D&D for Solarpunk – a big kitchen sink game that becomes a cornerstone for the genre. That's… Hm, I like my RPGs written with a lightning focus on telling specific stories, so I feel like I'll be biased against , but let's see. 1/8

Anaphory,
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Starting on the front page of https://fullyautomatedrpg.com/ I notice that the starting point of the system is a Cyberpunk homebrew, that it is “similar to the d20 systems most people are familiar with” and that the system highlights combat, I miss the big points of the @SolarpunkPrompts: Community as protagonist; Infratructure is sexy; No simple solutions; Human-Environmental Context. But the combat page pre-empts the question, so I'll head there next. 2/8

Anaphory,
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@poVoq Thank you! I haven't figured out that part of the fedi nature yet.

Anaphory, to random
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In addition to some stories, I heard the first episode proper of @tomasino's @SolarpunkPrompts podcast. While I am not a a writer myself, I enjoyed it. In particular the mention of “Dialect: a game about language and how it dies” – which I have played and enjoyed a few times – makes me look forward to hearing more such asides beyond @alxd's original list (https://alxd.org/22-solarpunk-communities-and-story-hooks.html)

Anaphory, to solarpunk
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Following some recommendations on @solarpunk I picked up “The Dispossessed” by Ursula Le Guin, and I found it right up my alley. I went through it as fast as I could, unable to put it aside for long. There were a few aspects which I did not need (the Terran connection in particular messed with my suspension of disbelief), but overall I found it a very good start to dive into reading fiction again.

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