There is a Possibility of a Pen and Paper Project Eternity RPG

[Malcador]

are you as excited for the possibility as i am?

 

Hopefully filled with soporific combat!

Edited May 4, 2015 by Malcador

[bluepotions]

Use Monte Cook's Cypher System. 

 

No, really. It's simple, fast and the entire game is about rewarding XP for learning ****, discovering **** and exploration. Nothing is gained through combat. 

 

You could actually do this really easily, the Cyphers could be animancy items that you use for various things HEY LETS DO THIS

[Bovronius]

I'm in agreement that if they were to make anything pen and paper based, they don't even need to go as far as make any game rules. 

For the most part, PoE is DnD 2.0.. Which means you can just put your players from any D20 system (or any system depending on the work the DM/GM wants to do) into this world of lore. 

Which I will say, this worlds lore is fantastic. I'm in agreement all they would really need to make is a lore/map book with all of that relevant information, and let the players use their own systems, instead of trying to develop their own from scratch. 

Given the smaller market for PnP these days, and the majority of people that currently play are already in the system they like, a new world to play in would probably be a lot more attractive to people to purchase than a whole new system. 

[bluepotions]

I'm in agreement that if they were to make anything pen and paper based, they don't even need to go as far as make any game rules. 

 

For the most part, PoE is DnD 2.0.. Which means you can just put your players from any D20 system (or any system depending on the work the DM/GM wants to do) into this world of lore. 

 

Which I will say, this worlds lore is fantastic. I'm in agreement all they would really need to make is a lore/map book with all of that relevant information, and let the players use their own systems, instead of trying to develop their own from scratch. 

 

Given the smaller market for PnP these days, and the majority of people that currently play are already in the system they like, a new world to play in would probably be a lot more attractive to people to purchase than a whole new system. 

 

PnP has a big market if they went with 5E rules. They'd need to rewrite most of the classes. Fighters are tanks, Barbarians do AoE Damage, chanters would be confusing as hell etc

[hamskii]

Has there been any word on this? Hopefully Obsidian won't be deterred by the lukewarm reception for Lords of the Eastern Reach - there is much more demand for a PnP adaptation imo.

[globalCooldown]

This post has a long and honorable tradition of necroposts, I see.

 

I'm also interested in a PoE tabletop. So much so that I may, er, have been working on a translation/simplification of actual mechanics from actual Pillars of Eternity, geared toward a d20 tabletop system.

 

Who wants to see WIPs?

[bluepotions]

Has there been any word on this? Hopefully Obsidian won't be deterred by the lukewarm reception for Lords of the Eastern Reach - there is much more demand for a PnP adaptation imo.

 

Hitting every single backer goal is not a "lukewarm" reception, man.

 

Lukewarm would have been like, hitting the goal and nothing else.

[hamskii]

It's not looking good for a tabletop implementation.

Um, we did not do any - so the question is, if we, how we prototyped prior to, uh, implementation. Um, and since we had a lot of basis in tabletop did we do any tabletop gaming? Uh, we did not. Uh, part of that is because these stats would be a nightmare - that's funny too because some people say like, "hey, when's the tabletop of this coming?", and I'm like, "you wanna do percentile operations on damage ranges that are, like, double-digit, I don't think you actually do". Um, so we didn't do that, we, we sort of charted things out in Excel to see, like, what are the boundaries of this, how's this really mapping out with how we're planning out abilities and damage ranges, and things like that, uh, so it was mostly sort of, it was theoretical for a very long time, but we also, we looked outside of D&D, we looked at other games and said, you know, how to we feel about balancing in these games, and what are the um, the sort of margins of influence - like, how impactful are these attributes on that, and how does that feel, uh, for the type of game we're trying to make? And the nice thing was that, um, you know, Tim Cain did a lot of the implementation of the attribute things, and it was, uh, it was usually pretty easy if I went to him and I said, "ah, I was wrong, like these values are bad, we need to adjust this up or down or whatever", he was usually pretty quick turnaround, so we could test out those changes relatively rapidly. But um, yeah, I - I would have done tabletop, uh, sort of testing of that stuff, but the mechanics were really designed - and we, we wanted to design them for a CRPG, we wanted to say like, "you gotta computer here, we do lots of calculations really easily for you, we don't have to base things on dice".  Um, you know, and so that's why our damage ranges are things more like, you know, 14-20. Uh, so yeah. Thank you.

What are some ways that a tabletop adaptation could preserve the spirit in which the game's systems were designed, without becoming too complex to actually play without the aid of a spreadsheet?

[globalCooldown]

What are some ways that a tabletop adaptation could preserve the spirit in which the game's systems were designed, without becoming too complex to actually play without the aid of a spreadsheet?

 

It's tricky, I'll give you that. Especially making every single point you put into an attribute meaningful, and especially when you're working within PoE-the-computer-game's attribute system.

 

The way I did it in the PoE tabletop homebrew I'm writing up (yeah that's me, plugging myself), benefits from increasing an attribute are staggered out. Like, Resolve influences Deflection and Will, right? So you put one point in, you get a boost to Deflection. You put in another point, this time you get a Will boost. That kind of "staggered".

 

Still sucks that we're not going to get an official system, though.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Honestly, I'd be more interested in a PoE PnP RPG for the stuff that isn't really simulated/possible in the game, not to have the same combat in tabletop. I'd be perfectly open to something simpler/different that captures the lore and the general spirit for a combat system.

 

Also, note that the question pertained prototyping the systems on paper, not whether the property will get a PnP adaptation in the future and that Sawyer made no comments about an eventual adaptation (in fact, I'm pretty sure Obsidian's CEO hinted at something in the works some time ago, around the same time he talked about the card game.. though only one of those two panned out for now.)

[bluepotions]

"you wanna do percentile operations on damage ranges that are, like, double-digit, I don't think you actually do"

 

 

Does this stupid man honeslty think that what we want from a PoE tabletop game is the exact system ported over and not, you know. a system that works in tabletop and has the unique POE classes and setting info?

[Silvaren]

I know it's old topic but here is a link to a poll on this forum about system for P&P Pillars of Eternity. I wrote the example how game mechanics from Pillars could be used in RPG. I did some work adapting ruleset of PoE for sci-fi setting that you could hear about, it's called Mass Effect. It needs some balance and stil a lot work to finish, but it's doable. So if I can succesfully combine rules from Pillars with few p&p RPGs, I think that game designers from Obsidian could do this even better.

 

I know more people who design role playing games than playing them right know - it's like new trend. We all started with small, personal projects or this kind of adaptations I mentioned above. It's good exercise and a lot of fun. One of my friends share few games with the public, but it's small community in small country so maybe few hundred people played it. It's hard to make something innovative and plenty of RPGs are similiar to each other so why making new over and over again? I think that it's better to release new setting based on well known ruleset than make another one, but Pillars could be exception. 

[hamskii]

So I'm sure everyone knows about PnP PoE coming as part as Deadfire, but in case some people hadn't seen that Josh had spilled one or two beans about it on tumblr...

 

 

 

Can we get any details on the types of systems the PoE pen & paper RPG will feature? I'm excited to run a game for my friends and already brainstorming ideas.

Sure. My goals with the system are to create something that captures the the spirit of the setting and is a more flexible and simulative than something like D&D. Because I know some people will complain about this, let me restate something I earnestly believe:

 

It is within the power of any DM out there to run an A/D&D game in Eora with minimal work.

 

If you want to play A/D&D in the setting of Pillars of Eternity, you don’t have do a whole lot to the core mechanics of most editions to make that viable and fun for your group. So, personally, I’m not interested in making an A/D&D adaptation of the PoE ruleset.  Instead, I’m going to make something I think combines a lot of gameplay elements I think are cool and fit the world well.

 

The game will use standard RPG/AD&D dice.  All of them.  If you buy a standard set of RPG dice at any ol’ RPG shop, you have what you’ll need: d4, d6, d8, d10/100, d12, d20.  Most checks will use 2d10 and add modifiers.

 

One of the first things I decided about the TTRPG is that groups should decide on a cause.  The cause is the common rallying point for the campaign’s players.  It may be a home, a person (a superior, wealthy patron, the young heir to a noble house, etc.), a society, or an accomplishment.  The group defines the cause so their characters and stories can have focus.

 

Backgrounds are a large part of character creation: defining the character’s childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and beyond.  Backgrounds form the foundational narrative elements and stats that you build up over time.  Backgrounds will not be quite as wild and varied as in Burning Wheel, but I’m taking inspiration from both Burning Wheel and Darklands for them.

The system is classless and puts a heavy emphasis on a wide variety of skills, from Astronomy and Glazing to Intrigue and Quarterstaff.  Skill tests can be obstacle-based, versus, investigative, or seasonal.  Obstacle and versus tests are pretty familiar to most people who have played RPGs and focus on static challenges and actively opposed checks.  These tests can typically benefit from assistance, which comes in the form of d4s or d6s handed to the player by the assistant (similar to Burning Wheel).  

 

Investigative tests give clues and information to the character with the highest relevant test.  It’s most useful for mystery scenarios where the focus is not on whether or not you find a clue (often resulting in dead ends in a lot of RPGs), but how you reason out the significance of the clues you find.  Most of the inspiration from this comes from the Gumshoe series.

 

Seasonal tests are for downtime activity like research and practice.  If you’ve played through Pendragon or Torchbearer’s Winter Phase or Ars Magica’s seasonal activities, that’s what this is like.  Characters are intended to grow and change with time, both in personality and mechanically, so downtime is a big element of how a character develops.

Advancement happens primarily through experience that characters earn through either adventure sessions or downtime sessions.  Adventure experience is spent directly on skills that were used during the session and downtime experience is earned through seasonal activities (reading books, training, studying a magical phenomenon, communing with an adra pillar, etc.).  Most of these mechanics come from Ars Magica.

 

Abilities, powers, spells, etc. in the book form the foundation of special tools the players have at their disposal, but I want each power source to have its own guidelines for improvisation, experimentation, and long-term breakthroughs.  All of this heavily inspired by Ars Magica.

 

I’m still thinking through the combat mechanics.  In a TTRPG, combat pacing is a serious concern, so I’m trying to weigh the pros and cons of various approaches.  The math involved will be addition, subtraction, halving/rounding, and doubling.  There won’t be Pillars CRPG-style percentages to deal with.  Damage is less likely to be about wearing down hit point pools, more about fatigue and discrete wounds that wear characters down.

 

Well, that’s what I have so far, which is insane and way out of scope, but there you have it.