Soulsborne inspired games

Granularity isn't the same thing as mechanical depth. Rather than focusing on details I'd prefer to look for a set of mechanics focused on the broad ideas of risk against reward, of evaluating the challenge you face and what it's worth to risk to try and win.

It's not quite the same thing, but the dice system of Don't Rest Your Head comes to mind. In that game, the PCs are capable of overcoming almost any challenge the GM sets before them, but the more dice you roll the greater the risks of negative side effects, even in victory. As I said, it's not quite the same, but it's an example of looking more at the themes than granular details and building a set of mechanics off of that instead.

>mechanically the combat in a roleplaying game will never be the same as the combat in a video game
It still can be a lot of fun and feel close to the original video game if you put effort into it

Fun RPG combat and fun vidya combat are completely different beasts. I haven't seen a single attempt to translate vidya mechanics into a tabletop format which hasn't ended up as a clunky mess. It's always better to use themes, tone and the feel of the experience as a basis for adaptation.

What you are describing is looks more like Apocalypse World.

Eh, I like things a bit more crunchy than that. I respect the ultra-light design of PbtA stuff, but it also lacks much in the way of mechanical distinction or real crunch in its options.

I haven't seen many attempts to run games using them.

Maybe, but that's not what I was asking for in the first place.

You seem to want crunch and not crunch at the same time.

No matter how good you make the mechanics about exploration it will still mostly fall on the DM shoulders to make players actually engaged with the world.

You can do some "random" generation for areas with different secrets being revealed or treasures found but in the end it will still go to the DM to present it in such a way that it won't be boring. And most DMs who can do it don't need this mechanics. Though they can be nice if you do multiple possible secret knowledge chains that not even DM knows what is exactly the reason behind all the things that happen in the world until he rolls them on some table.

You can have crunch without granularity. Legends of the Wulin is my favourite example, a mechanically deep system with a focus on the overall themes and style of the genre, rather than trying to represent things down to the details.

It's pure personal preference, but that's the sort of design I'd love to see in a game for Soulsborne stuff.

see

From around 5 or 7 big attempts to flesh the world together that I was part of only 1 came out okayish. All others transformed into some unholy mess. So I probably never will be keen on using such mechanics.

Hey Shadow of the Demon Lord isn't a system I see regularly.

Sad, it's pretty good.

Oh jeez, bump

How is it, mechanically?

This man gets what my problem with 1:1 transplanting mechanics to tabletop usually is.
This man doesn't.

AW is actually a very good base for a Soulsborne game imo, if you don't want to do something entirely original. Both are games of hard decisions and sacrificing things to get what you want. There's even a fantasy apocalypse supplement coming (I think), which is basically a Souls setting.

---------------

For Souls, I think going with something card based would be best, although Legend of the Wulin style dicepools could work too. That way, you front-load randomness and then have the player make the best of it, which is much more "skillful" to make the best of what you have than the reverse (player decides he wants to do something and then it's up to the dice). Exploration also feels like it could be fitting for something vaguely poker based; go in too hard, play too cocky and you'll sooner or later run into something brutal and die, but if you don't push when appropriate you'll slowly bleed your resources without making headway and fail that way.

One thing worth noting is that souls games rely heavily on isolation and limiting the available tools of the character. With a full group of 3-4 players I see no way that you can keep this aspect of the game. A few months (years?) ago in a Souls thread, I saw an idea where a Souls game could work like a reverse RPG, with many (adversarial) players playing the environment, crafting the enemy, traps, and the story, and only one "player character" trying to brave them. It's a weird idea, but it stuck with me.

I don't understand why people need a special system or setting to run Souls at the tabletop. Because...

>There's really no way to capture the combat

Souls is one of my favourite franchises but what works as a video game doesn't necessarily work at the tabletop. WotC realised that after the failure of 4e.

If you want to capture the feel of Souls games then just create a lonely world brimming with undead where civilisation is scarce and demons are out to get you. Perhaps have PC start as humans (undead) rather than elves or dwarves.

It's just a really dark and gritty fantasy setting. Quite easy to replicate thematically.

I've been playing around with a vague idea for a card based souls-esque combat system (ever since I got really pissed off at the official board game missing the point by going dice based)

The basic idea is that each player has a number of slots in them representing fractions of time, probably between five and eight slots. From the cards in your hand, you select some to place in various slots, in secret in PvP or openly if you're working together.

These cards can be attacks or defences of various sorts, which interact in different ways. A dodge roll might let you avoid attacks on its slot or the next slot or two but prevent you taking actions, while a parry would only protect a single slot but not impede your actions in any way.

You would also have utility actions with resource costs (stamina, focus or cards) which let you peek at an opponents card to try and gauge what an opponent was doing, or things like forcing them to declare what type of card is in a certain slot.

It's a vague idea but I think it could work. Balance PC decks for PvP with each other but also have extremely powerful boss decks that'd require the efforts of a whole group to take down. The bosses might even have an 'AI' mode, using semi-randomized sets of cards dealt face down into the slots each round to keep them unpredictable without forcing another player to run them.

Probably not suitable for an RPG unless you went full WHFRP 3e/Rise of the Phoenixborn with it and made it a fully card based RPG, and that'd be a lot of work.

I already started brewing something like this like years ago, but never finished.

I keep saying I will, but I'm preoccupied with other stuff.

there was work on a couple of soulsbourne games...

I was the compiler for a sci-fi setting.

and I did most of this one.

>There's really no way to capture the combat
there are some criteria you can call vital...
Lethality
speed
variety of actions
they're all common mechanical points, in all the games. and relatively easy to transfer or convert

>The real issue is keeping that exploration driven lore.
I disagree, the trick will be shot-gunning the world with distinct hooks and lines that can be followed to the final conclusion.

>If I ever do a Soulsborne game, I may say that the players are amnesiacs (like the Bearer of the Curse and the Ashen One) with a "sixth sense" that gives the item descriptions.
this is one way to do that.
Another might be the DeS method, the area of play is largely unknown, myths, legends, and stories are plentiful enough that the PCs can get Key Item descriptions from a good Lore-Check but as they traverse the fog their bodies and souls partially disassociate to allow for revives.

>Of course, I'm the kind of person who can't resist talking about a setting
the solution for you would be to talk a lot and reveal nothing.

this is an interesting idea, but it would fall apart with anyone but a very highly experienced party that knows itself well. people would compete over lore tidbits and artifact powers and similar things.

play testers for Lost Source seemed to think that d100 roll under was a really good system for translating the feel of a souls game for the given setting, everything worked out well with work and the % made evaluating Risk-Reward evaluating fast and easy

>Some kind of a tick system, like Exalted has, might also be helpful.
as a stamina mechanic?
French user who played BloodBrew worked something out for that that seemed to cover it nicely, it's an action-point system with regen and partial regen on a per-round basis.(it's transcribed in Pic Related and paraphrased for clarity)

>That's why if you're going to do something, you've got to focus on the theming and the setting. The mechanics you want to simulate aren't the combat, it's the world. Hollowing, the Bonfires, the Covenants, experience and money both the same currency gained through murder, that sort of thing.

Hollowing can be covered with a system like Cronicle of Darknesses Humanity/willpower

Covenants might not work so well unless you build in the Parallel worlds if the soulsbourne games. either that or they're guilds or guild-like, tying into the many hooks described in Bonfires are as easy as placing defensible structures in the world, hallowed ground, blessed statues, barrier stones dedicated to repelling all that goes bump in the night.

>Although the world resetting is probably another bad one for a PnP. While I think never truly dying (unless you go Hollow) is good, no one wants to go through the already pretty tedious act of RPG combat over and over again.
perhaps partial resets?
nothing tells us in the lore how long there is between death and rebirth. could be a day, or 3 or 20...some things will be dangers again others will not, perhaps rolling a die on a chart for how long it takes to respawn and re-setting the world accordingly.

>It still can be a lot of fun and feel close to the original video game if you put effort into it
the effort is in making the mechanics match the theme rather than the pure nuts and bolts of the systems

>For Souls, I think going with something card based would be best,
in the last thread there was an user posting his work in such a system, it looked promising.

>A few months (years?) ago in a Souls thread, I saw an idea where a Souls game could work like a reverse RPG, with many (adversarial) players playing the environment, crafting the enemy, traps, and the story, and only one "player character" trying to brave them. It's a weird idea, but it stuck with me.
links? I'd like to give that a look.

>It's just a really dark and gritty fantasy setting. Quite easy to replicate thematically.
It's a very specific kind of gritty fantasy.

>(ever since I got really pissed off at the official board game missing the point by going dice based)
How is it missing the point? The official board game seems to do quite a lot of things right (in particular the boss deck). How is card based not missing the point?

Hey, Monotreeme. This whole thread was actually based on me reading your Bloodbrew the other week. I still don't think that there's any way to replicate the feel in a tabletop.

I'm not French (and never played your game), but I was working on an AP system that regens each round, and a d% system. Did you mean me? I need to flesh this out and rewrite it with the other stuff I've worked out.
Also, that's not the full document.

>perhaps partial resets?
The implication is that a reset is instant (I mean, you can reset the world and have everything stop chasing you).
One thing I've noticed in DaS2 though is that if you kill things enough they'll stop respawning.

These threads never do as well as I'd expect...

>How is it missing the point?

My explanation is this:

>you front-load randomness and then have the player make the best of it, which is much more "skillful" to make the best of what you have than the reverse (player decides he wants to do something and then it's up to the dice).

Basically, if you do the random after deciding what you want to do, the dice can fuck you over, no matter how good your decisions are. If you do the random before you take your actions (draw cards, or pre roll sets), then the skill comes from making the best of the situation, which is a very souls thing to do.

Also, cards can be used for hidden information for mindgames, which is what souls PvP is about, if you want to capture that aspect.

I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions. Have you seen the Bloodborne card game, though?

youtu.be/G4a4j7YdB4s

>I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions.

I'm not sure _I_ agree with my conclusions. For one, you could easily consider minimizing risk a skill, or "missing on the 90% hit that would have killed so I got greedy and I'm now wide open" thing could be considered to be in theme as well. Or you could just say it's a stand-in for execution errors. Really, there's a lot of ways to go about it, and it's up to you which aspect you think is worth converting.

>Have you seen the Bloodborne card game, though?

Not yet. Thank you for the link.

>For one, you could easily consider minimizing risk a skill, or "missing on the 90% hit that would have killed so I got greedy and I'm now wide open" thing could be considered to be in theme as well. Or you could just say it's a stand-in for execution errors.
This is sort of where I'm coming from, with my system .

Watched it. Interesting. I wonder if I can grab a print and play version from somewhere. Or if an image-rip exists. Seems like a great resource.

Why would you expect anything good?

boardgamer.ru/forum/index.php/topic,13138.0.html

>russian site with a link to a zip

I shall walk through the fog, like the heroes before me

Honestly, worth it for the hunter token.

But GURPS, especially when it comes to the combat actually captures the Souls series combat very well. You may want to do without some things like targeted attacks, but that is it. It actually focuses on fatigue and time management. Honestly I don't see this Kickstart we really offering much that the tried and true rock solid mechanics of GURPS doesn't already offer, besides a more detailed setting.

Read the fucking thread. Fuck GURPS.

I don't see why you hate it so much m80. If does what everyone is looking for, more so than any other system I can think of.

I don't hate it specifically. I hate the people who keep blindly recommending it regardless of context and without reading the multiple good arguments present in the same damn thread as to why it isn't appropriate.

GURPS does not do what people are looking for.
How is it that GURPS seems to have some of the nicest threads, but every other thread someone spews that GURPS is *exactly* what people are looking for. It's not. I've played GURPS, I know it's not. Dark Souls combat won't work in *any* fucking game. I'm aware that GURPS has a lot of tactical options. I'm aware that you can trade off this or that in exchange for that or this. I'm aware of all of it's maneuvers. It doesn't work for a Dark Souls game in the same way that it wouldn't work for a Call of Duty game with it's heavy focus on aiming and reflexes. More than that, I know this is hard for people who love GURPS to understand, but NOT EVERYONE LOVES GURPS. Exaggerations about spreadsheets aside, for instance, GURPS has very complex and in depth character creation. It's far too granular for many people. It's also very bland at its core (some might say Generic), and nothing feels particularly exciting about it. Certainly not without sourcebooks, which are more or less required. These are just a few reasons people don't like it. Either way, after people have said "nah, not GURPS", there's no reason to continue suggesting GURPS.

Basically, I'm going to second >Honestly I don't see this Kickstart we really offering much that the tried and true rock solid mechanics of GURPS doesn't already offer, besides a more detailed setting.
The Kickstarter is FOR the setting. It's a setting that will have several different books with rules for the system of choice. I'm not actually sure how setting agnostic books like that work, but they're popular enough.
Much like the question I was asking in the OP of the thread, though, that Kickstarter is for a setting. Not a system. I was asking how to do what they're doing: Create an RPG setting that feels reminiscent of Dark Souls, with the obfuscated lore and XP as currency

Although to be fair I'm more interested in making a Bloodborne inspired setting

A balanced mix between WFRP and B/X D&D.
customization comes mainly from random rolls and career choices.

>GURPS rant
And GURPS players look at bullshit that people write and just sigh disappointedly. Because they seem to not fucking know a thing about how system works besides the fact that it has complex character creation. GURPS is good for gritty-heroic games with high possible mortality rates with resource management. If we were talking about superheroes that would have been totally another matter. Superheroes are hard.

Though the sourcebooks part is true. If you are DM you either need to have a sourcebook or write it yourself - which is a lot of work.

_________________________________________________________________
Ok to other matters:

About prerolling dice before choosing what to do:

Character has a pool of Xd6 dice - depending on his attributes. He rolls his X dice and then divides them between actions. And matters not only the amount of dice used but also numbers on them. Higher numbers mean slower and less precise but more powerful actions and lower numbers are precise and fast moves.

Example:

Character rolls 7d6 - 2,1,3,3,1,1,3

And decides to use three dice for attack 2,1,3. So it is not that powerful of an attack (3) but it is pretty precise and fast (1)
His opponent throws a fireball at him with 2,5,4 and area dice 6 - so it's this fireball is not the fastest but with big flameball
Character needs to dodge with 3,1,1,3 - depending on mechanics he can dodge or not say if he can use 1,1 to dodge and 3+3 to evade area

Weapons and equipment will modify rolls. So heavy weapon will add +1/+2 on attacks dealing more damage but making it easier to dodge/parry. And armor will add +1/+2 to while trying to dodge making it kind of hard.

I have played GURPS. It was literally my first system. I get that you love GURPS, but not everyone does. Just accept that.

I'm not even sure what the rest of your post is about, it certainly isn't a GURPS mechanic that I remember. I'm not sure why you're still talking about mechanics in the first place.

I'm gonna shill the ttRPG not!Souls me and some others are working on.

bumping so I can steal more ideas to finish this

have you considered asking the guys that do work on Song of Swords for ideas?

might be able to hand you some things

You cannot, I repeat CANNOT recreate the Souls experience at the tabletop.

It is a videogame not a TTRPG.

Mechanically, yes, you're absolutely right. But you can try to capture some of the same themes and elements in ways more appropriate to the medium.

tell the counselor child....who hurt you? show me on this doll where the bad GM touched you.

you cannot recreate it exactly, but you can recreate elements of the game.

theme is absolutely repeatable
mechanics take some work
finding the latter to suit the former takes luck and skill

and making the whole lot FEEL like souls is the challenge called out in threads like this.

Yeah but you don't need a specific system to do that.

A good way to do it is create a kingdom like in Demon's Souls that is surrounded by impenetrable mists that the players cannot escape from. They are alone in this fallen kingdom that has been overrun by demons and undead.

You're wasting your time trying to recreate the mechanics at the tabletop. Have you ever even played Souls games?

They are all about memorising enemies' attack patterns after dying repeatedly. They are skill dependant games with very little RNG and autists keep wanting to translate that to TTRPGs with dice and character sheets etc...

Every fucking day we have another thread about how to do Souls at the tabletop and nothing ever works. Take a hint guys: some things just don't work as TT games.

>being this much of a toxic dickhead

>You're wasting your time trying to recreate the mechanics at the tabletop.
...but I'm not doing that...

you seem to have a disconnect here.
I want the game to FEEL like souls...most of the FEELING is in setting and presentation.

but a games setting and aesthetic can only go so far and picking sets of mechanics is important.

if the mechanics don't lend themselves to the setting, don't feel like they belong, the game won't work.

I AM NOT DUPLICATING THE MECHANICS OF SOULS

I am looking for something that I can stick onto a setting that feels like souls without disrupting things.

GET THAT SHIT SORTED OUT YOU FOOL

How am I being toxic? I'm trying to give my point of view from someone who has played both Souls games and TTRPGs extensively.

Alright. Calm down dude.

If you want to recreate the feel then just use whatever system you and your players prefer and build a not-souls campaign.

I don't think that would be very hard. It's just a gritty dark fantasy world.

Mechanical feel is an important part of running a game. At least, to some people. Some people don't care about how mechanics feel, generally the type who use GURPS for everything, but for others the system capturing the tone is quite key to enjoying an experience like this. Any old system won't do, it has to feel right.

I understand that but what I'm trying to say is that the mechanics of Souls games work in an action RPG video game not at the tabletop.

For example, Souls games are designed around the premise that the player will die frequently and respawn at the bonfire. This doesn't work at the tabletop. Constant TPKs that force the party to restart an encounter are just tedious.

The combat in Souls is also very different from combat in most tabletop RPGs. It's all about skill and timing your attacks properly which usually involves dying repeatedly to mobs until you learn their attack patterns. TTRPG combat just has too much RNG (dice rolls) to replicate that.

Replicating the world of Souls games is totally doable but the mechanics just don't work at the tabletop. Prove me wrong.

>Constant TPKs that force the party to restart an encounter are just tedious.
then include a mechanic that changes that a little while still matching the tone.

if the monster TPKs the party or drives them off, then when they come back it may still be injured, or trapped under a pillar.

>TTRPG combat just has too much RNG (dice rolls) to replicate that.
then reduce die rolls, make chances of success and failure clearer or easier to estimate.
"do I have time for a second swing before my turn is over? or should I save that action point/Half-action/ability power in case I need to defend or evade away?"
"is it worth the risk to make the attack or is my chance of a miss or the enemies evasion too great"
they don't have to MATCH, they just have to fit the tone of the setting and game.

>...but the mechanics just don't work at the tabletop.
>Prove me wrong.
I AM NOT DOING THAT, NONE OF US ARE.
these threads exist in part to discuss the techniques in setting-building and presentation to capture the feel.
and in the other part they exist to find the compromises for a mechanical system that, WHILE NOT BEING IDENTICAL, lend themselves to the TONE of the games.

when did "reading for content" stop being a thing?

DAMMIT TYPOS

>Replicating the world of Souls games is totally doable but the mechanics just don't work at the tabletop. Prove me wrong.

Nobody is saying this.

What we're aspiring to is finding a set of tabletop mechanics that capture the same Feel as souls mechanics. Between the different mediums they'll likely look, on the surface, completely different, but it's the tangible quality of experience we're trying to find the best translation for.

>lost source
What is this? Google gives me nothing

The gameplay feedback loop in Souls is actually very, very similar to classic dungeoncrawl campaigns in the "pre-roleplaying" era (ex. Gygax's Castle Greyhawk) - it's the campaign context that matters here rather than the specific edition of D&D you're playing.

Players delve into a massive, sprawling multi-level megadungeon complex. The levels might be themed and might have a story behind them, but such information is ever only fed to the players in bits and pieces.

The resources players find in the dungeon (gold) are used both to buy equipment but also as a source of metaphysical power - gold taken from the dungeon translates to XP at a 1:1 ratio in most older editions of D&D, thus fulfilling a similar function to souls/echoes.

The dungeon itself is highly lethal and features a mixture of pre-stocked encounters as well as random ones - every venture into the dungeon is thus a risk. If a character dies, however, that's no problem - a PC rolls up a new one, but the meta-knowledge of the dungeon remains with the player (who obviously hasn't died).

The campaign has little emphasis on character simulation but is entirely about the meta-game of understanding the dungeon, mapping it out, slowly getting a feel for the monsters and encounters inside.

There are probably elements of this you don't want to copy, but the structure of a classic dungeoncrawl campaign probably provides a good framework. Most notably it means the GM has to start creating with some degree of consistency, so that players can deduce patterns and learn over the long run.

I'm of the opinion that the mechanics are secondary to recreating the experience of playing Soulsborne games. I'm currently running a (moderately) successful DS-themed game and have plans for a Bloodborne one-shot for halloween next year.

I've posted before, but I put together a handbook for my players.

docs.google.com/document/d/1I9VuVul_FaVrbdAzSKxCnsNZpj2WZRbNxoIqH3GEZI4/edit#

Lost Source was cool, and I also worked for a while on an update/spin-off for my own purposes (I didn't like some of the things about the game). It's too bad that game never got fully off the ground.

Have you even read the thread? Like half of it is explaining that we're trying to focus on the Goddamned tone and narrative style. Maybe I should have put it in big letters at the top of the thread to save us all the trouble and keep things on track: THE POINT OF THIS THREAD IS NOT TO REPLICATE THE COMBAT, IT IS TO CREATE A GAME WITH A SIMILAR TONE AND MOOD AND THEME.

No one is ASKING for a specific system. REPEATEDLY I have said "I'm not looking for a Goddamned system".

I actually had an idea for a slightly more humourous Dark Souls dungeon crawl game inspired more by vidya than OSR where gold (which monsters dropped/turned into) was used to buy Traits, and increase Attributes, and even purchase equipment. You'd get your equipment from vending machines and every so often you'd find safe rooms as you travel down that lead you back to the fancy dungeon version of Firelink. If you died, you'd leave a bloodstain with all your gear, but Death would teleport you back to the last safe room, where you could pick up any equipment you left behind in one of the storage chests.

The 'plot' as it were was that thousands of years before, an alien ship crashed down and was buried deep in the earth. The ancients started building upwards from their ship, and created civilization. The ship crashed on a long forgotten evil that was unburied. The core society in the ship went mad and died, and slowly societies started forming to worship the ship's contents, and then at the very top of the dungeon it was all sealed away. So you've got dark woods, a hidden temple, lots of underground dungeon, evil shrines to forgotten Gods, a beautiful but ruined and crumbling high tech cityship, the city ship's mines, and then evil darkbad cthulhu caverns.

>Faith lets you see better
Switching Wisdom out seems unnecessary, really. That said, starting out I really like this, particularly the way that your story is Dark Souls inspired but not Dark Souls, with things like the Twilight Mark. You've also thrown in a lot of Bloodborne and DaS3's spooky water stuff. I also can't tell whether those are your own quotes or ones from the games, so if they are yours, kudos on the tone.
Isn't it a bit weird for the Sunbros to not like outsiders? I do like how you've handled the Covenants, though. Is there any way to rise in the Covenants, though? Could also be more, but you can't be expected to make nine on your own, you've already done quite a bit.

I'm not sure what some of it means, since I'm rusty on Pathfinder, but I like where you're going with this. This is the kind of thing I was asking for when I made the thread. How has your game gone? Why only moderately successful, and what are your ideas for the Bloodborne game?

This is still my favorite Veeky Forums creation. Nothing about this I don't like.

It's the pdf he linked

>Switching Wisdom out seems unnecessary, really.
Technically, it's just a relabeling. Faith is literally the same thing as Wisdom, and I thought it was a minor change that added a lot of flavor (because Souls uses the Faith attribute to cast miracles).

>That said, starting out I really like this,
Thanks. I read something a while ago where someone said that you could strip away all of the mechanics, aesthetics, and lore from DS and replace them with something else entirely and you'd still have something that was DS at the core. The more I think about, the more I think there's some really interesting part of DS design that can be translated/applied to any other medium. I've also been trying to find other games that feel like that, and in this game I also borrowed themes from Kingdom Death and Shadow of the Colossus. The quotes? Let's see...the campaign traits are all pulled from one source or another and the equipment/gifts are my own work.

> Isn't it a bit weird for the Sunbros to not like outsiders?
I thought it'd be fun to mix up the sunbro covenant which has been pretty consistent over three games. I decided to run with the idea of the golden invaders from DS3 and expand them into a full covenant.

The covenants are lifted out of Dungeons the Dragoning. Rising in them is arbitrary more or less. I didn't really want a robust alignment system. There was also one other covenant that got written up but didn't make it over.

>I'm not sure what some of it means, since I'm rusty on Pathfinder, but I like where you're going with this. This is the kind of thing I was asking for when I made the thread. How has your game gone? Why only moderately successful, and what are your ideas for the Bloodborne game?
My games chugging along just fine. It's an online PbP, which means it's veeeery slow. However, we started in June and nobodies dropped out and there's been consistent posting which is an accomplishment in its own. They're about a fifth of the way through the second area right now.

>Why only moderately successful
When I ran the recruitment a lot of people where turned off by the many small changes I was making to standard Pathfinder. Most people wanted to play vanilla PF and didn't want to bother learning shit like SoP. I think the whole game could have been done better outside of PF, but finding a group to play something other than D&D online is painfully difficult. Overall, I'm satisfied with how things have been going and especially like that most of my players put effort into following the games theme when creating their characters.

>and what are your ideas for the Bloodborne game?
Also PF, I've been putting together a homebrewed BB Hunter class, though I'm still getting feedback on them. I have a few ideas for the game, but I don't have anything like a handbook that I can show you unfortunately. Right now I'm still doing a lot of research and outlining what story I want to present.

Sure, that works well as a general idea. The key thing is that most modern tabletop RPGs have come to be dominated by the "character simulation" idea, where there is a divide between the player's meta-game knowledge and the character's knowledge, and the game is more focused on character interactions and narrative arcs similar to a story.

Conversely, classic dungeon campaigns (and the Souls series) are about meta-mastery of the patterns present in an environment - pressure plates always evidence arrow traps, or locks always have poison needle traps, that growling signifies a werewolf, etc.

This thread was just getting good, can't let it fall off page 10.

I just had a bit of a Dark Souls moment in this OSR game I'm in, too. An acid covered frond folded out from a monster plant hidden in a giant conch shell and my first thought was how Soulsian it felt.

Please don't die!

Threads like this don't die. They go hollow.

youtu.be/GE-xLHUfmSw

been planning a possible OSR campaign using that map for the setting(along with some stuff from the book it's originally from) with some Dark Souls/Bloodborne influences(primarily fluff, although I might try and emulate some of Bloodborne's mechanics with some new rules, as many of Bloodborne's unique mechanics aren't that hard to copy over to a Tabletop RPG context), and a bunch of other miscellaneous OSR inspirations

and also taking some stuff from the blog Games With Others, especially some of the stuff from this post;

gameswithothers.blogspot.co.nz/2013/06/other-frontiers-dungeons-megadungeons.html

Vaati's soulsongs are pretty cool, although I tend to prefer Miracle of Sound's stuff. Fires Fade is a fucking masterpiece.

the worlds of Souls games dont seem to fit for songs like that with words

>I didn't like some of the things about the game
WHAT THINGS
TELL ME
I WAS THE EDITOR...I NEED TO KNOW

>I actually had an idea for a slightly more humourous Dark Souls dungeon crawl game...
reminds me of Borderlands

>my ego explodes
ever play it?
have any suggestions?
tweaks and small add-ins are nice
but to do that I need input cause I am not particularly original.

>Thanks. I read something a while ago where someone said that you could strip away all of the mechanics, aesthetics, and lore from DS and replace them with something else entirely and you'd still have something that was DS at the core.
one or the other or the third, but not all three, not even 2 of them
youtube.com/watch?v=YQ44hVeVdEw

>WHAT THINGS
>TELL ME
>I WAS THE EDITOR...I NEED TO KNOW
There was some minor hang-ups that are mostly just personal taste. Like, it really is just a lot of ramblings mashed together. There's not a lot of substance

I separated Psyche into two sub attributes and redefined Source. I also worked on incorporating more robust character advancement through "feats".

I did a little background work based on Nechronica.

I threw away hacking because I thought it made things too complicated.

I had felt there wasn't a lot of content in the game that helped tie the areas together or build an overall setting, so I started some work on that.

Most of all though I "de-memeifyed" it. I get that we're on Veeky Forums, but I didn't want to see Lost Source as a comedy or novelty game. Ludwig and all the out of place quotes I think hurt the project more than helped it, but that's just me.

>one or the other or the third, but not all three, not even 2 of them
I had read it as part of an interview with some game insider. A developer or something. They had intended it as a complement, and I think they had been referring to the philosophy that went into making the game and the design process.

>I threw away hacking because I thought it made things too complicated.
yeah, that was put in because people wanted a magic analogue not a lot of playtesting for it got done when the threads were active.

>I had felt there wasn't a lot of content in the game that helped tie the areas together or build an overall setting, so I started some work on that.
oh? what did you add? might be cool to finally have new content after so long.

>Ludwig and all the out of place quotes I think hurt the project more than helped it, but that's just me.
people were getting stroppy about not including content from other games and shit...

>the worlds of Souls games dont seem to fit for songs like that with words
I disagree. I love that song.
Here are some more.
youtu.be/5N7J802QzP4
youtu.be/0-8vp4akcPc
youtu.be/TAQMJZeYSe8
youtu.be/u8faH18iOJg
youtu.be/u8faH18iOJg
youtu.be/8eSrmSsz7mQ
youtu.be/lBNOV29Y-VU
youtu.be/55QmNK0uMyw
youtu.be/4DGe4RtPmWw
youtu.be/6f3j4okhb8o
youtu.be/T3RpwRFxFeo
youtu.be/VB2qqZQePAU
youtu.be/ul6AePnTOno
youtu.be/NQ2vBhIJWwE
youtu.be/yQJCi4RVFZ8
I like how a lot of the official songs are, like, American spirituals.
Bloodborne's remix cover of God's Gonna Cut You Down is also good. I'm surprised no one's made an Eileen the Crow GMV out of it.

>Reminds me of Borderlands
Technically it's inspired by Pathfinder.

>I WAS THE EDITOR...I NEED TO KNOW
You seem nice enough and all, and I made this thread because you got me started with your bloodbrew, but... you, an editor? You don't even use capitalization or punctuation in your posts.

Hollow is my favourite of all of them. I wish Paleblood Moon wasn't the only Bloodborne song. There are a few raps, but that's it.

>You don't even use capitalization or punctuation in your posts.
FINE, I WAS THE COMPILER
USING MICROSOFT WORDPAD
WITH NO SPELLCHECK FUNCTIONS...

>oh? what did you add? might be cool to finally have new content after so long.
This may be faggy but just bare with me.

I intended to use the tarot as an allegory for the journey to enlightenment/the heroes journey. Not the tarot as a psychic device, just a storytelling medium. I played with the idea that rather than custom create an AI for every purpose, the scientists created archetypes. They scanned in 20 or so human mines with certain traits, and based all the digital architecture off that.

The PCs are the "Fool", the protagonist, the character that proceeds through the trumps. In-game, their AI was special - it could learn, it could create. They could take pieces from the other archetypal AI and cobble together something new.

From there it plays out just as you expect. They proceed along some ill-defined path to humanity until they reach the end. I liked the hanging question of if they could be truly unique, or if they were no more than patchwork creations.

I like this...it's a good idea, and from each of the 20, individual personalities might grow based on interactions...

I was asking about how you connected the world together but this is also sensible from a development perspective, and as a character-limiting mechanic. there are many "Hanged Men"(traitorous back-stabbing individuals) but THE HANGED MAN would be Patchwork the merchant.

this works for "high population" plays with lots of characters

and "low population" plays with just the 20 survivors that most closely follow their archetypes(and thus are less corrupted by the passage of time.)

I don't have my notes on me so this is all from memory but I had tried to work out 6-8 starting archetypes that were most appropriate for players. Shit like the Chariot or the Hermit. The others, especially the more abstract ones, I had intended for enemies mostly.

>I was asking about how you connected the world together
Oh. I was basically writing down how much Psyche you needed before certain events triggered as a roadmap to progression. Like, the PCs couldn't really get out of the first few areas until they had enough Psyche. It's not that original, I think they already touch on that sort of thing in the Lost Source doc.

One boss I had was for the "Devil". It was essentially an automated media producer that put together custom content based on user input. Obviously at the end of the world there's no trends left for it to analyze. Once the players get enough Psyche to register as human, the Devil starts going after them. After all, it needs the ratings.

I had one for the Chariot too but it was just stolen from Ghost in the Shell but with power armor instead of helicopters.

bump

I'll pass along my bloodborne PF homebrew in case anyone is interested.

Bloodborne Hunter - drive.google.com/open?id=1NW98K-_vTEnS5ELs6UEZgu2WyMX0-hwrfEoMKGdUXlE
Vileblood - drive.google.com/open?id=1s5BDGbHbBVnoqLpgMAFAlyz2etbaRLcJouVraeJasRI
Blood-Addled Hunter - drive.google.com/open?id=1U85TQ-_b_anKdM2O9AzRv0XPxvZTZA9y9w_4GgrAzf0

>The others, especially the more abstract ones, I had intended for enemies mostly.
you might consider looking to the utilization of the trumps in a game called the Binding of Isaac(a rogue-lite game that is DarkSouls hard, and also brain-twistingly morbid)

>I was basically writing down how much Psyche you needed before certain events triggered as a roadmap to progression.
ah I see. I was gonna leave that sort of thing to GMs so they could write in the order of visited locations

>but it was just stolen from Ghost in the Shell but with power armor instead of helicopters.
do tell...
and stealing EVERYTHING is how we get the likes of BloodBrew and Lost Source. it's part of why Lost Source IS so meme-laden we had to steal so many things from so many media sources that everything was essentially a reference to something else.

who the fuck is this weaksauce thing?
is it even an Old One?

if I played pathfinder I'd be more excited...

>do tell...
Ghost in the Shell ep 4.

The pilot of a semi-autonomous helicopter dies during a live fire exercise causing the helicopter to go rogue. I thought doing the same thing but with the military drones/power armor would be cool. The players defeat it and then open it to find the preserved corpse of its long dead pilot.

You can look up the full episode synopsis on wikipedia.

>who the fuck is this weaksauce thing?
>is it even an Old One?
it's just something the artist made up

This is not really related, since I don't know what this thread is entirely about, BUT

I have been basically making a copy of the Bloodborne game as a campaign I wanted to write because, well frankely the game just does every single thing I was wanting to do in a game, with it's gritty world, intense narrative twisting, and Lovecraft out the ass.

So, I took the world, twisted it a bit, bit off a bunch of details and mixed them with some other stuff, and tried to make them into a D&D setting for a campaign.

Basically what I arrived on is an ecumenopolis (a city that goes on forever) that trades in blood transfusions, blood taken from the corpse of an Old One that induced regeneration and flesh malleability in it's consumer, basically turning the city into a Lovecraftian version of Rapture as some people used it to stay healthy, but some under the supervision of the Surgeons (plague-doctor types) morphed their flesh into new forms. The blood was obviously doled out and controlled by the Holy Church, but eventually it ran out, and people turned to the Corrupted Blood to slake their addiction, before the whole city descended into eternal night as, presently, the Church attempted ancient rituals to contact an "angel" to come down from the sky and provide the blood to bring them back to prosperity. So now, the city is Night, the people are crazy, and the Writhing Moon is slowly descending towards the planet.

Am I doing it right?

>her hand crossbow
What's the point of that? I mean, if you're not in Golarion, just have them using guns. Then again, you are using Pathfinder races.
Also, looking at the Class Ability list and levels, Pathfinder seems a really poor system for this, since to actually feel interesting you'd need something like level 15 characters, but then the numbers are all bloated. That's my biggest problem with Pathfinder. I want Level 15 or even 20 abilities with the numbers of a level 5 character.

Cthulhu is frankly unfitting for Bloodborne. But then again, when you think about it, Cthulhu barely fits in the Lovecraft shit to begin with. He's just a big guy with tiny wings and a cephalopod for a head.

Sounds pretty decent. Not sold on the corrupted blood thing, but I'd have to see where you wanted to go with it.

>captcha: wong bus stop

slap that fool then we've monsters enough without inventing more of them

I vaguely remember that, perhaps the greatest of war-machines still had pilots but recall that most of the smaller units were autonomous...

sounds like you are.
present it properly and you've got a quite good sounding setting.

I personally would not go the rout of the endless city because forests, islands, etc break up the monotony better than "oh look 6 more miles of gothic architecture"

In what way?

I'm still writing, so I haven't solved every issue yet. Please explain where it falls apart and needs to be shored up.

I mean, there was literally no explanation of what Corrupted Blood was, for one thing. Like I said, I'd like to see what you're intending with it. There's already plenty of justification for monsters with your flesh-warping surgeons.

Are you trying to replicate the scourge of beasts?

I mean, I wrote them so I can't really have an unbiased opinion but I think they offer some pretty cool stuff starting at level 2-3. Pathfinder isn't the ideal, but I make do with it.