Dark Souls inspired gaming

I was actually thinking of straight up using a Chronicles of Darkness style system. This is how Mage sets it up:
>Wisdom 8–10, High / Enlightened (5 dice) These highestlevels of Wisdom force the mage to walk a careful line. Any minor Act of Hubris risks degeneration. At this level, any time the mage uses a spell to accomplish something she could do through mundane methods with little or no risk poses the chance for degeneration. When innocent bystanders are affected by your character’s spells or actions, she is at risk as well.
>Wisdom 4–7, Medium / Understanding (3 dice): Most experienced and stable mages fall into this range of Wisdom. Sometimes, Acts of Hubris happen. But by and large, the mage acts with basic Wisdom most of the time. Allowing a Sleeper to witness obvious magic, thus risking greater Paradox, can cause degeneration. Self-mutilating events such as soul stone creation risk degeneration. Not attempting to contain a severe Paradox risks degeneration as well. Forcing a sapient being (whether a Sleeper, spirit, or anything else) to act counter to its interests, altering its nature long-term, or binding it to a task all risk degeneration, as does deliberate and premeditated murder and violence that leaves its victim with long-term injury.
>Wisdom 1–3, Low / Falling (1 die): Hubris of this level concerns all mages. A mage at this precipice could be lost to his magic at any time. Only the darkest, most selfishly destructive acts risk degeneration at this point. Killing someone in a fit of rage, destroying an Awakened soul, allowing a Supernal being to be consumed by the Fallen World, or dealing with the Abyss can force the mage through her final loss of Wisdom.
>Wisdom 0: A character with no Wisdom is forever lost. His hubris has overcome him, and he’s become one of “The Mad.” His magic leaks into the world, letting the Supernal out wherever he goes. He cannot control his magic; it controls him.

Just replace the magic related things with things related to setbacks. Dying might be an automatic drop, but everything else is a threat. Levels would also probably be something like "Replete", "Undead", "Crestfallen", "Hollow". Minor setbacks like a blocked path might only threaten you at Replete, and you'd have a good chance of avoiding the fall. But really big things, like losing any focus or goals you might have is going to be Crestfallen level, and really shit on you, and almost guarantee you'll drop.

That guy's player handout treats Covenants similar to oWoD Paths from Masquerade, too. They each have a big list of sins, and committing a sin from a level below where you are is an autodrop (if I understand correctly, which I might not).

Part of the problem with Hollowing is that it requires two aspects that are tricky in RPGs:

First is the slow loss of player agency as you forget who you are and such. Losing player agency is pretty un-fun, but also a clear theme to the setting, so this has to be approached carefully.

Second is that Hollowing seems largely based on pursit of some kind of goal. I think it may be best to turn towards some more story-based RPGs like Fate for a way to do this.

Clearly some kind of "Humanity" stat is a good idea, like the example of Vampire, but would be based on different things. It would improve with the pursuit of your goals but once it's achieved you can no longer regain any without finding a new goal. Death and time would both erode it away.

Unlike Vampire, I'm not convinced that the rolls to lose/gain should be more or less difficult based on how high your Humanity is. In fact, I'm not sure you would want to roll at all.

Say you have the 0-10 Humanity, maybe starting at 8? You pick some kind of goal. Then every week or month of not pursuing your goal costs a point, as well as each death counts a point. Each "accomplishment" in furtherance of your goal gives you a point and actually achieving your goal gives you 2-3, or maybe maxes you at 10. Then though you are no longer able to recover any and will slowly lose until you Hollow. Unless you find a new goal.

And "goal" here has to be something both serious and meaningful, agreed on by both the PC and GM. It has to be something you can somehow work towards and do something you can genuinely point to as progress.

(cont)

(cont) Example of Big Hat Logan, his goal would be
"Learn ALL the sorcery!" and so any time he learned a new spell or found hidden arcane lore he could point to that and gain a point of Humanity back. Once he raided Seethe's library, he may well feel he has reached the pinnacle of knowledge and that would be the end.

Solaire would be "Find my own Sun" which is a little obscure but advancement on his path would be learning Gwyn and family related lore, meeting Gwynavere may count and so on. Rekindling would certainly count as an end to his quest, it just also kills him.

Both these guys stories bring up general "madness" as a concept, sanity. Though I guess the question is: Is the madness because of Hollowing or does it hurry Hollowing along? That's unclear. I supposed mental trauma could cost variable amounts of Humanity as well, most stuff costing one point, being raped by Cthulu maybe a few more.

Another interesting idea is while undead should lose Humanity with time, should they lose more if isolated and alone and less if with companions. One could argue that socialization is good for the soul, so to speak.

>Another interesting idea is while undead should lose Humanity with time, should they lose more if isolated and alone and less if with companions. One could argue that socialization is good for the soul, so to speak.
Don't you dare go hollow
youtu.be/1Y41l4FGHPg

Ouch, that was a bit too close to home.

But yeah, it makes it pretty clear where my thinking is coming from on that issue.

Yup.

So now that it's not 3am, I'm going to bump this thread in the hopes that more people can comment on the 'checklist' I wrote up last night and give me their two cents.

>I'm still thinking about how to mimic the way that the backstory is told through the items.

Lore/Knowledge checks. Make it clear early on that researching an item's history can give useful knowledge, such as finding out that the slightly sinister oversized curved sword was once used for ritual sacrifices and has weak vampiric qualities as a result, or that a particular weapon was designed to fight demons and gets bonuses against them, or give a few details about one of the major characters that could prove useful in diplomacy or combat, or maybe have a certain item being related to some myth or another and its presence in that area being a clue towards finding it.

All of those are examples from DaS1. For instance, you could actually find the Path of the Dragon covenant if you followed the Dragon Scale pickups from Firelink Shrine to the poison swamp, and you'd have reason to do so if you read their description and wanted in on that transcendent monk gig.

Your other points were really good, too. I'd like to add one, though: Souls games strongly emphasize that the player is cursed and trying to find some cure for it. All the concepts used in Dark Souls would work equally well if the player character were a vampire, or a werewolf, or even suffering under a surprisingly lenient type of mummy rot. The idea is that they're slowly turning into a monster, but still trying to save everything they care about even if it means they can't save themselves. Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of their curse is that they stop caring about those things, which is all that stands between them and becoming an undying, soul-devouring zombie.

On that note, vampires would work pretty well as a substitute if you didn't want to rip ideas directly out of the game while still making a Souls-like. Blood is your XP, but also your currency because all the vampires want it. You can only rest in specially prepared graves because something something negative energy, etc.

>How do you run a game that feels like Dark Souls?
Simple, you use the Veeky Forums homebrew for it
Last time I checked they managed to adapt it to Bloodborne and to a futuristic setting with robots trying to deal with sapience
Monotreeme's a bretty cool guy

The problem with that is in Dark Souls you don't have to research or anything, the information is just innate, and often completely without any sort of context. That's one of the reasons that it's so unique. You get all this information about wars or far off countries, but without actually knowing anything else about them. You don't learn about a sword because you know about how it was used in an ancient battle. You know it was used in an ancient battle without having any sort of greater context for that battle.

>All of those are examples from DaS1. For instance, you could actually find the Path of the Dragon covenant if you followed the Dragon Scale pickups from Firelink Shrine to the poison swamp, and you'd have reason to do so if you read their description and wanted in on that transcendent monk gig.
Elaborate. Because I remember the Ashen Lake as being completely ignored and unremarked on by the rest of the game. I mean, it's hidden behind two separate illusionary walls. It's the kind of thing where I'm surprised anyone ever discovered it to begin with.
Probably only found it because people were attacking walls in the hopes that the Pendant did something...

don't forget French user who managed to wrap a system around the first one...

Did you ever finish it ? The bloodborne one I mean

Bump`

not yet.

got held up on other projects.
still have it, and I still work on it from time to time though...

1) Ravenloft
2)Ravenloft
3) What the fuck are you doing you doublenigger, play Ravenloft

You can do grim DS Knight or quick stabby bloodborne style combat. Use fifth and get inspiration for visceral attack auto crits. Nerf all healing magic and have players lose all exp progress but reincarnate if they die--Lord Strahd gets bored when his toys expire too quickly.

If you don't like fifth and yo too broke to buy curse of Strahd, get Monster of the Week or Dungeon World and just flavor it a little. If you can't think of an equivalent setting, do Gothic fantasy or read The Night Lands.

Why would I want to use Ravenloft when I could use my own setting that isn't just a weird mishmash of things?

Well, if you want to homebrew a setting that's fine. OP stated they were looking for a system to match ds/bb, not a new independent setting.

I am OP. I was explicitly not looking for a system. In fact, I said I *found* a system (a very hacked apart Pathfinder with no classes or levels, and possibly M&M style damage). I'm looking for how to actually make the game feel Soulsian in the running of it, and the way the world is designed. That's why I made three posts listing off things that I think a Souls inspired game could benefit from.

I'm a little disappointed no one has commented on them, in fact, but I guess that might be a good sign.

if you HAVE a system all you need is the right presentation.

1.)what kind of architecture does your world have?
LEARN THE WORDS FOR IT
LEARN THE RIGHT SHAPES

FOR EXAMPLE
Anor Londo is Gothic with high flying buttresses, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, etc.
Yharnam is Gothic-Victorian with wrought-iron semi-decorative fences, residential fret-work, gas-lamps
externally, Sen's fortress looks Romanesque with BIG FUCK-OFF WALLS, round arch-tops, and a feeling of being built heavy enough to last a millenium without giving a single solitary damn about the passage of time, like the the Boletarian fortress

you can do the discount version and describe it using different non-technical words but a great big chunk of the souls feeling is a world with clean clear detail.

1.) a.)PICK AN ARCHITECTURE style AND STICK TO IT. if the party goes to a different region then the architecture can change, but if you flip the building styles too much it jarrs and feels wrong.

2.)odd sounds, odd sounds with little or no explanation. and they should cause the party to stop and carefully consider things

3.)a thought to backstory given through items, with enough humanity a player might pick up an item and catch a glimpse of memory. a bow collected from a dead opponent might yield a flash of memory of a young person learning to shoot. it's still not the full backstory you can get in Souls with paragraphs of data per weapon, but it will have a similar effect.

4.)in a souls game, the odd corpse laying in the street is fine as window dressing and an excelent warning of what might be around the next corner, but DO NOT OVERDO THE EDGY; NO PILES OF CORPSES FOR NO DAMN REASON

5.) assemble a short list of adjectives for certain areas that you can glance at for good ideas of how to describe areas

I'm not trying to be mean here, but have you even read the thread? I'm not asking for GMing 101 advice, I'm asking for very specific sorts of advice, and even listed off a bunch of things I was musing over in hopes of getting feedback on them.

6.) learn how things wear, not just buildings, armor, leather, wood, weapons, stone.
bloodbourne didn't need this because it was only just barely into decay, but Souls games are usually centuries into their downfall at the time of play, with nobody and nothing to maintain the structures...one word builders HATE; settling it's why that silly tower in Pisa Italy is famous and it's something that anyone building in stone DREADS
>tl;dr the bigger and heavier the buildings, the more tilted and fractured they can be
dude, you want suggestions for a souls game.
since you stated in that you have a system already then all this thread can do to help you is muse about how to present a souls-bourne setting.

I thought I was giving you the important points for presenting a setting that feels like souls, not mechanics, nor plot. all I have from you is "how too feel like souls?" with no other details so I'm talking about descriptive things that feel right.

I've never seen bullet points on Veeky Forums.

you have to copy-paste them from other applications but they can be done

You maybe weren't as clear as you thought you were. That user's advice is on-topic and relevant, even if it doesn't directly answer your question.

Hexes were the best, I will never forget hexes

There's a lot more written backstory in the game than people give it credit for. The whole 'vague, poorly explained story' bit is mostly a meme at this point. Although, I will grant you that the story is never told in one giant chunk, but broken up in smaller pieces and spread out over several item descriptions, which are supported by the world design. Dark Souls 2 was much worse at the world design lore part than Dark Souls 1 was, to the point that they eventually gave up and changed most of the item descriptions in a patch to clarify stuff that was originally supposed to be explained through the environment. If you pay close attention to your surroundings and how everything is laid out, you can find nearly all of the supposedly impossible secrets. The only one I can remember off the top of my head that I didn't figure out on my own was saving Solaire, and that was more because it's the sort of thing that only makes sense when you backtrack after the fact. I think they wanted players to fail to save him the first time, then try to save him the second... by forging a pact with a chaos demon and giving her human souls. Weirdos.

>PotD
As written. The hydras, undead dragons, and other sources of Dragon Scales acted as a trail of breadcrumbs that lead from Firelink Shrine to the swamp at the bottom of Blighttown. There were no Dragon Scales leading away from the swamp, only in a line to it. From there, a determined person could thoroughly search the place until they found it. Which, eventually, they did, and nobody had to do it the hard way anymore once it was on the internet. You could tell all sorts of things based on item locations.

Everything is actually really straightforward, at least compared to some of the other weird shit I've played before.

I hadn't thought of the Breadcrumbs thing.

I'll have to incorporate it into my BloodBrew and perhaps Lost Source too maybe.

you are helping me, even if you are not helping OP.

SPRINKLE US WITH MORE WISDOM FROM YOUR MIGHTY BRAIN

any thoughts specifically towards Bloodborne, cause while it has a lot in common with Dark Souls, it also does quite a few unique things of it's own that need to be accounted for if you're going to emulate it in an RPG context

The Night Land would make for a great Souls/BB style game with some minor tweaking

>The whole 'vague, poorly explained story' bit is mostly a meme at this point.
Not really. Like, I get what you're going for here, but it's very intentional that the story and backstory are intentionally vague, and we're only getting very small snippets of the world. Even if you put together all the little bits of lore, you don't get a complete picture of the world. There are still many many unanswered questions.
> Dark Souls 2 was much worse at the world design lore part than Dark Souls 1 was, to the point that they eventually gave up and changed most of the item descriptions in a patch to clarify stuff that was originally supposed to be explained through the environment.
Dark Souls 2 is worse at literally everything than Dark Souls because halfway through Bandco realized they hated what the director was doing and called in a series regular to bat clean up under a deadline.
>[This post was originally me ranting about how fucking garbage a level Iron Keep is]

I have no idea where you get that there's a trail leading to Blighttown. There's the Undead Dragon and the Drakes in the Valley of Drakes, and a chest in Blighttown. You can argue that leads to Blighttown, but that's sketchy at best. One of the biggest Dragon Scales is the Hydra, and that's not between the two. There's also no indication that it's supposed to be breadcrumbs. I am 100% certain it wasn't intentional. Oh, Painted World, too.

There is just a ton of stuff from Dark Souls that I found byzantine and senseless when I played it, and that's intentional. The game is supposed to feel that way, that's why there's a system in place for it. Hell, the game never even tells you illusionary walls are a THING outside of messages. The only way you'd find out you can save Solaire without a guide or without knowing anything is if you randomly hit a wall, joined a Covenant with no information, and just happened to give her some 30 Humanity before moving on.

I've only played Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 2 [which while still enjoyable on a base mechanical level due to being a Souls game and also improving a great many things on a technical level, is still a hot fucking mess in terms of level design and story and enemy design]; everything I know about Bloodborne is from people saying how great it is and running through the story. I couldn't particularly think of anything for that in the same way.

I will say that Bloodborne seems to do Lovecraftian stuff in a way that I prefer over the real thing. Mostly that Enlightenment/Insight is *not* insanity. It's understanding. Frenzy is insanity (which is the Japanese term) and having higher Insight makes you less Frenzy resistant because *you know how bad this shit is*. Knowledge is power, but knowledge can also make you understand just how dangerous what you're up against is.
I much prefer that way of doing things over the more CoC-esque "you see the monster and go insane because boogabooga". You see the monster and can understand it, and understand how frightening it is.
It's not perfect, but still.

I am always reminded of a line from the Eisenhorn series when I think about insight leading to insanity.

"the floor was flat and seemed to be made out of perfectly tessellated regular heptagons"

a character with low Intelligence or no insight might find that only slightly off-putting. someone with high insight or an education in geometry might get royally FUCKED by trying to wrap their head around what they are clearly seeing and can measure. because if you're in a place where regular heptagons CAN tessellate in a mostly flat plane you are way WAY down the rabbit hole and dropping fast

That's actually the kind of thing I hate, precisely because it involves woooh boogabooga reality is acting wrong so now you're insane. I hate that whole "it looks weird in a way that isn't actually possible" form of insanity induction.

You also don't need to know that "regular heptagons" can't tessellate to be able to physically see a strange and impossible incongruence like that.

>precisely because it involves woooh boogabooga reality is acting wrong so now you're insane.
but that isn't the point I'm making, and that wasn't the effect in the book(even for 40k lit, I'd actually recommend it, it's a quite good trilogy/omnibus)
regular heptagons don't tessellate, it tweaked the brain heavy character really hard IIRC. BUT NOBODY WAS DRIVEN MAD BY THE SIGHT they simply ranged from "mildly put off" to "stopping occasionally to measure things to try and make it make sense"

when shit like that shouldn't be possible, then the fundamental rules of reality have been altered in some way. this would make someone WARY or possibly PARANOID because if ONE rule can change then so can other rules.
>if you keep going will you start encountering WEIRDER SHIT?
>if I keep going when will my body be warped by the changes in the rules of reality

plus it bugs the shit out of me to this day because I can't visualize it.

and I might argue that an uninformed character wouldn't care about the heptagons because to them it's just "a disquieting patch of floor"

but an informed one KNOWS TO BE WORRIED

...

...

this would be a better trick weapon in my opinion if the thing split down the middle to form a pair of gauntlets instead of a single impact thing

...

>plus it bugs the shit out of me to this day because I can't visualize it.
That's why I don't like it. I mean, I can even visualize the half-inch large inside of Will Navidson's house.

Shields are also very against Bloodborne's style.

It's like difference between being weirded out, but unable to put a finger on why, and being ABLE to put a finger on why. Knowing why makes it worse because, as you say, it goes from being simply weird to the certainty that it should be impossible.

I dunno, it has two shields. One is shit and the other is great, but only against arcane.

I don't think that weapon works very well. I think a better variant would be something like the amy fist club thing that is a club in one mode and a dual fist weapon in the other.

exactly

that was just my opinion of the pattern

my other points still stand as valid

Shortcut from Firelink to Undead Parish, through Darkroot to kill the Hydra, continue to Valley of Drakes to kill the Undead Dragon, keep moving past that into Blighttown for the chest. The route you suggested, going directly into Valley of Drakes from Firelink, requires the Master Key. The route I'm talking about only requires stubbornly forging ahead down one path.

Figuring out how to save Solaire is a lot more intuitive than you said, however it's only something you can naturally figure out after the fact. In Solaire's bug pit is the wall you can normally only open with the Chaos covenant, however in reality that's only to open it from the other side. From Solaire's side, you can open it without the covenant. Open the wall, follow the path to see that it leads to the area before Lost Izalith. Normally, the other side of the wall says that it's "locked by some contraption", whereas doors that only ever open from the other side will simply say they're locked. At that point, familiarity with the game can tell a person that there's a way to open the door and enter Lost Izalith directly from the Demon Ruins, and familiarity with Solaire's questline will tell you that he has one extra encounter right at the normal entrance to Lost Izalith before he's found with the Sunlight Maggots, suggesting that this path will let you cut in ahead of him. At that point, the challenge is just finding the fucking wall.

Speaking of, there's a developer message before the first bonfire in Darkroot that outright states there's an illusory wall hiding the bonfire. Which, incidentally, is near the route to the Dragon covenant.

Yes, the backstory is intentionally vague. I'm only saying it's nowhere near as vague as people make it out to be, and there are plenty of snippets. They don't elaborate on the details, but the questions who, what, where, and usually why are answered, if not when.

I think we've talked a few several times before, actually.

>I will say that Bloodborne seems to do Lovecraftian stuff in a way that I prefer over the real thing. Mostly that Enlightenment/Insight is *not* insanity. It's understanding. Frenzy is insanity (which is the Japanese term) and having higher Insight makes you less Frenzy resistant because *you know how bad this shit is*. Knowledge is power, but knowledge can also make you understand just how dangerous what you're up against is.

Tasty description. If it helps any, I couldn't comment much on the bullet points because I generally agreed with them.

>chaos covenant

Ah, forgot to mention. There's also an elevator that leads directly to the illusory wall to it, right before the Centipede Demon boss. Which is also your last chance to save Solaire, especially if you're actively searching for it.

And I suppose it'd help to point out that the intro video links the dragons with archtrees, so making it to Blighttown swamp and seeing the cluster of big trees on the other side should probably count as a hint.

Like I said, less vague than people accuse it of being. It's nowhere near point-and-click moon logic, though.

Except that route isn't even the intended route. You come *out* of Blighttown into the Valley of Drakes. And you never need to go near the Hydra to get there, either.
You're using some pretty backwards logic to argue that it's easy to figure out how to save Solaire, too, since there's not even an indication that being in the Chaos Covenant is what opens that door if I recall (I remember thinking it didn't work), and there's no indication of the Fair Lady being that answer.
>Speaking of, there's a developer message before the first bonfire in Darkroot that outright states there's an illusory wall hiding the bonfire.
Only with Seek Guidance.
>Which, incidentally, is near the route to the Dragon covenant.
It isn't. That's not how the path goes.
I actually kind of fucked this up, but pic related is more or less the intended route.
You go from the Asylum to Firelink to Undead Burg to Undead Parish to Undead Burg (Lower) to The Depths to Blighttown to Quelaag's Domain to Valley of Drakes back to Firelink.
Frampte sends you through Sen's Fuckhouse, Anor Londo, you get the Lordvessel and warp to Firelink.
You now have several choices, but you're intended to place the Lordvessel first. Then head to New Londo, get told about Artorias, head to that door with his crest, kill Sif, go back to New Londo, warp home from the Abyss, then go through the Duke's Archives and Crystal Cave, warp home, head to the Catacombs, then back home and if you didn't find the secret door to the Fair Lady (something that I'll again remind you would be nearly impossible playing blind offline) you need to go back from Blighttown to the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith and deal with the shittiest boss fight in the game, warp home, and finally go to face Gwyn and choose your ending.

To sum up: You never go through Valley of Drakes before heading to Blighttown, the Hydra isn't between Firelink and Blighttown *at all*, and to top it off outside of Ash Lake there are only *two* Dragon Scales in the whole game, both of which are outside of any sort of trail: One is in Blighttown, the other is from Snuggly. Every other Dragon Scale is an item drop *from dragons* or found in Ash Lake. Saying that there's a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a hidden faction that farms Dragon Scales relies on ignoring that dragon scales *drop from dragons*, or at least Hydras and Drakes. There's nothing even resembling a hint. You're seeing apophenia.

On top of that... you could just as easily argue that there should be Dragon Scales in Tomb of Giants, except there aren't. The Great Hollow is literally just a tree. The Arch Trees specifically are connected to the Ancient Dragons, but that one isn't identified as one. There's also no indication that anyone could find it at all, since, again, you'd need to know about the wall in the first place. And the second wall.

And the elevator doesn't lead directly to the wall. In fact, they're not really that close to each other at all. For someone on their first playthrough, it's just a shortcut back to the Demon Ruins. There's no indication that joining a secret Covenant opens that option, and no indication that you've even opened it to begin with.

When was the last time you played the game? Good lord, dude.

>Firelink shrine
>take elevator to undead parish
>bonfire by Andre
>enter Darkroot
>fight giant hydra, can't miss it
>bonfire before valley of drakes, after black knight
>go through valley of drakes, kill undead dragon
>go past undead dragon area, enter blighttown
>take elevator down to swamp, light bonfire, pick up scale
>what's with all these fucking dragons, anyways
>why are there trees in the swamp
>didn't the intro say something about dragon trees?

And that's how I found the dragon covenant on my first playthrough.

As for chaos and saving Solaire,
>find Solaire, he's crazy and trying to kill me
>kill him, kill the bugs
>open wall to area before demon sage
>this isn't any kind of shortcut that makes sense for the area it leads to
>it couldn't be opened from the other side, but there's no lever anywhere, trigger must be something else
>"shortcut" goes to area where Solaire was, but before encountering Solaire in Centipede Demon fight
>take the other, more useful shortcut elevator to bonfire
>oh hey, that wall's clipping
>covenant found, still didn't know the two were related
>second playthrough, joined new covenant, trying to figure out how to open the door before going to Lost Izalith, but it just opened normally when poked
>kill bugs, save Solaire, get fancy hat

This was my exact thought process. You'll have to forgive me if I think you're a bit slow, and I'll forgive you for accusing me of using "backwards logic" and pretending I'm making shit up.

>Every other Dragon Scale is an item drop *from dragons* or found in Ash Lake
When the hell did I ever exclude dragon drops? I didn't, you shoehorned that in on your own to make yourself feel smart, but it never happened outside your own mind.

>Every other Dragon Scale is an item drop *from dragons* or found in Ash Lake
When the hell did I ever exclude dragon drops? I didn't, you shoehorned that in on your own to make yourself feel smart, but it never happened outside your own mind.

>And the elevator doesn't lead directly to the wall

Yes it does. The elevator between Demon Sage and Demon Centipede takes you into the same room where the illusory wall to Chaos covenant is. Have you forgotten?

You do know the elevator to Undead Parish only opens after you've gone to the Parish, right? I'm going to be honest, at this point I just outright don't believe you and think you're either misremembering or full of shit.

Why would anyone come up with the logic that enemy item drops are somehow a trail of breadcrumbs? The elevator takes you outside the room where you fought the Demon Firesage. You have to go back, down some stairs, through the Demon Firesage room, out to the hall, then take a left and travel all the way down to the doorway. Or drop off a ledge. It's about a football field's distance away. Slightly less if you take the drop. I remember it very well because that's where I kept respawning when having to deal with the Bed of Chaos' bullshit fight.

>You do know the elevator to Undead Parish only opens after you've gone to the Parish, right?
Yes, and? It's something you can do without the master key, without killing any boss, and it's still a straight path from point A to point B. That has no bearing on anything.

>Why would anyone come up with the logic that enemy item drops are somehow a trail of breadcrumbs?
Non-respawning enemies, the item description makes a clear reference to a group or organization and implies a multiplayer function, and when you've fought two large dragons, a bunch of little ones, picked up a small handful of scales that hint at PvP and found what appears to be a small arena with yet another scale, you start to wonder if you're closing in on something. Although, I'm wondering if I'm the only person who found a chest behind a false wall to be an obvious attempt at misdirection.

>The elevator takes you outside the room where you fought the Demon Firesage
Okay, now I know you're doing this on purpose. Are you going to bother re-reading what I wrote to see where you read it wrong, or do I actually have to explain it to you step-by-step? I'm going to assume the latter, because it seems to be a recurring theme here.

The chaos door isn't a shortcut, and isn't a part of any shortcut. It has no relation to the elevator after Demon Firesage. I already said this, and I also said that's the reason why I found it suspect to begin with. If you kill the Demon Firesage, then take the elevator up, you are now in the same room as the illusory wall hiding the Chaos covenant. You can then join the covenant, take the elevator back down, and open the door to save Solaire. The problem is knowing that the Chaos covenant is there in the first place, and I already said that this is something I missed the first time through. It wasn't until looking at the pieces after the fact that I was able to get a rough idea of where Solaire's storyline could branch off and stumbled on the covenant.

Waaait a minute. I understand now. The problem here is that you aren't looking at the world design as if it were a game, and you're instead looking at it like a story. You're treating the world as if it's supposed to be natural and organic, and that item/enemy placements or how areas are designed aren't intentional and done with purpose. Souls games are super, extremely gamey, you know. This is just video game logic.

Hell, if you think that's bad, you should've seen my first Ashes of Ariandel playthrough. Not that it had much content, but I was five steps ahead of everything there, too. I might still have the first half of the recording somewhere, but the second half got corrupted, which pissed me off because I'd wanted to post it to Youtube.

No, you know what, I'm tired of this discussion and it's stupid and feels like you're backpeddling and moving the goalposts and ignoring anything that contradicts you. The Hydra isn't between Firelink and Blighttown.
You can't make this big argument about item placement being a trail of breadcrumbs and then go "oh no I mean it works if you go backwards", because that logic is stupid. The items are placed with purpose. Tons of it, and the lack of that is one of DaS2's major flaws. But the game is meant to be traversed a specific way. It is very clear that you're not supposed to go through Blighttown from Valley of Drakes, but up from Valley to Blighttown.

In fact, if you go through the game backwards it's very clear how specifically the enemies were placed, because most of them end up with their backs turned to you.

You might have gone through things the way you say, but it is clearly not fucking intentional that there were "breadcrumbs".

Why do you keep insisting that I was going through the game wrong? What on earth makes you think that's a valid argument? You keep trying to use that argument, but it isn't the rational explanation you think it is.

The game is set up to allow that path. There are several areas where they blocked progress outright, either through subtle hints like enemies not dying or less subtle walls of golden light. No such thing happened here. You can't agree with intentional game design and then claim that I took an unintentional path in the same breath. It was not unintentional, it was clearly allowed, and none of the enemies were fucking backwards. You made that up, too, along with other things like "Every other Dragon Scale is an item drop *from dragons* or found in Ash Lake" after you'd already made it clear you knew what I meant in this post , you insist that the world is meant to be senseless and opaque (which may have been your playthrough experience, but what does that have to do with me?), you've been trying to say it's impossible to go into Valley of Drakes before Blighttown when there's nothing at all stopping you, and your reasoning for this was that the enemies are clearly backwards when in fact they aren't. Do you remember what game we're talking about, here? This is the game that lets you fight the Four Kings as your second boss in the game, and even requires it to unlock a multiplayer covenant. You are speaking nonsense, and you should know better than that.

>backpedaling
I hate this word, and I've never once seen it used correctly. I have not once backpedaled, I have not once changed my statements or objectives, and nothing I've said since the beginning has been false or non-factual. So far, you are the one who has made false claims, dropping arguments and fabricating new ones at every turn. Don't be so ridiculous.

You're right, I'm sorry. I just don't recognize your genius. I'm so proud of you for being the only one to have ever noticed this.

Also as an aside, I asked Reddit how all the secrets were found and a surprising number of people found The Great Hollow by attacking the chest out of paranoia.

I know that's how I found it.

>You're right, I'm sorry. I just don't recognize your genius. I'm so proud of you for being the only one to have ever noticed this.

Why would you even bother typing that? That didn't help anyone, and it just makes you look like an ass. I'm not even doing anything special, it's just video game logic. I've played more old games than should be considered healthy, and have a general idea of how they're put together. It's like a person who hikes a lot getting good at fixing ankle injuries even if they don't have a medical degree.

>Also as an aside, I asked Reddit how all the secrets were found and a surprising number of people found The Great Hollow by attacking the chest out of paranoia.

Oh, that's actually kind of funny. Cool. Makes me feel better, I was worried maybe I'd been getting too paranoid.

You're all too paranoid, you can tell which chests are mimics by looking at the chain.

or which one is breathing...

or which one reacts to being poked with a pointy stick...

>players learn that attacking chests can reveal mimics
>start whacking at everything
>introduce trapped chests that detonate on impact

They did that with crystal lizards in DS2, and it was annoying.

In DaS2 you can actually destroy chests if you hit them too hard. There are also chests that don't have mimics but do have poison gas and fucking machine gun crossbows that you can barely dodge.

Did what? I haven't been able to deal with most of the Crystal Lizards I've seen, but I don't remember any exploding. I do remember three of them showing up in a fucking annoying spot in Harvest Valley where one of them falls into a pit filled with poison where you can't see a fucking thing, because Dark Souls 2 is garbage and the level design is criminal compared to Dark Souls 1.

...

There were two red crystal lizards in the game, and if you hit them they'd explode for more damage than it's possible to have HP. Purely there to dick the player over.

All wooden chests required three hits to break. Also, sometimes trapped chests would instead spit out a pinkish red mist that healed you, but it's extremely rare. I've seen more shiny pokemon than I've seen that trap.

>There were two red crystal lizards in the game, and if you hit them they'd explode for more damage than it's possible to have HP. Purely there to dick the player over.
Jesus fucking Christ why. Please tell me they at least have, like, something good drop.

>How do you run a game that feels like Dark Souls?
Firstly, avoid the classic blunder when adapting from a videogame to a tabletop game: don't assume that replicating substance requires emulating mechanics. It's a good way to miss the forest for the trees.

For instance souls, which are XP and currency. In many systems that could otherwise be desirable you might be best of not worrying about exactly tracking it, which also eliminates a shit-ton of other paperwork along the way. Or, equipment: the Souls series is all about changing how you approach things by changing your equipped gear. Narratively this doesn't really make sens, and certainly in a TTRPG this would be odd. Obviously there are not such rarefied movesets in-fiction and in a pen and paper rendition of it.

Don't get hung up on what works in their gameplay loops or in a game's meta, because a tabletop campaign is outside of that.

I got this. I would run slightly modified Into The Odd. If you don't know, the core system is just "whatever you say you do, but sometimes you need to pass a save" and "all attacks always hit". It discourages just standing there trading hits, and makes figuring out opponents and trial and error both important parts of exploration.
>Character creation should be done by giving the players a handful of very basic character packages to choose from
it's roll 4d6 drop lowest, but its got the equipment packages alright, based on the highest score and hp
>Currency and Experience should be the same thing
just stick some xp based levelling instead of inbuilt achievement-based one
>Magic--and also perhaps special abilities--should be treated like equipment
already there, all magic is carried out by arcana, magical artifacts
>Characters should slowly lose their grip on themselves
the way I'd go about this, is mutations. Characters regenerate from death in d6 hours, but each time they mutate further and further, making death very undesirable. Additionally, PC characters abandoned by players due to too many/horrid mutations would go feral and become a permament obstacle in a locale where they were left to gen a new PC
>Death should also be costly
look above, plus each time somebody dies, the party has to either drag their corpse until they come to, or camp around in a hostile area

That's my take on it, make it oldschool as fuck with rolls reserved for major fuckups. Player skill developed through trial and error. Add some verticality because what makes DS for me, is the crazy vertical levels where you're always no less that 20-100m above or below the next nearest walkable surface. Additionally, no more than a handful of friendly NPCs, even a major hub should have no more than 10 people loitering about.

Fuck FATE and any other system with skill rolls or the such, make it as raw as possible. That's the Dark Souls way.

Actually, I feel like Currensperience is super doable and good, but then again I generally play systems where levels aren't a thing. I don't know why changing weapons would be odd in pen and paper (Also I never changed my weapons, I picked the things that have the best animation and stuck to that).
I mean, I agree with you on the overall notion of "adapt the themes not the system", but those seem like odd choices as examples of what doesn't work.

>I would run slightly modified Into The Odd. If you don't know, the core system is just "whatever you say you do, but sometimes you need to pass a save" and "all attacks always hit". It discourages just standing there trading hits, and makes figuring out opponents and trial and error both important parts of exploration.
That sounds like Dungeon World a bit. I forgot to mention that there's a Dark Souls inspired Dungeon World game called Cold Ruins of Lastlife. It's got some neat stuff.
Here's the book a.uguu.se/bB8C0WdVWKAQ_DungeonWorld-ColdRuinsofLastlife.pdf

>Fuck FATE and any other system with skill rolls or the such, make it as raw as possible. That's the Dark Souls way.
Actually, I'd point you to the poster above you because I think that games like Fate can be very useful (hence something like Cold Ruins) for Dark Souls, specifically because they have more narrative systems. (I assume that's what you meant by "Skill rolls" and making it "raw as possible" at least)

Nah, Into The Odd is more OSR focused than DW. I'm not a big fan of DW, if anything try World of Dungeons, John Harper's demake of DW. OSR general has into the odd for you to see, the game has quite a flavor to it. What I mean by excluding skill rolls of any kind is that it's... Less mechanical. The layer of mechanics is thinner between player declarations and in game actions. Character's don't have anything resembling skills or even moves, it's the players who have to be inquisitive, creative and verbose about approaching and solving issues at hand, with saving throws being just that, last failsafe before eating consequences of a choice they made. The system is way more lethal as well, with 1d6 starting hp, and damage being dealt by things ranging from d4 to d20. FATE doesn't do this sort of high lethality, and its' narrative is too heavily metagamed. ItO is narrative directly, by all means it's an OSR mentality of high lethality, importance of immediate choices and "learning" the game's world that makes it suitable IMO.

I've been playing OSR lately and while it's an interesting divergence from the storygames I usually play, it also often just feels like 20 questions as opposed to anything more meaningful. That said, some of the worldbuilding and gameplay of the OSR game I'm in is kind of informing my sensibilities for a Dark Souls game, even if I'm not really fond of the super generic "you just have D&D attributes" mechanics, and the way that it feels like characters are intentionally incompetent. (My highest bonus is a +1 and that's basically barely better than a flipped coin, and the LotFP skills are basically a useless crapshoot where rolling means failure).

I've also never really felt that a high lethality added anything to a game, and even for a Dark Souls game I wouldn't focus on that aspect because from a mechanical and narrative standpoint, the lethality in a Dark Souls game would be *LOW* because death and constant rebirth is a theme of the series.

It's also important to understand that you can never really "learn" and "git gud" as it pertains to a mechanical system because Dark Souls proper is all about timing, hit avoidance, player skill, and being able to read the enemy's telegraphed attacks, none of which is actually possible in a pen and paper game.

But my dislike of a lot of the philosophy of OSR is really beside the point. I actually think that a "storygame" is a good Dark Souls jumping off point because ultimately the focus of Dark Souls is its story, or at least the in-the-moment narratives that the game tells, where the constant state of death and rebirth is really just a metaphor for what the characters go through. It's been said many times but your character only goes Hollow if you never come back to the game. In OSR a lot of the emphasis is on lethality and the disposability of characters, even ones you've come to love and given a name. Dark Souls on the other hand is fundamentally about hope.

(cont)

And, I mean, I'm not completely ragging on it or anything. In my OSR game we basically got our asses kicked (well, I got my ass kicked and lost a leg, but I mean I had three more, and it got better, so whatever) and still came out on top last session, despite things ostensibly being super lethal (and shitty as fuck rolls). I think that the OSR style of gaming can offer Dark Souls a lot, but I don't think that using an actual OSR game is the way to go.

Was that just a bump or did you mean to say something?

it was meant to be a bump, but apparently the thread is locked.

I feel that if I have nothing to contribute then my post doesn't need to stay here longer than the minute before I can delete it.

Locked?

thread didn't seem to bump when I posted it...seems to be working properly now

Is there a place where the dark souls Veeky Forums homebrew system is hosted? A quick google search gives me nothing

Honestly it might work better if you impose certain statistical penalties as the score grinds down, and then make sure to give lots of ways to get it back that they have to fight fore. Specific boss enemy creams them six tines in a row(losing points at a slowly increasing rate due to despair, for example)? When they kill him, they get1d6 back

I made an edited ruleset for 4e and 5e. Never used it, but I got praise for it. It was a mixture between the edition's rules and dks rules, though.

Of course not, they didn't drop anything. You just hit them and you die.

Dark Souls 2 is a mess.

Well some guys started developing a not!Souls ttRPG, but its not done yet.
t. One of the guys working on it

>Dark Souls 2 is worse at literally everything

It actually improved most things when it came to actual gameplay, but it gets overshadowed by the world design problem. Easier to identify one big flaw than a hundred quality of life features.

Fixed BS, actually had level design focused on traps, enemies with non-laughable tracking, backstep wasn't pointless, magic wasn't shit, builds had variety, dual wielding, could move while firing arrows, more weapons/classes/moves, all armour classes were good, equip burden wasn't an arbitrary breakpoint, equip burden rewarded light builds with stam regen and roll distance, heavy armour gave you hyper armour/good defence, poise didn't allow you to face tank Ultra class weapons, covenants actually worked and there was a million quality of life features like respeccing, telling you what areas were active for pvp and ascetics (no fuck you DaS3, I am not replaying the entire game so I can fight a specific boss).

I'd post more, but I'd hit word count. Few games in recent years were more unfairly maligned.

Can you share?

>enemies with non-laughable tracking
The problem is that it they go too far and have enemies that turn on a dime and arrows that lock on like guided missiles. Most of the bosses really kind of feel like they're cheating, although all the bosses are also uninspired and boring and strangely easy if you've got summons.

It's not unfairly maligned. I'd argue that it's completely fairly maligned, and an example of how gameplay alone can't save something when story, worldbuilding, level design, creature design, and character design are all working against it. I went on a binge watch of a bunch of "what does Dark Souls II do wrong" videos, and I don't think any of them mentioned all the glaring flaws ("Literally everything about Iron Keep").

Also, you mentioned weapons as a plus, but honestly I have used nothing else since getting the Flaming Longsword, until I fought Smelter Demon and got a Lightning and Magic Longsword. The weapons are just boring. I'm sitting on all my Boss Souls and looking at the Wiki's list of Boss Weapons and I'm just... It's worse than DaS1. None of them interest me even remotely. And that's disappointing.

Honestly crestfallen is 0. Think about the crestfallen warrior- the only thin that keeps him going is the desire to tell you something he thinks you might not know, and the only thing to keep the crestfallen merchant going is his desire to see others fail. Meanwhile the "hollow" merchants are perfectly functional. Being hollow isnt just losing yourself, its also a physical state. But beong crestfallen... Theres no coming back from thay precipice

>Improved most things when it came to gameplay
No. No you fucking asshole, it didn't. It had a few improvements, sure but in terms of the major points of gameplay, it fucking ruined a lot of things.

>4 way locked rolling
>Hitbox remains static during rolls, meaning you'll dodge away and get hit by things that very clearly miss you.
>Enemies with outrageously huge hitboxes on their attacks, which mean you get hit by shit that clearly misses you.
>Limited invasion items
>Parries slowed down for no reason
>Enemies that spin on their heel at high speed to prevent backstabs, but end up just auto tracking like they have aimbots enabled
>Magic that varies between useless and fucking broken (Hexes that kill in one hit, with a fast cast and a small, homing projectile)
>Shit level design
>Terrible enemy placement and philosophy; where "challenge" is created by spamming 10,000 garbage enemies.

Yeah, it improved some things for sure but it made the basic core gameplay unfun, thus rendering any other improvements moot BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO PLAY THE FUCKING GAME!

I swear to god, you ds2 fans have some kind of Stockholm syndrome. You were stuck with it so long you rationalized the problems away. Meanwhile I moved from that to Bloodborne and realized just how terrible DS2 felt to play in comparison.

The Undead Merchants aren't Hollow, and all the Crestfallen characters are still together, but dwelling on their loss of purpose. In the case of the Merchant, he's trying to keep from slipping. Saulden and the Warrior are just cripplingly depressed, though.

>spend 3 weeks doing nothing but designing an inescapable megadungeon. I mean make it YUUUGE, going both outside and in. Place tough "boss" enemies in tatical choke points so the only way forward is through them. Make just enough story to drive the players along, then let them loose in the dungeon.

dark souls 1 is pretty vertical