Dark Souls

If there's a dark souls system, I just hope it let's you play as things that aren't undead.
There's a lot of character potential that would be squandered otherwise.

The problem is that Souls style combat really doesn't work with dicerolling in the traditional way. It's not about randomness, it's about decision making and correct allocation of resources.

Legends of the Wulin's dice system is closer than most, since you roll before taking actions and it gives you that decision making element, figuring out what to do with limited resources, but the rest of the system is entirely inappropriate for Souls.

How precisely do you mean "how the stat system functions?" Do you mean how they scale? Because that would be a nightmare for any non-crunchacholic to go through. If you mean how the stats interact with items then that's doable in pretty much any system. You CAN use the greatsword at low Strength, but your attacks are slower or hit for less damage until you hit the appropriate strength level for said weapon.

If you're most interested in the combat (which is what most threads are about), you'd want some system of pre-allocated actions. You say "I charge in and do a charge attack, then I roll away because I think there'll be a counter attack", the GM reveals that the enemy is channeling a spell on both actions and your first attack staggered him but you rolled away anyway. Something like that. The Dark Souls Boardgame on Kickstarter (or patreon I dunno) had an interesting idea that needs a board. Your enemies have set attacks with areas of effect, and they're on cards that the GM draws, this means the players have an element of prediction involved.

The real hard part of Soulsborne to convey is the tone and mood, the games work in such a way that feature vistas and NPCs who aren't entirely original (it's a giant tree, the Knight is hunched over, the giant eldritch monstrosity vaguely calls to mind an arachnid etc), but gives us a visual depiction that isn't often seen in film/tv/games. The rickety structure of Blighttown isn't an original idea, it's been in lots of stuff, but actually seeing and exploring it is completely different to a GM saying;
>The walkway you're on is made of twigs and rope, but that's the least of your concerns. Far below in the murky swamp you see shambling figures converging upon the base of the rickety structure that you're clinging to for dear-life. Bloated flying insects buzz towards you, glinting claws and mandibles click and clutch at thin air as a dart flashes out of the gloom, catching you in the thigh.

>If you're most interested in the combat (which is what most threads are about), you'd want some system of pre-allocated actions
that's how the combat system in Burning Wheel works. Both combatants plan actions in groups of three and then they're revealed simultaneously, it works pretty well

Man if I had a dollar for each of these threads

If you were in charge of making a DS RPG system what would you have the races/classes be?
Hard Mode: it isn't just the starting classes from the games

Just take any low fantasy game and remove random bits of the setting/story so that players have to figure it out themselves. Wa la.

Fuck classes, go point buy, and only one race- Undead.

>races
>Undead
>base Human

>classes
>just do what said, but woth the added addition of covenants as a sort of sub class system that gives your character benefits as they level up
>fof example, if a character was a part of a covenant of Ihylill knights, they would slowly become more monstrous as they leveled up along with gaining frost themed powers or traits

>this thread again

Related to OP, anyone ever run a game with Lost Source? How did it go?
The idea behind the scifi soulsborne makes my worldbuilding dick hard, but I have no idea how viable it is in practice.

Stats are viturally meaningless in Souls games.

A half decent player can clear the games at SL 1.

Souls games are all about memorising the enemy's attack patterns and timing your attacks correctly. They require a bit of dexterity with the controller. That's why it's hard to recreate that at the tabletop with dice and paper.

Bloodborne seems like it would be better for an RPG, honestly.

Erm, well there's this board game coming out this year. I believe it took over £3m on kickstarter and it's supposed to be fully licensed by the IP holders so that's going to be as close to the IP on the table top as you can get

I had playtesters.

I got some rules refinements done.

still not sure if anyone did more than a braced handful of sessions though

Kind of tricky, since the games are built around the idea of a character who can't stay dead. Undead are just the easiest way to do that in a fantasy setting.

It'd be easier in a sci-fi setting, since you have cloning tech or mind uploading as options. I'm partial to the idea of the players being stuck in a velvet prison utopia that half the species uploaded themselves into, but collapsed when a few sociopaths slipped through and started coring out other people's digital avatars to repurpose as highly advanced code and digital tools. The discarded leftovers take on a semblance of life, their nature defined by their final moments as they attack other people and break their minds, hoping to use the fragments of their digital personalities in an attempt to rebuild themselves into something resembling a complete human again.

DESU, I would do some homebrew in 5e. For example, introduce small and large bonfires for short/long rest benefits.

Switch weapons are easy. Allow players to switch modes as part of a movement (draw/stow) or attack, give them two stat blocks. Example: switch axe. Maul stat block greataxe stat block. Get more creative with it if you're cool.

The fuck? Why did DESU become DESU?

Oh gotcha

I actually made my own book for a campaign like this for the pathfinder system a long time ago. Now, here's what I recommend, as a lesson from my experience. (this is gonna be long, bear with me here)
1: What I did was essentially reduced classes to just their tables (no class abilities), removed feats, and gave loadout requirements for starting. To give it a bit of an edge I'd say have everyone be a neutral class with a +1 bab table, as for saves ask players if they want to be fast, strong, or clever, don't tell them what it means, just give them the table, then quickly into the first session have them come across an armory with limited gear, then essentially everyone is deprived
2: For magic I had attunement slots set up to advance every level and had the number of each spell use set, to create the spells I just took preexisting spells from pathfinder with similar effects and to use the spells you had to meet certain score requirements (wis for miracles, int for sorcery, and cha for hexes) as for catalysts i made staffs and talismans available available, and made a separate one for hexes called totems, as for pyromancy hands you could pay souls to level them up and further increase their effectiveness (although I admit
they were broken as shit, just like in game). I'd recommend making a preselection of spells in the appropriate categories, and set up classes for a over encompassing spells per bonfire (like take the lvl 0 spells from druid class and have those set up as the total spells of any kind you can use before you die/sit at a bonfire)

3: I had a system in place for titanite, every advancement to a weapon was a +1 to damage and every +5 added a damage die and reset the damage bonus, armor got additional armor bonus.
4: Unlike the game, don't make enemies respawn with every sit at the bonfire, it makes souls all the more valuable, though do include the bloodstain mechanic. For humanity, I used the ds2 method of effigies and taking a penalty to hp with each death, with each death giving you a 1/4 penalty to health, your fourth death would cause permanent hollowing and insanity.
5: And lastly, be careful with items (rings and consumables). And don't allow health potions but rather an estus flask with a set dice (I used a d20 with a bonus for firekeeper souls)

>character potential
There's a lot of character potential in being undead. If you don't want to play undead, I'm not sure Dark Souls is the right game to play.

and If I had a Million dollars for each time someone actually answered the fucking question OP poses I'd still be poor.

>Are there any systems good for
Savage Worlds, maybe? It's what I'd use.

I know some user stated up the enemies from DS1 in 5e. but has anyone done the same with the enemies from DS2+3 yet? Hoping since I'd really like to use them in my upcoming game. especially with the DS board game coming soon.

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EVIL
NOPE
FUCK NOPE

So long as it doesn't have any fucking dogs with it, I'll be just fine.

Of course that means it has wheel skeleton dogs.

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That's just cruel.

brb going to lob dozens of wooden arrows at it from behind a glitched boulder.

there IS NO GLITCH BOLDER HERE

>BOULDER***
FUCK

ONLY PAIN LIVES HERE

[distressed undead noises]

Is there a titanite lizard mimic?

not from this artist.

but DaSo2 had red ones that insta-gib exploded after the first hit..

Pity, I was hoping for an angler fish lure variant.

And by 'hoping' I mean I never want to encounter one.

and by "never want to encounter one" you mean you expect it in the next soulsbourne game you play...

What? You DON'T stare at, cautiously shoot at and then poke with a spear everything new?

lol jk that's what dying and respawning is for. I'll investigate everything up close at least once. Maybe it just wants a hug, I don't know it's life.

When it comes to story in Soulsborne games, I took the approach of using the game as a foundation and then expanding it.

I made a Bloodborne campaign, and this game has a fuck ton of theories. I searched around some theories, saw ones I liked, and then made them true in my campaign. I also went back in time from where the game starts you, so the world has more NPCs.

With regard to the games making the player an average Joe thrown into the world, you don't have to do that in tabletop. My mentor NPC (think Gehrman) captured my PCs before the campaign started and forced them into fighting for his faction, the Vilebloods, against the Executioners. They lose, losing the memory of what brought them to the start of the campaign, and are tied to the Hunter's Dream (think undead curse but with your own pocket plane hub). And of course the mentor is trying to manipulate the party to free him from the Dream. The state of the world isn't as bad as it is in the game, but I want my campaign to kind of show how everything gets so bad. And since the PCs are in it, they'll get to influence it all.

In making a TTRPG story in Soulsborne, definitely make your characters important. Go beyond what the games give you. For Dark Souls, I'd love to delve into the Abyss Watchers/Artorias, the Deep, the Abyss, and what the world would be like after one of the DS3 endings.

This sounds good for DS, and makes Pathfinder simple. Double whammy.

Which setting do you think is better for RPGs: Souls or Borne?

Bourne, if only because it isn't a semi-generic fantasy setting.

Blade of the Iron Throne RPG.

You'll need to rework the Magic system a bit, but otherwise it's perfect.

I'd have to say Bloodborne, IF you can do fear right and if you have a good group.

I think the horror aspect and the gothic aesthetic really makes Bloodborne stand out more. I feel more immersed when I'm wandering through Old Yharnam, wondering if a pillar of smog is hiding a monster inside.

Don't get me wrong, I also get scared in Dark Souls. But that's more of a "oh god, this guy is going to kill me and I'll have to do this whole area again!" Where Bloodborne is more "JESUS FUCK KILL IT!"

I think Bloodborne is good for the right people and Dark Souls has a broader audience. During a weekly meeting of my college RPG club, just about everyone gasped in delight when someone said they wanted to do a dark souls game.

Souls. People are more used to the tropes of medieval fantasy and there's fewer 'gotcha' moments like with most victorian / romantic literature - Borne seems like you'd always have the threat of becoming a monster you don't want to be, or having a lot of unfortunate things happening to your character that's neither your fault nor in your ability to do anything about. That's the entire point, really, behind that sort of existentialism and stuff, things being out of people's control and going mad from that sort of revelation.

Dark Souls is all about heroes doing things, even if you've gotten there late to the party. It's more active and available for the PC's to feel influential without being fucked.

These images annoy me slightly because they seem like they were made by someone that doesn't realise that D&D (i.e. what the mimic is from) is already full of other monsters that look like things. In particular, the wall and the stump are moderately notorious monsters.

he might have only had experience with souls and nothing else.

D&D is something people sneer at as a thing only the hardest core nerds do till they've tried it

>During a weekly meeting of my college RPG club,
I envy you so hard right now...we didn't have such a thing in my college.

There was this Finnish RPG circulating on here awhile back that had a very Souls-like flavor to it, visually and backstory-wise.
Fantasy with a strong element of horror and a lingering sense of impending doom.

Sombrarium I think it was called?
Dammit, I forget.

It's called Symbaroum! It's very Souls-like, and that's mainly why I bought it.

Haven't read too much of it, but it's more akin to the d100 rolls where you roll below your stat number. But instead of d100, it's just a d20. I believe the difficulty is based on your stat, and increasing it (making it easier) or decreasing it (making it harder).

Take DS and mix it with Eastern European/Scandinavian aesthetic. Like DS with a bit of Witcher. There's actually civilization and counties, but like 80% of the map is the Davokar Forest. Where all the ancient ruins and monster hang out with barbarians. There was even a war against undead Dark Lords, making the human nation have a mass exodus to where they are now. They're only mentioned for a brief moment.

It's also Swedish, not Finnish :)

drivethrurpg.com/product/163293/Symbaroum--Core-Rulebook

How does D&D 2e compare to Dark Souls?

I'm mainly looking at difficulty. My friend bought all the 2e kit handbooks, and from what I've heard, 2e is a bear in combat and seems to fit the bill for DS in that regard.

Everything else like souls exp and lore we'd figure out ourselves. Other things that don't mesh well with DS we'd probably take out. Like we probably wouldn't have any non-human races available.

It'd be fine. It's not quite as brutal, but it' snot like you can just res party members every time there's a TPK. It did popularize the save-or-die style of game, where things like a poison dart just killed you if it hit instead of dealing 1d4 damage and a piffling save.

Check out things like Keep on the Borderlands, which has some very stark design changes between 2e and 3e if you want a good example of what I'm talking about .

That being said, if you want a REALLY Dark Souls-y experience, check out some retroclones instead like Lamentations of the Flame Princess - That's a game that prides itself on doing terrible things to it's players. Labyrinth Lord might also be a bit easier to get into for a whole group, it's compatible with 2e but THAC0 tends to make people cringe nowadays and LL does away with that.

I will say that the way casters work in DS should be the way casters work in DnD.
No reality warping, no weird bullshit, just you and your set of blasts and buffs.

It's been answered a million times and the answer is still the same: there is no system that can recreate the dark souls experience because it's a fucking action RPG with mechanics that just don't work at the tabletop.

not a 100% agreement, universe warping has it's place. that place is NOT usually in the hands of the players.

as an extension. combat magic like pyromancies. close range, reasonably fast spells that you can almost chain into regular combat.

we can still work towards a best-fit

I always suggest Blade of the Iron Throne, which has exactly what everyone wants from a DS RPG: Gritty, fast-paced high mortality combat with plenty of flavour AND even has rules that cover combat maneuvers, dodges, parries, etc.

The one thing it's missing is a more detailed Magic System and some rules for Returning. I'm almost tempted to make it myself and actually have a system to suggest to someone every time we bring up this topic, but I just don't have the time.

The issue is that dark souls is a game that involves timing and skill (pressing O at the right time mainly).

TTRPGs are fundamentally luck based games due to dice rolls.

Add to that the fact that dark souls is primarily a single player game with occasional co-op and you'll begin to see why a group based game like a TTRPG just isn't suitable.

For the record I love dark souls. I have sunk hundreds of hours into the games. It's just not suited to tabletop gaming. You're more than welcome to homebrew a system and prove me wrong.

That was the title!
Yeah, it seems pretty cool.

>the fact that dark souls is primarily a single player game with occasional co-op and you'll begin to see why a group based game like a TTRPG just isn't suitable.

or this stands as why GMs need to re-learn how to tailor something to more players or a diverse party.

>The issue is that dark souls is a game that involves timing and skill
I play a cheese-monger(bows and spells) and I can tell you that timing and skill are not the ONLY components.

so any system that emulates Souls might need to have a means of reducing RNG butt-fuckin like static weapon damage values(that increase with stat changes or the application of titanite)

some people are not so skilled(like me), and so for them not every dodge-roll or parry attempt or even attack is guaranteed to work. I've sunk a few hundred hours between the games and I still fuck some of that shit super hard(call it a 25%-40% failure rate for non-attack non-block actions) so to me this game CAN be emulated on the tabletop using a RNG or semi-RNG.

>tl;dr, the get-gud mentality means that you only THINK this game cannot be done with RNG tabletop systems

There is no RNG in Souls. Any tabletop adaptation of it will be a completely different game. Even if you're not that proficient at the game you must realise that you're fucking up dodge rolls and parries because you're mistiming them. Not because you're "unlucky".

As I said, Dark Souls is all about memorising attack patterns, dodging and attacking at opportune moments.

It's also about dying. A lot. This is frustrating for a lot of players and definitely doesn't work at the tabletop particularly if the players keep dying because of RNG.

But like I said, prove me wrong, homebrew some shit. I love Souls but, to be honest, if I wanted to play Souls I'd play Souls not D&D or whatever.

>homebrew some shit.
by the by...I already did. with a little help
is.Veeky Forums.org/tg/1483614094695.pdf

you might not count it though cause it's Sci-Fi. it was only meant to feel like a souls game(big and empty, with a plot mostly hidden behind exploration), not emulate one directly.

no I didn't finish it. I got distracted and started working on other things...

I'll take a look at it. Props for effort.

I always thought that a futuristic version of Dark Souls would be cool though I doubt Miyazaki and FROM are interested in making any more Souls-like games.

still working on this one, though it's meant to be more of a 'bourne than a souls game.

thinking I HAVE a system baseline, but not a very good handle on it yet and not a lot of work on the system itself.

>nope, you just have not gotten gud
dude, explain how "gaining proficiency" is different from "a TTRPG character leveling up"

>particularly if the players keep dying because of RNG.
you have never encountered a game where the players can adjust probabilities for success on a per-turn basis have you?
Song of Swords is the only example I am familiar with.

to a lesser extent there is Shadowrun, World of Darkness and any game with fate-points

>I always thought that a futuristic version of Dark Souls would be cool
enough of us thought that all at once, that I sat down and collated and edited things and bashed a system into it hard enough that things started working.

We all know you want to be le gritty slow-swinging dexterous man but tabletop doesn't have your "gameplay". We get this thread about various games, cartoons, and anime all the time.

Just go LARP already.

Why? The setting of every single game is vague and paper-thin. There's barely any functional society for players to interact with, and so much of the storytelling is reliant on game mechanics that would not translate at all to a TTRPG.

My dark souls system in the works, mechanically, has hollowing as a sanity system (that's how permadeath still exists, and is 100% with the lore) and a way to represent the varied movesets of weapons.

>dexterous
>being a dexfag
>ever

>not dancing all over STRfags as they fail to land a single hit while you poke them to death with a rapier or katana

Step it up sempai

Runequest 6, the combat has this reasource economy and grittiness that just screams darks souls. also the game has no specific setting so as a DM you can take and put from anywhere you feel like.

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(You)

>D&D is something people sneer at as a thing only the hardest core nerds do
Not really much nowadays, D&D is a borderline normie game now.

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Dnd, make your own areas, come up with your own lore, use the sanity rules from dnd 5e, each time a player dies they die for good, unless you're having your players be the chosen undead divided by 4, in which case they come back at the last bonfire that you've placed into the maps player traverse through, each time they die give them a roll on the major insanity table and minor insanity up to (your choice) times.

FUCK OFF ALREADY.

It's not really about combat, it's more about for example the feeling being completely alone in a hostile world that is rather hard to emulate in a tabletop game where you almost always have some kind of party.

Also how would you deal with dying? Because large part of souls game is basically replaying the same area over and over again until you finally get it right, because death means almost nothing. In tabletop this would be tediously boring and death should be a big thing.

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For anyone wanting Dark Souls monsters in D&D 5e:

imgur.com/a/zDgA3#6ET7weS

imgur.com/a/7wvqp#Pcf8xKF

dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/145609076574/dark-souls-3-monsters-by-alvig

Use TOWERS once it's finished.

It's incredibly easy to homebrew things into it, so you could basically handcraft the perfect Souls game if you're willing to let the combat be not very "soulslike". It won't play like Souls, but it'll be the best damn choice for a quick and easy way to make a game that fits that world.

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I had fucking nightmares over this goddamn thing.