Did anything ever happen with CATastrophe? I haven't really heard much about it in a long time...

I browse generals myself, but you are (part of) the reason people hate generalfaggotry.

>picking it back up again
Does this mean you were one of the original devs?

Looking through the archives, they mentioned something about organizing games via skype. Do you have the skype contacts of those original anons?

No, it's shit.

It's a kind of okay setting, but without any major conflict, it's not really interesting. It was essentially a wankfest of "look at this cool aquatic culture/location" I built.

Which is why I clamored for humans as NPCs. They're coming back, but they have like maybe 100 of them (moon colony send people back or whatever) so they subvert various population centers or w/e.

And before you get your autistic panties in a twist, I am not saying you get to PLAY a human. The humans are supposed to be the antagonistic NPCs.

>without any major conflict, it's not really interesting
>he doesn't like comfiness
I agree that the project died before the setting really started to get any meat to it, but intense conflict and drama are not absolutely necessary for an interesting setting. Ryuutama can testify to this, as can Golden Sky Stories.

>Implying you need major conflict for game to be interesting

Look up Ryuutama (i was the guy originally suggesting it btw). Ryuutama doesn't need epic adventures of epic heroes epically saving the epic world. Ryuutama's heart is travelling through unknown and often dangerous lands, seeing natural wonders and helping people on the way. You can of course run "The return of humans who all are evil subjugators for some unexplained reason", but that's honestly kind of a waste of a setting. In Ryuutama (and CATastrophe, i find their themes to be very similar) a simple journey across a mountain ridge is already a difficult and fun adventure. Connecting trade routes of two cities is a rewarding experience, especially if your GM is good at characterization of NPCs. If you want something more high-scale, discovering secrets of an ancient civilization is a by-the-book D&D, and by succeeding players bring prosperity to ther village and insight into deeper layers of the setting.

Not every game needs to be Epic D&D to be engaging and interesting.

>no major conflict
But that's wrong, you dummy.

I'm not really experienced with designing mechanics though some of my friends have been playing RPGs for years now and are helping out more with that aspect, I was thinking of a more rules light, narrative focused system definitely. Though I'm not sure what to look at exactly as far as those go, I'll be giving consideration to Ryuutama and as suggested, Numenera.
The more open "I'm a X Y who Z's" kind of thing Numenera has going seems like a neat idea to rip off to allow characters to be less locked into specific classes.

>HFY
?

>Does this mean you were one of the original devs?
I participated in a lot of the original threads like five years ago, but I actually have an interest in carrying it on now.

I've been working on a less waterworld type setting, with the coastal areas being a big focus still but there will be terrestrial areas, just the terrestrial are far less pleasant due to the implications of being on a very warm, very wet planet. And actually have room for conflict instead "everyone gets along, yay!"

>HFY
"Humanity Fuck Yeah!"

If you're not experienced with making systems, just use an existing one, reskinned to your needs.

Speaking from experience here.

Yeah, that's mostly the idea, just thinking that some things will need to have aspects lifted from other systems besides the base one being used to cover things that aren't handled in the system chosen.

Does anyone have experience with Numenera?

Well, it's Monte Cook game, which means caster supremacy.

It's supposed to be about exploration, but most rules are about combat.

Don't get me wrong - it has some good and stealable ideas, but, sadly, it's D&D in shining foil.

Yet, if you don't autistically chase perfection, it provides good tools for a campaign (or good tools to steal).

The main difference between it and Ryuutama is scope, and it's an important thing to consider - Numenera is more mythical and large-scale - superhuman warriors, weather-controlling wizards and so on. Ryuutama is MUCH more mundane and has different challenges (actually surviving walk through forests or mountains).

>HFY
"Humanity, fuck yeah." It was a meme back a few years ago. There were entire threads where people jacked off to human supremacy

>There were entire threads
There still are, people keep trying to resurrect it.

I tried a few games with the CATastrophe setting with my group. It was comfy and goofy but there was simply no motivation to keep playing.

There were no conflicts. No emotional moments. No real threats that weren't overshadowed by the abstruse setting itself. In the end I made it a lot darker with returning humanity and a more realistic survival from the animal people. Setting instantly got 1000% better.

... designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost.

It was just such a relief to have a setting that wasn't all about grimdark oneupsmanship. Veeky Forums is creative, but they're also the types to take something like "solarpunk? how about a setting where pale overlords domineer over their solar-farm serfs?"

It was just nice to have a cozy setting that had some adventure and danger without going overboard. Not to mention catgirls and catboys without heaps of fetish fuel, just some ecchi.

...

Realistic survival is a good way to do it.

Return of humanity... i dunno. Forst, it kinda cheapens one big aspect of the setting - a mystery. Second is ABSOLUTELY BUGFUCK RETARDED (yes, caps) idea that humans leaving stasis would instantly go full conquerinator mode and start fucking around subjugating everyone they can get hands on.

Return of humanity can be done well, yes. But it must be done very, very carefully.

I really don't like the attempts to reintroduce humans into the setting.

>It was made as an explicitly humanless setting
>the animal-people were considered the "progeny" of the last humans, which is much nobler than having humans come back and decide to wipe them out
>reeks of typical Veeky Forums "and then the humans killed everything and conquered stuff" HFY-type stuff.

I think the danger in CATastrophe should come from more natural sources. Like the good old storms, sea monsters, or ancient robots. Maybe if you really wanted to up the stakes some kind of GIANT robot wakes up and is gonna destroy a city if you can't find a solution, or some greedy pirates steal the eggs of a sea monster who starts making a big mess.

Anything that isn't your standard blood-and-warfare stuff.

Y'all have been baited hard, good job people!

Okay, guys. Here's a thing. Hear me out.

CAtastrophe setting is actually ideal for an old-school hexcrawl if you make it take place on a large island.

>Lots of explorable wilderness
>Dangerous ocean areas
>Ruins on and around the island
>Local cities full of quests and rumors
>Probably giant enemy crabs and other monsters visiting the island

TL;DR - OSR CATastrophe hexcrawl. Discus.

>Every differing opinion is bait

>Autism

This is now a Catastrophe Development Thread.

Central conflict is important for growth and drama, but it doesn't have to mean evil sea dragon cults. In Ryuutama, wanderlust is dangerous, in Golden Sky Stories, people are sad. Sea exploration and salvage is important in Catastrophe, up that with some sample conflict in the source.

For rivalry, the next platform over might be full of smug jackasses who found a ship full of polo shirts. You could have pirates into the pirate lifestyle more than actually stealing stuff. Maybe there's an academic network interested in finds that feeds rivalries with other salvage crews?

Mite be cool.jpg

Simple hexcrawl build rules would probably be a good idea since we're exploring tons of open water here. You don't need land on every bit, just stuff to populate the hexes with underwater ruins and hazards.

See, on one hand you're right.

On paper.

In actuality, it's boring as fuck, and the reason why games like Traveller tend to fail. You can certainly have a "cross the mountain" adventure once or twice. But eventually, it gets dull.

And I'm sorry to say that everything needs to run on conflict, especially in an RPG. Now, I will be fair and say that it doesn't have to be combat, to generate conflict. Hell, the conflict doesn't even have to come from someone who is objectively "bad." It can be just rivalry or conflicting goals. To go back to CATastrophe, and my example of humans coming back - it doesn't have to be grimdark. The humans are glad to see their creations survived, the various weeb girls are happy to see the true humans return - but the issue is, the humans want to start terraforming the Earth, which would cause a period of about 100 year of upheaval before stuff stabilizes. And at the same time, there's a group of people that is pro-human/catgirl breeding, and those who think that the two should be symbiotic, but not homogenous.

See? Conflict, but we don't need to do violence.

With piratry no doubt being a thing in CATastrophe, how do we make pirates decent antagonists without them always being either poseurs or too gruesome?

How can pirates be intimidating without them just restoring to stabbing? Maybe they're fond of classic methods? Marooning and walking the plank? Or maybe they'll shanghai you and just make you slave away swabbing the deck. Which is pretty godawful but not gruesome so much as it is grueling.

But why not just keep humans and politics (in-universe politics) out of a setting that was intended for cute characters and adventure? And not going in for big world-changing events?

Why not a grand adventure that runs of your competing values principle, but is maybe a bit more setting-friendly. Like a trading fleet wants to scrounge up a bunch of shinies but the locals at an island/derrick don't want this fleet taking up space? And then maybe the merchants accidentally wake up a bunch of robot guards and now we have a three-way brawl to consider.

Because I'm very mechanically minded, I will tell you - because if you have a bunch of good players, they will resolve this issue very quickly AND without an "overarching" plotline, it feels like a whole bunch of disconnected BS.

So, in this case, I guess I'm arguing for the necessity of a metaplot, and I will just stop myself here. I think metaplot is great, apparently you don't, no-one is right, everyone is wrong. So I think CATastrophe the setting should have the option of a metaplot.

Ah, ok. So it's more of an "advancing the storyline" type stance.

Well in that case I say that's your prerogative. I think as a shared setting open to and developed by the public, that CATastrophe should remain largely static, with change coming about as a desire to incorporate new elements, rather than as the result of major "lore" or in-universe power players.

But if you wanna include that shit, go for it, enjoy. Nothing to stop you.

>Le no conflict meme
There is some strange co-relation between "you need strong, definitive conflict" and American daytime hours. It's a mystery what that could mean

It doesn't have to mean combat, it's conflict as in basic component of a story. You start in a state of normalcy, something shakes up that state of normalcy, you overcome it and grow in the process. If there is no conflict, the story doesn't move anywhere from that original state of normalcy.

I've been considering hexcrawl a lot for this.

Since GURPS has been brought up many times I've been considering using it at least for a base and lifting aspects of other systems to graft into it. Does that sound like something that could work?

Enough systems have been suggested and even worked on that I'm wondering if it could be done with a more modular approach. Identify key mechanics and it seems possible you could say, "insert diving roll here."

This really depends on who you play with. Of course it's going to become boring if the bulk of your group is made of varying degrees of murderhobo.

Oh no! They were tricked into giving their honest thoughts on the matter! This thread is irreversibly ruined!

A better modular example might be:

"The mood and setting of Catastrophe assumes that cats can hold their breathe indefinitely as long as they have some device to help. If you want more realistic rules, default to your system's default rules for swimming and drowning."

No, no, you're going at it all wrong.

See, piracy is COOL. Pirates are COOL.
But you're not a pirate unless a pirate captain says you are.

So pirates show up, board a ship with cutlasses flashing and parrots squawking, and demand plunder. And people give it to them, because man PIRATES maybe they'll let ME be a PIRATE too if I give them stuff. And the pirates leave with their booty, a new crew member or two, and maybe even a stowaway.

Of course, the responsible types hate this, but what can you do?

Personnally, I would try some kind of eco-friendly age, where you have electricity and concrete, but no motors or centralized organisation. There still have technology, we haven't lost all, but it is quite limited. Still, I would keep hostile tribes of primitive indigenes (perhaps like the coconut people in Moana). Bits of survival, bits of salvage, bits of exploration. And a lot of superstition.

Humans are in faraway space colony, somewhere in space around a forgotten star, with no mean of contacting them yet. Perhaps some on the dark side of the moon, but they don't care about the Earth anymore. Too heavy for someone used to the lunar gravity. Think something like Cloud Atlas techy humans in the post-apocalyptic segment.

This is why you don't just go "cross the mountain". I'm not saying a game shouldn't include conflict at all, i'm saying that "a game should feature some sort of overarching serious storyline" is silly.

You cross the mountain, then take part in village festival, then a giant enemy crab attacks said festival, then you get to cook that giant enemy crab, then giant enemy crab's carcass gets stolen by pirates, then you chase said pirates, kick their ass and bring your goddamn crab back. Then you get info about nearby sunken ruins and sail away to explore them.

Pirates are not ruthless buccaneers, but a proud warrior culture, built on four postulates:
-Being a pirate is fucking cool
-if you can't defend your stuff you don't deserve it
-Attacking someone with overwhelming advantage is a dick move
-You're a pirate. You're fucking cool. Act like it.

So you get various colorful gangs competing in who pulls off the most outrageously ridiculous heist.

Of course ocean is vast and one could as well supplement his diver income with stuff taken from fellow divers.

I'm just here to post this.
Not me, but kickin' tunes.

soundcloud.com/arizona-music/sets/catastrophe-soundtrack

Pirates means guns and swords. If you attack with a lethal weapon, we can say the results are mosaic censored and we cut to cat lying down, clutching their belly and groaning.

I feel like taking inspiration from swashbuckling genre would be most appropriate here.

There's no "hacking at each other until one falls" combat. Combat should be dynamic and acrobatic. HP loss is superficial cuts, exhaustion, getting someone in a bad position... Essentially the only strike that connects is the last one, and if it's not duel to the deatgh then getting to 0 hp could be represented by being knocked over and held at swordpoint.

7th sea (and it's second edition, just demo for now, but it looks promising) is pretty good at this, just ignore Wick-ery.

As a generic hack for whatever system you're using, I suppose death/0 hp could just mean not enough energy to continue or at the mercy of your foes.

You are still just baiting people with with your magical realm BS.

How do they even reproduce if they're all catgirls?

They are clones from a massive genepool, produced by a machine.

Obviously there are guys too, we just say "catgirls" because it's brief and convenient seting description.

And because "catboys" is sadly associated with certain insufferable overfaggots.

This looks like a less-grungy Waterworld with catgirls. Am I close?

The exact amount of grunginess is up to GM, but basically yeah.

Sandstar.

CATastrophe is comfy. Humans would ruin comfy. Why would you do that?

C A T B O Y S
whatcha gonna do
whatcha gonna do when they come for you

I actually like the idea of this comfy world being built on the death of all humans too.

Wouldn't adding humans back to this setting essentially turn it into less furry Sonic the Hedgehog?

I guess people want to add humans so they could ERP.

Wouldn't the existing nekko-things be more receptive to ERP (if you wanted to ERP) than humans?

>without any major conflict
man vs. man [ ]
man vs. self [x]
man vs. sociery [ ]
man vs. nature [x]
man vs. supernatural [x]
c'mon son, high-school literature classes. Don't give up so easily.

I have often wondered about it, but I've never bothered googling it.

>reeks of typical Veeky Forums "and then the humans killed everything and conquered stuff" HFY-type stuff.
This, pretty much. There's a segment of the board that just can't stand games that aren't grimdark all-brown everyone is covered in shit.

Am I the only one who doesn't want things to be completely pacifist?

It works well for the starting villages and tone of the early settings, but even a lot of the robots and such encountered being entirely non-lethal even late into the game seems a bit forced.

I'm not saying everything needs to be violent and edgy, but it should definetly be an option and something to be prepared for, even as a last resort. Not everyone is going to play by the rules.
The ancient coastal artillery battery and armory of Earless rifles your village has isn't supposed to be used for anything, but when some less noble pirates come along in an Earless warship, it will be a good thing to have.

>American daytime hours.
You mean when Americans are at work or school and the Europeans are all home?

And herein lies the problem. Most RPG players are incapable of separating conflict from violence. Subnautica is a good resource for this.

All of the art that inspired CATastrophe has a dictionary definition of nihilistic or existential hidden in it somewhere.

Also as this is a disturbingly active CATastrophe thread, have Arizonamusic's soundtrack for CATastrophe games:
soundcloud.com/arizona-music/sets/catastrophe-soundtrack

NO GUNS REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

My point exactly. Thank you for putting it so eloquently.

Subnautica is the game where you have to slowly and brutally ram things to death with your mini-sub because they are all violently psychotic murder machines and won't leave you alone while you pick up rocks, right?

I just got the mini sub, the splats are so satisfying.

>pic
How the heck is that catgirl supposed to get that book back to shore?

The whole structure is a fancy bus-stop. So she takes the bus home.

l have no idea what CATastrophe is, but that pic looks comfy as fuck. What is it? Google only gives me a British romcom.

Yup, there really should be way more passive fauna. For a game that's "pacifist" the aggressive predators are super annoying in almost every biome

Setting Veeky Forums made.

The earth got flooded and humanity fucked off/died.

Fast forward 200 or so years and genetically engineered animal-people fuck around among the flooded ruins of human race.

Subnautica is also the game that lets you puch to death the non-impossibly huge fishes with a power-suit of doom, so I don't really label Subnautica under the "pacifist" label, since I'm pretty sure I murdered so many things that the whole planet should be a lifeless rock by now

>What is it?
CATastrophe.

But if there's absolutely no violence, how will I be able to have a pig pilot in a seaplane who defends a small village from seaplane based pirates?

Did someone on Veeky Forums draw that art and is there more of it?

>Defeated a Chinese invasion with ice cream and badass piloting.

>See, piracy is COOL. Pirates are COOL.

Pirates are just about booty, and honestly shiny diving is largely about stealing booty from earless tombs anyway.

CATastrophe combines piracy + indiana jones/tomb raider shit as a matter of course.

they're at a penguin-bus stop.

Well it depends on what the conflict is: CATastrophe has stuff like "protect your home islands from NEONhoggr", great storms that occur X number of years due to the huge expanses of ocean - there's a lot of potential existential threats that could drive a CATastrophe game and give a bit more oomph to shiny diving.

For a hex crawl you really need to do it at sea and do it like this:

When PC's ship moves into a hex of sea without an island on it, it remains unexplored until the PCs do an exploratory dive to see what's underneath them.

Of course that then needs a system for handling combat with a very fixed number of total turns - basically when anyone is knocked out underwater or the "air time" runs out, all the PCs get winched automatically back onto the boat, which is relatively safe (with the exception of when they rouse one of the things that is able and willing to chase them up to the surface and trigger a BOAT FIGHT).

A limited combat time also means you have three combat end states: PCs succeed and defeat enemies, PCs fail and get knocked out, PCs fail because they're unable to defeat enemies quick enough or counter some special move the enemies have to survive a little longer than usual or impeded the PC's speed at killing them.

Which creates a little more variety for combat abilities - a stun that stops a PC from acting that turn or negates what the PC is doing is a lot more significant than mere Damage output/tanking. And also forces the designer to make a game like 4e or its superior cousin Strike! to balance the game properly rather than just throwing heals and tons of HP at the PCs.

Miyazaki films would actually be a great example of how to display impactful violence without it being unnecessarily gory for its own sake.

It is a setting Veeky Forums created based on that image ( and few followups) by an Japanese artsist.

No, it is randomly from pixiv from a Japanese artist named Nukomasu, who has nothing to do with the project that his art spawned.

Here is his pixiv
pixiv.net/member.php?id=586750

>Of course that then needs a system for handling combat with a very fixed number of total turns
I think that would be awesome, paired with "feats" and equip to prolong the time, and giving players challenges that they possibly cannot overcome with their current gear/stats, but since the whole game is low-lethality it's just a matter of "let's gear up to beat that encounter", maybe using some sort of timed-quest since otherwise there would be no pressure

Nausicaa and Porco Rosso are both good influences with how I'm developing my spinoff.

I'm not calling it CATastrophe because apparently I break the "must be pacifist no violence allowed" rule, but it's not the main focus.
Fighting other Kenomi is still a terrible thing and people want to avoid conflict with each other, but their are still pirates and not everyone chooses to live in the island society. But the world is not without danger, besides the few who decide to not play by the rules. Once you leave the coastal shallow and your island homes, the environment itself is hostile, poisonous swamps, thick rainforests, vast arid highlands, and whatever creatures live in the depths.

Very few ever leave the safety of the islands due to this, but it's also where the best loot is to be found for those willing to take the risk.

>there's either full grimderp overblown violence
>or there's absolutely no violence
>there's nothing in-between

I have been frequenting in the CATastrophe threads I honestly don't know where this "pacifist" mindset came from. The setting was never supposed to be full on pacifistic where nothing happens. There were "dungeons", there were talk about enemy robots, pirates, dinosaurs, heck once there was a talk about having Kaiju fighting vs. giant robots and all that crazy shift.

The problem is that Anons seem to default to the point that any enemy that the kemos can face can only be humans with guns who return for some reason, then immediately go maximum evil and start to kill and destroy everything for no fucking reason. Just for the sake of having an easy antagonist that has the capability of destroying he world and having humans as the enemy is apparently "cool" or something. Seriously use your imagination guys, one can think of more creative things than that.

Just for starters according the CATastrophe bestiary there are weird shit out there like sentient moss that grows on corals, rocks and junk and can form giant walking golems. There are parrot like birds that are heavily hinted to be even more intelligent than Kemos themselves and can talk and even operate machines and computers better. There are supposed to be semi-sentient AI and autonomous robots that actively guard ruins. There is stuff out there to use.

Honestly, you're doing a setting in a way most people here would do.

This whole "pacifism vs grimderp" debate is one huge embarassing misunderstanding in which two sides autistically screech THE SAME FUCKING POINT OF VIEW at each other while misinterpreting the other side to be demonic HFYfags/hippies who eat babies and don't use coasters.

I'm still against humans obviously present in CATastrophe, but for reasons other than "b-but they will come and subjugate everything!". If anyone's interested, i'll clarify my stance in next post. If nobody's interested, tough tits, i'm sufficiently butthurt to make that post anyway.

do go on

The only way humans are showing up in my setting is either ancient isolated Vault like facilities housing a small community that has managed to survive, or encountering humans in cryrosleep or something.

I'm already planning for the party to encounter a human ecologist in one of the ruins who will be a questgiver because he wants to study the life that has developed on the planet,
but doesn't want to leave his bunker. He also has no concern for the safety of the post-humans that now inhabit the planet since he only cares about the life that has naturally evolved, not the kenomi which were made by human science on purpose.

You do, realize most Kemo by default would be super happy to see living humans.