How would you run a warframe rpg? Would you ignore the operators or keep them...

How would you run a warframe rpg? Would you ignore the operators or keep them? How would you deal with multiple frames being on the table for any one player? Any particular system besides the inevitable rumbling of gurps?

Operators would be your actual character, a warframe would just be another (albeit your most important) piece of gear. One that can be switched out back at base.

How's that work with the Warframes having their own personalities and identities?

They're basically Eva's, if my buddy explained it right.

How do you handle a character with an animal companion? Same way. PC gets control of it most of the time but the GM takes the rp reigns on occasion.

Definitely ignore operators and make exploring the actual nature of the warframes a possible plot hook. Are they ghosts in the machine? Is every frame a distinct personality?
Also it would be very important to make the players much more "lonely" again and leave out most of the story garbage with very very very few Corpus and Grineer "NPC"s. The PC should be mostly left to themselves in a hostile solar system

You coul always have a threshohold where the warframe encourages you to act in a certain way, each time you do something to go against it you take some sort of penalty to represent the warframe feeling increasingly uncomfortable. this penalty being reduced and eventually negated by acting more in line with the warframes personality. Not sure if this is entirely canon, but I feel like throwing ideas out there.

How would that pan out, since before the operators were revealed and we weren't sure what warframe and Tenno were, they were basically super mercenaries iirc.

I'd prepare about three sessions worth of notes and then just repeat the same scenario every week until the players stop showing up.

Make it so the warframes are not the PCs. Either have the player/players be a part of a pre-established faction, or have them be mercenary types using tenno safe-havens like Darvo or Maroo. They'll do the mundane kind of star-chart shit that warframes can do blindfolded, but with less focus on hoard-mode combat and more focus on character interaction with more personality given to your enemies (instead of being a bunch of dumb clones, the grineer could have stormtrooper-like banter and personality that could be interacted with). Warframes become rogue threats, the equivalent of a medieval fantasy random dragon attack; you may not necessarily be the target, but you may get caught in the crossfire or be a victim of collateral damage. Alternatively, if you could afford it, you could start hiring tenno to take care of jobs for you, or to assist you while you do a job (i.e. survival mission) Going forward in the corpus faction could result in you becoming a intuitive financier (i.e. glast, anyo), or perhaps instead a Warframe hunter, where you build a team of specialized troops outfitted to disable a particular warframe (i.e. lay an ambush with nullifiers and energy leech eximus troops) and salvage their parts for credits or for experimentation (i.e. alad v). Other factions could be similar. the possibilites are endless, really. the only thing I would say needs to be a necessity is doing away with warframes as the PC thing. By their nature, warframes are a combat-focused tool. making a setting where the full capabilities of the warframe are made meaningful would turn it into a 4e shitfest. not that combat focused settings can't be fun, but if you're trying to juggle warframe-power-level combat and also any amount of character interactivity and roleplay, it would feel like a generic sci-fi tabletop where every now and again you have to say "The enemy is bearing down on us? Fine. I bring out my peacemakers and kill them all. Now what were you saying?"

Actually, there was a pretty solid understanding of their background, we knew that they were elite soldiers of the Orokin Empire that destroyed it after beating the Sentients and we knew that they were sorta unstable. They had been woken up for SOME reason and guided towards a goal that wasn't totally clear, but mostly functioned like high powered mercs. I actually liked that more when it was just...fighting in the wreckage of something greater.

The big issues Warframe's story had was that the elaborated on the one part that didn't need explaining(the Tenno) instead of building the world. At least it was when I dropped the game, which was some years ago so maybe it's changed since then.

And this is why I dropped.

There's a few ways you could do it. Focus on the Operators and mix the high action combat with the emotional troubles of the immortals behind them, or ignore all that and focus on the heist angle instead, ninjas performing missions and high stakes operations with lots of planning, using Warframe abilities as tools for problem solving.

My preferred setup is using Legends of the Wulin for running it as high action space opera. Probably starting the game pre-Second Dream but including that in the plot at some point. I've had a campaign premise rattling around for years I want to use at some point.

The warframes personality is just a convoluted interface that allows its to act out it's operators wishes without him having to learn to walk again with a new centre of gravity every time he gets a new frame. It can in a limited capacity take defensive measures flee or even fight when it loses transference (it's link to its operator).

No frame ever resists or fights the operator, they may however have specific insight they pass on to the operator. A Nidus may for example let the operator know if the infested they are fighting are in some way abnormal, they wouldn't however care if the operator used or ignored this info.

Keep in mind the only frame in existence with anything resembling a personality is a sociopath/autist

Not talking about canon, but how I'd interpret it in a game. I'd say the 'personality' of each Warframe is an imprint left by the original person it was based on, since we do have some impression that this is the case, each frame being based on a unique individual, their fighting style and capabilities replicated and mass produced.

While this wouldn't overwrite the personality of the operator, it would influence it. An Operator might find themselves more hot tempered while infusing their light in an Ember frame, or more stubborn while using a Rhino. Primes might also carry an edge of that Orokin arrogance.

I'm not sure I'd give any mechanics to it, maybe a Chi Condition for the Legends of the Warframes idea, but it'd mostly be a fun little roleplaying thing.

Why do people dislike operators? I actually like them. They're cute in their own little way.

Strike!

Operator nets you your core skills, possibly your Role, Warframe is your class.

Also, everybody gets a Mobility feat for free.

They're an answer to a question which didn't need one. I don't mind operators, I think they're pretty cool conceptually, but I also think that answering the question at all was a bad move. The mystery was better than any individual answer that could be given for it.

I think if you go in without knowing there'll be operators, the reveal is great, especially since then you get to create your actual character _after playing the game for weeks_. It's so unexpected that it's hard not to be amazed by it. Plus the mission is pretty cool too.

The answer itself is kinda eh, but I think it's overall a net plus.

...

Fuck, I may just run this with a group. Trick them into playing a "hack and slashy, session/mission based game" and then spring the story on them.

There was some homebrew but you played a faction member/grineer/corpus or something else.

As for system, Shadowrun (if you dare), or something simple. I'd personally ignore the operators and go with some sort of ghost in machine deal.

bump

Some people liked being latex genocide sex robots. Being an Eva pilot via space magic is a let down.

Also they are just really unfun to play as and the devs keep making the game to have you jump out as them. Like, no, I just wanna go fast and genocide corpus.

But who doesn't like having a super-psychic space autist as your reverse-Stand? And apparently the new update lets you give them funky armor and weapons and such

Not to mention the actual, for real by the definition autistic potato that is Harrow and his damn fidget spinner quest.

The mushroom man armor is neat looking but they are still not fun to play as. If I want to go slow Ill just use Nyx and be an unkillable terminator.

Homebrews based on Legend of Wulin.

This.

Also acceptable.

I left a little bit after Second Dream, apparently another quest called "War Within" or something was about to show up. Game worth coming back to? I've missed a bit, but I did enjoy space ninja shenanigans even when I couldn't be bothered to grind focus and such from "good build" to "meta build".

Open world update is kinda neat and it's fun to listen to the Lotus get pissy about you not accepting random missions while fishing, but it's still the same old game though.

Wasn't expecting it to be completely new, just wondering if there's enough new stuff to waste my time on. Got rather bored just grinding my way through the new Star chart gates and collecting shiny gold guns.

I think a better question is would you have players use canon 'frames or come up with their own?

They're really poorly written, both in lore and dialogue/personality, to the point where operator voices are now disabled by default.

The devs tried to recreate Evangelion, but forgot the emotional complexity that made evangelions cast watchable.

The faces look like potatos, and 90% of the hair styles are retarded, it's really difficult to make an operator look decent.

the operator potatochild explanation is completely different to what was alluded to for years with the original DarkSector pitch trailer, and the Dark sector game.

most of the latest quests have focused almost entirely on operators, with clunky operator only segments.

there's probably other reasons

They already have Frames for anything and everything, minus sweeping I guess. It'd be hard to come up with a new niche not already covered.

My real question: Why did the Lotus want to destroy the Orokin?

Well, from everything we've learned about them the Orokin were a giant bag of dicks who entirely deserved it.

still no spider frame

I'd allow both. Why restrict player options? I'd probably stat up the canon frames as examples and let them either pick one or homebrew something.

I like this. Tenno are unknowable, wholly inhuman things that act in the service of goals and scenarios that make zero sense to you. Sure you know one is massacring your grineer buddies but they're leaving everything intact and you cannot understand WHY. They are avatars, distinct in behaviour but seemingly hard-locked to traditional behaviour patterns. Ember is the all-consuming blaze, the fire that seeks only to be fed. It does not consume out of hate. It simply consumes fuel to burn. Be it you or others

The warframes need to be strange. Encountering one should be a tense and unsettling affair.

An absolute sack of cocks, yeah. They kinda deserved what happened to them.

Vengeance for Ordan Kallis!

Go back to when we thought that the player characters were cool space biomechanical monster ninjas and not just dumb piloted things or whatever.

The more we learn about the setting the less I enjoy the game.
The operator reveal killed the most interesting question of Warframe lore entirely - what are warframes?
It was a dumb choice and everything from there on lore wise has been kinda boring. Good thing the lore barely even touches gameplay and you can pretty much entirely ignore it in favour of horde shooting and grinding.

this

But is Clem a viable PC?

How is he not in any way?

I dunno, when you get down to it, Clem is kinda a mary sue, isn't he?

Any NPC that does things in Warframe is automatically a mary sue, because if he weren't protected by bullshit plot powers, the Players would have already murderfucked them with guns and bullets and killing them

I briefly considered a oneshot where players are Steel Meridian, or even kavor, just trying to survive.

Even Darvo?

Two grakata > one grakata, he's already twice as strong as the average mook.
ESPECIALLY Darvo.
I mean, we still don't really know what a warframe is. They certainly aren't "Metal puppets, dangling on Tenno strings", since we've seen them act on their own. I'm not sure if we'll ever get a proper answer desu

Tenno can have THREE grakata though

I'd run it in GURPS with each player having one moderate point operators and a high point Warframe.

Its pretty heavily implied both are canon tho...

>We still don't have a Glaivekata
why live

TO BUY PLAT

>Quads on Glaivekata

4grakata confirmed one day, user, one day

to bring it more on topic; Ammo being kept track of in a Warframe tabletop, yes or no?

Depends on how you were doing it. I tend to say no because bookkeeping sucks.

During gameplay, periodically make the players wait twelve hours before they're allowed back into your house unless they pay you directly for the thing they wanted.

bump

They're actually forcing you to use operators the way they forced you to play archwing missions. Shoving it down our throats no matter how terrible it is.

Warframes are essentially anti-sentient warriors, created in experiments to try and make awesome technocyte soldiers. They're all basically crazy, 'grown' into place, and the n the scientists refined the 'organic' body, making a technocyte/orokintech cyborg. They were uncontrollable monsters+beasts... and then when the Rhino prototype broke free and started slaughtering things, it ended up running into the tenno area of the lab... and the tenno 'operated' it.

Boom.

The thing that pisses me off the most with the direction they went with for the operators is that they're just generic somewhat bratty teens; the fact that each and every one of them kills hundreds if not thousands of people a day should have some effect on them, but IT FUCKING DOESN'T.

Goddamnit I just want to play a terminally jaded 1000 year old stuck in a childs body, but the closest I can get to that in game is picking every edgelord choice in the quests and studiously ignoring the Lotus while fishing in the plains.

ALSO

>Warframes explicitly built as anti sentient weapons in the lore
>Ayydolan shields are proof against everything but the operator's meme beam
>Ayydolan's are unaffected by many warframe powers

FUCKING DE

One-shots in Wushu where they have missions. Handle it almost like an adventure board game.
If you want it to be less verbal, Strike or Gamma World 7e or Open Legend would do you a treat.

well fuck

it's not that bad, desu; you only HAVE to use operators for a couple quests and the most recent bit of content, but that latter's glitchy as shit anwyay.

Yest more proof of making operators insufferable.