Is it possible to represent DBZ faithfully as a tabletop RPG? And by faithfully I mean with all the flying around, energy blasting, and powering up.
It's a setting where the bigger number always wins, and the only tactical choices boil down to making your own number big enough to beat the other guy, one way or another. So the theoretical game would be all about powering up, transforming, charging beams, or just surviving and escaping a more powerful threat. I think there should also be a mechanical emphasis on training in an engaging way. I think it could be interesting.
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No
>It's a setting where the bigger number always wins
Power levels are bullshit, they really don't mean much.
When has the bigger number ever lost?
Broly, three times beaten.
All to someone who powered up to a higher power level.
Nah, because of plot reasons. Goku punched into Broly's weakspot, then Gohan, Gotenks and Goku did an energy blast together (and no, 3 supersayans are not stronger or first movie would have been much more shorter), and last time he was a mutant that got petrified. Not once was his powerlevel suprassed.
>Goku punched into Broly's weakspot
Goku took the energy of everybody else, powering up for one punch.
>Gohan, Gotenks and Goku did an energy blast together (and no, 3 supersayans are not stronger or first movie would have been much more shorter),
Combined into a single attack they are.
>and last time he was a mutant that got petrified
Only worked because he was a pile of bioshit.
>Goku took the energy of everybody else
To move, everyone was beaten to pulp and could barely move a muscle.
>Combined into a single attack they are
They would have done it in the first movie if that was true.
One other time smaller power level won was against Raditz, when Goku grappled him and Piccolo blew a hole into both. Goku beat Piccolo earlier, so he was stronger, and Raditz was beyond both of them at the time.
>One other time smaller power level won was against Raditz, when Goku grappled him and Piccolo blew a hole into both.
This was only possible because Piccolo had an attack that gave him a big enough number to hurt Raditz.
>had an attack that gave him a big enough number to hurt Raditz
His powerlevel didn't increase, he used the power he at the time had.
>His powerlevel didn't increase
Raditz literally talks about how their power levels increase when they use their unique energy attacks.
Sure, the energy flows as they use it, but it never goes over their limit, which takes training or transformation.
Yeah, since power levels fluctuate wildly for reasons like emotions, technique and transformations.
I was speaking about the older movies, new Broly is whole another beast.
>Sure, the energy flows as they use it, but it never goes over their limit, which takes training or transformation.
What are you talking about? Piccolo's power level nearly quadrupled from charging his attack.
He states ''He knows how to rise his power level by concentrating it into one spot.''
And? Does that not count as a bigger number for some reason?
In a way yes, but it shows its not really the bigger power/number, its how you use and concentrate that energy.
>Do you have a bigger number?
If not
>Can you get a bigger number, conditionally or temporarily?
If not
>You lose
It's really that simple.
>Can you get a bigger number, conditionally or temporarily?
when doing a specific attack changes your power level drastically that's a very vague question
trying to run a game in the setting, i would not make power level a calculable stat in any way. a regular stat spread is more than enough to replicate the setting.
if one butthole insists upon using his scouter in every combat, do something like all stats multiplied times a d6 times DM fiat
It's true that he did not get a single hit once they did the SSJ blue fusion. But he was just slapped around, not taking any damage. Once he began to punch so hard he broke reality that's when they had to go all in.
giant ape vegeta had a much higher power level than any of the guys he faced
And he beat the frick out of everyone before his number got suddenly lowered.
I think you're missing the point.
Yajirobe has a higher power level than Vegeta. How else would he be able to cut off his tail?
Tails were always shown as a weakspot.
I think you're missing the point.
The anons in this thread, like most DBZ fans, are so obsessed with power levels that they are incapable of understanding things like weak points and cheap shots. So if character A physically harms character B in any way, character A has a bigger number.
Ergo, Yajirobe was stronger than Vegeta in the Saiyan Saga and Chi-Chi was stronger than Goku in the Cell Saga.
Nobody in this thread has claimed anything like that, nor have they used logic resembling that. Yajirobe didn't beat Vegeta by cutting his tail off by the way.
DBZ is unironically impossible to run in tabletop because morons like (You) and exist. Power levels are just bullshit to fill out guidebooks, the setting actually runs on willpower, friendship, and resourcefulness. Trying to run something like Piccolo's invasion would be impossible because the whole party would think its about charging him head on or screaming until your number goes up, when actually the encounter is about playing dragon ball keepaway until you figure out what Piccolo's weakness is. The party gets wiped instantly and is upset they lost because they think DB/DBZ is about something it isn't. Even DBZ enounters you think are about punching hard are actually about a secondary objective. Raditz's encounter is about saving gohan, vegeta's encounter is about getting them away from the cities, frieza's encounter is dragon ball keepaway, cell is initially android keepaway till the group blunders hard, and buu is supposed to be a keepaway encounter that only becomes a punching hard encounter because the players are all moronic.
All of the mechanical shit is doable in most any system but the narrative things that actually make DB and DBZ fun are impossible because everyone has memed themselves into forgetting what the shows are about, but then again even toriyama forgot as time went on.
I really don't care about what you think DBZ was about, I care about what it actually is, and that's what I'm interested in representing.
>I care about what it actually is
and you're wrong about what it is. DBZ spends significantly more time focusing on the emotions, relationships, and problem-solving abilities of its characters than it spends on who's number is bigger at any given moment. If you go back and actually watch or read the whole thing back to front this becomes painfully obvious, but few people actually paid attention when they watched it years ago.
That's another problem of group. DBZ is possible in game, but the average player would refuse to play it today as it actually was back then. The problem isn't that tabletop games can't handle dbz, it's that players can't handle it.
>and you're wrong about what it is. DBZ spends significantly more time focusing on the emotions, relationships, and problem-solving abilities of its characters than it spends on who's number is bigger at any given moment.
Only in as much as those things help you get that coveted big number.
I'm not going to go back and forth with you. I stated why people like you make it impossible to run dbz and all you're doing is proving my point. You have been poisoned by this meme and you're too attatched to the meme and your own bias to actually analyze the show as it was. You don't actually care about DBZ, but rather are only interested in repeating the stupid meme, which is why you ask reductive questions and deflect answers that prove you wrong despite your fallacious questioning.
You're so attached to your headcanon that you became completely delusional.
nope, I'm right and you're wrong, moron
Combat would be hard to give combat DBZ feel, since usually its 2 combatants fighting and others watching and narrating the fight to the reader/watcher. In game situation that would be other players waiting for their possible turn while other player beats the enemy into a pulp.
That's not really true. The protags gang up on the villains quite often, it just never works. They only sit back to watch 1v1s when the power disparity between both parties is far bigger than that of the observers. It happened during the Cell games because Cell threatened to blow everything up if they didn't play along.
then don't run fights that way. you stupid or something?
>Raditz's encounter is about saving gohan
Except they could only save him by killing his kidnapper.
>vegeta's encounter is about getting them away from the cities
This is just completely wrong.
>frieza's encounter is dragon ball keepaway
Which would buy them, what, a year of time after wasting the wishes? And they'd all be dead. Frieza had to be beaten and there was no way around it.
>vegeta's encounter is about getting them away from the cities
First it was about destroying the androids, and because they failed they then had to destroy someone way stronger. In both circumstances it was about full on fighting.
>Except they could only save him by killing his kidnapper
You're missing the point. It's not just a duel to the death, it's a fight that has to be had carefully/by a deadline or else the hostage may be at risk. My point isn't that they didn't have to fight raditz, my point is that the narrative cares far more about gohan being kidnapped and goku's newly unveiled heritage than whether or not they can punch raditz hard. The fight is important, but its entirely secondary to the circumstances of the fight.
>This is just completely wrong.
Vegeta and nappa are highlighted with them destroying cities. It doesn't take long to get them elsewhere but the initial horror of the saiyan's isn't that they punch hard, its that they're genociding everyone.
>Frieza had to be beaten and there was no way around it.
Had frieza wished for immortality, ultimate power, or some other such they would have been fricked. They had to play dragon ball keepaway or else they permanently lose.
Again, the narrative weight here is on avoiding the Bad End of frieza's wish and highlighting frieza being a menace.
>First it was about destroying the androids, and because they failed they then had to destroy someone way stronger
But that's exactly my point. The point of the cell encounters is on avoiding the outcome of perfect cell, which the party then fails to stop. The narrative weight here isn't on who punches harder, it's on what happens if cell absorbs the androids.
The circumstances behind the fights don't change how they went down. The bigger number always won.
I want mechanics, not a narrative. You're arguing against some dumb shit you made up in your head.
>I want mechanics, not a narrative
Then you don't want DBZ, you wan't DBZ-flavored number crunching.
If all DBZ just boiled down to spreadsheets and dick-measuring then why did toriyama write an entire narrative instead of just a series of mathmatical calculations? You're ignoring 90% of the actual content of the show and are still pretending to tell me I'm the one who doesn't get what dbz is. Frick right off
Mechanics and narratives are not mutually exclusive. I don't need a storyline to run a game that doesn't even exist yet you fricking moron. Stop wasting the post count of my thread with your pseudointellectual contrarian homosexualry.
Not that anon but you've got some suggestions. Another anon suggested Big Eyes Small Mouth if you don't like the superhero flavored stuff. Short of inventing a system yourself there's not much you can do. DBZ doesn't naturally lend itself to tabletop.
I don't recall ever asking for premade system suggestions.
have a nice day then, moron.
>Mechanics and narratives are not mutually exclusive
I never said they were, but you're acting like narrative is irrelevant to mechanics. If you want a game that plays like how DBZ watches then you're going to be severely disappointed if you think that what makes DBZ fun is that Super Saiyan is a 10x power multiplier and that frieza's race can survive in the vaccum of space without life support. DBZ would not be less interesting if the potara earrings were worn on the right ear instead of the left or if great ape was triggered on a waxing crescent moon rather than a full moon and yet those things are all entirely mechanical.
Then eat shit and die. Nobody on /tg/ is going to write your homebrew for you. You're already acting like you're a DB loremaster with how you recall every fight ultimately boils down to who punches harder so there's clearly nothing else we can tell you that you don't think you already know. You already know how DBZ works so go write your homosexual homebrew and leave us out of it.
>If you want a game that plays like how DBZ watches then you're going to be severely disappointed if you think that what makes DBZ fun is that Super Saiyan is a 10x power multiplier and that frieza's race can survive in the vaccum of space without life support.
The visceral feeling of a character powering up and beating the frick out of the antagonist is exactly what makes it DBZ. Not the fricking mind numbingly basic narrative tropes you're losing your mind over.
>aaaah but they fight for a heckin reason!
Fighting for reasons isn't what makes DBZ stand out. You have to be a complete moron to think that this basic shit somehow needs mechanical presentation whereas the most basic underlying theme of the setting's combat does not.
Yes, and you know this because it's already been discussed and you couldn't refute it, so the only thing you can do is pretend it somehow doesn't make sense.
>exactly what makes it DBZ
When goku first goes super saiyan nobody got hyped because it was a 10x boost instead of 5.3x, they got hyped because the dynamic of the fight changed and that goku's rage has physically changed his body. The parts of namek people dislike are goku screaming for hours, despite it being the most literal mechanical representation of powering up.
DBZ is not a show about math. Your statement even proves my point. "The visceral feeling of a character powering up" is a statement about narrative. That powering up feels visceral and raw is something that is captured with narrative, not with calculations.
>Fighting for reasons isn't what makes DBZ stand out
Goku is not interesting just because his hair turns yellow sometimes, goku is interesting because of when and why his hair turns yellow sometimes. You would not be able to reduce dragon ball to a spreadsheet.
>this basic shit somehow needs mechanical presentation whereas the most basic underlying theme of the setting's combat does not.
There is not one word in any of my posts where I say any of that. My point is that what would make a "faithful" campaign are narrative elements that people like you would ignore because they think that what really makes dragon ball authentic is that going super saiyan lets you roll 20 more dice when you attack. People like you are too caught up in representing the power level increase of the potara fusion to pay attention to why characters are fusing in the first place.
>couldn't refute it
Circular logic by definition can't be refuted. You're using a fallacy and have mistaken the fallacy operating as described for being correct.
To prove my point answer a simple question: What would a DB fight look like where the lower power level wins? If the answer is "that's impossible" then you're using circular logic.
Dragon ball spends magnitudes more time showing the narrative of the characters than it spends listing off power levels and doing equations on them
>That powering up feels visceral and raw is something that is captured with narrative, not with calculations.
Except in this medium it is captured mechanically, not through meaningless make believe. Just play freeform if you want that shit and frick off out of my thread.
>Circular logic
Proving you wrong is not circular logic. There is not a single instance of a lower power level beating a higher one.
>Except in this medium it is captured mechanically, not through meaningless make believe
And the moron reveals himself as a nogames. Figures.
>Proving you wrong is not circular logic.
If you want to attempt to show you're not a mouth-breathing trog then answer the question I asked you.
>There is not a single instance of a lower power level beating a higher one.
You've been given dozens of examples but again because you're operating on circular logic you refuse to acknowledge any of those examples.
>X doesn't exist? Then show me an example of X!
>You can't? Circular logic!
You are demented.
>X doesn't exist? Then show me an example of X!
You fundamentally misunderstand the question.
If I say "I refuse to believe that pigs can fly" an inquisitive follow up to that statement might be "Well if you did see a pig fly, like it had grown wings and such, would you then believe pigs can fly?". The follow up question asks whether or not the initial belief is some reasonable conclusion that can be proven or disproven, like any worthwhile belief, or if it's some truism that the believer holds without actually considering any evidence.
So you say that every fight in DBZ boils down to who has the bigger number, and so I'm asking you what would a fight look like where the bigger number doesn't win. I want to know if "bigger number always wins" is some made up bullshit you believe without evidence (it is) or whether or not it's a reasonable conclusion based on the information you have that could change if the information was different.
Like this is a perfect example of you proving that this whole thing is just bullshit you made up. A specific scenario where character X has a higher power level than character Y and yet character X doesn't win is dismissed because you think that the show was wrong rather than your logic being wrong.
You're trying to meme on me but you don't actually know what I'm saying so the joke falls flat. Ironically you're still engaging in autism over who hits harder by speculating about whether suprise shotgun could kill raditz. You can't see past the memes
>Like this is a perfect example of you proving that this whole thing is just bullshit you made up. A specific scenario where character X has a higher power level than character Y and yet character X doesn't win is dismissed because you think that the show was wrong rather than your logic being wrong.
The show explains why it doesn't work. I explained why it fits under my logic. Your mental illness is getting in the way of your objectivity.
Are you going to answer my fricking question or are you going to keep pretending you aren't making up everything as you go along?
A fricking mook with a power level of 5 nearly killed goku and took him out of the fight with a laser ring. At least be more knowledgeable if you're going to be this obtuse.
You mean the part that literally everybody thought was bullshit because it never happened before in all the fights that they've had? That farmer with shotgun could have just sneaked around and shot every major villain to death this whole time? Yeah, you've really nailed what everybody thinks of when they think DBZ. moron.
You're the one who asked for examples of times people lost when they had higher power levels, sped.
It's been proven people can get fricked up when hit unawares since the fricking Vegeta arc, moron. It's not something new or something that never happened before.
>That farmer with shotgun could have just sneaked around and shot every major villain to death this whole time
Not the ones with regeneration, but if he'd shot Raditz without Raditz knowing, he'd be dead. Same with Krillin's destructodisc, which was proven to be deadly. The only reason those never killed any important badguys or why a guy with a normal gun never killed any badguys is because of the
N A R R A T I V E.
>destructive battles?
>transformations?
>energy blasts?
>power levels?
>mystic bullshit?
>power ups?
>nope, what truly defines DBZ is that farmer with shotgun could have killed Frieza if only he had gotten the drop on him!
You are genuinely insane.
What defines DBZ is the NARRATIVE that chooses to focus on the former and avoid the last one, despite the possibility for that to happen.
Sorry, bud.
Imagine being this much of a mentally I'll contrarian.
This is /tg/ everyone is a mentally ill contrarian.
Piccolo and Goku had lower power levels than Raditz and Raditz is dead.
Trunks Grade 3 couldn't beat a weaker Cell because Cell was faster.
It would have worked if Trunks had hit him. It's the same logic as those other conditional power ups like beams and whatnot. Just like Piccolo needed Goku to distract Raditz while he powered up, so did Trunks.
you don't get what dbz is, eat shit and die lol
>Vegeta and nappa are highlighted with them destroying cities. It doesn't take long to get them elsewhere but the initial horror of the saiyan's isn't that they punch hard, its that they're genociding everyone.
Except this is false. Vegeta got annoyed at Nappa for destroying a city because a dragon ball could of been in it. They couldn't risk just blasting everything until they knew where the dragon balls were. Which is why even on Namek Freiza's men weren't just blasting every settlement they came across.
Akira Toriyama himself said that power levels are BS, & the whole narrative point of them is to hilight this.
Toriyama is also notoriously bad at writing and completely botched this aspect of the story.
most authors don't have the first clue of what their works are about, and he's no exception.
Yamcha vs Oozaru Goku
Jackie Chun vs Oozaru Goku
King Piccolo vs Goku
Piccolo vs Goku
Raditz vs Goku & Piccolo
Saibaman vs Yamcha
Ginyu vs Goku
19 vs Goku
Trunks vs Perfect Cell
Super Buu vs Gotenks
Kid Buu nearly beat SS3 Goku (the latter being stronger), but was instead defeated by base Goku (who is instead weaker)
Trunks vs Zamasu
Goku and Frieza vs Jiren
The response the anon is going to give you is that all of those instances are events where the character(s) with the normally lower power level used some technique or technology or other thing to temporarily increase their effective power level for a time. It's circular logic and there's no point even trying to reason with him.
King Piccolo was significantly stronger than Goku, but he decided to frick around and left himself open.
>Power levels are bullshit, they really don't mean much.
That's not wholly true. There isn't actually an instance of a character with a known higher power level losing to a character with a known lower power level. The closest you'll come to it is Vegeta losing on Earth, but that was an extended battle between him and Goku, Krillen, Gohan, and eventually Yajirobe, with much of the initial fight dominated by Goku being able to expressly boost his power level to match or exceed Vegeta.
Also it's my favorite fight in the series due to how back-and-forth it was, but that's neither here nor there.
But otherwise:
- Raditz is taken out by an attack with a power that is expressly stronger than his own
- The Saibamen are stated to have been as strong as Raditz, and Piccolo, who has boosted his power considerably since fighting Raditz, is able to manhandle them.
- Nappa throws around most of Earth's defenders like they're nothing, but fails to stand up to Goku once Goku can boost his power via Kaio-ken beyond Nappa's.
- Goku's Kaioken x3 is enough to equal or slightly exceed Vegeta
- Cui stated that he and Vegeta had identical power levels, but thanks to Vegeta's zenkai he's now stronger and manhandles Cui
- Ginyu is expressly given a power level of 125,000, and freaks out at the thought of facing Goku, who can boost his power to 180,000 (at minimum) at that point.
- Frieza's 2nd form is clocked in at 1,000,000 and it's more than enough to throw around everyone in his path, who are all known to be substantially weaker.
So Power Level isn't bullshit in and of itself. It's just that when you have the capacity to raise or lower your power, it makes it unreliable.
>with much of the initial fight dominated by Goku being able to expressly boost his power level to match or exceed Vegeta.
*Oh, and Vegeta losing power throughout the fight as a result of needing to push himself so much, especially when he created the power ball.
DBZ is bad for a trpg because it's just fighting. there is no plot.
if you wanna create a fighting system like DBZ and add your own lore , check the 2d fighting videogame was good. you can start with taking a look at that.
Up until the first alien invasion, there at least was world building.
HERO System/Champions Complete. Everything is created with the same set of power effects so everything has a power level. And you can roll huge amounts of d6's for powerful attacks. Use the Skills supplement for training rules.
A rules light alternative with the same concept and rolling lots of dice (but less than HERO) is Prowlers and Paragons Ultimate Edition. But you'd probably need to bring your training rules.
GURPS Social Engineering: Back to School has rules that could be adapted to another system for training. As for playing DBZ in GURPS it's possible but you need to make customized attacks yourself to balance it for superheroic fighting. That's fine if you play nothing but GURPS and already know how to do it, but non-GURPS are better off starting with a different system.
FATE
stacking advantages and debuffs until you have such a huge advantage that you can oneshot the other dude is the way to play it
Cortex Prime. It's resolution system lends itself to dramatic engagements by avoiding hard numerical relationships between abilities or power levels.
Frankly, any superhero system can do shounen action stuff. If all else fails check out Mutants and Masterminds.
No because all of the things you just listed are aids even in their own setting. Take a superpower setting like mutants and masterminds, or savage worlds with the superpower companion and go from there.
I don't want to play generic capeshit though.
Skill issue.
shonen is just weeb capeshit. get over it.
I found the Capecuck.
All Shonen is a stylized spin on Enter the Dragon.
nah
>DBZ is ANIME. I need an ANIME system to play it, baka!
BESM. Never played it but I know it's "for anime".
DBZ is DBZ. I don't want to play "anime" any more than someone would want to play "movie."
Heroquest
The big number is better than the small number
You can make up new attacks in the fly.
You got Deus ex machina meta currency.
What matters most is that things are entertaining.
A tried and true fit I would say.
As usual the answer is OVA. It's simple to build attacks and powers, tfs are especially easy to build compared to GURPS, and you get to dice a lot of cubes which i guess may be amusing for smoothbrains playing a Dragon Ball RPG
Yeah, we've been using the best system ever invented, 3.5 DnD. I've been charging my kamehameha for 10 sessions now and Namek will explode sometime in the next five minutes which I expect to be in about 20 sessions.
I feel that, dragon ball z kai pacing was so bad it's unreal
*laughs in play tested house rules for z-warrior psionic striker*
How's this work with some powers being martial and others being psionic? Also, you can't use immediate interrupts on your turn.
The martial/psionic split is there for multiclass feats but typically seperates between melee and ranged.
>can't use immediate interrupts on your turn
Rules Compendium page 29; specific rules beat general rules.
big cringe
This sounds terrible except:
>there should also be a mechanical emphasis on training in an engaging way
A game where combat is just roll a die plus modifier, highest wins the fight. But the training montage beforehand is highly detailed. That could be something. I want play 36 Chambers of Shaolin RPG.
I don't know how you'd have complicated training without the test at the end being complicated to match though.
A martial arts game where techniques and training regimens are like Traveller career paths would fricking RULE.
I'm not that familiar with Traveller, wouldn't that just be a bunch of tables to tell you how you trained?
There's more to it than that, but that's part of it.
As you build up your character mechanically with chosen and random skill growth, you're also implying swaths of their life during that period by committing them to whatever career track they're on and whatever specialization they've chosen (or how they're coping with their imploded career), as well as generating a more specific event that is more important.
Making a Traveller character is pretty much a little solo RPG in itself. It's a good time.
maybe a flashback mechanic like in blades in the dark only you flashback to a special move you trained before?
Some kind of mechanic where you sacrifice training pure value for flexibility (via flashback) on what type of training?
you just narrate the training sequence. you don't need mechanics for it. stop being a slave to rules.
No fricking shit. Everyone "just narrates" their training sequences. You can "just narrate" the combat too, same way I can "just narrate" fricking your mother.
I just wondered what it would be like to shift the game aspects of the role-playing game to a different place than combat for once.
dumbass
Daily reminder that the official DBZ RPG has you rolling thousands of d6s and using full sized action figures as your miniatures
I remember reading some forum posts by the dude who wrote the official game explaining that they knew what they were making was fricking terrible but they didn’t have any choice in the matter because of license agreements.
ultimately there's no good way to model the power of friendship.
all anime games fail because of this
>Is it possible to represent DBZ faithfully as a tabletop RPG?
Yes.
prowlers and paragons.
It was already mentioned, but the guy is being a moron and dismissed all superhero systems as "generic capeshit".
By "find a game that represents DBZ" he means "write a DBZ rpg for me"
system is orthogonal to genre and setting.
I don't think a DBZ RPG would have to be about BIGGER NUMBER but rather about representing the push/pull between characters zooming past each other in strength and the techniques you can do that makes the fights so fun.
>push/pull between characters zooming past each other in strength and the techniques you can do that makes the fights so fun
This. I'd see it like rock/paper/scissors with powerlevels. You can beat a rock with either a paper or a bigger rock, and a big enough rock can't be beaten by a small enough paper; Throw in a little bit of hidden information for the big reveals.
Dragonballs in the Vineyard.
Kind of echoing the sentiment that the system doesn't really matter too much if you've got a party that respects the tone and themes of the setting.
You can be running this game in anything from One Roll Engine to Savage Worlds to Fate to Mutants and Masterminds and if your players are treating the setting as a yard stick to measure their number on then you're all going to hate yourselves.
It's been years, but I was working on a system to run DBZ RPGs in. Here's the last actual release I managed to do. It's all unfinished, but maybe it'll give you some ideas.
It's a d10 pool based system. Rolling over a number grants you successes. That number decreases the stronger you get.
In order to prevent people from just going all out in the first round of combat, there's a mechanic called "Tension", where for every round of combat that passes Tension increases by 1. Some forms and attacks have a minimum Tension requirement. That way, you don't have dudes going SSJ3 and using their custom made infinite piercing instant charging ki attack on round one.
I was working on a rewrite with more narrative combat with stacking wounds instead of normal HP and damage, but life happened and I haven't touched it in forever.
Cool that you're here, I haven't had the chance to run this but it looks like a really cool game and the layout/graphics are top tier
Dude this system is fricking rad
Thanks!
I think one of the biggest issues it has, and something that I was trying to address in the rewrite, is that there are just too many weird currencies and stats to track.
Like, you have Attributes, Skills, Ki, Health, Soak, Fatigue, Willpower, Tension, Fate Points, and Tiers of Power, and five or six of those are things that have to be constantly tracked.
And there are just, like, too many facets of the game that interact with too many of those stats. Maybe I'm just a dumb baby.
The real problem is that the base combat lacks any "play". I tried playing this a few years ago with some /tg/ bros, and a guy who could do Trunks voice perfectly, and we started out at a tournament where we sat mindlessly slapping our dice roll macro for 15 minutes waiting to do even a pip of damage to one another.
If you're going to pick this up again I'd suggest making the very core interaction something interesting before trying to supplement it with any sort of stats or points.
Hey Regalia I've thought up a bunch of extra races, transformations and items for this system. Is anyone still working on this? I want to give them my ideas for it.
I dunno Anon, spending three sessions with one player yelling seems kinda boring.
I dunno, I always viewed DBZ as figuring out the most efficient way to get to a certain power level to overcome an obstacle versus whatever that obstacle is.
Like, even if your theoretical power level is higher than the other guy's, if he reaches his peak before you do you're still hosed.
The problem with doing DBZ 'faithfully' is that you're asking most of the players to be the Krillins and Piccolos and Vegetas who always job for the one player who gets to be goku.
If you want to get Death Battle style autistic with it, Mutants and Masterminds. Dogs in the Vineyard for the best storygame.
Could try to draw some inspiration from those DBZ RP games on BYOND.
Those always devolved into a bunch of clique homosexualry. And the clique with the most admins would be the main characters.
Sure, but the core mechanics could still be relevant.
https://dbu-rpg.com/
Here anon
sell me on it
You would need to base it off Namek.
Have the players functioning like Gohan and Krillin, outclassed for the most part but with the advantage in stealth.
Have various boss fights rolling around the map, with the arc boss active but fairly predictable in movement.
I also recommend basing a good amount of encounters around tricky fighters like Guldo or Ginyu.
Also spread power ups and macguffins across the world map so you can have power level dick measuring contests, I recommend having the main boss transform to keep the players feeling like underdogs.
The more the series goes on, the less and less "bigger number wins" is true. Super has been leaning hard into how fighters use different techniques with different weaknesses and strengths. Goku and Vegeta are slowly mastering completely opposite styles right now, and they're both beating a guy who has an objectively bigger number because their enemy isn't well trained.
Jiren.
Not that guy but the current arc is literally going for a "haha, yeah you wished to have biggest number, but that guy wished the same thing after you so now he has bigger number, and those other two guys are going to have a bigger number than either of you by the end of this fight lmao". It's more about "number can always go up more" so always keep training, don't be complacent, break your limits, etc.
Tricks only matter when the power levels are roughly equal.
you would run a dbz game like that anyway
unless you insist upon some highly scripted "try to stall the bad guy from blowing up the earth while the protagonist trains" storyline in every adventure
in which case you might as well ditch combat mechanics entirely and just compare numbers
god I wish I was Jiren
Radiz saga maybe, after that it's full moron.
It's all great.
I agree and I love this series to death but it's still full moronic.
no
Risus.
Its unironically perfect.
There is a very dedicated group of spergs shitting up every thread they get to today.
Time to leave.
good riddance, homosexual
Hero system with large point totals that go entirely on defenses and attacks.
What mechanics would the fusion have?