Homestuck RPG, 2nd Edition (Temporary Omegaupdate Home)

I'm not sure what they were thinking when the original Homestuck RPG writers made their Claspects and Lands, but they sure are... interesting. As for us, I feel like our Claspects and Lands match up pretty well, but I am a bit biased!

I don't really think that Lands necessarily need to have particular features in common with their Player's Claspect. Cathedrals may be Hope-filled, or they may be empty, quiet places. The brilliance of Land generation is that you can create features that don't seem to make sense and then connect them with Aspects, or even to have them fit a pattern. The Alpha kids all had Lands that followed the pattern of burial chamber and noble gas, not their Claspects. And for instance, I came up with the Land of Cathedrals and Magnetism for a large Session of my friends, all of which had some kind of scientific phenomenon. pixelatedPeripatetic had Magnetism, whereas I had Spectrums.

The "what you think they should" sounds oddly attacking to me for some reason, but whatever.
Oh yeah, 6 years algo, lands weren't very well understood. I'll forgive it.

Thank you for your reply, and apologies for the late response! I'm honored to hear from someone who worked on v1.1, I really loved the work that was put in and it definitely inspired me to get more into making my own games and running my own tabletops. I appreciate the constructive criticism concerning the work we've done. Second Edition is primarily my personal project at this point, and I try to keep a mindset that the work we've put in can always be adjusted to be better balanced and better at telling a story (as much as possible, considering this IS Fourth Edition we're working in, hehe).

I'm gonna be digging more into the Google Doc you sent me when I have more time to sit down and give it the reading it deserves (much love for that by the way, I appreciate the effort, Second Edition was one of my early attempts at putting together game rules, so I expected a lot of material would have flaws). I agree with the point that PCs can become rather beefy - I'm currently running a long-term campaign using the rules in order to gather data and adjust rules, and one of my big problems is that my players are really swole. In particular, I have a Bard of Hope that stomps everything around her and shrugs off a lot of damage because of her high HP. Even my relatively squishy Page of Blood has AC out the hoohaa. Powers too tend to be a bit beefy, resulting in monsters getting stomped rather quickly before they can do proper damage. My expectation is that I will do something to limit the output of Aggrievements and Fraymotifs.

I appreciate the testing on Lord English, and I hope you enjoyed the multiple phases. I feel like Solo monsters are difficult to manage because they tend to run out of powers fast and get surrounded quickly; breaking up the fight into multiple segments allows me to shift the battlefield, recharge monster powers and make the encounter more interesting. Nevertheless, I imagine someone playing to the best of their abilities could easily find ways to break things in their favor. In regards to the dissonance between monster and PC strength, I've been debating whether it would be easier to simply buff monsters to match the PCs more effectively, or weaken player strengths to be more in line with the monsters. I'll have to evaluate more and look into what to do there. For the time being, I've been loading up on larger groups of monsters or monsters with higher levels, but that can only go on for so long.

As for Alchemy, I've heard this discussion before concerning how loose the rules are concerning Traits combinations, and I agree... to a point. I'm not one for giving players the keys to the castle, but in my opinion I want a little bit of fuzziness concerning Alchemy development. I feel that GMs should have a hand in crafting Alchemy Items with players, partly to give them advice on Traits that might fit well with their PCs tactically, partly to find Traits that fit the look and feel of an Alchemy Item (fluffwise), and partly to look out for dangerous combinations. Unfortunately for me (sorry guys, not trying to throw you under the bus here!), my players aren't particularly interested in Alchemy, so much so that Alchemy has been somewhat of a chore to manage with them. Nevertheless, I'm thinking they may be warming up to it, especially as they see more benefits to using their Items.

I appreciate the comments and work you've put into the response! I'm really happy to see that people are interested in the work I've been putting in, and when I have more time to myself (a precious commodity these days), I'm going to do more to update the Handbook to a comfortable place. If you have any more notes on the work (or perhaps are interested in working with me on the project? ), please feel free to send them to me, I'd love to collaborate. I'm currently partway through my expansion book Expanded Errata and would love to hear your thoughts on that, along with some of the adventures I've put together.

Thanks!

PS: I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the Melee/Ranged divide, only my Mage of Time utilizes Ranged attacks, and his Weapon/Weapon Duality Strife Specibus tends to have him filling in a lot as a melee attacker.

Hey! Just registered to say I GM'd a campaign of this RPG back when it was 1.1 and had a blast. And I'm absolutely delighted to see a Version 2.0 exists now that my player group want me to return to Sburb and start a new Homestuck campaign.

This is good stuff!

Hey, wanted to say this is very interesting.  I'm working on learning the D&D 4e rules so I can try and run one of these sometime.  I've got a 4e group I'm meeting with soon via Roll20.  In the meantime, I'd like to know a few questions:

1.) Any conventions you're going to run this at upcoming?  Would love to meet some fans and play a game or two.  I should have 4e mastered by the time convention season hits next year.

2.) I've been going over your expanded errata and wanted to test out an idea I had for a battlefield on Skaia.  So far, I've got an evolving, continuously shape-shifting battlefield that is based upon Archamedian solids.  Based upon my maps, everything connects correctly between the shape shifts, and it looks pretty damn cool to.  I've never played a mass combat game other than simple board games like risk and would like a player's perspective, as well as perhaps a playtest on Roll20.  If I get this right, I think this would be a neat addition to the game, as I feel it would add a unique campaign setting to add to the manual.  If not, it wasn't much more than a day, and I learned a lot about geometry.  It's probably too complicated to be done by pen and paper (though I personally feel that without this element, it just doesn't fit the Homestruck theme), but a simple program in the Roll20 mechanics should keep shifting the pieces to the new planes would probably be pretty simple.

3.) I'm also interested in running a forum campaign in the cradle that eventually turns into this RPG game.  Has anyone tried that approach before?  How did it work out.

4.) Any updates since June?

I am prettu sure that you could add a few fanclasses and fanaspects as options. Sburb Glitch FAQ and 48classesand48aspects might be good places to start.