|
That Merchant power reminds me an awful lot of an old Twilight Zone episode (the Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross) wherein a guy finds himself with the power to do just that - trade abstract things like diseases, age, and eventually compassion, which ends up getting him killed by the man whose compassion he buys. Interestingly, it didn't make me think of Faust at all... what Mephistopheles gives to Faust is his own servitude and use of his powers. Also, the thing that bothers me most about Avatars is that they don't really seem to have a code of conduct so much as a few things they have to not do - the Mother doesn't actually have to help children, she just has to not hurt them. I guess it ends up working out in the game itself, sure, but it still seems kind of haphazard. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jun 22, 2015 |
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 08:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 08:15 |
|
|
Count Chocula posted:But that one character tells you so much about the world of Unknown Armies. It tells you that while your cabal is screwing each other over for a bit of power, inspirational sports stories like Rudy and The Natural are happening at the same time. It tells you that the world of Unknown Armies is a world where a sports player who's beloved enough actually CAN win that final game by calling on the strength of the crowd! But even if you're Shaq with a camera-team, doing Shaq-Fu doesn't help unless your Sports skill is lower than your avatar skill. So it's all pointless.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 09:27
|
|
|
Didn't you guys have dads who made you watch sports movies? The MVP isn't the best athlete. They're not Ivan Drago or Apollo Creed, who've trained their entire lives for this. They're Rocky, the scrappy scrapper with a heart of gold, who pulls through for the game-winning touchdown when his whole town - no, his whole state! - is cheering for him. Ever seen Rudy? Or it's a badly worked out Avatar. Either/or.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 09:35
|
|
|
Hyper Crab Tank posted:That Merchant power reminds me an awful lot of an old Twilight Zone episode (the Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross) wherein a guy finds himself with the power to do just that - trade abstract things like diseases, age, and eventually compassion, which ends up getting him killed by the man whose compassion he buys. Interestingly, it didn't make me think of Faust at all... what Mephistopheles gives to Faust is his own servitude and use of his powers. You can't just not hurt children and watch your Avatar: the Mother score improve. You've still got to act as a caretaker to justify your xp expenditures.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 11:54
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:You can't just not hurt children and watch your Avatar: the Mother score improve. You've still got to act as a caretaker to justify your xp expenditures. Nope. There's no rules that say you have to do anything, only not break taboo. To get the avatar skill you have to spend 1 month not breaking taboo, getting it at 1%, then for each week you don't break taboo you earn an additional 1%, up to 11%. At that point you can spend xp. At no point are you actually required to engage in any particular actions. There's no rule (either for avatars or just generally) that says you need any form of practice or special behavior to improve skills with XP. Now, your Mother channels aren't going to be very useful if you don't have people who see you as a caretaker so I wouldn't necessarily call it a flawed system...but it does mean that most characters could potentially have 11% at any given Avatar channel after 3 and a half months, because all you've got to do is not break taboo. I could be an 11% Executioner, after all I've never killed anyone who I was not ordered to kill and I've never shown any sort of fear or hesitation when ordered to kill someone...I've also never been ordered to kill anyone but that's not actually part of the rules.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 12:08
|
|
|
If you're not actually doing anything to pursue the Avatar's path and the GM is letting you take points in it anyway, they're an idiot.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 13:26
|
|
|
I think it sort of balances out, though, since most of the paths don't give you much of a benifit if you're not pursuing them. You might have 11% in executioner, but until you're ordered to kill someone, that doesn't get you anything. And thinking about it, I think I'd kind of like that as a setting element - that everyone is following some avatar path, even if they're not conciously aware of it. The out of shape sports fan who'll talk your ear off about what his favorite team should be doing? In some small way, he is the MVP, even if he's never played a game in his life and never will.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 13:36
|
|
|
Through the Breach: The Fated Almanac I was a little wrong earlier when I talked about advancement. Each game session ends in an Epilogue, which always begins withg the GM talking whay Destiny, if any, was in play during the session and if anyone got a step in their Fate resolved or denied. If anyone did, they can either improve an Aspect by one point or gain a Manifested Power - basically, a personal magical power designed with the GM. Then, everyone gets 1 XP. If some important story milestone happened, there may be between 1 and 3 additional XP. At that point, the group talks about any lessons their characters learned ('nothing at all' is a valid answer) and the GM chooses 3 skills for each PC which could potentially be advanced. Each player picks one, or another skill from the allowed ones of their Pursuit Talent. If the skill has no rating, the PC gains it at 1 fir free. Otherwise, the PC can spend XP equal to the current skill rating to advance the skill by 1, or may save up their XP for later. After that, the PC can spend 1 XP to get rank 1 in any skill they like, regardless of if it was picked. Lastly, the character gains a Step in their current Pursuit. That was what I was wrong about - you get a new Pursuit step every session, not every adventure. So new talents flow pretty freely. After this, the game explains its Skills, but I already went over the list, and they're all essentially self-explanatory. If you have questions, feel free to ask. But now we move on to General Talents. Many have requirements, and in many cases the requirement is having a stat that is below 0. You only need to meet the requirement when you buy the Talent - if you no longer meet it, you still keep the Talent during play. Armor Training: You reduce the penalty to Defense from armor by 1, to a minimum of 0. You can take this multiple times. Better Part of Valor: Requires Tenacity -1 or lower. You cannot Charge, but you get +2 to your Walk speed. Blissful Ignorance: Requires Cunning -1 or lower. Whne you fail a Horror duel, you get the Slow condition instead of the Paralyzed condition. Call Shot: Choose a skill. When you generate a Critical Effect with an attack using that skill, you may discard a card to change the Suit of the Critical Effect to the Suit of the discarded card. You may take this multiple times, for a different skill each time. Calm & Collected: Requires Speed -1 or lower. You increase the value of any Focused condition on you by +1, to a maximum of Focused +3. Clear Orders: Requires Leadership 3 or higher. When you take the Order action, you may Cheat Fate for the ordered character. Combat Reading: Requires Cunning 1 or higher. When you make disengaging strikes, you add half your Scrutiny skill to the value. (Rounding up, presumably.) Counter-Spell: Requires Counter-Spelling 3 or higher. When you are targeted by a magical attack or action, the attacker loses any Suit associated with their magical skill. (Not with a random flip, but funny thing is, NPCs don't make random flips.) Critical Strike: Requires Specialized Skill with the chosen skill. Choose a skill. All attacks with that skill, when you cause damage with it and draw a Rams card, deal one additional damage for each Rams suit in the final total. You may take this multiple times, but for a different skill each time. Cynic: Requires Charm -1 or lower. You get a bonus to any duel to resist deception. Flick of the Wrist: Requires Might -1 or lower. When making a close ocmbat attack with a one-handed weapon, you may use Grace instead of Might. Governor's Gift: Requires Charm 1 or higher. Choose a sex. You get a bonus to Bewitch or Scrutiny duels against members of that sex. Great Fate: You draw an additional card at the start of each session. You may take this multiple times and the effects stack, but you must always discard down to 5 cards if you have more than 5 in your hand, as normal. Gruff: Requires Charm -1 or lower. Scrutiny duels made against you suffer a penalty. Hard to Kill: Requires Resilience 1 or higher. You may ignore one Critical Effect per Dramatic Time. Hobbling Attack: Requires Specialized Skill with the chosen skill. Choose a skill. When you succeed on any attack with that skill and draw a Crows card, the target gains the Hobbled condition for the rest of the Dramatic Time. a Hobbled character can only make one Movement action per turn. Honest: Requires Cunning -1 or lower. You get a bonus to all Convince and Leadershi[ duels with any character that is at least neutral or friendlier towards you. Imposing Mass: Requires Grace -1 or lower. You get a bonus to disengaging strike duels. Ingenious: Requires Might -1 or lower. You add half your Intellect to any duel that normally requires tools, such as Crafting. (Rounding up, presumably.) Just A Graze: Requires being a PC. You may Cheat Damage flips you suffer, as long as they have no bonus. Open Hand Fighting: If you are unarmed or wielding a single one-handed weapon, you may choose to have your attacks deal damage when making disengaging strikes. Paired Weapons: Requires rank 3 or higher in the chosen skill. Choose a Close Combat or Ranged Combat skill that qualifies. You get a bonus to your attack flip when wielding two of the same weapon that uses that skill. This does not apply to two-handed weapons, and you make only a single attack for both weapons, gaining no boosted damage. Plain Spoken: Requires Intellect -1 or lower. You get a bonus to Social duels made during Dramatic Time. Quick Study: Requires Intellect 1 or higher. Whenever you would gain a skill, you may choose any skill you don't have but saw a friendly character successfully use, instead of the options the GM presents. Rush: Requires Speed 1 or higher. You get +1 to your Charge. You may take this multiple times, and it stacks. Scoundrel: When you draw a Masks card on any Social challenbge, you may make a free Pick Pocket action as part of resolving the challenge. This Pick Pocket action gets a bonus. Shot Studies: Requires Shotgun 3 or higher. If you have Focused +1 or higher, multiply the range of any Carbine or slug-firing Shotgun you are wielding by 10. Shove Aside: Requires Might 1 or higher. You may move through characters with a Height lower than your own without being impeded, though they may still make disengaging strikes against you. Shrug Off: Requires Resilience -1 or lower OR the Ortega Station. You may take the (0) Shrug Off action: discard a card to remove on condition on yourself. Simple Logic: Requires Intellect -1 or lower. You get a bonus to resist Bewitch, Convince and Deceive duels against you. Skill Mastery: Requires being a PC. Choose a skill. You get a bonus on all challenge flips with that skill. You may take this multiple times, for a different skill each time. Specialized Skill: Requires being a PC. Choose a skill and a Suit. Add the Suit to the chosen skill's value. You may take this multiple times, for a different skill each time. Sturdy: Requires Grace -1 or lower. You get +1 Wounds. Sure-Footed: Requires Speed -1 or lower. You may apply your speed as a penalty to the distance, in yards, that you are pushed by any effect. Twisted Fates: Requires being a PC. Choose a card in your Twist Deck and increase or decrease its value by 1. You may never have two cards of the same value and suit - you can have two 8s, but they must be of different suits, for example. You may take this multiple times. Unassuming: Requires Might -1 or lower. You get a bonus to any duel to avoid being noticed in a group or angering someone. Undermine Confidence: Requires Resilience -1 or lower. You get a bonus to all Intimidation duels not made during Dramatic Time. Unequaled Accuracy: Requires a rating of 2 or higher in the chosen skill. Choose a Ranged Combat skill. You do not randomize your target when firing into an engagement using that skill. Unimpeded: Requires Grace 1 or higher. Ignore all terrain penalties when taking Movement actions. Wall of Muscle: Requires Resilience 1 or higher. Increase your Height to 3 and increase the range of all melee weapons you wield by 1 yard, to a maximum of 3 yards. Will of Ages: Requires Tenacity 1 or higher. When you are using the Magical Shielding effect of the Counter-Spelling skill, you may shield a number of additional friendly characters, including yourself, equal to your Tenacity. That brings us to the equipment section. It is written in character as a Guild catalog with a bunch of mercenaries and fighters scribbling in the margins. It's actually pretty drat entertaining. All weapons and armor have access to customizations, on top of whatever traits they have already. Guns, for example, can be 'blued' or parkerized, giving them a nice finish and a double bonus to resist damaging corrosive effects, or get a custom grip to make them more accurate, or a custom action to increase the range. They can be nickel-plated, to give a bonus to Bewitch when you're using the gun to impress people. Or you can reduce the cost by making it a shoddy weapon - it can't cause Triggers. Each gun has a full IC description, often with comments, and I find them pretty entertaining. There are rules for both 'legacy' firearms - single shot guns, mostly - and modern revolvers and rifles. Rifles are nice in that their range automatically increases the more you spend time Focusing (IE, taking actions to aim). You can also use a bow and arrow if you like, with the benefit of never needing to spend turns reloading. (Unless you like a crossbow.) Melee weapons are available, and can be customized as well, though mostly to make them bigger or smaller, or to make them balanced for throwing. (Or to use folded steel, which gives some hefty damage boosts, but is pricey.) Armor exists. Light Armor is pretty easy to get, while Heavy Armor requires more protection. Armor also tends to grant protection from certain kinds of critical effects once per scene, and some armor only does that, rather than provide any armor or shield bonus. You can get a robot limb, which always grants some armor and room to augment the limb, allowing you to get super strength or super speed or integrated guns or tools. It's not cheap, though. Skill toolkits are available - they give you tools use a skill type, and a bonus to a specific skill. They're costly. Anyway, now that we're past all that, we are finally into actual explanation of game mechanics. For most actions, the GM will just let you succeed unless the action is important to the plot or has some significant ramifications. In that case, you need a Duel. The GM chooses a target number, with higher being harder. You flip the top card of the main deck and add the value of that card to some of the numbers on your sheet - usually an Aspect and a Skill. If you beat the TN, you succeed. Sometimes, a TN will have a suit requirement as well as a number, or even multiple suits required, which generally means you're going to have a specialized skill to hit both suits. The main Fate Deck contains two jokers as well. The Black Joker is worth 0 and the Red Joker is worth 14. All other cards have their face value, from 1 to 13. (If you're using a regular deck, Aces are 1, Jacks are 11, Queens are 12 and Kings are 13. Rams are Hearts, Crows are Spades, Tomes are Clubs and Masks are Diamonds.) The most basic kind of flip is the Challenge Duel, which works exactly as described above. You try to do a thing, you flip a card, you add your numbers. However, every player has a hand drawn from their Twist Deck - generally 3 cards from that 13-card deck at the beginning of the game. You draw another card whenever the GM has to reshuffle the main Fate Deck due to running out of cards. During any Challenge in which you are using a skill you have a non-zero value in, you may choose to play a card from your hand to replace the flipped card. (Never mix your Twist Deck's discards with the Fate Deck's, though, they're seperate.) Your hand can never have more than five cards, and if it does, you must discard down to five immediately. To give a solid example - let's say you're trying to hit a TN 12 and you draw a 2 of Tomes. That's not enough with your +5 bonus, so instead, you play a 7 of Crows from your hand - just enough to hit 12 and succeed. Flips can have modifiers. I have been referring to them as 'a bonus' and 'a penalty' - in the text, they are shown as a black card containing a + or a white card containing a -. For each bonus you have, you flip an additional Fate Card, and you choose which of the cards you want. For each penalty you have, you flip an additional Fate Card and use the lowest value among them. Bonuses and penalties cancel each other out 1 for 1 if there are both applying to any single duel. However, no matter how many bonuses you have, on any flip that includes the Black Joker, the Black Joker must be used. And no matter how many penalties you have, any flip that includes the Red Joker and not the Black Joker may use the Red Joker. Each deck, both the main Fate Deck and each player's Twist Deck, maintains its own discard pile. When you run out of cards in your deck, you shuffle your discard pile and it becomes the new deck. You may not look at or change the order of cards in any discard pile. As I noted, whenever the GM reshuffles the main Fate Deck, you get to draw a card. In fact, this happens any time the GM touches the main Fate Deck. (Shuffling only counts as one touch.) The GM can choose to reshuffle the deck when an important story moment resolves, and must reshuffle when the final card is flipped. Sometimes, a character's actions can force a reshuffle - in the case of flipping the last card, the card flipped is not shuffled in, but is discarded after the shuffle. Twist Decks are only reshuffled if you would draw a card when there are none remaining, and after a Twist Deck reshuffle, the GM may cut the deck. There are no further benefits to reshuffling the Twist Deck. Lastly, whenever a Dramatic time scene ends, each player may discard any cards they like, and then draw back up to 3 cards if they have less than that. Next time: Triggers, more detailed Duel rules anbd more.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 15:11
|
|
|
chiasaur11 posted:Gotta say, the UA avatars don't seem particularly well balanced.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 16:30
|
|
|
I'm guessing the expectation was that there would be more archetypes and avatars around to choose from, so it wasn't a big deal if a few of them were kind of weak?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 16:34
|
|
|
Dear System Mastery, You should receive some hot garbage on Wednesday. Yours, Anonymous "benefactor"
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 16:55
|
|
|
Rifts Dimension Book 2: Phase World Part 19: Spaaaaaaaaace!  So, firstly there’s a list of space skills that a lot of OCCs and such have. These are under the heading for ‘starships’ and might’ve fit better at the front of the book or somewhere more obvious. They’re things space people might need like spaceship mechanics, zero-G movement, a separate skill for piloting contragrav packs (versus ‘jet pack’) because gently caress you, etc. Also Law: CCW & Alien Lore skills and a suggestion to look at Mutants in Orbit for more optional skills, in case you really wanted more poo poo to write down. And now we get dog-fighting rules. Oh, and a note that combat rules for BIG starships will be included in Phase World Sourcebook. There’ve been several times that this book said it was gonna do space combat and now they’ve yanked that rug.  quote:
So no guided missiles I guess. Also: “The most common position in aerial combat is where one vehicle, the Dog Tail, is following another vehicle, the Dog.” Sure, maybe in WWI or in Wing Commander games but--oh nevermind. To become a dog tail, each pilot rolls a 20-sided die and adds their “dog-fighting” bonus which is--explained below. The ‘faster or more maneuverable’ of the two vehicles gets +2 to the roll, which is basically going to be ‘the faster’ since we don’t actually have maneuverability statistics. As far as I know everything including that super-tank can turn on a dime. Once you are the tail you are in a good position, the dog has -3 to dodge. Bonuses to dog-fighting come from space fighter combat and elite training, skills offered by a very few OCCs. Basic adds +1 to dog-fight, Elite adds +3, and basic also adds an extra attack with fighter weapons and elite adds two.  have some stars And...that’s it. Like, a paragraph that basically boils down to 'roll some contested d20s' and gives very few ways to modify it. It's also not clear how you shake a tail once you have one. Now we get some chatter about FTL propulsion. There are a few options for FTL drives: phase drives, gravitonic drives, and Rift drives. There’s also “space-fold drives” which are apparently risky. I am quite generally fine with FTL being magical in its function and having a certain amount of arbitrary space rules attached to it, but as we shall see, Rifts cannot leave things unexplained where they should be, and loves random consequences. Phase Drives or P-drives are very common and average one light year per hour. The most powerful P-drives reach about 10 light years per hour. This is great but only the prometheans can fix and maintain these drives, being mysterious and phase-y. The drives are generally made with modular replacement in mind but running out of spares pretty much leaves you stranded. Also: The drives can only run for about 12 hours at a time before ‘the guidance system must be recalibrated’. They need to get some better compass software. Every hour past 12 that the ship runs, there’s a 10% chance the ship veers off course by 3d6x1000 light years. 1000 light years being a distance that it takes 100 hours to travel in even the fastest P-drive ship. So stray even ONE hour over the maintenance window and you may discover new and amazing vistas of amazing speed! ...in a random direction. While you presumably starve to death trying to stop the ship from traveling. Lastly, P-drives don’t work in an atmosphere and if they’re activated before “10 or 20 thousand miles away” there’s a 70% chance (the same for all ships and drives I guess) the ship will plunge into the planet’s atmosphere and explode, no save. Contra-Gravitonic Drives are basically the same thing as those super-expensive jetpacks, except for space. We are informed that gravitons are sub-atomic particles that travel in waves (okay...not...exactly…) and their interactions determine the force of gravity. (Maybe, if they exist?) Opposing graviton waves cancel each other out, therefore contra-gravity. Sure, okay. “If an object was freed from the bonds of gravity, it was also no longer limited to the speed of light.” Wait, what? Jesus. Moving on. “In practical terms, however, most CG-drive starships have reached a roof of about eight light years per hour.” Again, 10K imperial away from a planet. These drives have a lower top speed than P-drives but require less mysterious alien maintenance and don’t seem to have the 12-hour limitation so are vastly superior. Last we get Rift Drives. Rift Drives travel through the “Flux Dimension” of swirling lights and colors and similar  PPE costs are high, so large batteries and magicians are required. Close proximity to a planet again somehow makes costs and trajectories impossible to calculate, despite the existence of rifts ON planets, but they can be closer: five thousand minimum. These drives are too bulky to install on anything but medium and larger vessels. Smaller vessels can “piggyback” but have a 10% chance per hour (not cumulative) of falling off and being lost. Since the rift travel is listed as being instantaneous, this seems to be a non-risk. We also don’t get specific PPE costs for drive operations, and assuming those are not utterly prohibitive, this is actually the best system. Lastly there are the spacegate systems which were mentioned at the beginning of the book. These systems will immediately teleport a ship to one of the phase gates around Phase World, one-way only. The so-called risky “space-fold” systems from the intro are not explained. Sublight propulsion! ...gets its own heading despite contragravity being the only one listed. It can do Mach 8 in atmosphere, Mach 25 in space, and then goes on to say that in an atmosphere, maximum speed ranges from Mach 4 to Mach 10. Three times maximum speed is possible but there’s an 18% (really? exactly?) chance of burning out the propulsion system, a chance of damaging the ship (with SDC materials of the planet!) or overshooting by 2d6x1000 miles. Siembieda is not great at rules but he is really really super not great at vehicle rules. Oh, other methods of sublight propulsion include “chemical, ion, plasma, solar, and traction” which are all in Mutants in Orbit blah blah buy stuff, 80% of all ships have contragravity unless otherwise listed. Way to save space and plug guys. Sensor Systems get a little nod, giving a (long) list of standard sensor systems and noting that military ships get +10% for being extra-sensitive. These include: Radar, sonar (really, they list this), thermographic (kay), motion and gravity-wave sensors which can detect ships as far as 200K miles away. Gravity and P-drive emissions are detectable at one light year. Military systems can see things at ten light years. So like, an hour or so of warning. “Stealth” systems reduce radar signatures so all those other fancy systems fail as well and then at 5,000 miles away they can be seen by “visual scans.” There's no discussion of light-lag and they don't seem to have anything but basic radio to talk with. Next: before we get actual starships, we get starship weapons.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 16:59
|
|
|
Plague of Hats posted:Dear System Mastery, Best kind of garbage. No one likes cold garbage. We will look forward to it! Also, we're so looking forward to this question we got for the next Afterthought: quote:2) I'm a diehard fan of 3.5 DNd and hate that bullshit, wish fulfillment, special snowflake fourth addition ( no offense please make fun of me). Do you enjoy 3.5 and why do you enjoy 4th?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 17:33
|
|
|
Hyper Crab Tank posted:I'm guessing the expectation was that there would be more archetypes and avatars around to choose from, so it wasn't a big deal if a few of them were kind of weak? There are potentially a lot of archetypes and the implication is the 14 in the main book are just a fraction of the much larger whole. Hence why fan-made avatars are so popular. Just a pity they aren't of a consistently higher Quality. Well, there's always my favorite archetype, "Guy With Pencils Stuck In His Eyes"
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 17:36
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Best kind of garbage. No one likes cold garbage. We will look forward to it! Also, we're so looking forward to this question we got for the next Afterthought: You could run a whole Afterthought on just that question!
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 17:50
|
|
|
It always gets me when people say "Wish fulfillment" like it's a bad thing to have happen in an RPG session. Oh no, you might get things you want or enjoy out of playing a game with your friends!
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 17:50
|
|
|
occamsnailfile posted:Lastly there are the spacegate systems which were mentioned at the beginning of the book. These systems will immediately teleport a ship to one of the phase gates around Phase World, one-way only. The so-called risky “space-fold” systems from the intro are not explained. That's exclusively a Robotech thing, I think, as far as Palladium is concerned. I'm not sure if this is more Siembieda's slightly off interpretation of Robotech canon, or the fact that most RT ships with fold drives also have those planet-slagging lasers and doomsday cannons on the front.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:02
|
|
|
What I really don't get about the groggiest of 3.5 fans is their opposition to mechanical minmaxing and multiclassing. That's the system's only strength, what other reason do you have to play it?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:04
|
|
|
oriongates posted:There are potentially a lot of archetypes and the implication is the 14 in the main book are just a fraction of the much larger whole. Hence why fan-made avatars are so popular. Just a pity they aren't of a consistently higher Quality. I'm reading Godwalker right now. I enjoy it, but while the Mundys are hosed up people, they seem to be hosed up people who know magick, rather than their magick being one and the same with a totally delusional worldview.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:06
|
|
|
unseenlibrarian posted:It always gets me when people say "Wish fulfillment" like it's a bad thing to have happen in an RPG session. Oh no, you might get things you want or enjoy out of playing a game with your friends! This was my first note, so don't be surprised to hear me say the exact same thing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:07
|
|
|
Through the Breach: The Fated Almanac So, what is a Trigger? You remember all those Talents that mentioned drawing a specific suit of card? Those are all Triggers. To activate a Trigger, you need to meet the conditions it requires - having a specific Suit in your final total during a specific type of action. Occasionally, they'll care if you succeeded, failed or dealt damage with that action. Most Triggers are from Talents; NPCs can also have Triggers that work based on what your total is, too. So, the actual full provess of a Duel depends on what kind of Duel it is, but most are Simple Challenge. You do a thing, it has an immediate effect. The game breaks it down to a nine step process that, in play, goes much faster and more intuitively. 1. Dtermine the TN. Very easy tasks might have 3 or 4, while a nearly impossible one might be 20 - something you won't hit without a great Aspect, Skill and card. The TN may also have a Suit associated with it, typically for magic. Don't have that Suit in your result? You're SOL. 2. Generate your initial Acting Value, before flipping any cards. You take your Aspect and add it to your Skill and apply any Talents that would add a Suit to it or some other modifier. If you're only using an Aspect for some reason (say, just Might to lift a heavy thing, though you could in theory use Might+Labor for that) then double the Aspect. 3. Calculate any Fate Modifiers - that is, bonuses or penalties. One bonus cancels out one penalty and vice versa, so you will always end up with either nothing, or just Bonuses, or just Penalties. This determines how many cards you flip. 4. Flip the right amount of cards and calculate the Duel total now, adding the value of the card and its suit to the Acting Value determined in step 2. 5. See if that's enough. 6. If it's not, you may opt to Cheat Fate and replace the card with a Twist Card from your hand. However, you cannot Cheat Fate if any of the following are true: You lack the appropriate skill, you flipped the Black Joker or you have one or more penalties. 7. Determine the final result and see if that's enough. 8. Declare Triggers if you have any that you want to use. Triggers most commonly require you to have succeeded at the check, failed it, resolved it (which is any result) or caused damage. 9. Apply the results. For every five points by which you beat a TN, you get a Margin of Success. For every five points by which you miss, you get a Margin of Failure - so a 16 against a TN 10 has one Margin of Success. This primarily notable for attacking and for ongoing challenges. Ongoing challenges are those which take a long time to resolve. They are broken into a series of related Simple Challenges, which can often use several skills. Ongoing Challenges have a TN, which may fluctuate over the coruse of the Challenge, a Duration, which is how long each taste takes to complete, and an Increment REquirement - how many successes need to be gathered before it's complete. Generally, while you're doing an Ongoing Challenge, that's all you can do, and you need the GM's permission to take any other actions during it. Every time the duration passes, you can make a challenge duel against the TN. If you succeed, you gain one success, plus an additional success per Margin of Success. Once you build up enough to meet or beat the Increment Requirement, you're done. However, if you fail, you subtract a success per Margin of Failure (so if you fail by less than 5, the total stays the same). Typically, an Ongoing Challenge only totally fails if somethings goes catastrophically wrong or you run out of time. If you hit a deadline, well, got to abandon the job and can't come back to later, most of the time. Catastrophic Failure happens when you draw a Black Joker or when you get four or more Margins of Failure on consecutive tests - four at once, three and then one, two and then two, one four times in a row, whatever. If that happens, you fail the challenge and lose any supplies and will have to start over, if that's possible. Multiple characters can work together on some Ongoing Challenges, which can greatly increase success or reduce time required. This can be handled two ways. First, everyone works on their own, so you get multiple tests per Duration, and everyone gets a chance to add to the success total. Alternately, if someone doesn't feel good about their skill in the situation, they can work wither another character. They make no tests of their own, but each assistant adds a bonus to the leader's action. Combat comes next, and with it, we get the distinction between the two types of time the game uses. Much of the game takes place in Narrative Time. The passage of time is not critical to the game, and it goes by as fast as it needs to to move the story along. This is the part where montages happen or cuts to later or whatever. Narrative Time covers extended efforts over the course of hours or days, too, and until the GM says otherwise, Narrative Time is what's in effect. It's loose and not tracked particularly strictly. It's flexible. During Narrative Time, you can take any action, and unless there is a cost to the action, such as discarding a card, or a big risk of failure, you may assume that for any flip you flipped a 10 by taking a moment to focus. There's no deadline, no real pressure, so you just got a 10 with any suit you like. You can cheat a higher value card if you want, but there's often no reason to. When you Assume 10 this way, you cannot declare Triggers. Dramatic Time, on the other hand, is stricter. It's for when conflicts escalate and it becomes important to know what's going on when in a very real and fine sense. It is measured in combat rounds, which last for about five to six seconds each, with the exact length at the GM's discretion. Most Dramatic Time scenes involve multiple characters, and actions take place by Initiative Order. On your turn, you declare and execute your actions, and you get one turn per round, though you can take multiple actions in that turn. Whenever Dramatic Time ends, every player may discard as many cards as they like and draw back up to three if they have less after discarding. When Dramatic Time begins, every character makes an Initiative Flip - a Challenge Duel based on Speed Aspect and Notice skill. There is no TN - the highest number goes first, and the rest in descending order. If there's a tie, PCs always go first, deciding amonst themselves who goes in what order. If they can't agree, the GM picks. NPCs do not flip - they just add their Rank value to their Speed and Notice, so similar NPCs will often go all at once in whatever order the GM likes. When your turn starts, you follow this order: 1. Start of turn effects. Resolve anything that happens automatically at the start of your turn, in whatever order you like. 2. Generate AP. Every character receives two Action Points by default, but certain talents or effects can increase or decrease this number. 3. Spend your AP on Actions and resolve those actions. If you have any AP left after resolving an action, you can spend it on other actions. You can declare actions as you go, they don't have to be pre-decided. 4. Resolve any automatic end of turn effects in whatever order you like. Actions are preceded by parentheses containing a number - that number is the number of AP you have to spend to take that action. Don't have that much? Can't do it. You do not have to spend all your AP in a turn, but any you don't spend are lost. Some Talents will give you extra AP that can only be used on specific actions; the effect that does this will tell you what the AP is good for. You can only use one bonus special AP per turn, so if you have multiple special AP sources, you choose which applies each turn. Some actions have a 0 AP cost, but you can by default only perform one 0-AP action per turn. The GM may loosen this at their discretion. The following actions are available to all characters. Combat Actions (2) Charge: You target someone you can see and move your Charge range directly towards them, then take two 1-AP melee attacks against them if you are in range. You may not Charge if you are engaged currently or if you have no Charge range. (1) STrike: You target another character or object within range of a chosen weapon, ranged or melee, and perform a single attack with it. Tactical Actions (#) Defensive Stance: You may discard a card. If you do, you get the Defensive +1 condition until the start of your next turn, usable a number of times equal to the AP spent on this action. Defensive +1: You gain a bonus when you use Defense to resist an attack. (1) Focus: You gain the Focused +1 Condition until you resolve an Action other than Focus. You may take this action more than once, and it stacks up to Focused +3. You can only take this action in Dramatic Time. Focused +X: You gain a number of bonuses to your next non-Focus action and any resulting damage flip equal to the value of Focused. (1) Impose: You make an appropriate Social test, usually Intimidate, against a TN of your target's Tenacity+Scrutiny. If you succeed, the target suffers a penalty, plus another penalty per Margin of Success, to any attack that does not include you as a target. (1) Trick: You make an appropriate skill challenge, such as Deceive or Sleight of Hand, to misdirect your foe, against a TN of their Cunning+Awareness. On a sucess, you get a bonus to any melee or ranged attack action and damage flips until the start of your next turn. In addition, you get a bonus to Defense Flips made against the target until the start of your next turn. (#) Reload: The cost of a reload action is listed in a weapon's stats, if it requires reloading. It may take more AP than you have, in which case you can continue to take Reload actions on your next turn to accumulate AP on reloading. Once enough is spent, the weapon is reloaded. Movement Actions (1) Drop Prone: You drop to the ground, gaining a bonus to Defense against Ranged attacks and a penalty to Defense against Melee attacks. (1) Stand Up: You stop being prone or knocked down. (1) Walk: You move your Walk range, not necessarily in a straight line or in any specific direction. (2) Run: You move twice your Walk plus your Athletics skill, again, in any direction and not always in a straight line. Universal Actions (1) Assist: You declare who you are going to help and what you're helping with. When the target performs the action you're helping with on their next turn, they get a bonus to it. (#) Use Skill: You spend AP determined by the GM to do a special skill challenge, possibly as part of an Ongoing Challenge or to pick a lock during dramatic time. Most of the time this will be 2 AP but is sometimes 1. (1) Evaluate: You examine some aspect of the situation, possibly to identify a weakness or escape route. Usually this requires a Notice or Scrutiny challenge. (1) PAss: You do nothing, but add 1 to your Initiative for the rest of the Dramatic Time. (1) Order: You give a command to a subordinate you control, such as a zombie, elemental or construct minion. The ordered character acts immediately after your turn ends, and you control it for that turn. If a PC takes this action, the ordered character makes flips as if it were a PC but cannot Cheat Fate. (1) Ready Weapon: You draw a weapon and arm it for use. Next time: Specific Movement and Attack rules
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:09
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:What I really don't get about the groggiest of 3.5 fans is their opposition to mechanical minmaxing and multiclassing. That's the system's only strength, what other reason do you have to play it? If you're not into your character, then you're not really role-playing. It's this fear that trying to engage the system purely on its mechanical merits means you're not really playing for the story or however grogs tend to phrase it. It's similar to how when someone points out "I roll to attack. I hit/miss" is boring and the proposed solution is to have the player provide flowery descriptions of combat, rather than accepting that there's a problem with a system when the only way a character can engage with the rules is by a binary d20 roll that only ever affects the target's HP.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:17
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:What I really don't get about the groggiest of 3.5 fans is their opposition to mechanical minmaxing and multiclassing. That's the system's only strength, what other reason do you have to play it? I don't think people discover 3.5 these days on their own. It's not like you walk into the store, see two old editions, and say "hmm, instead of the current game, I shall make an informed decision after reading both of these other out of date options." This guy likes 3.5 because his DM plays 3.5 and he hates 4e because that is a regular conversation at his DMs table. Granted, I also know that the writer of this question is 15 so I may be cheating a little with some extra knowledge.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:25
|
|
|
Nerds do hate change and love habit after all. That's why we're playing games about little plastic mans and killing imaginary orcs in the first place I guess. It still always baffled me how much differently grogs play 3.5/Pathfinder than my group does. We always thought 3.5 was supposed to be for wacky one-piece/discworld character and settings, as opposed to the more "grounded" AD&D. That selection of spells and feats lets you grow four extra pairs of arms, great go out and found a monastery of the ten armed style. Next campaign the GM will streamline the rules for it and growing extra arms through martial arts will become a part of teh setting.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 18:32
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:What I really don't get about the groggiest of 3.5 fans is their opposition to mechanical minmaxing and multiclassing. That's the system's only strength, what other reason do you have to play it? 3e was a really weird event in the history of roleplaying--D&D was essentially the first game, remained the most popular, and just as importantly, it created a distinct milieu (dungeon crawl and wilderness adventure in a fantasy mashup setting). Then it died and was reborn as a a universal, multi-genre system, and we learned (or refused to learn) many lessons from how well that worked out. The narrative that baffles me the most is when people say that the history of D&D was some sort of grand tradition that progressed until 4th edition made a sudden, radical departure. I wonder if these people are really familiar with the rules of AD&D and/or the Basic line.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 19:14
|
|
|
They mustn't remember anything prior to 3E, because I remember starting with Basic, dropping out for a few years until 2E came out, then flinging poo poo like an enraged chimp when they put out sneak peeks at the sweeping changes in the 3E ruleset, even having adopted games like GURPS and RIFTS. Wish fulfillment? 3E was the first where you could multi-class just about anything, had advanced classes with ~special~ abilities, and didn't require black magic rituals to play something that wasn't stuffed into the front of the PHB. Of course we all know how well that turned out, but it was a worthy experiment.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 20:02
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:The narrative that baffles me the most is when people say that the history of D&D was some sort of grand tradition that progressed until 4th edition made a sudden, radical departure. I wonder if these people are really familiar with the rules of AD&D and/or the Basic line. For a subset of the grog population, they either really don't or are engaging in some kind of cognitive dissonance. A whole ton of poo poo that's in 3E and nowhere else is regarded as how things have always been, even in the face of Gygax, PBUH, not liking 3E for reasons he'd been writing about since the 80s.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 20:09
|
|
|
Bieeardo posted:They mustn't remember anything prior to 3E, because I remember starting with Basic, dropping out for a few years until 2E came out, then flinging poo poo like an enraged chimp when they put out sneak peeks at the sweeping changes in the 3E ruleset, even having adopted games like GURPS and RIFTS. Wish fulfillment? 3E was the first where you could multi-class just about anything, had advanced classes with ~special~ abilities, and didn't require black magic rituals to play something that wasn't stuffed into the front of the PHB. gradenko_2000 posted:For a subset of the grog population, they either really don't or are engaging in some kind of cognitive dissonance. A whole ton of poo poo that's in 3E and nowhere else is regarded as how things have always been, even in the face of Gygax, PBUH, not liking 3E for reasons he'd been writing about since the 80s.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 20:29
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:D&D wasn't my first game--it wasn't even my fifth--and when I did finally play it, it was because I couldn't find anybody local running anything besides D&D 3rd. All through the 90s I viewed it with contempt, because whenever I cracked open a D&D book it would be full of charts, references to spell effects, and stuff like THAC0, Bend Bars/Lift Gates chances and nonweapon proficiencies. I couldn't understand how or why anybody would design or play a game that seemed so stubbornly unintuitive. Well someone just named a podcast.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 20:38
|
|
|
Through the Breach: The Fated Almanac Movement stuff...well, first of all, you can't just walk past a guy in combat. If you try to leave melee range with a Walk action, the person you are moving away from can interrupt you with a disengaging strike - basically, they make a melee attack against you, and if they hit, you stop moving but take no damage or other effects. (Normally.) Special movement, like climbing or vaulting a gap is usually part of an Athletics check as part of a Walk or Run action, with difficulty based on the conditions and surface. Climbing a steep hill is pretty easy, climbing a vertical wooden plank wall is pretty fuckin' hard. Without a check, it's assumed that any PC can jump 18 inches straight up, one yard horizontally from a standing start or two yards with a running start. Further means an Athletics check. Standing long jumps are part of a Walk, with running ones as part of a Run. Climbing generally goes at half your Walk, but faster if you succeed well on a climb check. Swimming is also half your Walk, and it's assumed any character can stay afloat indefinitely in calm waters. Moving quickly is a (2) Use Skill action that moves you at Walk + Athletics, but no roll is needed. Tougher water conditions require Athletics checks, though. Pushing, shoving, dragging orp ulling all functions as a push movement, and most movement penalties do not apply to pushes. You just move the distance of the push, and you don't trigger disengaging strikes. Flight allows you to bypass terrain and other characters without penalty, but you still get disengaging strikes if you don't have the altitude to be out of range. Falling at least three yards triggers fall damage, with it hurting more for every additional two yards fallen. Falling is also special - normally, when you draw the Black Joker on a damage check, you take no damage, no matter what. If you fall from a height that would normally kill you instantly even on a minimum damage check, though, all the Joker means is you survived and land with 0 Wounds left and probably a lot of lasting injuries. Attacking works specially when NPCs do it - only PCs flip cards, so any modifiers that would apply to an NPC instead apply in the opposite manner to the PC's defense - so if the enemy would get a bonus, instead the PC gets a penalty. Attacks follow a special sequence because they involve multiple tests. For the attack, it's just like any normal challenge, really, if the PC is doing the attacking. 1. The TN will be the target's Defense or Willpower, plus their Rank. All weapons not explicitly stating otherwise target Defense. Magical attacks also have to beat a casting TN in addition to the enemy's resistance - if they fail at either one, the spell doesn't go off. If an NPC has any modifiers that would modify their Defense, they instead raise the attack's TN. 2. Acting Value - this is typically calculated via relevant Aspect and weapon/spell skill. 3. Modifiers as normal. If an NPC has any modifiers that would improve or harm their defenses, they are reversed and apply to the attack - so an NPC in a Defensive Stance applies a penalty to a PC attacking them, rather than getting a bonus to defense. 4-8. Resolve as normal. 9. If you hit, there is now a damage flip. If the attack hit as a tie, the damage is at two penalties. If there were no margins of success, one penalty. One margin of success, no penalty. 2 or more margins of success, one bonus. When an NPC attacks, the PC still does all the drawing. 1. The TN is based on the attacker's Aspect, Combat skill and Rank. If the NPC has anay abilities that, in PC hands, would make attacking easier, they instead add to the TN. 2. The Acting Value is typically based on your Defense or Willpower aspect. 3. Modifiers as above, but the NPC's modifiers to attack are the ones reversed instead. 4-8. Resolve as normal. 9. If you fail, there is now a damage flip. If you had no margins of failure, it's at a penalty. If you had 1, no penalty. 2, a bonus. 3, two bonuses. Common attack and defense modifiers include: Attacking blind, which causes 2 penalties. A Called Shot will typically give a +4 to the TN to an attack. Having a superior position, such as high ground or having someone trapped against a cliff or wall. This gives the attacker a bonus. Cover comes in two types - soft and hard. Soft cover is stuff like tents, tapestries or plants, while hard cover is stuff like rocks, trees or animals to hide behind. Soft cover gives a penalty to the attack flip, while hard cover gives a penalty to both attack and damage. Fighting on an unstable platform gives a penalty to attacking. If you want to make a ranged attack on someone who is engaged with other people, the target is selected randomly. You flip one card for each character within a yard of your target and hit whoever got the highest card instead. You can take Talents to prevent this, or you could Cheat your attack down if you accidentally shoot an ally. Whoops! So, damage. How's damage work? It's pretty special. There's no TN, so you just determine modifiers. Most commonly, that'll be from how accurately someone got hit. You flip cards as normal for the damage - and it's always the player who flips, either dealing or receiving the damage. If there is no modifier or there's a bonus, the attacker chooses which card is used. If there's a penalty, the defender chooses. If the Black Joker shows up, it must be chosen, period. If the Red Joker shows up but the Black Joker doesn't, it must be selected, too, even if the attack is at a penalty. You can Cheat Fate on damage...sometimes. You may not Cheat Fate on damage if either is true: You are the target of the damage flip, or you're the attacker and the attack has a penalty. All attacks have three damage values, presented like this: 1/2/3. The first is Weak damage, the second Moderate and the third Severe. If the Damage Flip got a Black Joker, no damage is done at all. 1-5, Weak damage. 6-10, Moderate. 11-13, Severe. The Red Joker is Severe damage and triggers a Moderate Critical Effect. The person taking damage reduces their wounds by whatever the damage value. If that reduces them to 0 or below, they also suffer a Critical Effect, with level equal to the damage's type - Weak, Moderate or Severe. If you hit 0 or fewer Wounds, you risk falling unconscious. You must pass a TN 10 Tenacity+Toughness challenge, taken when you hit 0, whenever you suffer a Critical Effect or at the end of any turn where you took an action while having 0 or fewer Wounds. You can be revived with a (2) Use Doctor action, TN 10. Some attacks deal set damage, no flip involved, and others deal blast damage, marked by a mushroom cloud next to the number. Anyone nearby also gets hurt at the step below the damage dealt. Armor comes in two types. If you have any Light armor at all, you are lightly armored and get Armor +1. Doesn't matter which hit location it's on - there's four. Head, body, arms and legs. Any single one can have Light Armor and you will be lightly armored. If you have one location with Heavy Armor and at least two more with Light Armor or better, you are considered heavily armored and get Armor +2. A pneumatic limb gives an additional +1 Armor, so the max a PC can have is Armor +3. (Some NPCs can have more.) Armor directly reduces damage dealt. However, if you lock the Armor Training talent, you also reduce your Defense by your Armor value. Also, you can't reduce damage below 1 with Armor. Critical Effects target a hit location. You flip a card to determine how bad it is and where it hits. Rams hit the body, Tomes hit the head, Crows hit the arms, Masks hit the legs. Most armor will prevent a single critical effect to the location they protect, even if they provide no Light ARmor or Heavy Armor. The higher the number of the card, the worse the hit is. And if you draw the Red Joker? No critical effect whatsoever. Nothing happens. Black Joker? It is the highest possible effect on the chart, which for Weak damage or Moderate damage means 'draw again and move up a chart'. For Severe damage? It means the hit location got blown the gently caress off, and you draw a card to figure out which one. Weak Criticals at low numbers are stuff like 'you get a penalty to all Social challenges until Dramatic Time ends' and at the upper level are 'you take an additional damage' or 'you get the Paralyzed condition.' Moderate Criticals at low numbers are 'You get a penalty to all challenges, but at tne end of each turn you can make a TN 10 Toughness challenge to end this.' At high numbers, they're 'you gain the Paralyzed condition until Dramatic Time ends due to nerve damage.' And Severe? At low numbers it's 'generate two Moderate criticals' or 'Get a penalty to all Social actions until all damage is completely healed.' At upper levels it's 'you are bleeding out' or 'the hit location is crippled and made useless, if this hit the head you go blind or deaf, if it hit the chest you loving die' or 'a large part of your body is ripped free; if this hit tyhe head or chest, you loving die.' Conditions! Conditions are ongoing effects. If they have a number, they can stack. If they don't, they can't and you ignore any second instance. Normalyl, they leave at the end of your turn unless what put them on says otherwise. Common conditions: Blind: You get two penalties to any action requiring Sight, including most attacks. Bleeding Out: You will die in 10 rounds if the condition is not removed. This condition is not removed at end of turn, but requires a (2) Use Doctor action at TN 15 to remove. Burning +X: At the end of each round, you take damage equal to the Burning value. The effect is removed once damage is dealt. Anyone within a yard of you, including you, may take a (1) Action to remove 1 from the Burning value. If it hits 0, it goes away. Dazed: All actions suffer a +2 TN modifier. Defensive +X: You get a bonus to Defense duels, but each time you use it, the value drops by 1. You lose the condition when it hits 0. Intoxicated: You suffer a penalty to all Willpower tests. Fast: You generate an additional ACtion Point. This condition is removed at the end of your turn, or if you get Slow while you have Fast. (They cancel out.) Focused +X: You get X bonuses to your next non-Focus action and any resulting damage checks. Focus maxes out at +3. Paralyzed: You generate no AP and can declare no Actions at all, even (0) Actions. This normally ends when your turn does. If you get the Reactivate condition, it cancels out Paralyze. Poisoned +X: Each round, you take 1 damage that can't be reduced and reduce the Poison value by 1. If it hits 0, you lose Poisoned. It cannot be removed until it hits 0. Suffocating +x: Every turn (or every 5 seconds in Narrative Time) that you cannot breathe, you get +1 Suffocating. At the end of your turn, you must make a Willpower test at TN equal to Suffocating. If you fail, you fall unconscious. If you are already unconscious, you take 3/4/5 Damage. If you hit 0 Wounds or fewer from this, you don't generate a Critical Effect - you just die. Reactivate: At the end of the round, you may act an additional time, as if you hadn't taken any turn. If multiple characters have this, they act in Initiative order. Paralyze cancels this out. Slow: You generate 1 less AP than normal. This is normally removed at end of turn. Fast cancels this out. Useless Limb: If this is an arm, you get two penalties to anything requiring two hands. If a leg, your Walk drops to 1 and you two penalties to anything requiring movement. Next time: Healing, Horror and Magic
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 21:01
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:D&D wasn't my first game--it wasn't even my fifth--and when I did finally play it, it was because I couldn't find anybody local running anything besides D&D 3rd. All through the 90s I viewed it with contempt, because whenever I cracked open a D&D book it would be full of charts, references to spell effects, and stuff like THAC0, Bend Bars/Lift Gates chances and nonweapon proficiencies. I couldn't understand how or why anybody would design or play a game that seemed so stubbornly unintuitive. I think for me it was because D&D was my first, and it set my expectations. When 2E came out, reorganized and a little friendlier than its predecessor, I was still in a frame of reference where numbers were awesome and figuring out how they went together was even better. There was an exclusivity to it, despite attempts to get friends and family involved, which appealed to angry, nerdy me. We ignored weird things like bend bars/lift gates, while brewing up enough house rules to fill a book of their own, and flirting with verisimilitude, though we didn't know the word then. We thought that rules for determining if a character knew how to make a barrel, or fill one with beer, were important. Rules, regardless of the situation, were important. These days-- heck, the last fifteen years or so-- the appeal of that kind of thing has evaporated. I can still jot up a GURPS sheet, and I enjoy M&M despite its flaws, but rules and charts for their own sake are just frustrating. Even aspects of FATE-- its skill system, for example-- annoy me because they just seem so extraneous.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 22:17
|
|
|
Hyper Crab Tank posted:That Merchant power reminds me an awful lot of an old Twilight Zone episode (the Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross) wherein a guy finds himself with the power to do just that - trade abstract things like diseases, age, and eventually compassion, which ends up getting him killed by the man whose compassion he buys. Interestingly, it didn't make me think of Faust at all... what Mephistopheles gives to Faust is his own servitude and use of his powers. Faust would have an omnipotent being follow you around trying to essentially woo you over by showing you lots of amazing/weird stuff as part of a long, elaborate plan to get your soul. Now here's an idea for a RPG. Too bad the exclusive stuff isn't available as a separate release. I think there was some talk about this, but nothing really happened in that regard. unseenlibrarian posted:It always gets me when people say "Wish fulfillment" like it's a bad thing to have happen in an RPG session. Oh no, you might get things you want or enjoy out of playing a game with your friends! Because roleplaying games are cleary about playing as your boring old self or something you don't like.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 22:19
|
|
|
Doresh posted:Because roleplaying games are cleary about playing as your boring old self or something you don't like.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 22:30
|
|
|
Doresh posted:Because roleplaying games are cleary about playing as your boring old self or something you don't like. "So you want to play a half-elf wizard, huh?" "gently caress you, you're playing a middle-aged human shitfarmer or you're not playing at all. Make a DC20 Fortitude save to check if you die of dysentery before the session starts." 
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 23:08
|
|
|
unseenlibrarian posted:It always gets me when people say "Wish fulfillment" like it's a bad thing to have happen in an RPG session. Oh no, you might get things you want or enjoy out of playing a game with your friends! I don't think wish-fulfillment actually means anything when he says it. It's like communist, socialist, and fascist to rightists- they're all substitutes for "bad thing".
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 23:37
|
|
|
Through the Breach: The Fated Almanac Healing is pretty simple - when you would be (non-magically) healed, you make a flip as you would for damage. Black Joker is no healing, 1-5 is 1 damage, 6-10 is 2, 11-13 is 3 and Red Joker is all damage. You make a single healing flip each day that you've had at least 6 hours sleep. If you have a doctor caring for you, you get a bonus. Doctors can care for a number of people up to the Doctor skill. Anyone with the Doctor skill can also do first aid, which can only be done for someone with 0 or more wounds left, and you need tools. It's Intellect+Doctor, and the TN is 5. You heal 1 damage, plus 1 per margin of success, but someone can only benefit from first aid once per hour. Doctors can also do surgery, which also takes tools. Surgery is what you do when someone has less than 0 Wounds left, and the TN is 10 now. If it succeeds, the target immediately jumps to 0 Wounds. If it fails, the target suffers a Damage flip of 0/0/Killed, with a bonus to the damage flip for each margin of failure. Surgery takes 1 hour per negative wound the target has, and you can only get benefits from surgery once per week. If you are suffering a Critical Effect that lasts until all damage is healed, it has a chance of being permanent. Once you are fully healed, you make a Resilience+Toughness check, TN 15. If you fail, the Critical Effect becomes permanent. The book suggests Cheating Fate on this if possible. If you had successful surgery, however, you raise your result by the Doctor's Surgery skill. So, what is Horror? Horror is something caused by certain talents or enemy actions - basically, a mindnumbing terror that can drive you mad. It's a Willpower test, with a TN listed by whatever caused it. If you fail, you gain the Paralyzed condition if it isn't your turn, or you lose all AP and your turn immediately ends if it is your turn. If you pass, nothing bad happens and you become immune to Horror effects from the source of the Horror for the rest of the round. If you cause a Horror test with, say, a spell, then you make a test against a TN of the target's Willpower plus their Rank, and your acting value is half the TN of the effect you caused. If you have multiple targets, you make just one test, with the result compared against each target's TN. (This can affect other PCs - when PCs act against each other in any way, the defender is treated as an NPC with a Master rank - ie, an automatic result of 11 plus whatever stats are relevant. PVP's not easy.) Now we finally hit the Magic chapter. On Earth, magic is difficult. Some are potent enough to do it without fueling it with soulstone, but most require a soulstone to do magic there, especially for their most powerful spells. In Malifaux, this is not so - magic is everywhere, in the air itself. Soulstones can still be a great aid to casting, but are not requied. Even mundane people find themselves able to shape magic by their will alone. It's not too uncommon for a gunfighter to be able to shoot fire from their gun or for a martial artist to harden their arms like steel. Those who train can do stranger things still, and more of them. The Guild, of course, restricts magic use heavily. The work of the Arcanists has weakened their hold on Earth, but in Malifaux they retain control. All magical practice without Guild sanction is forbidden, with brutal punishments enforced. Luckily, the Guild defines magic narrowly. Magically enhanced equipment and pneumatic devices are entirely unregulated, and can be purchased freely - usually from the guild. There are several codified schools of magic, which attempt to define a set of guidelines by which magic works. It's never really worked - for every law someone defines, magic exists to break it. Teaching a magical theory is rather like teaching art in that way. There's a lot of techniques and truths, you can teach reliable methods, but art remains purely personal and no two people will ever do it in truly the same way. Many sorcerers end up making their own systems, learning from masters or cobbling it together from old writings, and many organized magical systems encourage practitioners to learn the styles of others. Some believe a unified magical theory may one day be discovered. Whatever the case, you need a Magical Theory to cast spells. The development of your Magical Theory is personal, and if it happens during play, the GM should work with you to create circumstances where you can learn one, rather than using it as a restrictive tool. You may only ever have one Magical Theory, and it permanently shapes how you approach and use magic. Each Magic Theory has an associated talent that you gain when you choose that theory, and you can never lose it. Ever. The Oxford Method is taught out of the Oxford University of Metaphysical Studies in Mississippi, which recently reopened its doors to students. It's what most people think of when they hear the word 'wizard,' and it commonly uses techniques such as summoning circles, magical formulae and ritual words of power. It teaches that magic comes from a mindscape, an imagined reality you come up with which you harness via gestures and magical words. Use of wands, staves and runes is not uncommon. The talent it comes with increases the Action Point cost of any spell you cast by 1, after any adjustments for Immuto. However, you get a bonus to the casting check of any spell with an AP cost of 2 or more. The Whisper is not quite a theory, and it doesn't come from the minds of mortals. What is known of it has been taken from the ramblings and dying words of those mad enough to practice necromancy. They speak of a driving force, something that teaches them their mad powers. This condition has been named the Whisper, and it drives those who suffer it to ever more complex necromantic creations, with skills acquired almost spontaneously. You might wake one morning with no magical skill, but the Whisper will guide you by nightfall. The talent? You get a bonus to all Necromancy checks or to any spell with an undead target. However, your madness gives you a penalty to all Intellect checks. The Darlin Theories are less a codified system of magic and more a collection of essays and scientific treatises on magic. It's the closest to a science that has ever been made out of the arcane arts, and is named for Aaron Darlin, the Mecha-Tyrant of Virginia, who was famously responsible for 1791 Conflagration of Richmond. He died a year later, but his works circulated widely after his death, and his name is now synonymous with steam and clockwork-powered magic. The core metaphor of the Darlin Theories is that magic is shaped by discovery, and so practitioners are encouraged to create their own theories about magic's interaction with steam and clockwork. However, they are also trained in a rigorous system of notation so that similar thinkers can recreate and learn from their work. Every spell, to a Darlist, is a combination of scientific principles augmented by ether or soulstone. Even when they personally channel their spells, they see it as an execution of science that requires some form of pneumatic assistance, and so it is very common for Darlists to possess pneumatic arms or similar focus items customized to allow a wide variety of effects. The talent requires you to have a pneumatic device of some kind to manifest any magical effect, and if the item's value in scrip is lower than the spell's TN, the item will be destroyed. (If it's equal or above, it's fine.) Creating a suitable device takes one hour and Artefacting skill equal to a tenth of the device's value, plus scrap parts equal to the device's value, which are easily purchasable anywhere in Malifaux. The scrap of a destroyed device is worth as much as the device itself was, so you can reuse it. Also, you get -2 to the TN of any spell targeting a construct, and this can be combined with the Focus Object Immuto. (And, in fact, often is.) The Court Procedure was developed after the Powder Wars in the aristocratic courts. It's actually a rather mocking name, and it was invented by infamous necromancer and enchantress Lauren Descartes. It's a somewhat heretical system that isn't really a theory, so much as a collection of 7,922 laws organized into 11 'gates' of power. Each Gate of Power contains revelations and training you are expected to master before you move on to the next. There's no organized teaching of the Court Procedure, though, and the introductory primer on it explains that you are expected to learn it without a master. Once you have mastered it, it says, you will know how to recognize and find others like you, thus gaining access to the books on higher gates, and so on. Descartes held that power came from forcing others to obey rules that the powerful did not have to. As you learn more of the laws, you become allowed to break more of them. Ambition and rulebreaking are simultaneously rewarded and punished. On the surface, Court Procedure shares a lot of trappings with the Oxford Method, but the Gathered, as the users of the Court Procedure call themselves, are highly organized. The only thing keeping them from being an overwhelming force is their unending internal conflict. The talent gives +2 to the TN of any spell resisted by Defense, but -2 to the TN of any spell resisted by Willpower. The Thalarian Doctrine is the name used to refer to the Guild's regulation on soulstones, and their legal restrictions on magic usage. Their early investigations after the Powder Wars were led by a man named Abel Thalaric, who believed magic was the right of the common man, not just the magical elite. Thalarian Doctrine is the Guild's only sanctioned magical style and also its political platform. They have currently lost the shadow war to keep the Oxford Method in check, but the Thalarian Doctrine claims to be the only system that promotes the good of the common man as equal to the warlock, as it defines all non-Thalarian spellcasters. It uses complex formulae and concepts to make magic items anyone can use, and is closer to a craft than an art. Thalarians often refer to themselves as Magewrights, and generally refuse to use any magic but enchantment, as magic is a universal right, not just for those with wild talents. They are exceptionally good at counterspells, the only non-enchantment magic they widely accept. To an outsider, Thalarian magic resembles both Oxford enchanting and Darlist machinery, and sometimes special dispensation is given to ranking Magewrights to learn non-enchantment magic, most notably among the Guild's Witch Hunters. The talent prevents you from ever raising Sorcery, Necromancy or Prestidigitation skills above 3 without Guild consent, and reduces them to 3 if they were somehow already higher. In addition, you get a bonus on any spell targeting someone with a Magical Theory Talent other than Thalarian Doctrine. The Balanced Five is a magic theory hailing from the Three Kingdoms (a united combination of Vietnam, China and Japan). It's a rough translation of the name, and the basic principle is that the five elements (Earth, Metal, Fire, Water and Air) must be kept in harmony. Each has both positive and negative alignment. Magic is always occurring via the interplay of the elements, and life itself is magical. All experiences are magical. The goal is to live a life in balance, serene and natural. Spells are created not by harmony, but by disharmony. You don't will a spell into the world - rather, you cease to maintain balance in certain elemental combinations. You are not a creator of magic, but a dam stopping all magic from flowing forth at once. Common trappings of the Balanced Five include incense, meditation, physical representation of the elements and communion with ancestral spirits. The talent prevents you from ever raising your Counter-Spelling skill above your Tenacity Aspect's value. However, you may apply up to two Elemental Immuto to a single Spell, rather than one. Hedge Magic is the general term used to refer to those who follow a wholly personal path, creating a magical theory no other shares. Even trying to explain these theories tends to make you sound utterly insane. But they work. Many try to write down their theories, but it often goes horribly wrong - books catch fire or become tainted with infectious madness, say. It's often these tomes the Guild points to when talking about the dangers of magic. Not all Hedge mages are insane, however. Many just think they're special or uniquely able to understand some esoteric principle, and that might actually be true. Every one of them is unique, and that locks some doors but opens others. The talent requires you to choose a specific Elemental or Genus Immuto. You may only cast spells that can have that Immuto applied to them, and you must apply the Immuto to any spell you cast. However, that Immuto is considered to be in every Grimoire you use, and it never raises a spell's TN, though it can still lower it. Tradition Magic refers to those magical traditions passed down generationally. Many of these familial magics finally work properly again with the reopening of the Breach. Each tradition is different, and few enough of each that they can't really be organized. Each is unique, often using their own magical trappings, such as runestones or numerology or herb lore or even ritual scarification. Users are often expected to further the tradition, building on its concepts and expanding its possibilities, honing it better for the next generation. Teaching is a valuable part of tradition magic, and most tools are designed to be passed on to a student one day, usually your kids. The talent requires you to choose one pairing of skills: Sorcery and Necromancy, Counter-Spelling and Harness Soulstone or Enchanting and Prestidigitation. Then you choose one skill from your chosen pairing. You get a bonus to all duels with that skill, but may never raise the paired skill above 1. Next time: Soulstones and Grimoires
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2015 00:40
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Best kind of garbage. No one likes cold garbage. We will look forward to it! Also, we're so looking forward to this question we got for the next Afterthought: I always love questions like this, because they really boil down to "I do not understand why people have different tastes than myself."
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2015 00:53
|
|
Angry Salami posted:I think it sort of balances out, though, since most of the paths don't give you much of a benifit if you're not pursuing them. You might have 11% in executioner, but until you're ordered to kill someone, that doesn't get you anything. That's how I see Unknown Armies. Everybody's actions in Unknown Armies let them follow the pattern of the Choir Invisible. That's why I'm a fan of giving people an 'unknown mystical skill' at 11%. You don't know what you're doing until you play, but once you do play you'll often find yourself acting as a Messenger or a Mother or a Masterless Man, and you can pull power from that universal archetype. If you want some great fictional discussions of the Mystic Hermaphrodite, I suggest Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol for its portrayal of Rebis, Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic for the Phantom Stranger, and at least one Michael Moorcock book that discusses it at length - maybe Tanelorn or Rose. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jun 23, 2015 |
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2015 00:58
|
|
|
I think you mean Doctor Occult and Rose Psychic, maybe, not the Phantom Stranger?
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2015 01:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 08:15 |
|
unseenlibrarian posted:I think you mean Doctor Occult and Rose Psychic, maybe, not the Phantom Stranger? Yes, I do. The details are muddy, since UA drove me insane.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2015 01:07
|
|