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For me and my friends the perversion table is the litmus test. If you sit down to play and the new guy wants to roll on it, you just go 'ok, get out' right there. Maid provides you many screens for creepers (or, I guess, chances to be creepy).
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 21:19 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 05:13 |
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Between Maid RPG and Magical Burst, I kinda appreciate the fact that these authors are acknowledging that their subject matter can land on the far side of creepytown, but that they haven't hard coded it into the game as the default. I am eagerly anticipating the adventures of Little Diesel.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 21:22 |
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shotgunbadger posted:For me and my friends the perversion table is the litmus test. If you sit down to play and the new guy wants to roll on it, you just go 'ok, get out' right there.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 21:49 |
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So guys, I've been reading this thread and I happen to have all three Dragon Ball Z "Action Adventure Game" books, (base game, Frieza saga, Android Saga) so I think I will start posting about it. It's not completely as insane as quite a few things posted, but some are just hilarious. Art of war quotes left and right in the combat chapter just makes it better.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 22:21 |
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Lord Psychodin posted:Frieza saga, Are there Super Saiyan rules? I need Super Saiyan rules.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 22:30 |
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projecthalaxy posted:Are there Super Saiyan rules? I need Super Saiyan rules. Well, if it's the Fuzion rules, I think Super Saiyan is basically just 'roll all the dice, ever. You get all the dice.' and unless the other guy is slinging around all the dice as well you just win. edit: I'm probably wrong, but I have heard horror stories about the DBZ game.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 22:39 |
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Well that's no fun. The d20 DBZ fan supplement I know of had it handled as a wildshape type thing. Your ECL was 110+any levels you had in other classes. Yes, Saiyan was a class, and you could transform to SSJ1 with a trigger at 10, at will at 12, SSJ2 at 15, at will at 17, SSj3 at 25, at will at 30, at which point you had an ECL of 330+other class levels.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 22:48 |
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Yea the 'good anime' games like Burst and Maid are the ones that you know sat down day one went 'ok guys let's get this out of the way, this could get SO creepy SO easy, let's avoid that. If someone wants to do that creepy poo poo they can, but let's not make it a 'thing' please.' Also the D20 DBZ thing was the best thing, it was basically the 'I roll all the dice' version but with more bullshit charts and templates to PROVE to you that you roll all the dice. Please review both, in depth, including examples of character creation and combat. Things are getting too decent with time-fighting being cool despite being dense as gently caress, and Maid not being as creepy and disgusting as people expected, someone needs to suffer for us.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 22:55 |
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Changing Breeds Part X: The Pack The opening fiction to the Pack's section is the story of a guy who's about to throw a half-dead dog that lost him a bet in a dog fight into a dumpster, then getting ambushed by The intro writeup apparently writes the dog breeds as having "To Serve and Protect" etched in their veins at the same time that they threaten to castrate people for neutering and spaying dogs, and calling legislation to ban breeding of dogs for dogfighting "draconian." wait a minute what Moving on. Hyenas are also lumped into the Pack despite being a distinct evolutionary line closer to cats than dogs, due to The book also addresses the mildly interesting question of why ancient shapeshifters can sometimes turn into dog breeds codified less than a hundred years ago. Naturally for the WoD, it says "hosed if we know, make up the reason yourself." Normally I enjoy this, because I love making my own cosmology, but in this book it's pretty drat lazy about it. It brings up the question in a sidebar solely to say "Do it yourself." The Pack are all intensely social and crave a distinct hierarchy in their lives. They also surround themselves with animal and human kin to act as Omegas to them. There's also the problem of them dealing with prey-animal shifters and the possibility/probability that they'll try to hunt and eat them, even if they're friends. Also, they hate the Bastet because hurr cats and dogs. It's not like I have three cats and a dog and they're all bros or anything. The book also mentions that some Pack may end up as breeders for dog fighting, despite the opening fiction, a discussion of Pack Heart-Rippers in a few paragraphs, and entire tone of the book being violently and diametrically opposed to this. The paragraph that mentions this does not paint them in a negative light for doing so. This loving book. quote:Stereotypes The Maerans are the first of the three types of Pack, the domesticated breeds. Yes, all of them. Yes, that means that this  and this  have the exact same statistical representation. The book explains this by having tinier dog breeds explode to preposterous size in Primal form, most shifters are from old, large breeds, and saying that there's no Chihuahua shifters (and that it's probably for the best.) Maerans are basically stereotypes of dogs writ large: loyal, protective, hate being alone, don't do well with cats, go berserk around intruders, etc et- quote:That canine blood manifests through a "pedigree" — as the breed of dog a person becomes. This pedigree reveals a deep connection between the shapechanging human and the dog-shape he attains. While Maerans don’t usually arise from bestial couplings between humans and dogs (though there are rumors to that effect...), this connection does appear to follow family lines. CAN WE GO ONE loving UPDATE WITHOUT ALLUDING TO, OR OUTRIGHT MENTIONING, BESTIALITY!? Ahem. Mechanically, the Maerans are Werewolf Lite, with approximately the same spread with the numbers lowered. Next are the Riantes, the hyenas. Riantes are scavengers who prefer to live alone with their enclaves of fellow hyenas, kin, and Riantes. They're all sorts of crawling in my skin about being outcasts, "[hiding] their bitterness in caustic laughter and [burying] their tears in scorn and disdain for what they cannot have." Most Riantes are poor or barely making ends meet, which might have something to do with the fact they only show up in the more strife-filled areas of Africa and the Middle East. Hyenas also are deeply tied with witchcraft and the rumor of a hyena-man can get lynch mobs a-frenzying. The book also mentions the misconception/myth that hyenas can change sexes, though thankfully shooting it down and not expounding on why that exists.  Warning: disturbing biology lesson ahoy! It's because female spotted hyenas have a seven inch clitoris that looks like the male penis, and they give birth through it, often creating fatal tearing or leading to a suffocated newborn. This is due to the female hyena being stuffed with male hormones to pass onto her male children so they have as many babies as possible to pass on her genes, which kinda backfires sometimes as the babies are so aggressive they attack each other from the moment they pop out of their mom's dong. Evolution is a hilariously cruel thing. Oh yeah, and the hyena greeting ritual involves sniffing and licking their wangs/pseudowangs. Both genders get erections on command to show submission and greet another hyena higher on the social ladder. Once you've stopped trying to scrub that image out of your brain, you can be as thankful as I am that the writers stopped short of giving a mechanical way to make furries with dickginas playable. Anyway, the backgrounds say that African Riantes tend to treat both genders equally while the Indian breeds have females be dominant, which is flat-out wrong, as spotted hyenas (rather apparently now) are overwhelmingly matriarchal. Mechanically, the Riantes are actually kind of an interesting alternative to Werewolves: slightly smaller but equally as tough, with the animal form being far tougher and slightly slower. The Vargr are the discount bin werewolves. Their writeup:  . No, seriously, that's pretty much the whole thing. They have no idea why they exist or why other werewolves exist and why Father Wolf doesn't favor them. They have no warform at all, just a huge-rear end Dire Wolf form that has its stats only barely differentiated from the Werewolf version. They're also mostly (uuuuuuuugh) lone wolves.The final breed, from Other Species, is the Warrigal. They're Australian aborigine stereotypes who turn into dingo-men. That's about it.  You may have noticed that there wasn't any art this time. This is because both art pieces in this chapter were  .http://i.imgur.com/ORBUA.png http://i.imgur.com/d1ekV.png I would bet a large amount of money that the artist drew those penises with meticulous detail and then smudged them in Photoshop so it would be publishable. Judging from a later piece in the book, I'm probably not wrong. Next time: the Royal Apes. Oh Jesus.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 22:56 |
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As a note, there's actually an interesting belief in some areas of Ethiopia involving hyenas being the guardians of King Solomon's gold mines...and also that these hyenas will assault your village, tear it apart and eat your loving children unless someone keeps them fed. Sometimes, these people who keep the hyenas fed (who are socially discriminated against; this is a dirty but necessary job) are believed to be able to turn into hyenas as well. They say you can tell the royal hyenas by the gold earrings they wear. Naturally, this belief is far more interesting than anything this book puts forward. This is pretty common. (Also: if you think only dogs and wolves have alphas? No. Wererabbits have alphas, too. Everyone has loving alphas, even though that's not even how wolves work.)
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 23:07 |
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Hyenas are such loving cool animals and WoD in both versions just shat all over them for shifting breeds. I would so rather play a Hyena game then a wolf game.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 23:15 |
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It's hilarious that they don't even bother giving ranges or something for different dog breeds. Then again, this whole section seems lacking in effort all around.Daeren posted:CAN WE GO ONE loving UPDATE WITHOUT ALLUDING TO, OR OUTRIGHT MENTIONING, BESTIALITY!? Yyyup, this is made for old world players. Hey, at least the Breeds don't still exist mechanically. shotgunbadger posted:someone needs to suffer for us. Daeren's already doing that, as you can see. Syrg seems to have learned the error of his ways and decided to live life fresh and FATAL-free.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 23:22 |
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My job can get pretty boring and I've nothing else to do while here, so: Continuum: Homo sapiens has several unguessed cousins who become wise enough to span. We begin by addressing why the Continuum doesn't actively recruit: it's essentially a rebirth into a new family for someone to join, and they don't want to force that on people. You can't raise a child as a spanner, so instead, they adopt levellers - carefully, and only from those who are quick enough to notice them and determined enough to stick with it. Drafting someone into your family just wouldn't work, and neither does drafting spanners. Besides, the Continuum wants to avoid a deterministic future, and they foresee recruiting actively as causing it, leading to kidnapping people and telling them their place in spacetime rather than letting them choose. Narcissists, conversely, do actively recruit; they prefer to take from the Continuum's ranks, but sometimes one will have the technology needed to jump someone to Span 1...and that can be very, very dangerous. These people are called crashers, and they are almost always killed or fragged out once someone realizes what they are, even if they seem innocent. After all, you never know what post-hypnotic suggestions a narcissist has left lying in their subconscious, or what diseases they may have. Between that and being trained by narcissists, they're just too dangerous to have around in most cases. Spanners generally don't hear anything about this until Span 3. We'll talk more about them later. Sometimes, a person invited to the Continuum will have doubts or second thoughts, especially when they learn that it involves invasive surgery - which it does, as Span 3s learn. If they've not learned too much, they'll get mindwiped and sent home. If that would leave too much of a hole in their memory, though...well, sometimes they have to be killed. Anyway, once someone does agree to join, they get hypnotized ASAP. This is to lay in a hook for a later hypnotic command, the one that will wipe their memory of their induction until they hit Span 3. This is also handled by the Physicians - they sort and mark key neurons involved in long term memory. After that, the new spanner spends some months making friends and learning how to Span, having been given that ability by the Physicians (which we'll talk about in more detail later). The Physicians then evaluate whether the skills and names of his friends are in his "deep memory" and, if so, take him to his corner. The Physician attending will then activate the hypnotic triggers, causing the marked neurons to retract their dendrites until a specific moment; if needed, they also have machines to do this. The memory of training and being made a spanner is thus locked away. Most spanners are from the Piscean and Aquarian eras - that's from the 1 AD onward - because that's when the most humans are actually around. In fact, the further back you go, the rarer spanners are. Almost no one from before 100,000 BC is considered bright enough to be worth teaching. Apparently, there's also intelligent apes and human offshoots that could learn to Span, though they are very rare. These, we're told, should be watched and treated as carefully as humans from the same era. Then a short section on day jobs, and how they can be as important or unimportant as you want them to be. They suggest that running scenarios in the day job, however, can help show how stressful day-to-day interaction with levellers can be, simply from the frustration of having to keep secrets from these people and that every action can seem like an act to keep their favor. Now we learn why Span 1 and 2 don't know the secret of spanning: temptation. They are inexperienced and would be tempted to share the secret too easily. That's why narcissists love to recruit from the low ranks. We also learn that spanning doesn't care about momentum, body positions or being tied up. You can span, and you'll take only what you want to take with you (though to take something, that thing must be either touching you, or touching something that's touching you, or touching something that's touching something that's touching you...and so on. You can take a bottle of water if you can touch the bottle, for instance), and at worst you may be a little disoriented. If you are born in one Era but become a spanner in the next - say, born in 1990 but become a spanner in 2010 - you are a Cusp spanner and are considered native to both eras. Anyone born after 2400 is considered an Inheritor and gets treated as such, rather than a potential spanner recruit...but anyone born between 2222 and 2400 can claim to be both an Inheritor and a spanner, if recruited. This can get complicated. We get a bit on Gemini incidents, but it's not too interesting. We do learn that while it would be possible to, say, clone yourself and kill that clone to make a corpse and thus escape death more than once, it's not allowed. No Thespian will want to play a corpse, and it takes a well-respected Exalt to convince a Physician to grow up a convincing dead clone. This is a common Narcissist trick, and thus it draws suspicion. Besides, if everyone was allowed to never die, we're told, there would be dire consequences. So, instead, you will eventually have to deal with any death in your Yet by...actually dying. We get a short discussion on an anthropological phenomenon: specifically, the first time a person comes to a place, they'll be considered a foreigner...but if they leave and come back, they will be welcomed home as a returning native, apparently. GMs are encouraged to keep this in mind when dealing with past civilizations. We also learn that the Jesus Fish is a result of early Christians copying spanners trying to identify each other by using the mark of Pisces, it being too early in history to ask the time.  Then, a discussion of paradox. It is hard to deliberately frag levellers or objects past one point, since that's likely to also get the Continuum involved and start a time combat...but some narcissists will try anyway. Most as/as nots only cause 1 frag, and then increase as you ignore them. However, really big stuff (someone tries to blow up your hometown or murder your grandfather) can cause 2. The more personal it is, the more frag needs to accumulate from ignoring it before it starts to affect others; it's a lot easier to collaterally frag by blowing up a town or destroying a house then stealing a pair of socks or killing Grandpa. Natural paradox can happen too, though - and that has no as/as not, being caused by spanning in the area of extremely high energy. Natural paradoxes happen around these things, rarely... Continuum posted:The Continuum must point out at this juncture that many of these observed instances are actions of sentient force, or results therefrom, and caution the level scientific community in their research. That being said, happy hunting. ...anyway, we get a brief discussion on the geon, a particle from a New Scientist article that apparently can be affected by events in its future. I have no idea why. Anyway, what causes natural frag is usually radioactivity. Spanning in or out near a uranium mine will get you 1 Frag. So will a particularly heavily electrified fence or an electrical transformer on a main line. A lightning strike within 3 yards or ball lightning within 25 will get you 2 frag, solar wind will get you 5 and spanning while within six seconds in either direction at the location of a nuke's ground zero will instantly shoot you to 8. 6 minutes is 6, 6 hours is 3, 6 days i one. A planetary axial shift will get you 9. Don't span during these things! You can, however, span past them without incident; it's spanning at the moment they are happening that causes problems. Since there's no as/as not, you'll need to get Physician help to get rid of that frag, too. We now get into what frag feels like, "saved for the GM's section, as it can be a bit graphic and startling." It makes you feel sick, nauseous or pained because you feel the universe isn't screwed on right, as you try to relate your mind to your existence and doubting you fit. At high Frag, your Yet is so damaged that you consciousness is drawn off to fill in the missing events. This is because you are no longer human, apparently, but "a reconstituion of matter and energy". Which is explained later. Thus spanners are also more likely to disintegrate when fragged than levellers or objects. Frag can rip apart your subconscious to fill in your Yet, causing mental problems and lack of control. Fragged spanners, we are told, explain faces in windows that shouldn't be there, footprints leading nowhere, sudden terror from no source, dogs or cats bristling at things that aren't there, figures on the edge of vision that become scenery when you look, photograph blurs and more. These, we are told, are fragged people. Next time: Secrets of the Fraternities!
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 23:35 |
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Strange Matter posted:Between Maid RPG and Magical Burst, I kinda appreciate the fact that these authors are acknowledging that their subject matter can land on the far side of creepytown, but that they haven't hard coded it into the game as the default. shotgunbadger posted:Things are getting too decent with time-fighting being cool despite being dense as gently caress, and Maid not being as creepy and disgusting as people expected, someone needs to suffer for us.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 23:40 |
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Zereth posted:Actually, I think by default you have a chance of rolling a Sexy Lolita maid wearing Transparent clothes who's a Nymphomaniac. And the item list is actually toned down from the Japanese version. The system won't break down becuase you just ripped out some critical mechanics if you excise the creepy poo poo, but you have to actively do something about it. Transparent/rainbow and Relation/perversion are those two results. So if you happened to roll that you can just opt for the less dodgy options. I can't say anything about the item list though, I never read it. A d666 list of an assortment of rules for little dodads in a game that excels as a rules light system is kind of asinine in my opinion.
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| # ? Jul 26, 2011 23:54 |
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I think I have a copy of that floating around on the other computer, I will have to check. But yeah, most of the deleted items that I remember are mega creepy. edit: Yeah, I found it. The first page is an explanation of why they cut things, the word 'creepy' is used a lot. Not all of the deleted items are creepy, many of them are just references to stuff unheard of in the West. But here is a semi-creepy example: Too Hot For Maid RPG posted:433 Widow-Killer Kwyndig fucked around with this message at Jul 27, 2011 around 00:09 |
| # ? Jul 26, 2011 23:56 |
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Can you get negative skills in Maid? I noticed that your type lowers skills and you can roll a zero, so what happens of you get a - on a 0 skill?
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 00:36 |
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Kwyndig posted:I think I have a copy of that floating around on the other computer, I will have to check. Aren't there Nazis in there somewhere, too?
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 00:51 |
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Yes, there's an Iron Cross item that makes Nazis follow you around. Whether you like Nazis or not.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 00:55 |
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Kwyndig posted:Yes, there's an Iron Cross item that makes Nazis follow you around. Whether you like Nazis or not. The Eisernes Kreuz isn't even a Nazi symbol, dammit. The German military used it before they came to power and they still use it.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 01:05 |
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Kavak posted:The Eisernes Kreuz isn't even a Nazi symbol, dammit. The German military used it before they came to power and they still use it. It would be so much cooler if you could use it to summon the Red Baron.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 01:10 |
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Rocketlex posted:It would be so much cooler if you could use it to summon the Red Baron. Of course, they'd need another item to summon his counterpart and arch-rival...
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 01:13 |
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homerlaw posted:Can you get negative skills in Maid? I noticed that your type lowers skills and you can roll a zero, so what happens of you get a - on a 0 skill? Maid is pretty easy to salvage from its own creepiness, but there are still problems. And once we get deeper into the optional stuff, well, the party's going to get a little wild.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 01:34 |
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Comment posted:Maid is pretty easy to salvage from its own creepiness, but there are still problems. And once we get deeper into the optional stuff, well, the party's going to get a little wild.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 01:53 |
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Kavak posted:The Eisernes Kreuz isn't even a Nazi symbol, dammit. The German military used it before they came to power and they still use it. I know that, and you know that, but Japan sure as gently caress doesn't. They don't even have their own history correct anymore, let along somebody else's. Coming soon, I roll up a Mekton character or two.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 02:11 |
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Goggle Fox posted:Daeren's already doing that, as you can see. Syrg seems to have learned the error of his ways and decided to live life fresh and FATAL-free. Nope, I just played host to people during SDCC last week and you better believe between that and the contest deadline in LP I was not taking time out to open those PDFs. Tried keeping the OP up to date, though, I'm not abandoning the thread. If I wanted to be a dick I'd say post here, vote for Syrg but don't do that unless you enjoy the video. (This is what I have been up to instead of reading FATAL.)
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 02:52 |
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Syrg Sapphire posted:(This is what I have been up to instead of reading FATAL.) Might take a look later. It's a neat concept, if weird. Definitely more worthwhile than anything involving FATAL, entertaining as it might be.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 02:56 |
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Daeren posted:I would bet a large amount of money that the artist drew those penises with meticulous detail and then smudged them in Photoshop so it would be publishable. Judging from a later piece in the book, I'm probably not wrong. A bunch of the pictures in this book were drawn with gigantic junk, which was blurred out post-production. Seeing the originals is terrifying. And I'm working on the last update of Infernals. I have something special planned.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:06 |
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CAPSLOCKGIRL posted:A bunch of the pictures in this book were drawn with gigantic junk, which was blurred out post-production. Seeing the originals is terrifying. First off, where the hell did you see the originals? Second off, the sole piece of art I was referring to that for certain has a version (DEERHOOF ANTLERDUDE) wasn't blurred so much as it was redrawn.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:13 |
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Daeren posted:First off, where the hell did you see the originals?
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:15 |
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Jonked posted:The artist put all the originals up on his DA page, IIRC. That's where the Mandeergo original picture came from, actually. Oh Christ, that wasn't the only one on his page? I just remember Yawgmoth or somebody linking it in the nWoD thread, me clicking it, and immediately regretting ever having done so.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:17 |
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Syrg you whore.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:19 |
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Daeren posted:I just remember Yawgmoth linking it, me clicking it, and immediately regretting ever having done so. 
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:37 |
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Daeren posted:First off, where the hell did you see the originals? I had a furry boyfriend at one point in time, and that's all I'm going to say on the matter.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:44 |
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Mekton Zeta Part 2: Randomly Determining How Many Friends You Have, and whether your parents are spies! So, now that we've got the introduction out of the way, we're moving on to the first chapter, Character Generation. Everything up to skill selection in Mekton can be randomly rolled, and in some cases must be randomly rolled. The first step in the character generation process is the Lifepath. While at points on the Lifepath, which is intended to cover the character's life from birth to age 16, you are allowed to chose results, I will be rolling everything. Why? Because all of the things that can gently caress over your character require you to roll anyway. We start by rolling for our hypothetical character's social status. This primarily covers how much cash you start with, but since you aren't expected to actually buy your robot I'm not even sure why the game has money rules. I go over to irc and ask my faithful dice bot to roll a d10 for me. We get a 9, which is good, because on this chart, higher numbers equal more money, in this case we start with 900.. wait, is this yen? 900 yen won't even get me a decent sandwich in the real world. I guess in the future of Mekton Zeta Japan took over the world's economy and experienced a hyper-deflationary period or something. Anyway, my hypothetical character is apparently a Noble or just plain Wealthy, depending on the world. Now let's find out if hypothetical character's parents are still alive! We roll another d10 and get a 4. This means something happened to them. Now, the next chart is the first one that specifically says we're allowed to chose, but I'm randomly rolling everything, so here goes. We get another four... which means our character's parents have amnesia... somehow. Alternatives are several choices for dead parents (war, murder, accident) and several other options where your parents are missing or otherwise not in the scene. If you're wondering where 'regular parents' is located, it's on the previous chart. Now, having determined that both or one of Hypothetical's parents have amnesia (the game does not specify how to pick this, I guess you just get to chose. I'm going to go with both because that's funnier). We move on to Family Standing. Rolling another d10 (there's a lot of d10 rolling, and again you don't get to pick) we discover that despite having no memory of Hypothetical, everything's otherwise fine. So we get to skip chart C, which includes such fun things as exile, imprisonment, murder, economic collapse, and other disasters. And we also skip chart D which is where you randomly determine what you're going to do about your family's exile, murder, etc. Actually, charts C and D are both choice charts. Anyway, now it's time to figure out how many siblings Hypothetical has! And we get six, which means we have six siblings (it's roll a d10, 1-7 is number of siblings, 8-10 is only child). Then we are required to roll for gender, age relative to character, and then chose or roll how they feel about you. It is theoretically possible to be an octuplet. Now, Hypothetical has four brothers and two sisters, one younger brother and sister, and the rest are older than Hypothetical. The younger brother hates Hypothetical, and most of them are evenly split amongst like and dislike (seriously, it's a lot of rolls for something that might not even come up in play, especially as this step is done after finding out whether any of the character's siblings are even alive). Interestingly, none of them are neutral towards Hypothetical. It breaks down like so for those of you who care.
Now we roll for friends, and get a 6, on a d6. drat the dicebot wants me to do a lot of work tonight. So I tell it to roll 12d10 and figure it out from there. Note, you are not able to pick the friend's gender or relationship to you, this is a roll only chart. Oddly, while the previous chart used odd for male and even for female relations, the friends chart reverses that for no apparent reason.
It should be noted that ex-lover is also on this chart, so the game can decide your character's sexual orientation for you as well, unless you were just 'experimenting'. Now we get to Enemies, which you usually don't get at this stage (you can, but it's rare). While we didn't roll an enemy I will still cover the chart. The Enemies Chart lets you chose most of the options, except for why your enemy is mad at you, which includes a Mystery (GM's choice) option, which is always nice to see. Now we get to Romantic Life, as sixteen year old pilots apparently get all sorts of action. This is another choice chart, but there's only three options and only the subchart for not in a relationship has any kind of choice element to it. To be fair, the vast majority of die rolls will land the character squarely in uninvolved, but that's not what I got. So it's time to more on to chart H1, Ah, Love... and I get a romantic rival for one of the two people involved in the relationship. Oddly, there are no details about either the rival, or Hypothetical's young love, leaving all of this up to player's choice. We're almost done with Lifepaths (for now), as the game gives us some suggestions on appearance and personality. This is another choice chart, thankfully, but I'm gonna keep rolling. The game recommends only using this chart randomly when rolling friends/lovers/enemies (okay, it might have been nice if they had told us before this step to do that... Not going back because I would have to roll ninety-one more times to populate all the incidental characters we've picked up along the way so far, not counting amnesiac parents). Anyway, Hypothetical has long blonde hair with bangs, violet eyes, is arrogant, proud, and aloof, values honesty, has a tool of some sort as most valued possession, and values a public figure most in the world. The hair color and eye color chart is full of anime options like green hair and gold eyes. Although violet is a little odd, at least it isn't Always Changing. Now that we're done with Lifepaths for now, we move on to the next step. Determining stats. Characters have nine stats in Mekton Zeta: Attractiveness, Body Type, Cool, Empathy, Intelligence, Luck, Movement Allowance, Reflexes, and Technical Ability. Most of them are useless unless you spend a lot of time outside of your mecha. Of note are Body Type (which determines you 'Hits', hand to hand damage, encumbrance, etc. it's basically GURPS Strength), Luck (which gives you a pool of points you can spend on rolls) and Reflexes (used for basically everything combat). Of the nine stats, the ones to powergame, if you were into that sort of thing, are Intelligence, Luck, Reflexes, and Technical Ability, everything else is either for social skill rolls or is used to derive something and then never referenced again. Stats have a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 10 (this will be important later). Now, we get to figuring out how to buy our stats. There are three methods, only one of which is sane, and it's not the recommended option. The first method is to just roll 1d10 for each stat, rerolling any 1s and rerolling entirely if you end up with a total below forty, you have to do this ten times because I didn't mention Education, which is a 'substat' in that it's not actually a stat but you buy it during stat generation. The second method (listed as the default) is to roll 10d10 and then take the total to split amongst your stats as you desire. Again, you reroll if you get below 40. This method, from a game design standpoint, pretty much combines the two worst features of random generation and point buy, and it's the default. Let me repeat that, the game wants you to randomly roll for how many points you get to build your character. As the most insane option, I will of course be using it. The final option is to have the GM decide how many points everyone gets to build their character. The game recommends 70 points, but it also lists other options from 55 (slightly worse than average) to 80 (practically superhuman). This post has gotten pretty long, so I'm going to leave you with a few pictures from the book and a chart I didn't get into.    Next time: Skills? And maybe resolution mechanics!
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 04:45 |
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So I went looking on Deviantart for the picture I was thinking of. I think I'm never going to be able to see again. Changing Breeds fanart.  (Also some of the other stuff by the artist who made it actually made my jaw drop to look at)
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 05:12 |
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Kwyndig posted:Rolls and charts. Everywhere. I'm noticing a pattern with these old-style RPGs, and it makes me wonder. Why are there so many 80s and early 90s RPGs with charts for everything in character creation? I can understand having a huge list of idea-farm charts, for when you're seriously stuck on what to make for a concept, but these games don't offer, they force you to roll on a billion charts to find out what happens. I remember hearing somewhere that Traveller had these masses of charts as well, though I think you had a lot more choice than in most of these. Difference is, Traveller is the only game I know of where a character can die during creation. It's supposed to be a pretty good game despite this. For Mekton Zeta specifically, er... the game recommends 70 points, but offers a roll that averages 55? The game makes you roll to figure out how many points you get to purchase your attributes? (Not the first time we've seen this, but it's still stupid.) There's a chart that you're supposed to roll on before rolling a specific number on another chart? This thing isn't off to a good start.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 05:33 |
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Part 5: or, Why hard copies will always be superior I've been trying for the past couple of days to continue writing about this loving book, but honestly, the rest of the book is uphill from...  Well, we all know what it's uphill from, lets leave it at that. I'm just awful at calling something bad when I have something worse to compare it to. I have problems calling Duke Nukem Forever bad because I've played Final Fantasy 13, I have trouble saying that the Twilight movies are bad because I've sat through Birdemic, etc. Chapters 1 and two are still loving awful, don't don't get me wrong. They're still poorly written, immature and disgusting, with broken mechanics thrown into Chapter 2, but they're not Child Sex Olympics bad. Which makes the fact that the remaining chapters are passable/good all the more the shame. At any rate, there's a reason I prefer my RPGbooks to be hardcopies rather than digital versions. Sure, digital copies are cheaper and have less printing errors. Sure, they usually have exellent bookmarking systems and hyperlinks can let you jump around the book to relevant sections. Sure, they're easier to store than huge, honking, heavy hardcopies. But...        ...there's something that's just so much more satisfying about hardcopies.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 05:43 |
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Goggle Fox posted:I'm noticing a pattern with these old-style RPGs, and it makes me wonder. Why are there so many 80s and early 90s RPGs with charts for everything in character creation? I can understand having a huge list of idea-farm charts, for when you're seriously stuck on what to make for a concept, but these games don't offer, they force you to roll on a billion charts to find out what happens. I was going to bring this up in relation to R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk. The Lifepath of the first edition Cyberpunk has, under Disaster Strikes! table, you have a 25% chance to receive a stat drop from an Illness/Addiction, Mental/Physical Incapacitation, or an Accident. Most are a single point from REF and/or COOL, but with the Accident one, your character's ATTractiveness stat can be reduced to 1. Not by 1, reduced to 1. So, if you had hopes of playing a good-looking Rockerboy, too bad. Oh, you could get it repaired but the plastic surgery is likely more than your character can afford starting out. For each point of ATT you wanted to elevate, it was 1D10x100 Eurodollars (I remember when that actually sounded cool). Starting characters only had 2000 Euro, 4000 if they sold themselves out to a corporation, an organized crime syndicate, or the government.
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 06:06 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 05:13 |
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CAPSLOCKGIRL posted:...there's something that's just so much more satisfying about hardcopies. Book burning of any kind makes me kinda sad. 
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| # ? Jul 27, 2011 06:33 |
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