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shotgunbadger posted:Wait do you guys legit not get that stereotypes are in 'character' and the entire 'character' of the Royal Apes is that they are arrogant and think themselves better then 'common man' and all? No, I get it. Really I just wanted an excuse to post a thought experiment about how broken some Arcana are that came to me the other day 
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| # ¿ Jul 30, 2011 23:29 |
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| # ¿ May 25, 2013 09:48 |
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Changing Breeds Part XI 1/2: Mages Are Broken Disclaimer: None of this works quite the way I say it does if you assume that Magic > Physics, which the system does in order to prevent maniacs like me from doing what I'm about to do. I'm going to be showing what happens if people forget that rule (and, from a questioning of my friends who play WoD, most of us HAD), or deliberately ignore it. Hello, and welcome back to The Battle of the Century, Round 2. After having the title of Manliest Thing In The World wrested from him, The Man Your Man Could Kill Like went back to the drawing board.  He puts on his robe and wizard hat Mage in nWoD claims to be cross-splat compatible, but this is a damned dirty lie. Mage is only cross-splat in that the mechanics are the same as the other systems. When it comes to relative levels of power, a munchkined Mage at character creation could easily mop the floor with just about any other character at creation barring humongous amounts of munchkinry and more planning than Batman. Mages thrive on being paranoid and always prepared, and also having about a dozen or so pre-made powers (and potentially infinite powers if you're creative enough) per dot of their supernatural power as opposed to only one. Also, they have ten different Arcana to choose from (Death, Matter, Life, Spirit, Time, Fate, Mind, Space, Forces, and Prime). Half the reason I'm doing this is to remind you that no matter how broken Changing Breeds gets, it can always be worse. The other half is because this example horrifies me. So, our hero still has 5 in every Attribute and Skill, and now we'll give him Gnosis 5 and the maximum amount in each Arcana he can. He can't have five dots in all Arcana, because Gnosis sets hard limits for each Arcana you learn after the first. For example, at Gnosis 1, your first four Arcana are limited to three dots maximum, the next three are two dots, and the last three are one dot. A mage with Gnosis 1 who has learned all the Arcana before increasing his raw power would be exceptionally weird, however. We're staying at Gnosis 5 because Gnosis 6 and above is really powerful and unlocks Arcana above 5 dots, which is considered to be the domain of Archmastery, and Archmages are synonymous with "ST Fiat." There's about eleven thousand ways to kill, maim, humiliate, destroy, trick, enslave, annoy, or benefit somebody with each Arcana, with certain arcana (hello, Mind, Space, and Fate) being exceptionally good at what they do. However, a few Arcana seem innocuous enough until you apply advanced learning to them, at which point they suddenly become some of the most hideously powerful stuff available to ANYTHING in the whole system. I'm referring to Matter and Forces in the hands of somebody with a degree in either Chemistry or Physics. That's right,  is the deadliest thing in the World of Darkness.Imagine the open battlefield that our hero and the Elephant Man were on last time. Let's make our hero's three five-dot Arcana Forces, Matter, and Space. Space 5 means that, given a sympathetic connection (like a hair clipping, some blood, or a photo), he can be on the other side of the planet from Elephant Man and still cast a spell on him (albeit not one that's full-out offensive). Or, in this case, just open a Scrying window and cast through that. The Mage Your Mage Could Cast Like is definitely going to want to be at least one county away for this one. With his fifteen dice roll for the rote, our hero casts the Matter 4 spell, Lesser Transmogrification. With his average of five successes, he is able to affect an "olympic swimming pool"'s worth of one kind of matter and transform it into one kind of liquid, and vice versa. The only real limitation is that you can't make impossible things, like liquid wood. Our hero busts out his chemistry textbook, and settles on turning a 29x29x29 meter chunk of the ground below Elephant Man into liquid chlorine triflouride. (If you count this as an exotic substance, this technically requires Archmastery to do sympathetically.) This stuff oxidizes more than oxygen itself does, meaning it can burn things you probably think are impossible to burn, like ashes, sand, water, solid asbestos, concrete, bricks, and probably the human soul. As mentioned in the article, a one ton spill of this - which translates to about 512 liters if my math is right - burned through a foot of concrete and at least a meter of sand and gravel before guttering out, while burning off hydroflouric acid fumes, an acid that gives you a loving heart attack as it burns your skin off. That was 512 liters. An olympic swimming pool has 2,500,000 liters. That, my friends, is a whole lot of burning. Also, if the ambient temperature where the spell is cast is about 13 Celsius or 55 Fahrenheit, the liquid will immediately turn into a gaseous state, probably explosively, sending Satan's own hot sauce soaring through the air. If the area is even remotely wooded, or otherwise full of things that burn well to begin with, I would honestly expect to be able to see the fire from space. Suffice to say, I don't think you even need to figure out how many dice are rolled to burn up Elephant Man before saying "gently caress it, he's dead. And so is a good portion of the county." Other possible japes with Forces and Matter include: - Warping gravity with enough force in a wide enough area to make a significant portion of the planet's crust implode - Turning bullets into solid Caesium slugs mid-flight - Being able to remotely access any information being transmitted wirelessly, WITH YOUR BRAIN - Doing the chlorine triflouride trick with liquid nitrogen, flash-freezing the poor idiot before the liquid nitrogen turns into gaseous nitrogen at insane rates - Make your Storytellers go crosseyed when you ask how it's unfair to be able to turn water into napalm when the only mechanical restrictions between Matter dots are mostly based on the metaphysical value of matter so you can't turn dirt to gold until 5 dots And much more. This is only a small fraction of what you can do with two of the Arcana, as well. There's commanding legions of zombies, spiritual hordes, giving people aneurysms with a thought, becoming The Incredible Hulk, and scores of other ways to break the game. So, what's stopping some lunatic Mage from blowing up the planet shortly after Awakening? Three things, really. 1: Archmages. Basically, if you survive long enough to become an Archmage, you know that the balance of power in the world is hilariously fragile, and all the Archmages - Pentacle or Seer (looooong story, but they're two opposing groups) - observe Pax Arcana. This generally means "Don't do stupid obvious bullshit with Archmastery or magic in general that would reveal Mages or ruin the planet/reality, or we'll loving kill you." And they will, because they're essentially demigods by the time they're slinging Archmastery around. 2: Paradox. The Abyss - a horrible, sucking un-reality defined by its lack of definition or form or logic, created by a huge magical catastrophe in the past - notices when spells are cast that flagrantly go against how reality should work. It proceeds to latch on to these spells and devour that delicious Supernal energy with all it has, screwing with how the spell is cast. At best, this is you getting a nasty headache from internalizing the damage. At worst, the Abyss spills into reality where the spell is cast, and all sorts of horrible abominations come out hungry for a meal of Dumbass Mage. Casting a spell like this doesn't mechanically guarantee the Abyss noticing it, but any Storyteller worth a gently caress would immediately have the Abyss explode in from how vulgar the spell is. Really, it's arguable whether or not the incursion is better or worse than the actual spell. At this point, Archmages would probably be interfering as well. 3: Despite how broken Mage can get, it requires you to actually sit down and think about how to break it. At first glance, it just seems moderately powerful, but as soon as someone with a devious mind, a command of how the Storyteller system works, and a good amount of practical knowledge sets themselves to breaking the game, the game breaks in a spectacular fashion. There's also the argument that the actual tone of the game setting itself could mean any phenomenal cosmic power you wield is utterly meaningless in the face of a horrible nega-universe devouring everything and false gods who hate you on a personal level sitting in the thrones of heaven controlling everything, but that doesn't negate the fact that Crazy Steve just blew up Cleveland. In summation, Mage Storytellers should pray they don't play with douchebag munchkins, and if they do, they'd better be ready to flat out say "No, gently caress you, you don't get to do that." Next time: I actually go on with what this review is supposed to be about. Daeren fucked around with this message at Aug 2, 2011 around 23:17 |
| # ¿ Jul 31, 2011 00:47 |
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FactsAreUseless posted:It becomes much harder to break, or at least requires a lot more creativity, if you force players to explain everything within their mage's paradigm (assuming Awakening still does paradigm) or get hit with massive Paradox penalties. So somebody trying to do SCIENCE! nMage did away with consensual reality, and I am eternally grateful that it did because holy poo poo that was  all over the place when you started looking at other parts of the World of Darkness, or even different things inside of Mage itself.Edit: and for the love of God, don't start those arguments in here, we're already dangerously out of the original territory as it is.
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| # ¿ Jul 31, 2011 01:00 |
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Etherwind posted:Fair enough points. I just personally think that completely bypassing the laws of physics using the spells based on the laws of physics is a little jarring, so I mentally ignore that until it's pointed out. The fact that my usual partner in crime is even more of a "everything has to make perfect logical sense god loving damnit" person than I am doesn't help. As for the Space requirement, restrictions on attack spells, etc, I flat out forgot about those. So, yeah, my bad. I'll edit the goofups out and put in disclaimers.
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| # ¿ Jul 31, 2011 01:12 |
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Etherwind posted:If you wanted to kill him in a really inelegant and unstylish way, sure. Yeah, I think you win this day. Curse you and your trumping me in any Mage discussion we get into  (Though I still thank you for alerting me to how phenomenally broken Acanthus are, so I can stay on my toes around Acanthus PCs)
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| # ¿ Jul 31, 2011 01:31 |
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I am sorry for starting this derail, let's rerail this back to the topic at hand: namely, a baby Marlon Brando with kabbalah powers is the greatest concept ever.
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| # ¿ Jul 31, 2011 04:34 |
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:oWoD A couple of notes here: Freak Legion has the worst power in anything White Wolf has ever written, so long as you are ignoring the existence of the Exalted erotic roleplay supplement that started as a joke and became horrifyingly real. Its only competition is something from the Giovanni handbook that has made even the groggest of grognards that I've shown recoil from it. More evidence that White Wolf hates Mexico: all Mexican Technocrats are lazy, corrupt, and incompetent, and Mexico City is erased from existence via Paradox from the biggest Mary Sue in White Wolf's history (Samuel Haight) and nobody seems to care. Mafia and Gypsies might get old pretty quick, because the whole reason they're bad is that they are Racist As All gently caress and there's only so many times you can quote something and go "drat that's racist." KotE has a mix of good and bad mechanics, at the least. Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand is bad because, if I'm remembering the story right, the dude writing it was getting fired and he decided to make the most hilariously terrible, broke-rear end power having, canon-shattering book he possibly could and I love it for that. Later books just pretended it didn't exist, or said the ideas within were only held by total lunatics. The [x] Of The East has an oChangeling kith of hypersexualized cat people called the Nyan in one of the books. If this doesn't show you why both XotE and oChangeling are terrible I think you're beyond hope. Doing oChangeling in and of itself would be a burden sufficient enough to not need to review the rest of those books. There's an enchantment based on BDSM relationships. An example enemy for Changelings is a perfectly ordinary slab of concrete that kills them with how normal it is. There's over fifty different kinds of Changeling you can be, and there would have been more, had the system not imploded. The system falls apart at the slightest touch. The backstory is creepy, retarded, and full of unfortunate implications. There's more than a few times that 'Changeling' seems a whole hell of a lot like a euphemism for 'Homosexual' (which opens up a giant can of worms on its own.) There's a Changeling race of magical black people, and another of magical Jews. One of my friends flat out slaps anyone who so much as implies there was an oChangeling. It's that bad. ... I think that my review is slowly turning this into the Terrible poo poo From White Wolf Megathread 
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| # ¿ Aug 2, 2011 07:09 |
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Was this played up at all? All I can remember about the Sabbat was "they're mindless dicks who like to break the Masquerade for no reason." There's actually a lot of philosophies in the Sabbat once you take all the books into account that were written to give more character to them than that. At their best, they're a bunch of vampires screaming "gently caress THE VAMPIRE POLICE" and trying to smash the giant political circlejerk that dominated Masquerade, as well as trying to avert the apocalypse. This characterization basically makes the Anarchs even more useless, as they're pretty much Pussy Sabbat. Their methods may be a little...excessive, but their goals are at least understandable. Sliding down the scale of morality, we get to "a bunch of young idiots who don't give two fucks about vampire society and live to serve their hedonistic needs, shuffled around by elders who realized that age and power is Actually Pretty Sweet and are trying to stop the apocalypse with it in between being corrupt bastards. The smart people tend to keep their loving mouths shut so they're not tossed into a bonfire, and subtly do what they can to keep the group from tearing itself apart." This is what they're usually written as by the end. Then at the bottom they're kitten-raping baby-eating Satanists that serve only to do suicidally stupid things the Camarilla has to fix. This is pretty much their original writeup.
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| # ¿ Aug 2, 2011 22:24 |
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FMguru posted:And both of them are different from Brujah, because We talking about the gangbanger Brujah, the philosophers-with-rage-issues Brujah, the philosophizing gangbanger Brujah, or the time-traveling one-of-them-was-Mothman-somehow Brujah? Christ, I know too much about White Wolf products. Edit: Sabbat's non-poo poo incarnations are sprinkled throughout nVampire, mostly in the Lancaea Sanctum (Vampire nega-Catholics with an interesting philosophy marred by mediocre writing), VII (mysterious vampire conspiracy that gets very little attention from writers, most details left to the ST [if they even include it]), and Belial's Brood (neo-Infernalists). Daeren fucked around with this message at Aug 2, 2011 around 22:37 |
| # ¿ Aug 2, 2011 22:35 |
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Benagain posted:Except that in that one expanded hunter book, which was 95% really cool ideas and new mechanics, they threw in a sidebar that was all "TFV is actually run by vampires." Same with that bit in the same book that said Cheiron's execs were all trans-dimensional space horrors when the Cheiron Group's whole thing is that humanity can be equally as monstrous, if not more monstrous, than the actual monsters, to the point of stapling monster bits to themselves. Those two bits, and a bit (but surprisingly less than you'd imagine) of the Ashwood Abbey stuff, were the only bad marks on an otherwise really excellent book.
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| # ¿ Aug 4, 2011 02:59 |
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GURPS: I sure hope you like math!
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| # ¿ Aug 4, 2011 19:03 |
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demota posted:Alright, who wants to hear about a cross between Changing Breeds and Maid RPG, from the designer of Maid RPG? If this is actually legitimately using Changing Breeds in Maid, I think I'm going to have to shoot someone. Speaking of which, I've been very  about my updates with Changing Breeds lately, and I'll try to get back into the swing of things here soon.
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| # ¿ Aug 14, 2011 03:06 |
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Kwyndig posted:Not on hand and Wolfram Alpha is being a jerk for not giving me the burning points. I would honestly assume that even with a mutant healing factor Wolvie would be vaporized, but then again, in one of the comics they nuked him and he came back from that in like three panels. Yeah, he came back from a single brain cell or something that time, and even comic book nerds were like "Okay that's bullshit."
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| # ¿ Aug 15, 2011 03:09 |
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For how bad some bits of nWoD can be, remember this: nWoD does not have actual rules for having your vagina be full of teeth, having your penis ejaculate lava, or loving a mound of stitched-together corpses as a casual get together with all your incestuous undead family members. Savage Genitalia from Guide to Fomori and surprise sex of Persephone from Clanbook: Giovanni(?), for those who think I'm kidding. oWoD's base level of quality was somewhere just above Changing Breeds and it only went down from there except for a rare few books that were actually good. Edit:  Seriously. Look at this. Look at this. I can't poo poo talk nWoD's writing without remembering this exists, and was not an anomaly at the time. Daeren fucked around with this message at Aug 17, 2011 around 05:42 |
| # ¿ Aug 17, 2011 05:38 |
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Mors Rattus posted:The reason you should remember Baron Samedi is that he is said to carry a bottle of liquor so potent that it will kill anyone but him. He also cross-dresses, bangs everything that moves, can keep people from dying by refusing to dig their grave (which can be a really good or really bad thing), and is generally cool as hell.
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| # ¿ Aug 18, 2011 04:39 |
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Tiemrhon posted:I seem to recall it being trivially easy to make a dude that could more or less go into a bar, pick up a dart and kill everybody inside in a single throw at character creation. Am I remembering the stats right or am I way off? You know how Exalted has the problem of having high-level combat ending up as long, meaningless slugfests that end in instant death the moment someone doesn't have the Essence to fuel a Perfect Defense? Scion 'fixes' this by basically just saying "Do you have more Epic Dexterity than the other guy? No? You're dead, sorry."
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| # ¿ Aug 21, 2011 21:12 |
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Changing Breeds Part XII: The Spinner-Kin Oh Christ why am I doing this again The first sentence of the segment reminds me why I took so long to get back to updating this review. quote:Elegant yet chillingly dispassionate, the Spinner-Kin are the poetry of enigma. God. Anyway, they apparently have the nickname (sorry, 'arcane title') of the Arnae, which is probably supposed to be a bastardization of Araneae. Howeever, googling Arnae gets a rather hysterical urbandictionary.com definition. quote:Having an unquenchable lust; not being able to stop screwing your partner; sex addicts. Changing Breeds, everybody. Anyway, the 'hat' of the Spinner-Kin is basically being short-lived, creepy, eternally ready to spring on opportunity, and always minding the future while working in the present. They're all very slim, the men rarely taller than five feet and the women able to reach six or more (I wish I could say that this was just due to gender dimorphism in spiders, but, uh...we'll get to it.) Animal form ranges from horrifying swarms of normal-sized spiders to cat-sized tarantulas that would probably make me poo poo out all my internal organs in terror. Spinner-Kin live for about five years after their First Change, leading to an almost fanatical devotion to seizing the day. This usually expresses itself in being endlessly social, but some of them go all emo and skulk around. They also have little use for families, being rather universally lovely parents or spouses who give little guidance to their children. They rarely have friendships or spouses, seeing the connections as too fragile and meaningless, or that people worthy of such attention are competition. Arnae live all over the globe, with several examples of pretty cool adaptations spiders have made (underwater air domes from silk, now nowhere is safe!), though it does imply they also live in Antarctica which I'm pretty drat sure they don't. Spider eating habits are also mentioned, and some are apparently chiefly cannibals like several spiders. I'd be less inclined to call this retarded if it weren't for how preposterously rare Changing Breeds are supposed to be. A spider shifter who could only survive by eating spider shifters would probably starve to death shortly after their First Change. They also mention Werewolves genociding them when they're discovered while ranting about Hosts, stating that this means they simply must strike first when discovered. This is where they bring in the Azlu from nWerewolf, if only to distance themselves from them. For the unaware, there's a pair of very distinct spirit breeds (by default) in nWerewolf, called the Azlu and the Beshilu, who are referred to as Spirit Hosts. Beshilu start as tiny rats, and Azlu as tiny spiders. They operate by infesting the body of a human being (the heart with the Beshiu, and the brain/nervous system with the Azlu), and killing them while consuming their body and spiritual energy to reproduce. Soon, the corpse either pops into a tide of Azlu/Beshilu, or fuses with the spirit to create a horrible hybrid abomination that wants only to continue growing and serve the agenda of the Hosts. The Beshilu want to rip down the barrier between Spirit and Flesh to reunite the two, not particularly caring that this would be horrendously catastrophic to both sides, as it would allow the Beshilu to recombine into the Plague King, an ancient, blind, disease-ridden rat spirit killed in prehistory. Meanwhile, the Azlu -who are also descended from a powerful spirit from prehistory - want to strengthen the boundary between Spirit and Flesh until both are strangled off, starving reality of definition and starving the Shadow of Essence, its lifeblood. To paraphrase from one of the books: "Do realize that this will happen? Yes. Will it be bad? Probably. Do they care? Not in the slightest." Some think they're insane, some think they arrogantly believe that they'll survive the catastrophe, but most just shrug their shoulders and say "loving spirits, man." They weave their webs because that's what they're supposed to do, God drat it, so stop interfering or they'll eat you. I bring all this up to show what good setting background is like, by the way. The book does to just go "Spinner-Kin think they are vulgar abominations and give the good spider-people a bad rap" which is what spider-spirits do in the normal setting anyway. Anyway, moving on. Females always take the natural leadership role and focus mostly on Physical attributes while men focus on Mental and Social. In case you weren't already catching the drift from this chapter, one of the example character concepts is dominatrix. At least they didn't say anything about using webs for that. quote:Stereotypes Now to the breeds. It's a weird mix of good and bad this time. First, we have the Nanekisu, or the Eight Knives. I really haven't made up my mind on how I feel about these guys. The breed originated in the Mediterranean, though they eventually spread across the globe. Their expertise is two-fold: information brokering, and murder. They hunt for the Truth at all times, preserving it while cutting away any falsehoods. Some set themselves up as syndicate crime overlords, some as assassins or spies, and some are simple archivists in libraries. They endeavor to be experts in whatever field they specialize in. All Nanekisu have a silver-white scar vaguely resembling a hand on their undercarriage in animal form (which was apparently cut, if you keep reading) and Warform, which is a huge teeming mass of spiders in the shape of a colossal spider. To get information from the Nanekisu, you have to pay a price in blood by fighting one in combat. The more valuable or secret the information is, the stronger the warrior you must face is. Now we get to the part that I'm still undecided about : this breed is apparently joinable. A spider-shifter can, if they defeat a Nanekisu in combat, ask to become one. They are then given a challenge: if they allow themselves to be poisoned to death, and the ritualist will revive them as a Nanekisu. Simply accepting is passing: all supplicants are accepted if they submit. Here's the really weird part: the breed is apparently a collective hive-mind. The text says they still have their own souls and bodies, but one mind apparently drives the Nanekisu in all their manifestations. You could read this as something from them all being 'themselves' with a sort of mental construct co-operating with them all, to a vast and alien hive-mind formed of the minds of all who have submitted to it using the shells of supplicants as puppets to enact its will, or some mix between the two. The latter is really loving cool, but it also steps pretty hard on the toes of the Azlu and doesn't entirely mesh with the whole spider thing. Ants, sure, I'd buy this in a heartbeat, but spiders? I see where they're going with the information gathering/web of influence thing, but it still doesn't quite click with me. Anyway, mechanically, the Nanekisu are actually pretty Goddamn frightening, being lightning fast and having Nine Lives. I actually can't get mad at this implementation, though, because the fluff behind it is excellent (albeit stolen directly from the Azlu); the component spiders of the body break up, book it, and try to reform elsewhere. So I guess the moral of the story is that if you find something cool in Changing Breeds they probably stole it from another line. Next up are the Carapaché, the Recluses and tarantulas. They have a lame creation story about Fate and Light and Darkness and Who Is The True Monster and yadda yadda. People who transform into Carapaché are almost exclusively South American, and often undergo their First Change when stuck in colossal jungle spider webs. They are exclusively of the Wind Dancer Accord, and are a bunch of shamans and autistics who are cripplingly shy and afraid of human contact. No, seriously. They all but use the word autism. Anyway, they tug on the threads of the web of Light and Darkness to...uh, I have no idea, bring it into balance? Make sure one wins? Basically they're the "insufferable cryptic old wizard doing random bullshit for a butterfly effect" archetype. They are all painfully skinny and of Latin descent, who hate clothes because it makes them think of the webs they were caught in during their First Change. Their Warform is a giant loving tarantula that spins webs, which they acknowledge isn't the case, but most people don't discuss biology when being eaten by a tarantula the size of a Volkswagen. Mechanically, they're very, very fast, venomous, and sneaky. In Other Species, we have two more, the first being as  -meets-White-Wolf as you can get.quote:In the grand towers above Hong Kong and the vaults below Singapore, a fatal game of Go has been waging for nearly 1,300 years. Open the wrong door in Beijing or turn your head in San Francisco just a moment too soon, and you may see one of the 10,000 secrets of old Qin. Neither Communists nor emperors nor Western oafs could untangle the web of the C'hi Hsu, a venerable breed whose alchemies stop the tread of time. In the centers of those webs sit vampiric spider-witches whose arts stave off the frailty of their kind. So yeah, Chinese vampire lich spider people, because why the gently caress not. C'hi Hsu might be intended to mean Mystic Webs, but whatever. Arnea must pass 1,000 tests presented by a master of Five-Web Magic to learn the secrets of immortality, who usually sit around ordering people to do something while mandating that all their visitors must fast for three days and have precisely seven different smoke perfumes on them at all times while in their presence. This is not a joke, this is a thing. To save the rest of the writeup: think "oVampire political circlejerk" and that is what the C'hi Hsu do all the time. Mechanically, they're boring as hell, too, aside from being preposterously fast. Lastly are the Sicarius, toxin-crafting dominatrices that have pretty much the same stats as C'hi Hsu. You think I'm joking, don't you? quote:Legends claim that Poison was once the concubine of Sleep. Dressed richly in the fever dreams and delusions of early Man, she wooed Him into a false peace. She brought wakeful dreamers into states that mimicked dreaming and death. Sleep had more territory with which to travel due to her ministrations. He fell for Poison's affections. Unfortunately, this is a legend for spiders. Poison acted as a female should. Sleep has never forgiven Her. He sent dreams from beyond the Web to his children to bind her in the hatred and death of Man. Forever in the darkness, She has grown mad. The Sicarius are Her voice. How organized madness can be if hate leads the way. Misandry, misogyny, bad mythological writing, callbacks to the everpresent lolmadness in oWoD, cringe-worthy sexuality, and the implication of the spider form invoking some emotion of love/sexuality. CHANGING BREEDS, EVERYBODY. Next time: Ursara. I pray that we get through this without a gay joke.
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| # ¿ Aug 22, 2011 19:24 |
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Goggle Fox posted:And of course, they had to stick creepy, unsympathetic PCs into a twisted sexual role with poison spider dominatrixes! I don't get these people. I love how they don't really consider that getting your poo poo kicked in for trying to betray/eat/murder someone after sex is sort of a logical conclusion. The author for this bit also wrote the Laughing Strangers section and the Horned Folk section, so we still have some to see from her. Also, keep in mind, Phil Brucato's got his greasy-rear end hands all over the whole book according to the writing credits.
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| # ¿ Aug 22, 2011 21:23 |
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Cooked Auto posted:I was almost kinda hoping for at least some references to the Australian Funnel Web spider there as they are some really nasty motherfuckers that won't hesitate to chase you if you've pissed them off. Truly, Australia is a hellish place. Rasamune posted:Jumping spiders are far too adorable. Jumping spiders are still spiders and therefore still terrifying  Eyes that cute should not be on a body that freaky. It turns the cute into nega-cute. Then there's the fact that they loving jump. Edit: seriously I am a grown-rear end man and I jump back and scream like a huge baby when I see a spider up in my grille that I was not expecting. I can handle little spiders (mostly), it's the big ones with longer legs that scare me. And yet, my first grade teacher had a pet tarantula that I thought was  and it had tarantula babies that were even more . I confuse myself.
Daeren fucked around with this message at Aug 23, 2011 around 01:00 |
| # ¿ Aug 23, 2011 00:57 |
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Glazius posted:Does it involve a god getting drunk and doing something stupid? Because that's a very common thread in myth. This is more accurate. Seriously, I am a huge mythology nerd, and easily a third or more myths I can think of involve someone, usually a deity, getting hammered at some point.
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| # ¿ Aug 25, 2011 02:18 |
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Mikael Kreoss posted:I'm half tempted to randomly roll up a deathwatch chapter when I get the chance. Not super obscure, but given the GRIM AND DARK TWO-WORD NAME table I think it's plenty mockable. /tg/ enjoys communally creating Space Marine chapters with those rules from time to time. Surprisingly, the ratio of stupid Angry Marines stuff to actually damned interesting concepts is better than you'd expect. It's goofy as hell, sure, but if you get a good result or are good at stringing things together, you can get something worth using. Between those rules and the Xeno Generator in the back of one of the Dark Heresy supplements, you could have a fun couple of mini-writeups. Edit: oh yeah, Rogue Trader has a system for making planets/star systems too.
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| # ¿ Aug 28, 2011 22:29 |
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Mikeon, while I understood what was going on in that big ol' mess due to being a Huge Goon and having read the book a lot, I'm pretty sure a lot of people here aren't goony enough to be familiar with the Warhammer 40k universe/games enough to necessarily know what all that jibba-jabba means. Space Marines: picture Gears of War or Starcraft or any Hulking Brick of Man Stuffed In Power Armor. These guys are where all of those guys came from. Seven feet tall and weighing about half a ton of muscle and biological implants, they are the most lethal soldiers in the Imperium of Man, who are basically Space Catholic Nazis (and almost have to be in order to survive, with how terrible the universe is.) There are twenty First Founding chapters, who were all made with the genetic code of the God-Emperor of Mankind, who was basically the most powerful psychic of all time and was incredible at everything but being a father. In fact, he sucked so hard at being a good dad that half of the Primarchs said "gently caress you" and joined the forces of Chaos, which is basically all the negative emotions of everything sapient that has existed or will exist. The Traitor Legion genes are no longer used to make new chapters, as you can probably imagine. Every now and then, the Imperium needs to divvy up the Chapters to make sure none get too big and rebel, or just to replenish lost manpower. This is where the time chart comes in, with several pre-established Foundings in place. There's four different reasons the book can give for why the Chapters were made - ours were basically made because of superstitious omens and readings saying it was a good idea to do so, while some are made for Crusades, some are made to act as a standing force, and some are custom-created to fight a specific threat. The foundings range from the Second Founding to the Twenty-Sixth, with earlier foundings generally meaning the chapters are more entrenched and powerful. Some in particular are special fluff-wise - the Twenty-First is said to be cursed, for instance, while one in the 34th millennium fought alongside a bunch of ghosts in the Year of the Honored Dead. Purity can range from Pure to Flawed, with New Generation acting as "trying to fix some of the bugs" and Altered Stock as "something screwed up somewhere." Flawed means "Sweet Jesus something REALLY screwed up somewhere." There's a bunch of Codex Demeanors that you can choose from if you get New Generation or Flawed. Demeanors are basically the general 'feel' of the chapter and the personalities of the Space Marines within. Space Wolves, for example, have The Sons Of Russ, which basically means "They are space vikings." Some of the new Demeanors are things like "Really, REALLY like fire," "Are reverent towards technology," and "Be as sneaky as a seven foot tall murder machine can be." Geneseed Deficiencies basically mean that the genes used to create one of the implanted organs use to create Space Marines have a bug in them somewhere. This can just mean they don't have some of the organs, or it could mean that their voices could be weird, or they could actually have lost the ability to create more geneseeds (thus meaning that the chapter is eventually boned.) Chapter Flaws are more psychological, with examples such as "views ranged combat as a thing for sissies" or "has a history of frankly disturbing rituals." Chapter Characteristics determine the stat bonuses of the chapter while simultaneously continuing to flesh out the personalities: "Favoring strength and cunning" gives +5 Strength and Perception, for instance. Mikael actually got my favorite result for the Chapter Hero, because the Master of the Fleet is usually known for fuckall unless the chapter specializes in orbital tactics. Other reasons for being remembered include "Killing a Daemon Prince in single combat" and "Was responsible for driving an alien race completely extinct." There a lot of different results for how the chapter homeworld can be populated. Combine either Hive World/Feral World/Medieval World/Civilized World/Uninhabited World/Fleet Based with a bunch of different terrain, and you have your planet. Yes, this means you can technically somehow have a Jungle-dominated group of starships for your homeworld. I'm somehow reminded of Predator. The three different rule types are Direct, Stewardship, and Distant. Direct is obvious: "We're in charge." Stewardship means that the Space Marines are generally figurehead leaders and delegate any real leadership to a ruling class, though they do have the final say. Distant means they don't really give a poo poo. The quote for this section is actually really goddamn funny: it's basically a ruling class member on a Feral world asking the Space Marines to deploy their Thunderhawk gunships after a Shaman comes to ask for them to call the wrath of the mighty sky dragon on a local tribe. Organization is based on how closely you follow the Codex Astartes, which was written by the Primarch of the Ultramarines, who are the most generic group because they are literally the baseline for other chapters. They are also kind of overrepresented in the fluff due to a certain writer of recent Codices being an unashamed fanboy for them. The categories are Codex Chapter, Divergent Chapter (mostly Codex-following with some differences) and Unique (totally different from the Codex). Combat Doctrine is how they prefer to do war. Simple enough. I will always prefer Stealth, because the image of Space Marines being sneaky will never not be amusing/terrifying to me. Squad Mode Attack/Defense and Solo Mode Abilities are all crunch so that doesn't necessarily matter, while Specialty Restrictions only come into play with Unique Organizations and mean that the Chapter doesn't use certain kinds of Marines. Special Equipment and Chapter Beliefs, Current Status, and Friends and Enemies are self explanatory. Note that it is entirely possible to, through a fluke of the dice, roll the same wing of the Imperium to be your friend and enemy. God help you if you get the Administratum for that. After the name is the EXP Advances for the chapter, which are also mostly crunch. Also, the best possible names you can get are The Bloody Blood, The Emperor's Death, The Fiery Fire, The Space Skulls, and The Imperial Guard. (    )
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| # ¿ Aug 30, 2011 20:33 |
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Wow. I appreciate the idea of trying to incorporate Prototype/The Thing/body horror in general into nWoD (most body horror in nWoD is mostly from spirits or the Abyss), but this is pretty dumb already. However, we're mostly looking at fluff so far, and what little crunch there is is just stuff from other lines with new, mediocre things stapled on top (par for the course in fan works.) What's really weird is a good friend of mine is trying to create a very similar system called Parasite, where the supernatural element is a parasitic entity entering your body (with the different 'clans' being where it resides, like the brain, or the vascular system). This is eerily similar, down to eating things being a way to get your major power source back. Gonna have to ask if she ever saw/worked on this, but I doubt it. This doesn't seem like something she'd write, or mine ideas from. I'll admit, though, using ATP as the mana equivalent made me smile a bit.
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| # ¿ Aug 31, 2011 01:19 |
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I brought up Pathogen to my friend, and she said she had indeed seen it before, and the similarities are because she decided to make a better version after seeing how terrible it was, taking the few clever things from it (like the eating bit, though changing how it works) and abandoning the rest. Bieeardo posted:This talk of horrible xWoD adaptations reminds me of the granddaddy of them all... I'm just...I'm just gonna pretend this was never posted.
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| # ¿ Aug 31, 2011 03:50 |
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Halloween Jack and The Chairman posted:oWoD fansplat about what goes on in that Dollfucker guy's head I was a healthier person when I woke up this morning than I am after having read that.
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| # ¿ Aug 31, 2011 19:52 |
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Mors Rattus posted:Chance to be raped by what? How often is the roll? Do rapists just materialize if you make it in, like, an empty field? And most importantly, why? I assume it's like the ogres in FATAL that materialize out of nowhere to cornhole you if you get their spell failure roll.
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| # ¿ Aug 31, 2011 21:42 |
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Wow, it's like they looked at Vicissitude's three-dot power (especially the bit about using the ribs to gouge open the heart) and then just went . For reference, here's the VtM -> VtR version that White Wolf suggests for Vicissitude 3: quote:••• Bonecraft: The character can alter the target's bones. Used as an attack, the roll is Dexterity + Medicine + Vicissitude – Defense, and inflicts 3L damage. The character can also cause a target's rib cage to move inward, piercing the heart. This imposes an additional –5 to the roll, but instantly kills a mortal target. Against vampires, it halves the target’s Vitae pool in addition to inflicting lethal damage normally. Simple, elegant, and with room for extrapolation. Really powerful against mortal targets, yet still not an instant win button due to the stiff penalty (even The Man Your Man Could Kill Like would be rolling 2-3 successes vs vampires, for instance). In addition, it rolls up the rest of the power set into a neat, not totally broken package, giving versatility in how you attack and the ability to help friends out. The craft attack dealing 3L, having the capability for instant death and more components to the pool means that, in general, the Tzimisce using this would prefer that combat option unless built like a brick shithouse (or crafted into being one). However, the spikes and quills are more useful for giving your beefier coterie mates an extra kick. Why do I bring this all up? Because this is just ONE DOT of a vampire power and it's already infinitely more useful, interesting, and balanced. Tzimisce can warp their appearance to be beautiful or hideous, rearrange their muscular system to absorb damage or punch harder, grab people's flesh and YANK to grossly distort their bodies and deal massive internal trauma, turn into a horrible, hulking monstrosity made only to kill, or dissolve some or all of their body into a pool of animate blood that can leach blood out of other people or force itself down people's throats to reform and explode them from inside out. What I'm saying is that Tzimisce are loving awesome and Pathogen wishes it was half as cool as a single clan from oWoD.
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| # ¿ Sep 1, 2011 04:03 |
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't know that I'd look to any Vampire Discipline for examples of simple, elegant, balanced design. Trust me, I know that Vampire is usually a bad example for this, but I have an unashamed fan boner for Tzimisce/Vicissitude, and in comparison, pretty much ANYTHING is better than this stuff, especially what it directly rips off.
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| # ¿ Sep 1, 2011 16:38 |
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Edit: ^^^ Promethean is the best game that nobody plays.MJ12 posted:Okay, quick shame bit. I was one of the participants in the initial thread that I think this sprung out of. No, see, these are actually pretty cool ideas. The morality track sounds like a proto-Geist track that doesn't suck, an airborne vector for diseases would lead to the question of "Why isn't everybody infected by now," and biological mutations and actual disease/body horror powers would fit in better with the stated theme of the game, being body horror and fighting against your own body. The subtitle they came up with is "A Game of Lost Control" for Christ's sakes. I don't have a problem with fan splats or developments, I have a problem with BAD fan splats or developments. Sturgeon's Law being what it is, this means I have a problem with pretty much all homebrewing I find on the internet.
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| # ¿ Sep 1, 2011 17:49 |
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Goggle Fox posted:I want to like it. Like so many other things in World of Darkness I find it's better to buy the book for ideas than to actually play it, but honestly it was the one that made me least annoyed at the supernatural whahoozits for being all broody. The other four books in the line turn Promethean from a good line into a great line, with some hiccups, which is inevitable with White Wolf. They give more example Refinements (ways to approach becoming human), extrapolations of the Divine Fire's nature and what it actually means to Prometheans on the Pilgrimage (from the basic 'will this manifestation tear my face off or not' to the questions of what the Principle truly is), to the motivations of Demiurges, to how to actually run a successful game. Really, though, probably my favorite bits in any of them is the Unfleshed, Constructs and the example of Great-Grandfather Crow, who take the theme of "What does it truly mean to be human?" and pushes it to the extreme limit. At least Prometheans are all made from parts that were once human, and have snippets of human memory. Unfleshed and Constructs can be created from any assortment of parts crafted into human shape and given life. Unfleshed are examples of extreme technology given true sapience and quasi-humanity, bringing in the nature of what separates humanity from artificial intelligence, and Constructs are Prometheans made of clay, stone, metal, or anything other than human bodies, making the fact that they can become human open up a giant can of worms about what humanity means and what the Divine Fire's properties are. Great-Grandfather Crow is a Promethean made from the corpse of a crow, who has no idea what his Pilgrimage is. He can't make another Promethean without hands to build it, even other Prometheans think he's a freak, he's not sure if his Pilgrimage - if he has one - would make him human, bird, or something else entirely, and he just wants to go back to being a dumb bird who doesn't have to think about all this. Promethean loving owns.
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| # ¿ Sep 1, 2011 20:01 |
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Dareon posted:It had better be preceded by "completely unlike" jiang shi, because those guys are stopped by a six-inch doorsill. Not to mention prayer slips nailed to their face, spilled rice, and something to do with throwing socks in a river. The hilarious cornucopia of weird vampire weaknesses/death requirements never stop being funny to me.
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| # ¿ Sep 14, 2011 21:35 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Jon Chung--the guy who has a reputation for going after Exalted for having rules that don't match its setting-- Well, I have a new guy whose stuff I need to read. Exalted's rules make me go crosseyed with rage whenever I try to think about them too hard. Seriously, nWoD's revisions were about streamlining the combat and making it more simple to deal with, and then you reverse-engineer it to be worse than oWoD as the system tearfully begs you to let it die as you go through a million back and forth cross references and rounds of pure essence attrition and "BANG I shot you you're dead" "Nuh uh no I'm not I have a Perfect Defense" and the horrible janky Social Combat and aaaaaAAA  What was I talking about?
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| # ¿ Oct 10, 2011 17:05 |
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Huitzil posted:Wasn't Exalted designed before nWoD? Exalted 2e (the system update to nWoD-esque rules) was published in 2006, while the nWoD core book was published in 2004.
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| # ¿ Oct 10, 2011 19:17 |
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WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:Dark Heresy's not exactly the best known for the care that went into its editing, nor the entire line, same with the rest of the Dark Black Roguewatch line - is it the case with other FFG materials? At least with most of the 40k RPG books, a ton of the errata is because of how slap-dash their writing and editing is in the first release. However, the actual content of their games tends to be good enough that people don't complain much. Seriously, Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, and Black Crusade are some incredibly fun games, and any issues of "so and so is broken!" can be met with "and then the psyker's head explodes and a Daemon Prince pops out holding a sword labeled FOR YOUR rear end ONLY." Even Black Crusade characters, who can get scarily powerful (especially Khornates in melee, Jesus) have stuff that can put the fear of the Dark Gods into them - Grey Knights, Greater Daemons, rival Warbands, the whims of their masters, and their fellow PCs backstabbing them.
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| # ¿ Oct 17, 2011 23:16 |
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Deadlands as its own self-contained setting was loving awesome and incredibly fun to play, especially with the poker hands mechanic in the original rules. One of my friends had a PC with a bum leg, Cursed, and Bad Luck, and was the most hilarious character in any game I've ever played. So many horrible things happened to him. Now, when you reach HOE/LC, or follow the metaplot's ending as legit, that's when things get really stupid.
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| # ¿ Oct 24, 2011 03:18 |
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404GoonNotFound posted:Would "the parents of every fourth or fifth PC" count? Yknow, of all the times I've played Deadlands, not one used this in their backstory. Am I just lucky?
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| # ¿ Oct 28, 2011 03:51 |
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homeless poster posted:To me, this is a huge missed opportunity, because you basically have your menacing Darth Vader analogue in Stone, and Raven would have worked beautifully as an analogue for an Emperor Palpitine stand-in, and instead they take this guy who masterminded the complete destruction of the human species and have him wander off stage and do nothing.  : "No, Prospector Jenkins...I am your father." "No...that's not true! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!": "Search your feelings. You know it to be true.": "No, I mean, that's literally impossible. You're a corpse.": "Oh. Right.  "
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| # ¿ Oct 28, 2011 05:47 |
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I've actually played 7th Sea and it was actually pretty goddamn fun. However, I will not deny it was also rather crazy. I don't remember any aliens, though 
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| # ¿ Oct 31, 2011 03:22 |
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Like I said, the actual system and general setting of 7th Sea is pretty loving awesome, although I don't remember any nonsense with aliens or whatever. I only read the core and most of the nation books, though, so if there were any metaplot books I totally missed them.
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| # ¿ Nov 2, 2011 20:07 |
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| # ¿ May 25, 2013 09:48 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:God of luchadores? If you think you can pull it off, why not?  I need this game. Edit: Also, I'm sorry I've sort of vanished, I haven't forgotten about Changing Breeds, school's just been eating enough of my will to live that doing it would probably kill me. I have a break soon, and I'll probably try to mash out the rest of it during it. Daeren fucked around with this message at Nov 18, 2011 around 20:07 |
| # ¿ Nov 18, 2011 20:04 |
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