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Tasoth posted:So, I found a thing. Seems like it might be worthy of the thread. One of the people who made that (Ben Lehman) is the guy who made Bliss Stage. He gives just as much information about it on his personal site as that site does.
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Apr 1, 2013 21:58
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I'm going to assume that this is free game now since Xand_Man only got through the intro and his last post was in April of last year. Demon: The Fallen: Intro and Prologue  quote:History, as the saying goes, is written by the victors. Whether an uprising is seen as a glorious rebellion or a treacherous insurrection depends entirely on who held the upper hand at the end, with the losers consigned to posterity as traitors, tyrants, or worse. Their story is largely forgotten. Demon: The Fallen was released by our good friends at White Wolf in November 2002. It was the last completely original game released for the old/"classic" World of Darkness line (the actual last was Orpheus, though that's tied to Wraith: The Oblivion) and is pretty much the culmination of all of the things the writers had learned while working on every single terrible oWoD book that has been featured or will be featured in a FATAL and Friends thread. If you couldn't tell by the name and the intro quote, the players are fallen angels who have just recently escaped from the WoD equivalent of Hell. The world that they've returned to is a tattered shadow of its former self, and God, the Heavenly Host, and Lucifer have all appeared to have vanished. Even worse, the very humans that they protected and helped flourish now see them as evil and worthy of destruction, if they believe in them at all. Still seething with anger over their millenia long imprisonment and trapped within the bodies of humans whose emotions and wills sometimes override their own, do they try to save Creation, the very thing that they had a hand in bringing forth, or destroy it? Now, with a premise like that, you would think that this game would spark another "D&D turns kids into Satanists" scare like the one that occurred back in the 80s. White Wolf, or at least, the ad agency that they hired to promote this game, took that as inspiration and created a parody website for a fictional priest complete with a parody of the infamous Dark Dungeons Chick Tract to promote the game. According to an RPG.net thread that I found, they even pretended to be protestors and passed the mock tract out during GenCon. (Most people threw them away, thinking they were real Chick Tracts, and got into arguments with the "protestors".) Aside for gamers getting upset and saying that the ad campaign was "distasteful" and would bring unnecessary heat on the community and start another backlash, and at least one store not carrying the game because the owner was offended by it, nobody really gave a poo poo. Not to mention that the game itself is overshadowed by other, more popular and established oWoD lines like Vampire: The Masquerade. I adore this game just for its premise and fluff alone, and seeing as White Wolf has announced that they are making a new World of Darkness version of the game, I think this would be a good time to take a look at it. Prologue: Stage Fright The prologue of the core book is a short story about Melbogathra, a demon hell bent on tearing Creation apart who has just escaped the Pit and found himself backstage in a theater. He is very confused, very angry, and very in love. Melbogathra is inhabiting the body of an actor named Max. Max tried to hang himself because his theater company's makeup artist, Becky, would not return his love. Melbogathra now loves Becky himself, along with every other thing Max used to love. He also hates everything Max hates, has all of his memories, and, to some extent, even has his personality. "Max and I are that close." Unfortunately, the company is 15 minutes away from putting on a performance of Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. Melbogarthra/Max knows his lines, but the message of them doesn't sit well with him. So when he gets on stage, he improvises. quote:I play the wealthy corn merchant, Star, recruiting young men for Christ's army, and my line reads, "If you join in the army now, you will be one of the saints. You will rule with Jesus a thousand years." [sic] Naturally, he gets kicked out of the group for this little stunt, but it does spark a kernel of faith in someone in the theater; someone desperate to believe his words. It turns out to be Becky. Becky, we learn later, is a drug addict, and Melbogarathra uses the power that her faith gave him to clean the drugs out of her system. After leaving the company, Melbogarthra gets an offer from another company called HolyWorks, which does improvised mummer morality plays. He accepts, seeing it as a chance to get others to believe just as Becky did. He continues his schtick while playing numerous important religious figures, and gains a large following, including 5 other people who follow him as devotedly as Becky does. Unfortunately, he's also attracted the attention of someone who hates him and, after one performance, pulls Melbogarthra aside and tells him that he knows what he is and is going to kill him. (Melbogarathra would have killed him right there, but the Max side of him found the thought horrifying.) Later, he breaks into Max's apartment and kills Becky. Melbogarthra isn't happy about it. quote:Max wants to cry and lie next to her body, but the Melbogathra in me is howling pissed. My wings are slamming against my ribs like a hummingbird in a small cage, and I want to bellow with that same voice that once spawned tornadoes. Problem is, I can't anymore. So I focus on all that seething anger and hatred instead - the same storm of misery that bore me through God's torment - and I drown Max out. This display makes his stalker crumble and break down. The stalker tells him that he wanted to kill him because he made him believe in God when he didn't want to. His parents are dead and his wife is dying of cancer. If there is no God, then there is no possibility of some divine being who could have prevented these problems actively ignoring him and letting him suffer. ("But poo poo happens, right?" "There is no God, so it can't be His fault. It's just poo poo, right?") Melbogarthra tells him that he's not going to kill him, since he's right about God not caring about him, and living with that knowledge is punishment enough. However, the stalker is mentally and spiritually broken, and seeing an opportunity, Melbogarthra makes him promise, on his soul, that he will never come after him or his friends again, and in return, he will make him forget about this incident and all of the times that he saw him act. The stalker accepts. Unfortunately for him, he is now connected to Melbogarthra, who is able to suck his life away. The pact also doesn't erase his knowledge of God not caring. So he will have to suffer with that knowledge for the rest of his life. After the story is the usual standard intro chapter to any White Wolf book. There's the credits, (Go here if you want to see who worked on this.) the "if you have trouble separating fantasy from reality, don't play this game" disclaimer, the general explanation of what roleplaying, the Storyteller system, and the World of Darkness itself is, the lexicon (whose terms I will be going over as I come to them), general rules of conduct for LARPing, and the list of inspirational source materials. Amongst other things, the list includes John Milton's Paradise Lost at the very top, the movie The Devil's Advocate, and American Gods, which I find to be an odd choice, to be honest. Up next: "In the Beginning" Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Apr 4, 2013 |
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Apr 3, 2013 21:53
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Demon: The Fallen: The Beginning and the Houses of Elohim The first four chapters of the book are setting fluff wrapped in several short stories of different demons/signature characters explaining it all to different people. I've seen it described here as "500 some pages of Paradise Lost fanfic", and it is a bit of a pain if you just want straight information about the setting, but some of them are pretty decent reads. (They're also way shorter than the greatly exaggerated 500 pages.) Chapter 1 starts with a demon named Gaviel struggling against the winds of the "Maelstrom" as he makes his escape from the Abyss/Pit. After some struggling and almost getting his entire being torn apart, he succeeds. quote:Gaviel pierced the Veil between the realms like a fiery arrow, only dimly aware of how much strength he'd expended in his escape. The world hung before him, close enough to touch, but even so he felt his spirit unraveling, threatening to come undone unless he could find a refuge from the storm. Gaviel comes to in the body of a man who is lying face down on the pavement. Gaviel's new host has just been hit by a car, but Gaviel himself is fine and quite happy to be out of Hell, as you would expect. (By the way, Greg Stolze, who has a whole thread all about how awesome he is, wrote this chapter.) The scene changes to the office of Reverend Matthew Wallace, a rich televangelist and the host of The Hour of Jesus' Power. Wallace is also cheating on his wife with his choir's leader. After some debate, he decides to not see his mistress after work and go straight home to his wife and kids. As he goes into the parking lot of his studio, he comes across his son, a graduate student named Noah. The two have been estranged since Noah came out as an Atheist two years ago, but being his father, Matthew is still overjoyed to see him. Unfortunately, Noah is now Gaviel's host. Gaviel toys with the old man a bit, first by revealing his angelic form to him (in game terms, this is known as an "apocalyptic form" or "visage"), and then mocking him when Matthew enthusiastically agrees to be his servant. Afterward, Noah asks to talk, but gets his hands burned by the door handles when he tries to go into the studio. Soon after, with some hints from Gaviel, Matthew finally figures out what he is. quote:"Let's see..." Noah counted off on bloodied fingers. "Glorious apparition with wings of fire. Not an angel of the Lord. Tries to seduce mortal into pledges of fealty... and is harmed by holy ground. What do you suppose that leaves?" Matthew tries praying, loudly, for God to smite Gaviel, but all it does is make Gaviel mad and call him out on his adultery. Gaviel, seeing that the exchange is getting him nowhere, starts to leave when Matthew pleads for him to, but not before saying that he thought Matthew could help him and gives him back the Bible that Matthew gave Noah after his first communion. This convinces Matthew that Gaviel isn't such a bad guy and the two drive to the studio of one of Matthew's associates to talk. At the studio, Gaviel explains to Matthew what happened to Noah (the car accident left him with brain damage, which killed him and left his body open for possession.), and the two go at it some more since Matthew still thinks that Gaviel is holding his son hostage. Ultimately though, Gaviel came to Matthew because he wants God to forgive him and the other fallen, and he thinks that Matthew is faithful and stubborn enough to help him do that. After some more banter, 23 pages into the book, Gaviel finally starts expositing. By the way, whenever a demon talks about events before their imprisonment in the books, the events and details never line up perfectly. I'm not sure if that's intentional and meant to illustrate the weakness of the human mind or the effect the Abyss has on the memories of the demons, or just the result of the several different authors working the books not collaborating well. Either way, I think it's a nice touch. In the beginning, there were only two things: God/The All-Maker and the Void; existence and absence; perfection and imperfection. Both infinite, both separate, and yet each contained in the other. While God sought to create a barrier between the Void and Him, he could not do it himself as it would "contaminate" Him. As Gaviel explains it: quote:"Everything we touch touches us in return, right? Contact means interaction - or contamination, if you prefer. How does a perfect being change? If it changes, it ceases to be perfect. Unless it was already imperfect, and it changes into a perfect form by expelling its imperfections." He raised an eyebrow. "Not a very flattering theory, is it? The universe as a hairball from the throat of the Almighty." So God created the seven Houses of angels or "Elohim" to serve as a buffer between Him and Creation and to carry out His will. This first act is both the "Let there be Light" part of Genesis 1:3 and the Big Bang. How? We'll get to that in a bit. The Houses of Elohim are: 1: The House of the Dawn/Morning Star - The closest to God and the only ones who could stand before Him without losing it, these Elohim were responsible for taking God's will, "translating it", and then ordering the Elohim of the other houses to carry it out. Elohim in this house are usually associated with light, stars, the sun and moon, and other similar concepts. Gaviel was part of this house. (His title was the "Throne of the Summer Sun".) Fallen who were part of this house are referred to in-game as Namaru or Devils. 2: The House of the Firmament/Rising Wind - The Elohim responsible for "breathing life" into every living thing and concepts pertaining to wind and movement. They are, for the most part, the kindest and most even-tempered Elohim, and many acted as guardian angels to the beings that they breathed life into. Fallen from this house are called Asharu or Scourges. 3: The House of the Fundament/Fire and Stone - These Elohim created the earth and all other physical matter. They are associated with the elements of earth and fire. Fallen from this house are called Annunaki or Malefactors. 4: The House of Spheres/the Indigo Night - The Elohim associated with the heavens and the ones responsible for the creation of Time and the custodians of Fate. When it comes to titles, there's some overlap between them and the first house. Gaviel explains that the "Fates" were the ones responsible for the planets and stars and whatnot moving in their orbits, but with some of the titles the angels from this house have (e.g "The Pole Star's Virtue", one unspecified one dealing with the Pleiades, etc.), you would think that they were the ones who created the stars as well. I assume that the first house is more associated with the light that the celestial bodies give off than the bodies themselves. Fallen of this house are called Neberu or Fiends. (They are also my favorite house.  )5: The House of the (Restless) Deep(s) - The Elohim responsible for the "animation" and "governing" of the world's oceans. As Gaviel explains it: quote:The physical stuff of the water was created by the Fundamentals, but animated and governed by the Oceanites because its excellent ability to hold and transmit patterns. They are of the pattern, not the matter, just as my words are not my mouth or the air they pass through or your ear when you hear it. Confused? Don't worry about it. Most of their motif still deals with water and everything associated with it and I'm pretty sure everyone who plays this game thinks of them as the water ones anyway. They are also associated with beauty, the arts, and culture in general. Fallen from this house are called Lammasu or Defilers. 6: The House of the Wild/Blood and Bone - Animals, nature, and all of the processes that go into making it work from photosynthesis to migratory patterns. Fallen from this house are called Rabisu or Devourers. 7: The House of the Second World/Falling Night - Angels of death and renewal. That's pretty much it. Fallen from this house are called Halaku or Slayers. Once the seven houses had finished making Creation, they worked together with God to create the crowning jewel of it all: Humans. What made humanity different from every other being in Creation was the fact that it held within it a spark of divinity. quote:"Understand that when one says humankind was 'made in God's image' it's nothing so literal as 'two legs, one nose, seven thoracic vertebrae'. Your shape is not in the image of God, your soul is. You carry within you a small reservoir of the essence of existence that God used to create the entire cosmos. Powerful through we Elohim are, we are barren of that true Making fire. You are His true children, and your holy nature courses through your blood, flickers in your emotions, and sings through your inventive thoughts. Before the angels of the second house breathed life into humanity, God gave the Elohim two commands: That they love humans just as much as they loved God, and that they never reveal themselves to them. When Matthew asks Gaviel if there are angels all around them at that very moment, Gaviel says no. "They're all gone [...] or hidden beyond my knowing." After a pee/coffee break, Matthew asks Gaviel what Eden was like. Gaviel explains that the world back then was "fundamentally different" and that Matthew would not be able to fully comprehend it. quote:It was... more complex. Richer. It had layers that are simply absent now." And this is the aspect of the setting that allows both the biblical story of Adam and Eve and evolution to co-exist and be equally valid and correct. So while on one layer of existence, the universe and Earth were created in 7 days, they were slowly forming and evolving over the span of billions upon billions of years on another. And the first of humanity was both Adam and Eve and evolved primates. And there were both angels physically moving and creating things as well as all of the scientific processes that govern nature and the universe and whatnot. And there were coffee sprites somewhere in there too, I guess. After some more bitching from Matthew, Gaviel talks a bit about Hell/The Pit/The Abyss. Hell is a place without layers and is essentially nothing. quote:"It is a void marred only by our awareness of it, and our ability to feel our rejection by our Maker." Of course, later in the book there's mentions of the fallen having conversations and being physically near each other in Hell. Again, I don't know if that discrepancy was intentional or not. Anyway, back to Eden. Despite all of their divinity and greatness, humanity was incomplete. (The book goes with a "biblical" interpretation of events for simplicity.) Adam and Eve were little more than animals; incapable of feeling anything other than the base instincts that any other animal would feel. ("So they were innocent. Like children." "Innocent like pigeons, more like.") Try as they might, none of the Elohim could invisibly coax humanity into realizing their true potential. Some angels even went to God to ask Him why Adam and Eve were not given higher reason. Those who did and took Him up on the offer to "see as I see" were never seen or heard from again. By all accounts, they were erased from existence. One day, an angel from the House of Spheres named Ahrimal discovered a "knot of great destructiveness and turmoil" in the "tapestry" of Creation. When he told his superiors about his discovery, they shrugged it off and said that it was only a "potential bad" and that God would never let anything bad happen to Creation. Unsatisfied with this explanation, Ahrimal gathered some of his friends from the other houses together and held a meeting in his glass castle on the moon. (Yes, that is what the book says.) After some debate, they came to the conclusion that humanity was at the center of the tragedy, as they are the only element of "chaos" in the fabric of Creation, but they couldn't come to a decision about what exactly to do about it. Then Lucifer crashed the meeting. quote:The debate became increasingly fervent, until all tongues were stilled by a sudden arrival. He was uninvited, and unwelcome, and as he entered, the others dropped to their knees in reverence and fear. Lucifer was not there to carry out orders from God to punish them, but of his own accord. God himself was mum on the matter of the coming tragedy and it seemed that no one could convince Him to act. So Lucifer proposed that they reveal themselves to humanity and give them the wisdom to defend themselves against the coming darkness. Lucifer's reasoning was that their order to love humanity overrode the order to not reveal themselves, since leaving them to their destruction when they could do something about it was definitely not an act of love. Some of the other angels in attendance, including Ahrimal, agreed and decided to rebel with him, and went off to spread the word. Up next: The Fall
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Apr 6, 2013 17:35
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Qwo posted:I... w.. what..? What on earth? I assumed Black Tokyo was kind of like FATAL: No one outside of the development team has actually played it. People just get copies of the books to horrify their friends and make fun of it. But with the internet being the way it is, I suspect that I'm wrong.
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Apr 13, 2013 20:42
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Robindaybird posted:Suing the High Emperor of Copyright Protection? Good loving luck with that Harris. The Channel M people, from what I recall, have a massive bug up their asses about W.I.T.C.H. "stealing" their concept. I remember reading something about how the Original Witch Girls book's title is a direct jab at W.I.T.C.H. because Witch Girls obviously came first. For those of you who aren't familiar with it: Here is the Wiki article for W.I.T.C.H. You don't even need to read the whole thing, just the top paragraphs will tell you that Harris and Co are either loving idiots who don't know how ideas and copyright law work or are just doing it to get attention... or both. Also, thanks for covering the rest of the books, FourmyleCircus. The core burnt me out. Though I'd still like to do a writeup of the revamped core... assuming it ever actually comes out. (Also, just mark my Demon writeup as abandoned, Syrg. Real life caught up with me.) Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 01:35
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It's amusing that they've raised such a bizarre fuss about copyrights when they're posting up pictures of Lucinda murdering Harry Potter characters, Galactus, etc. Not to mention the fact that three of the Willow-Mistt characters are basically Darrin, Samantha, and Tabitha from Bewitched with different names, (four if you count the brief mention of an Endora like mother figure. You can argue successfully that their backgrounds are different enough to where they're their own characters. But that didn't seem to stop Harris with Sofia's Lucinda.), there's a shitload of elements from other series, mostly Bewitched, scattered throughout the setting, and their main artist thinks there's nothing wrong with using pictures (that I'm willing to bet are not stock photos) of real people who did not give their consent covered in Photoshop effects as the artwork for a professional product that they expect people to pay for. Then again, I half suspect that they're not suing anyone at all and just using it as an excuse to get attention or explain why it takes them so long to come out with things. FourmyleCircus posted:On an unrelated note, I know a guy who used to roleplay with Lucinda/Abby when City of Heroes was still up. He hated her, but she loved pestering him. He explained a fair bit about how they guys at Channel M saw roleplaying. Apparently, a good deal of the messed up vibe of this comes from the fact that they don't see things like internal consistency and consequences as part of having fun. They also assume that all characters are self inserts at best. If you decide to get angry, it's because you think a fight scene would be cool right then. So by their logic, Atlanta Nights is a perfectly fine book with excellent storytelling and Calvinball is the perfect game. No wonder they decided to make a game for children... I mentioned their "All characters are self-inserts and/or Mary Sues" viewpoint before, and it's still bullshit. Just because you're playing a character in a tabletop game doesn't automatically mean that you are that character. And if one is so inclined and a good enough writer, it is perfectly possible to make a character that is both nothing like you and not a god among men. Then again, I don't think Harris and Soto really even know what the hell a Mary Sue actually is based on how the Mary Sue talent is used in-game. The term itself is nebulous as gently caress and can mean a whole bunch of things, but I highly doubt it means "Narcissist with enabling parents, pink hair, a lovely attitude, and Cyclops from X-Men's power" and not "Super powerful 12 year old witch who murdered a doctor seconds after she was born, can murder people at the snap of a finger, is more powerful than some witches who are centuries old, and somehow still has friends and hasn't been kicked out of school to protect the lives of the other students despite breaking the rules frequently". As a bit of an aside, I've thought about actually trying to rewrite this game on and off (including proposing it in this thread as a goon project. But I know how those usually go). I want to like this game, but it's just so god drat terrible on every single level. The reasons I haven't done so are 1:  , 2: I'm an idiot when it comes to hard game mechanics and unlike Harris, I'm not going to pretend that I know what I'm doing, and 3: I'm just completely overwhelmed by the idea. Even if you didn't completely scrap the setting, there's still very little that's salvageable.And of course, in the time it takes a person to do that, they could've just ran an age appropriate game with another, better constructed system.
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Sep 24, 2013 07:11
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Alien Rope Burn posted:"Hey, we know your family is abusive and goes out of their way to make your suffer on every axis they can manage, but it's very important that you stay with them over summers because reasons-" The reason was that by taking Harry in, the Dursleys, particularly his aunt, activated a spell that kept him protected while it was his home. The fact that that spell ran out when he turned 17 is a plot point in the last book. It's not so much an issue in the earlier books though. So who knows why he didn't just ask the Weasleys if he could stay with them. The other elements I just assumed were a product of a corrupt (and acknowledged to be as such) wizard government. (Except the other countries not helping with Voldemort. That was just bull.) FourmyleCircus posted:Speaking of making GBS threads On Bad Games... I'm going to go through the Superbabes Adventure because... Well, frankly, I don't have the intestinal fortitude to pull of 13 Magazine right now. Or enough vodka. Friend of mine suggested making a drinking game out of WGA. Not sure my liver would survive it. I'll take it off your hands, if you like. Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Oct 8, 2013 |
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Oct 8, 2013 05:41
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FourmyleCircus posted:I'll give it another try. Part of the burn out is that it shows some promise, then immediately shoots itself in the foot with it's "Black Comedy". The other half is I live-blogged it when I first got it. To said friend that has played with Lucinda. Alright. Hex-O is credited with this monstrosity.  I was under the impression that they were an in-verse producer of educational materials and the disclaimer for the thing you're talking about was just a way to cover their rear end from... magical lawsuits or something.
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Oct 8, 2013 06:03
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FourmyleCircus posted:You're reading that right. They wanted eleven dollars for this 40 page 'magazine'. I can't say it isn't a cute way of doing it. But I've seen better. Cheaper too. When I was doing research, I read somewhere that 13 was meant to be a free quarterly supplement. But Harris is bad at running a business so they scrapped that and started charging for it. For those who are curious, they also finished the covers for what would have been the next two issues.   “Saint Joan’s Magical Reformatory”, according to the Witch Girls wiki (which looks to be entirely written by one person, possibly Harris), is a school for “young witches gone bad”. I find the idea a little odd, and am really interested in seeing the write up for it, if it exists. It’s been established that Harris and Co do not like consequences and that it is anathema to their idea of fun and how roleplaying works. A reform school is all about the consequences of one’s bad behavior (or lovely parents, in some cases). So based on what I know about this setting, I imagine Saint Joan’s has an “inmates running the asylum” type of deal going on. The fact that Reinhexxen, an entire school that has an entire curriculum centered around learning how to be the biggest rear end in a top hat you can be, is accredited by the Witches' World Council, makes its existence interesting and kind of contradictory too. quote:Basically, a 700 years ago guy is born to a Witch, keeps a diary of the weird stuff and lives and dies in Belgium. The book also mentions that Charles Victus is an "Enchanted". What's an Enchanted? Well, you need to buy and read Pirates of Buccaneer Hill to find out, because everything about that book hints that there might be important setting and rules in i-Oh wait... Pirates of Buccaneer Hill, page 32, tucked in the back with a character sheet posted:Enchanted are the non-Witch offspring or relations (brother and sisters) of Witches. They are ever so slightly magical and can see and perceive the world like a magical person. They are also immune to Mortal Avoidance charms. Enchanted usually have special talents that are also slightly magical. (see Moon Shadow Circle Supplement for more information) Yes, consult the supplement book that was never released.  Also, Pandora Spocks, the "editor" of the magazine, is the name Elizabeth Montgomery was credited as when she played Samantha's crazy cousin on Bewitched, because Harris can't go two pages in this game without making a reference to that show. Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 11, 2013 23:46
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FourmyleCircus posted:Adnachiel, you know far more about WGA than is sane.  Speaking of being thorough, Harris has one of the unpublished WGA supplements, Magical Music Tour posted on the game’s Facebook in three parts here, here, and here(in that order). It’s about the witch world’s music industry and making campaigns centered around it. I’m not going to do a write up because you can just go read it yourself and I don’t feel like spending a week or two translating Harris’ unedited gibberish, but here are some highlights:
Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 21:31
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and most of the acts involved seem to be independent.), and have gone to cyber war with them in the past. Her totally not obvious online user name is “Extreme Em”.
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Here, have a triple post about magical boarding school games. Hellcats and Hockeysticks: Intro: British Schoolgirls Behaving Badly  Hellcats and Hockeysticks is a Corone Design joint; written by one Andrew Peregrine, and released in 2009. Peregrine’s worked on a bunch of things, including some 7th Sea books and the Victorian Lost supplement for Changeling: The Lost, which isn’t listed on that site. Corone Design is his own imprint. Like WGA and Super Babes, it’s a game where all of the PCs are girls/women. Unlike WGA and Super Babes, it’s not a fetish game trying to pretend that it’s a wholesome genre definer… Assuming watching teenage girls be complete bitches to each other isn’t a fetish, that is. The narrator in this book is really into that idea. There’s also more references to a nebulous “daddy” than I’m comfortable with. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s what Andrew himself has to say on the matter in the back of the book. quote:While I have you all gathered here, I wanted to take a moment to address anyone who might doubt my motives for creating a game like this. OK, you got me, to a certain extent a game about schoolgirls is going to do well in such a male dominated hobby as gaming. However, in truth I wrote this game for the girls, not the boys. This game is about young women taking control and deciding who they want to be, and what they want to do, and drat the consequences. Sure, the guys may look at the book and say 'whoa, she's hot' but I'm hoping the girls will also look at the book and say 'drat, she looks cool'. This is why I made a point of using women artists, so that the characters were powerful and attractive, but not just male fantasies. Well, having a woman draw the pictures doesn’t really mean anything or prevent that. Some people will draw anything if you give them enough cash to do it. But I’ve skimmed your book, Mr. Peregrine. Your stuff seems sound and not full blown sleaze. I am willing to give you the benefit of the dou- ”Inspirations – Role-playing Games” posted:“Excellent”? Seriously? Are you just namedropping the only magic school RPG for girls that you can think of, are you just an idiot, or is that code for “I thought it was poo poo and could do better, but I got to credit it anyway”? Because I wouldn’t call a game where at least 4 of the NPCs in the core are either illegal or unplayable due to bad editing, amongst many other things, “excellent”. And the obvious answer to that last thought is to bet all on Lucinda. And then immediately realize that it’s useless to bet in this case since one of the parties is made up of overpowered Mary Sues and it would be a squash match. Another notable thing that Peregrine claims is an inspiration for this game is Panty Explosion, a game where you play psychic Japanese schoolgirls who battle demons and the evils of the high school social scene. This game even uses one of the systems from PE, the Best Friends/Rivals system, which is special and only serves to create a bunch of pointless conflict among the PCs. But the biggest inspiration for this game is the St. Trinian’s series of comics and movies, which, as Peregrine correctly points out, I have never heard of because I’m an American. For all you fellow “colonials”, as Peregrine puts it, who have never heard of this series either, read this, and then come back. This game is pretty much St. Trinian’s with the serial numbers filed off and magic, mad science, and demons thrown in, as far as I can tell. But you don’t really need to know anything about its inspiration to “get” this game. But enough about that, back to the front of the book. The book’s layout is minimal: Black on white with no fancy borders, backgrounds, or fonts, and a smattering of black and white drawings throughout. The drawings are very same facey, but competent. Each chapter begins with a picture of a blackboard with some stick figures doing bad things drawn on them and two quotes. One from a well-known male historical figure, and another from a (usually) female pop icon that contrasts it. Chapter 1’s quotes are from Einstein and Cyndi Lauper. quote:Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. quote:When the working day is done, girls just wanna have fun. The first chapter lays out the basic premise of the game via a scene with the headmistress of the game’s setting: St. Erisian’s. The unnamed headmistress is an old, crazy drunk who thinks gin is an anytime drink, that Anne Bonny and Lizzie Borden are proper role models, and that there’s nothing unusual about a bunch of sixth form students saving some younger ones from the piranhas in the swimming pool. As for general information: St. Erisian’s is a private boarding school for girls created out of an old manor house surrounded by rumors of witches and blood sacrifices (“But I’m sure we both know the sort of japes girls will get up to!”) and nestled somewhere in a part of the English countryside that’s secluded enough to not attract the attention of the rest of the country, but not enough to prevent them from visiting other schools and performing shenanigans in the local village. The building for the school, which dates back to sometime in the early 16th century, was bought on June 6, 1866 by the first headmistress, and the current one is the fourth. The school is named after Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos, as you probably already figured out, to give the students something to “inspire them”. The requirements for getting into the school aren’t strict; only whether or not the girl’s parents can pay the tuition fee. For its curriculum, St. Erisian’s has a sort of Montessori style one, in that the teachers teach the girls anything they want to learn that’s even remotely related to the subject of the class, and they let them teach their fellow students, or they’ll probably get shivved in their sleep, I assume. Because of this and a lawsuit, the government will only let them offer their own diploma and not any standard qualification papers. But that doesn’t really matter because colleges and businesses honor the St. Erisian’s diploma anyway, according to the headmistress. At this point, Peregrine steps in, puts the “old girl” to bed, and sends “daddy” on his way home. He points out that St. Erisian’s is the most dangerous girls’ school in the world, and new students to need to find allies by joining one of the various, you guessed it, cliques of the school if they want to survive. But fortunately, “we’ve never killed a new girl yet”. The next section is the “What is this… roles playing?” section. quote:What? You think we're going to make it easy for you, new girl? If you don't know, ask one of the older girls or work it out for yourself. You ought to know anyway, having got this far. You could always ask one of the boys in the shop where you bought the game to tell you all about it. Tell one of them you're a girl who likes to play games and they'll be putty in your hands. In H&H, the GM is called the Headmistress, and is given carte blanche to be an unfair rear end in a top hat to the players and “smack them with a ruler”, if need be. “Remember, we don’t play fair. We play to win.” The book also uses the female pronouns exclusively for “obvious reasons”, and not to be “politically correct” like other games. “If you have to ask why, we’ll get the 1st years to set fire to you.” Peregrine then points out that he asked a bunch of anonymous women who were assholes when they were teenagers to share their stories, which are scattered throughout the book. I suspect some of them are cases of poo poo That Didn’t Happen, like the one after the content summary; the speaker set fire to her school’s bike shed by accidentally lighting some barrels with “flammable liquid” in them that the groundskeeper set by the shed for some reason with a cigarette. Up next: Character Creation
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Oct 20, 2013 06:57
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MonsieurChoc posted:So, I've been lurking for a while, and this thread is a major reason why I finally got around to paying my Are you implying that you want to do a write up of Charnel Houses? I have a morbid interest in the Holocaust and I have been interested in that book ever since I heard it was actually good, even though I've never been interested in Wraith. I'd read it. 
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Oct 22, 2013 00:54
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. There was some talk about Wraith on the previous page, especially Charnels Houses of Europe and Wraith: the great War. I've got both those books (in fact, I have a lot of Wraith books), and they're pretty great. The thing about Charnel Houses is that they actually took the time to make a great setting, full of plot hooks and interesting NPCs, that no one is ever going to use.
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Kurieg posted:Yeah, one of several problems that revised CoG had was the party line of 'every single advancement in human history was our doing, except for the bad stuff.' Thankfully it's an outlier in revised. Even Demon danced somewhat gingerly around the nature of religion if I remember correctly. For everything around Genesis, Demon basically goes "Yeah, Adam and Eve technically existed, and so did Cain and Abel. But there were like, multiple layers to the universe back then man! They were both a man and a woman AND the unevolved ancestors of modern day man at the same time! And they were possibly songs on another layer!"  to get around having to claim that either evolution or creationism was the correct explanation. Everything after the flood is pretty much ignored, from what I recall. The only "offensive" thing I can think of is an NPC getting pissy about Jesus. And his reasoning was basically "I doubt this one guy got special treatment. Everyone in Creation is the son or daughter of God."And now, for this... Hellcats and Hockeysticks: Character Creation: Japanese exchange students get their own clique because anime. Chapter 2… Mark Twain posted:I've never let my school interfere with my education. Gabriella Cilmi posted:Sweet about me, nothing sweet about me, yeah. Andrew Peregrine posted:In this game, you play the part of one of the most terrifying creatures ever devised, a schoolgirl... Characters in H&H are students of St. Erisian’s between 16 and 18 years old. There are no rules for playing younger characters, as they would be weak and trampled on by their older peers… or roaming the school grounds and living a tribal lifestyle. There are optional tweaks for playing guys, but they don’t affect a whole lot and come later in the book. The first part of character creation is picking a clique. Cliques give a character a special ability and determine their 4 class “curriculum”, which influences how skill points are distributed. The cliques are…  Fixers – The daughters of gangsters, mafia bosses, and other assorted criminal types. They specialize in getting items and making contacts. Their special ability lets them spend a Willpower point to call on a contact that owes them a favor. How that’s used is up to the player and HM.  Goth/Emo – Dark, creepy, and possibly into black magic. Goths, however, are not always depressed and morbid, and that’s the difference between the two groups, which are statistically the same. So if you want to play a perky goth, that’s cool. Their special ability lets them scare people by making eye contact and spending a Willpower point. The target gets scared if they fail a resistance roll.  Hockey Girl – The jocks. Want to play a combat oriented character? Pick this clique. Their special ability used to let them add a die to any Games (read: combat) skill roll, but this was errata’d to just adding “1 die when they are doing violence to people and things which makes more sense.”  Sweetheart – That girl who makes everyone think she is a sugary sweet girl-next-door type, even when she’s not. Sweethearts are the manipulators of the cliques. Their special ability (which is called “Butter wouldn’t melt”) lets them have a bonus die on rolls where they’re trying to prove their innocence and, optionally, when they’re trying to pin the blame for something they did on someone else.  Nerd/Geek - Smart girls who can hack into computers, are good at math, and “play the stock market for a hobby”. “[You] know how to strip down a computer and have probably read an awful lot of science fiction. You may well play a lot of those weird role-playing games as well.” Their special ability lets them add a die to any single action that requires them to use their smarts, such as “playing the stock market or hacking a computer network”. I would think that hacking into a network would be an extended action of some sort, but there you go.  Prefect – Natural leaders who specialize in herding the army of cats that is the St. Erisian’s student body. (Yes, the book makes that analogy.) Their special ability lets each party member pick a skill that they will be using to carry out a plan of the prefect’s devising. While they’re trying to fulfill that plan, they get a bonus die for rolls for that skill. If anyone deviates from the plan, everyone loses the bonus. In addition, prefects can summon a gang of 1st years to do their bidding, provided they’re on school grounds or a school trip. 1st years are the students aged 8 to 12 who haven’t joined the formal classes yet. As a result, they live on the school grounds in feral tribes, hunt wild animals and in grocery stores for food, and dress like American Indians… until they turn 13 and suddenly stop acting like that, I guess. Have you ever seen Recess? They’re the kindergarteners. I’m not sure if I should complain about how dumb that is, or let it go since it kind of follows the game’s themes of chaos and anarchy… Anyway, 1st years will only follow a single one word command (Attack, Capture, Repair, Cook, etc.). How they interpret it is up to the HM.  Scientist – Nerds who work in labs instead of with computers. There’s some stuff about them gaining true knowledge from experimentation versus raw knowledge from books like the Nerds, but that’s what it pretty much boils down to. Their special ability lets them subtract 3 from the difficulty rating of any Fear test, since they’ve naturally seen some weird poo poo from messing with the laws of nature.  Coquette – “I’m a hot girl. Look at my boobs. You should do things for me because I’m a hot girl. Other girls are bitches to me, but that’s because they’re jealous of my good looks and fashion sense.” “Men are queuing up to take you to the best events and buy you the most expensive things. But really, your heart belongs to daddy, as soon as you decide who he is…” Their special ability is that they can make a single male character automatically fail a task once per scene. This can be extended to multiple men “if [the HM] is in a good mood”. (There’s no mention of lesbians or bisexual girls.)  Exchange Student – A student who has come to St. Erisian’s from another country… and by “another country”, I mean Japan. Want to play an exchange student from a country other than Japan? That’s fine. But you can’t take this clique. This clique is here because students from Glorious Nippon are extra special because anime. Exchange students are broken into two “sub-cliques”: Samurai, which are from rich families who didn’t do their research about what kind of school St. Erisian’s really is, and Ninja/Shinobi, which are from families that know drat well what kind of school St. Erisian’s is and sent their daughter there to finish her ninja training. There are seperate special abilities for both: Samurai get +2 dice to combat rolls using katanas and +1 to social rolls when defending her honor, even if the person has a reason to shame her, and Ninja get +2 to rolls involving stealth or escaping bonds. (It was originally 1, but errata’d to 2.) In H&H, there’s only two crunch stats that you spend most of your time worrying about : Skill ranks and Willpower. Skills are represented as the different classes offered at St. Erisian’s, presuming that the character has taken those classes which she has points in at one point and learned something from them. Each character gets 20 points to spend on skills (one for one), 5 of which have to be spent on the character’s four curriculum skills before anything else. Skill ranks can go from 1 to 5, (1 is "Beginner", 3 is "Professional", 5 is "Master") but skills that are not part of the character’s curriculum are capped at 4. The book goes more in depth into what exactly the different skills represent in a later chapter. Willpower functions exactly like willpower does in real life and also serves as HP. All characters start with 10. Again, this chapter doesn’t go into how it works in depth. Next is an optional rule for adding a Personality Trait to a character. These don’t do anything except help you come up with a character concept. So if you’ve got a character in mind already, this section is useless. Some highlights are Chav, Stoner, and “Foreign Affectation”: quote:You come from another country, usually a European one or from some uncivilised American colony, and you make it pretty obvious. Usually, this takes the form of very stereotypical national affectations and styles and very likely an outrageous accent. So the Exchange Student clique without the stat bonuses and a smidge more racist and/or obnoxious, basically. Up next is the Best Friends/Rivals system from Panty Explosion, which functions under the idea that, even when they like each other, girls will always find some way to hate the other girls that they hang out with. quote:But naturally, being girls, you all also hate each other. Every player picks a Best Friend and a Rival from the other PCs. Whether or not you or they keep these choices a secret is up to the players. If there’s only two PCs, each one decides if the other person is their Best Friend or Rival. These choices do not have to be mutual among the players. Next, you pick something that you hate about every other PC, except the Best Friend character. The reason doesn’t have to make sense or even be true, your character’s warped teenage girl brain will find some way of justifying it. For the Best Friend, you pick something you particularly like. Optionally, you can also pick something you like from all of the other PCs. This is meant to just add some crazy drama among the PCs and doesn’t affect anything stat wise. Next comes the Secret Fear. Each PC picks one, and only the HM is required to know what it is as it is used for Fear tests, which are explained in a later chapter and can be used to gain or lose Willpower. “You might have a fear of failure, drunks might remind you of daddy in one of his rages, you might be terrified that you'll be left alone…” Finishing off the chapter is the reminder that you should flesh out your character’s backstory and personality and two list of names, one for regular students and one for exchange students, that you can use if you can’t think of a decent girl’s name for your character. Up next: Gameplay rules, and lots of them. Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 06:05
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Hellcats and Hockeysticks: Skills and Skill Rolls: The prettiest player wins ties. Because I forgot them, Chapter 2’s Real Tales of Delinquency involve a girl and her friend starting a riot at her 6th form Christmas party while dressed as a devil and an angel, respectively, and another who got revenge on the guy who kept calling the cops on her and her friends when they were hanging out by the local fish and chip shop by tearing up his neighbor’s lawn and leaving the shears they did it with on his doorstep, which lead to the neighbor punching the guy in the face. Chapter 3… Winston Churchill posted:I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows” posted:We get some rules to follow. That and this, these and those. No one knows.  …Brilliant. H&H uses D6s and only D6s. For skill rolls, the dice pool is whatever your rank in the applicable skill is + 1. Rolls will only ever use one skill, with the HM deciding or giving the player the choice of which to use if a task could feasibly fall under one or more skills. The book encourages players to be whiny rules lawyers about this. quote:You are also allowed to whine and cajole the Headmistress into letting you make use of one of your other skills, if you can make up a plausible reason why it might apply. In fact, instead of specifying a particular skill, the Headmistress might ask you to 'make her an offer' and suggest the skill you think suits the action best. Either way, most rolls are tested against this difficulty chart:  If one or more dice comes up equal to or higher than the difficulty of the roll, you win. To even have a chance at succeeding at an “Absurd” or “Impossible” task, players can trade in dice from their pool to add 1 to the result of every die that they roll at a rate of 3 to 1. (So 3 dice for a +1 bonus and 6 for +2.) You can also spend a Willpower point to add a die to the pool at a rate of 1 for 1, with a maximum of 3 on a single roll. So theoretically, assuming you have a 5 in the skill the roll is for, you burn all 3 Will points, and you spend the 6 dice to get the +2 for an Impossible roll, you still only have a 1 in 6 chance on 3 dice to succeed. I really don’t understand why those two difficulty ranks are there. They’re obviously for things that a character should not be able to do or that the HM does not want you doing. The book says that you can also use this mechanic to “perform easy and even tricky tasks with little difficulty", but I’m not sure how I’d feel taking from what is essentially my health bar to perform easy rolls. For non-combat opposed rolls, the appropriate skill or skills is decided, the difficulty is decided, and whoever has the most successes wins. Of course, if that doesn’t do it, there is a specific set of actions you can do to figure this out. quote:If you need to know who does best in a contest, you add up the amount of dice that count as a success for each contestant, and the highest wins. If there is a tie, the highest skilled character wins. If there is still a tie, the prettiest one wins (of course it isn't fair, but let's face it, that's what happens.) If you can't decide who is prettiest (character or player) then you can either call it a tie and roll again or just roll 1 die each and the highest wins. Of course, if one of you failed and the other succeeded, the result should be obvious. For some opposed rolls, the book points out that it would make more sense for one of the players to roll and set the difficulty. In this case, the number of dice that come up as a success for the defending player becomes the number to beat. If the opposing player rolls an equal amount, it’s an “almost” success. (e.g. They catch a glimpse of the hiding character.) If the roll comes up a draw, the HM just picks whoever they think has the most advantage. quote:We discovered in playtesting that sometimes both sides of an opposed roll might get the same number of successes reasonably often. When this happens a lot, it can drag on somewhat. So before the challenge commences the Headmistress should decide which side has 'the edge'. This edge might be because one side has better skill, or a home advantage or even better quality weapons. It might be anything that could give them the smallest advantage but isn't important enough to warrant extra dice. When a draw occurs the side who has 'the edge' wins that round. If all the dice come up as a 1 (which only happens if you have 1 or 2 dice), the roll is a botch and all manner of horrible poo poo that the HM can think off happens because “your character basically becomes the Headmistress's bitch.” For instances where the players want to attempt a failed roll again… the book just says that the HM can think of an appropriate penalty up. But the general accepted rule is to increase the roll difficulty by 1. Next is detailed explanation of the various skills and what they do. As it has been noted, St. Erisian’s is not a normal school. So they can learn things that are vaguely related to the subject of the class in question that help turn the game into a more traditional RPG. Art – Painting, sculpting, and making forgeries of paintings and sculptures that are much better than yours so you can sell them for money. Used by Fixers. Biology – Knowledge of the natural world and how to corrupt it by making frankensteinian monsters and the like. Also, first aid. Used by Scientists. Chemistry – Make drugs and explosives. Used by Scientists. Computer Science – Use computers and be a leet haxxor. Used by Nerds. There’s a massive sidebar after the description about how your players might use this skill to get really creative with in-game solutions, since a lot of stuff is run by computers, and that you should put a limit on it if you need to. Craft, Design, and Technology – Woodshop, autoshop, and anything involving mechanics skills. Used by Nerds and Scientists. Current Affairs – Info gathering on anything from actual global politics to what color clothing some rich shithead is fixating on this week. Used by Fixers and Coquettes. Drama – Acting and disguising one’s self. Used by Sweethearts. Economics - Shopping, selling, haggling. Used by Fixers and both sets of exchange students. Electronics – Used for repairing anything that it is not a computer or involves micro chips in some fashion, since the write up emphasizes the importance of knowing how they work. Used by Nerds. English –Persuation as well as lying. Used by Sweethearts, Prefects, and Coquettes. Games- Games is divided into 3 sub-skills: Team Sports, Track and Field, and Marksman. The first is the stat used for all forms of melee combat, including unarmed combat; the second is used for non-combat related physical abilities such as running, jumping, climbing, and stealth; and the last is used for ranged weapons, including thrown ones. All three are used by Hockeygirls, Track is used by Goths and Ninjas, and Team Sports is used by all exchange students. Geography – Wilderness survival skills and the ability to track others, as well as weather forecasting and the standard knowing the capitals of countries stuff. It mentions that St. Erisian’s likes all of their students to have such training, which is probably why all of the younger girls live on the school grounds in tribes. No clique specializes in it. History – Military and political (Michiavelli is specifically mentioned) history, as well as legal tactics because again, as long as it’s even vaguely related to the subject, St. Erisian’s students can learn it. Used by Prefects and Samurai. Home Economics - "The kitchen is an underestimated place of wonder and delight to any girl. This is not because of the influence of Mrs. Beeton, but because kitchens contain both fire and knives." Covers the usual Home Ec. subjects plus potion and poison making. Used by Goths. Languages – Speaking languages other than English. Every point after the first lets the character speak an additional language, with no restriction on which languages the player can pick. (The book suggests Klingon, as it is easy to swear in and intimidate someone with.) There is a sidebar concerning foreign students and their mastery of English. One can either just assume they speak English fluently, or have them have 1 point for heavily accented and possibly broken, but passable English skill, and 2 for fluentcy. Used by no one. Leadership – Leadership skills as well as torture and interrogation tactics… and tying knots, because “we don’t want anyone getting away”. (This would work a lot better under Geography, but you know, game about girls being jerks…) The book recommends forcing players to spend Willpower if they ever get into performing “Jack Bauer’s fanatical little sister” levels of interrogation. Used by Prefects. Maths - Covers the usual math topics as well as investment and betting techniques. Fun Fact: The school is mostly funded by a stock portfolio run by the 6th form students. (It would probably also work better under Economics…) Used by Nerds. Music – Knowledge of music genres as well as composition. Also functions the same way as the Languages skill, except each point lets you play an instrument. Used by Goths. Needlework – Sewing, lockpicking, and knowledge of the fashion world. Used by Fixers. Observation – Not a class, but it’s here because Peregrine couldn’t think of a class subject to put this under. Used by Hockeygirls, Coquettes, and Exchange Students. Physics – Build traps and design things that fall under the CDT class, as well as gently caress with the laws of nature, including the Space-Time continuum. Used by Scientists. Religious Studies – Knowledge of the occult. (“Demon summoning is tricky, as Satan really doesn’t like his boys hanging out with ‘those bloody girls’.”) Want to play a magic user? Dump points into this skill. Used by Goths. Social Studies – Used to “read” people, as well as knowledge of psychology, detecting lies, and seducing people. Used by Sweethearts, Prefects, and Coquettes. Veterinary – Animal training and care, as well as actual veterinary skills. The book notes that this skill can be used to heal human targets in place of Biology, but that the difficulty rating should be higher. Used by Swethearts. Up next: Combat rules and taking damage.
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Oct 31, 2013 04:14
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Plague of Hats posted:Hey so I made a site to put F&F reviews on both in case of thread archiving, to make them a bit easier to read (site formatting aside) and to allow them to be read despite the paywall. It is currently sparse, but I can copy-paste with the best of them. I am interested in getting permission from reviewers, though I can also abandon all my heroic work in the face of stern disapproval. Suggestions and pointers on how to make things look better or more readable are also a plus. You can repost my stuff, including the unfinished Demon one if you really want to.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:01
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