|
The more I go back and read old World of Darkness the more I think of Everlasting. It's like all the 90s supernatural games start to congeal into one indistinguishable, loathsome mass.
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2014 04:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:29 |
|
|
FMguru posted:One thing I've noticed in the writeups is that a lot of the stuff that was implied in oWoD (like "science bad!") is flat-out stated in Everlasting. It's kind of amazing; I guess the designer thought that the real problem with the WoD games was that they were a little too subtle about the point they were making. I don't think it's so much implied as really inconsistent, basically "technology sucks unless you use it while riding a skateboard".
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2014 17:19
|
|
|
MadScientistWorking posted:Rifts was like that too. As I noted in Triax, getting the option to take a lot of Rifts' classes is ridiculously rare. There's also the chance of dying in chargen, but only when rolling a non-human Crazy in the "Ultimate Edition". In the current book I'm writing up there's a class where a randomly rolled human has a 1% chance of qualifying for the class. And it's not even a good or powerful class, it's actually a terrible, terrible class that... only 1 out of 100 characters will qualify for.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2014 06:15
|
|
|
It's amazing how "free love" and PUA bullshit become indistinguishable past a certain point. It doesn't help that I've been dredging that kind of crap up for another thread.  This is making me flashback to my early days online playing C:tD as a childling pooka (I thought it would help me avoid sexual misadventures, so naive) where her guardian pooka, a wilder, locked her out of his apartment in the middle of winter so she could sex a sidhe. When she went to the freehold to crash, she got in big trouble for that, too... ... it's amazing I kept up MUSHing as long as I did after my experiences there in retrospect.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2014 14:57
|
|
|
My secret is not to post until I'm about 80% to 90% done with an F&F. I have a number of F&Fs sitting at like 20% or 40% that may or may not see the light of day, but I like to make sure I have all the hard parts done so I can post leisurely. That's how I've sometimes bookended reviews, because one is in post while the other's being written. Having occamsnailfile picking up the slack here has been a tremendous help for me on Rifts, too. But it was ultimately getting the work done in advance that made projects like Pathfinder even possible.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2014 20:28
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:The secret is never loving go near a WoD MUSH. Too late. Far, far too late.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
Nemesis Of Moles posted:I just wanted to say I'm really enjoying this write up. Yeah, I haven't had much to say on it but it's nice to see, because it was marketed so hard as an amazing achievement and... the amazing part is how hard that stuff falls apart under examination. (This is true of most d20 products, but it's really striking with WLD.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2014 08:00
|
|
|
I love to see the summaries of foreign games out there. It reminds of in Pyramid magazine where they had a article with various game designers discussing the future of the hobby, and Steve Jackson discussed internationalism (naturally, since they were working on In Nomine), but it was still a good while before we saw the rush of Eurogames, but even with that, we haven't seen that many foreign RPGs (at least, compared to the number out there). It's great to see Japanese games come over, but I'd love to see more corners of the world export their elfgames. And yeah, we learn Cortez and conquistadors in the US, and then essentially fast-forward to Iran-Contra. Hell, we don't learn poo poo about Canada or Mexico, our immediate neighbors.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 22:38
|
|
|
World's Largest Dungeon definitely like it was written by a bunch of people given a vague outline who never coordinated or communicated. It had, what, at least 17 authors? I can't tell if there's more because that's the point where RPG.net's layout runs out of space on the page to list them.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:If you have any insight into the red lightbulbs I'd love to hear it Regular white lightbumbs have a detrimental effect on legends, not as much as sunlight, but still, it's hard to make legends properly. Ideally, you should use a red or black lightbulb. At the very least you can get a dimmer for any white lights so they do minimal damage to your newly created legends.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2014 21:49
|
|
|
Tasoth posted:Riddle me this, riddle me that, whose hand in that?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
Huh. On a related note, do we have any idea what writers wrote which parts of the WLD, or is it a mystery?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2014 01:25
|
|
|
I'm just envisioning a bunch of slaad running around with paper angel masks a la Team Fortress 2. It's the only sensible explanation.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2014 17:00
|
|
|
The remit to use every monster in the Monster Manual certainly gave us a lot of "and then there's a remorhaz hanging out!" Even at its its monstrous length, it somehow comes across as 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 16:27
|
|
|
Lynx Winters posted:This has reminded me, though, can we write about games that never got released if we have the material that was going into it? Because I'd love to write some words about Capcom World Tournament, a cancelled d20 Street Fighter & Friends RPG. As a unabashed Street Fighter fan, I'd love to hear about it. There aren't really any "rules" about what you can cover here or how you go about it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 18:54
|
|
|
It was by the now-defunct Living Room Games. I had a preview for it somewhere, but I don't remember it being particularly substantial.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 21:06
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:Bear in mind that they used an only slightly tweaked version of them for Middle Earth Roleplaying. It's one of the two biggest game/setting mismatches I'm aware of (the other being GURPS Discworld). You have to understand that back in the 80s, you chose one fantasy system and used it for everything. It was the rule.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2014 13:58
|
|
|
I once tried to convince a friend to work on a Dungeons & Discourse game with me. It's probably best that it didn't work out. It was good enough for two strips of gags but once you try and expand it out into a traditional RPG the wit of the idea is spread so thin it's essentially lost. I think we could've done better but I'm probably also wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2014 03:12
|
|
|
Xelkelvos posted:The concept needs to be reworked from the ground up and the D&D concept needs to be thrown out until the mechanics are more settled. It would probably be better served with stats based on a series of polar philosophies (Leftism vs. Rightism, Libertarianism vs. Authoritarianism, etc.) with each giving a penalty/bonus depending on the stat and roll. Honestly I wouldn't go for oppositional axes like D&D unless it seemed absolutely perfect. I'd probably instead have philosophies provide different features / feats / whatever, and if you have directly opposing philosophies, maybe their powers counter each other if that fits well enough. I think the philosophies should be specific; genericized philosophies just become another alignment system (remember those?). It's a neat idea but I think the end result might be Planescape where the subtext just becomes text.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2014 20:07
|
|
|
Grnegsnspm posted:I can believe that. I'm sure they were more concerned with marketing to people familiar with their current product rather than establishing some kind of persistent world narrative that tied in Street Fighter. Also, you would want the RPG to focus on whatever the current game was in an effort to boost sales. Also, there was basically no narrative in Street Fighter at that point beyond "punch some guys, punch some evil stronger guys, get on with your life". There's really nothing too complicated until Street Fighter Alpha 3, which came around a decade later.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2014 20:41
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Well, at the same time, I think they were barred from getting their hands on anything from the upcoming Alpha series. Street Fighter Alpha didn't do much for the franchise (given that even Capcom essentially disowned it), at least until its sequels improved on the idea (Alpha 3, particularly). I'm not sure Guy, Birdie, Rose, Charlie, Dan, and Sodom would've done much to reinvigorate the line.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
It didn't help that Capcom of USA muddied the waters by attributing stuff like Shotokan Karate to Ken and Ryu, or Capoeira to Blanka, none of which was correct. It created the idea that the Street Fighter II characters were loosely based on real fighting styles... which some were, but not all. White Wolf ran with that notion right into the ground, of course. Eventually Street Fighter III would have characters that actually did resemble Shotokan and Capoeira - Makoto and Elena, respectively. I did a rather Elena-influenced character in the short-lived Street Fighter PbP we had, but even so I had Guile's sonic boom, because, you know. Street Fighter.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2014 00:11
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I always felt that way about a bunch of the characters in Alpha. Like "If Gen represents the pinnacle of rad kung-fu master, where's his special effects? All I see him doing is switching stances!" It's the same with Guy. I always liked Guy because of that, though it was odd because he had a short flame projectile back in Final Fight 3 that I guess he decided to stop using for whatever reason. I particularly liked the version of Guy in the Street Fighter Alpha manga, where he's actually played up as somebody that just wanders from city to city and demolishes entire syndicates with his mighty kicks. Gen is based off of the legendary Bak Mei, so his depiction fits with the old depictions of him in Shaw Brothers films.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2014 01:23
|
|
|
Also he can kill with a single touch, so there's that.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2014 01:34
|
|
|
FATAL & Friends 2014: Feel the light energies relaxing your muscles.Forums Terrorist posted:That's a pretty standard hypnosis script. Of course, what in the blue gently caress they're doing in an RPG is anyone's guess. Naturally the key to finding your inner hero, self-discovery, and self-empowerment is playing a cursed walking corpse whose only role is to drag people into the sewer and inflict the curse on them out of morbid sadism. That's Everlasting.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2014 21:14
|
|
|
Whups. Edit, not reply. Edit, not reply.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2014 21:15
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:The original edition had no editor. At least it cops to that fact, after some of the books I reviewed that have multiple editors yet no actual editing.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2014 20:53
|
|
|
There is that little OSR subset that really, really likes to fixate on body horror and parasitism (I'm reminded of Yellowdingo's blog back when it was up, which had basically 101 versions of Ophiocordyceps). A creature that fires parasitic eyes into you would be an interesting idea for one strange encounter amongst a variety, but Raggi just likes going back to the well of being infested again and again.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2014 19:19
|
|
|
It's interesting to have the whole historical setting to try and give the adventure some weight to the setting and then watch him fling it out the window to have a necromancer of the Insect God and his goblin minions. The shiny bellbottomed magic outfit with pentagrams, crazy collar, and potbelly makes him look like he's a Vegas stage magician twenty years past his prime.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2014 12:39
|
|
|
TL;DR, I suppose, that was crummy of me. Essential point remains the same, though, it feels like something out of R6: Burrow of the Insect God, which I guess is the point, but it clashes with the Weight of Real History Stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2014 13:18
|
|
|
I have to wonder what's in it for adventurers to be adventurers in Raggi's... adventures. Idiocy? Masochism? Suicide pacts?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2014 22:00
|
|
|
In any case, I'm not terribly convinced that the cultists of the Insect God "stop being generic fantasy threats". Worshippers of a god trying to take control of his world with its  It's disappointing because the "villains" start out feeling rather nuanced and then it seems to really focus laser-like on this apocalypse cult, which doesn't have much to do with the plot save to offer up dungeons, as far as I can tell. Smart PCs would just wait for the army to march through and then clean that poo poo up afterwards... but I guess you don't earn as much XP that way.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2014 22:08
|
|
|
There's something I find revisionist about deathtrap OSR stuff like Lament of the Flame Princess; the whole attitude that games were once three deathtraps per silver coin or the like, because a lot of old D&D adventures don't resemble that sort of play style. Granted, that's the way 1st level play tends to feel (given that just about anything can murder you in one hit), and you have things like the S-series or Grimtooth, but that's just a small section of AD&D's broad canvas. It feels more like a weird exaggeration, a funhouse mirror version of classic fantasy games. With jokes, it could easily be a parody of that style of play. Ultimately it's kind of a "gotcha!" style of DMing that can be good for a one-shot (the so-called "Dungeoncore" adventures used it well), but I just can't see it as more than a novelty. In my experience it actually pulls away from roleplaying, as the puzzles and dangers become too dangerous to solve through anything other than metagaming and player planning than any genuine in-character reaction, as roleplaying often becomes just a mode you drop into for conversations and gently caress all else.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2014 00:28
|
|
|
Well, it's like the phrase "Nintendo Hard", which is a misnomer considering how many easy, easy NES games there were.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2014 04:37
|
|
|
Well, at least the name has more relevance to the adventure than "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" has to do with the game.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2014 07:14
|
|
|
I don't think Raggi necessarily thinks about it so hard, really - he designed the sort of game that reflects how he wants to run D&D, and that's fair enough. It's just weird to have a game revolving around instant death (or fates worse than) that still has the 1-20 level structure and power crawl still sitting there, when one of the primary focuses seems to be in disempowering the characters. The whole thing seems like it may as well be run with Dread using its campaign rules.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2014 19:29
|
|
|
The way it starts out the section with all these setting details and then literally blows them up always confused me. Most of it is more coherent, though!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2014 15:02
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Star Wars counters: "I have lightsabers, they are laser swords that are the iconic emblem of a knightly order, and they come in a few light colors that help visually identify the affiliation of the wielder." Well, this is the guy who came up with the "darksaber", which you'd think is some kind of saber, or dark, but it's not really either, it's a giant beam cannon that sort of looks like a lightsaber hilt. That's the level of braining going on there.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2014 17:32
|
|
|
The Avalon Hill Dune board game is actually pretty great, though it's nigh-impossible to find everything for it (outside of France). I really enjoyed playing a translation of the French edition, even though I'm a pleb with no appreciation for the novels (I've only read the first, admittedly).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2014 18:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:29 |
|
|
What's funny is that I always saw Thrawn as an enormously back-patty character that's pretty much defined by How Much Smarter He Is Than Darth Vader And Everybody Else Really But Mostly Darth Vader, and it turns out he's one of the better new characters compared to a lot of self-congratulatory EU introductions. Go figure.
Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Mar 27, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2014 19:07
|
|