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ElegantFugue posted:And guidelines for lots and lots of interesting terrain like clock towers and living garden mazes and flowing waterways and ghost-filled ballrooms. The most successful game I ever ran--and which was the only one that I finished, from beginning to end--was a 4e Castlevania game that topped out around 14th-15th level. Terrain was an absolute must for me as a DM, and I actually went through the trouble of crafting custom centerpieces for areas of the castle.    A section of the clocktower. The players really loved this set. Super old, like close to 4 years at this point, and I long since trashed them. Mostly we used a dry-erase mat for most combats, since a good third of the time I was making poo poo up on the spot. The thing I kept in mind when making the rules for them was ease of use and understanding; platforms rose and fell on their turn, as did gears, and moving up and down sections of walls was simple jump checks (if I bothered to make them roll at all). Terrain ought to be something fun and engaging and not require jumping through hoops or making a lot of unnecessary rolls to get the most out of them. Exceptions should be here and there, of course, but it's something to keep in mind nonetheless. One particularly fun example I can think of was a hallway I had thrown in a topsy-turvy upside-down section of the castle. Gravity was subjective, and both enemies and players could attack from the ceiling or the floor if they were standing on either one, and could traverse between them by either jumping, flying, or using one of the many doors to hop from one side to the other. Things like that really help spice up what can otherwise be just a stream of combat encounters.
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Nov 4, 2014 05:09
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Esser-Z posted:I assume Spycraft 1.0 also adds a whole lot more options and abilities (I've never played it), because playing 3.5 entirely with noncaster sounds... horrifyingly boring. It is if the options stick to "attack/full attack/charge attack" routine, which is why my current Pathfinder game has the PCs as students at a magic school who are secretly FANTASY SUPERHEROES. Even at low level the variety of magic and spells is enough for people to feel cool. If you're gonna play 3.X, you might as well embrace all its myriad options both 1st and 3rd Party. There's really no excuse to limit martials in such a way anymore unless you're some kind of Fighter-hating Caster Supremacist. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 06:14
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I know this was in last month's thread, but up until today when I caught up on it I had literally never heard a bad thing said about Deadlands other than "Lost Colony was dumb" or "Reloaded is better," so I was sort of legitimately shocked to see people hating on it. Even beyond the people I gamed with, it seems like basically every gamer I have ever mentioned it around loves it. It is probably still my favorite system, even all these years later (and even though I understand mechanically the Savage Worlds version is more elegant). Though I suppose given that my traditional gaming group and I are all Yankees and would have never gone to the South in-game for the same reason we would not go to the South out-of-game, that might explain why we never encountered/thought about the Confederate bullshit. We understood in theory that the Civil War never ended, but that just kind of seemed like a backdrop to telling the actual interesting party-level stories. Its practical impact on our games was "the dollar is not a totally national currency. The end." We always tell people Deadlands is "Wild West Cthulhu where you MIGHT not die in the campaign" which I suppose indicates how little interest we have in the comparatively mundane real-life aspects of the game world, like the Confederacy. I do understand the Native American concerns though, and I could never bring myself into play a native as a result of the context of the "noble savage." But one of my favorite characters was a Muslim Blessed/Shaman, which felt like an interesting way to engage with those mechanics. And to demonstrate that nowhere do the rules say those two things are incompatible.
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Nov 5, 2014 15:07
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Quarex posted:I know this was in last month's thread, but up until today when I caught up on it I had literally never heard a bad thing said about Deadlands other than "Lost Colony was dumb" or "Reloaded is better," so I was sort of legitimately shocked to see people hating on it. I think that's to do with the internet and the spreading of actual reliable information. Eighteen years ago, when Deadlands came out, "The Confederacy was all about States Rights" was probably the mainstream non-academic position. These days, if people try that one online they get pointed straight at the Cornerstone Speech, the Declaration of Causes of Secession, the Constitution of the Confederacy, and a whole heap of other things that the Confederates were saying at the time was their cause (things like "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."). Rather than the attempted whitewash that started just after they lost and were trying to retroactively justify starting the war while pretending it was anything other than the causes they were championing when they started it. And because the actual history is so much better known now than it was 18 years ago, the alternate history in Deadlands has moved from being something considered interesting to those people who spend too much time online regard in about the same way we'd regard a holocaust-denialist alternate history.
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Nov 5, 2014 17:31
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The world didn't get more informed about the civil war in the last 18 years. It just became less acceptable to hem and haw and lie about it.
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Nov 5, 2014 17:33
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Impermanent posted:The world didn't get more informed about the civil war in the last 18 years. It just became less acceptable to hem and haw and lie about it. Eh, easier access to the information disproving STATES RIGHTS as the basis is definitely a thing that's happened in the last couple decades, so really the world is a (little bit) more informed. Slimnoid posted:The most successful game I ever ran--and which was the only one that I finished, from beginning to end--was a 4e Castlevania game that topped out around 14th-15th level. Terrain was an absolute must for me as a DM, and I actually went through the trouble of crafting custom centerpieces for areas of the castle. This is really, really cool.
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Nov 5, 2014 20:37
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While I was 3 years old 18 years ago, I'm fairly certain the non-academic position was that the civil war was about slavery...at least in the north (which is where I'm from). I say this because I don't know anyone who actually buys into state's right theory other than the obnoxious, libertarian, pseudo-academics I sometimes run into at college. What I mean is, since I was kid learning about the war in elementary school, it has always been taught as being mainly about slavery. Other issues and reasons are discussed, but it's always been clear in my classes that the main reason the war was fought was over slavery. That and, except for the prior exception, no one has casually mentioned a counter belief in the regions I live in (once again, I live in the North) and, in many instances, expressed a firm stance that is was about slavery. Of course, this could be different if you live in different parts of the country. That is my mostly uninformed, useless opinion on the subject matter.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:46
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Well, Deadlands has the weird thing where the Confederacy abolishes slavery, ostensibly to gain European support (with the subtext being they also needed more bodies for the war). It's a goofy oversimplification of the issues and definitely leans towards Confederate apologism, but at least I see where they were going with trying to excise the whole issue from the setting. And more pointedly, tell players that even if you're playing a Confederate character, being a bigot or a racist is still a villainous trait... in a really hamfisted way.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:59
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I choose to blame Gone with the Wind and European immigrant movie directors who didn't want to lock out a quarter of their market for the muddying of that particular water. Once again, Hollywood screws up everything it touches. But, yeah, with the rise of the internet and forums like this where you get to read about how one of the Confederacy's generals proposed abolition and was immediately hushed up lest people think him insane, that narrative holds even less water.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:12
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neonchameleon posted:I think that's to do with the internet and the spreading of actual reliable information. Eighteen years ago, when Deadlands came out, "The Confederacy was all about States Rights" was probably the mainstream non-academic position. These days, if people try that one online they get pointed straight at the Cornerstone Speech, the Declaration of Causes of Secession, the Constitution of the Confederacy, and a whole heap of other things that the Confederates were saying at the time was their cause (things like "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."). Rather than the attempted whitewash that started just after they lost and were trying to retroactively justify starting the war while pretending it was anything other than the causes they were championing when they started it. No, the mainstream view in the 90's was still that the cause of the war was slavery. Maybe 28 years ago in the South it was accepted but by the 90's everywhere it's not a widely accepted viewpoint. EDIT: Ken Burns Civil War is probably to thank for that as well and that came out in 1990. After that, most people who weren't apologists or had an agenda knew what the war was about.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:58
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"Wasn't about slavery" is something you're going to probably still hear from someone with a Confederate flag on their pickup truck. And you still see a lot of those loving flags. I'd like to print out a bunch of white rectangle stickers captioned "Surrender Flag of the Confederacy" and slap them over those license plates, but I like not getting beaten to death more.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:06
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Not to be a downer, but "it wasn't about slavery!" is still something muttered (or shouted depending on where you are) plenty these days. Probably moreso then in the 90's.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:42
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Yeah the other side of the internet is that it's easier to find disinformation to support your fictional narrative and surround yourself with those who share it. Imagine if the D&D Next "playtest" had consequences beyond producing a mediocre RPG, and then imagine those people are dictating the content of the nation's textbooks because they rule Texas.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:50
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To be fair to Deadlands, even in the section of their "All about the south" sourcebook written from a Confederate POV, it names "Opposition to Slavery" as the main cause of things and only goes into States rights (To own slaves) after that. And includes a disclaimer of pro-Southern bias at the start of the section. ...Sadly the OOC section at the back is kind of a wishy-washy "Well, we're not advocating for this point of view, but Confederate PCs might totally buy into this romantic nonsense"
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Nov 6, 2014 01:09
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Yeah for my dissertation research I had the pleasure? of looking through Strom Thurmond's Senatorial Archives and...whew. He had helped the President of the Confederate Heritage Organization or something revise his speech for the centennial of the Secession, and I pretty much wanted to throw up reading through it, talking about how the North would probably be spending the next four years lying about how the Civil War was about slavery. Ugh.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:15
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unseenlibrarian posted:To be fair to Deadlands, even in the section of their "All about the south" sourcebook written from a Confederate POV, it names "Opposition to Slavery" as the main cause of things and only goes into States rights (To own slaves) after that. And includes a disclaimer of pro-Southern bias at the start of the section. Shane Hensley is a pretty educated and cool dude so I doubt that he subscribes to the "state's rights" version of Civil War history. I think the Confederacy is there because in the mid-1800's Canada was still a colony, Mexico was Mexico, the Native American tribes were about to be decimated as soon as the Civil War was over, and that's about it in terms of national variety. North America was not exactly Europe in terms of diversity and I think every attempt was made to remedy that for the sake of variety. Even Deseret exists as an independent nation and at that point the Mormons were on there way to becoming a 19th century Waco.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:22
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I don't think Hensely is a Confederate apologist but you don't have to be to pen a game with some dodgy concepts, I would say that the vast majority of questionable content in RPGs (barring outliers like Black Tokyo or FATAL) is down to that whole "never attribute to malice what you can explain with ignorance" thing. Somebody decides they want to make a horror western game in an alt-history where the Civil War didn't end and gets too caught up with steam tanks and zombies
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Nov 6, 2014 01:35
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Kai Tave posted:I don't think Hensely is a Confederate apologist but you don't have to be to pen a game with some dodgy concepts, I would say that the vast majority of questionable content in RPGs (barring outliers like Black Tokyo or FATAL) is down to that whole "never attribute to malice what you can explain with ignorance" thing. Somebody decides they want to make a horror western game in an alt-history where the Civil War didn't end and gets too caught up with steam tanks and zombies Yeah, I mean they do explain why they left it out and it's a reason that makes sense at the first glance (American slavery was so god-damned awful and serious that it's not fun to roleplay, it makes the game horrifically dark, and not in the sense that a pulp-horror game would want to be) but for a lot of people the vast, vast problems only become apparent when you sit and think about the implications of it. Everyone should totes read the Cornell University War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies if you want some in-depth peeks at the letters generals were writing each other. If you check the Navy section, it also has documents and letters from diplomats. (MEMORY-DIM PREVIEW: In one series of letters, a commander of the Union blockade is unable to apprehend a captain who keeps smuggling in slaves ["Contraband," in civil war records: If they say "The Contraband tried to leave" you know it's a slave and not like, a walking bag of heroin or something] and gets more and more frustrated every time they capture a ship this guy is on and the captain is missing. IIRC, they end up finding him after a guy higher up the food chain writes a letter back explaining that the smuggler had a habit of hiding himself in a whiskey barrel whenever the ship got captured.)
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Nov 6, 2014 02:10
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The 'best' not-thought out implications about race in the Deadlands books is also in Back East the South, which basically says "Oh, race relations in the south have improved, they're about where they were at during WWII!" So, you know, during Jim Crow, lynchings, and the KKK hitting peak membership.
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Nov 6, 2014 14:43
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Yes but only 10 years away from the Mad Scientist Supreme Court releasing Desegregation Gas in Neo-Arkans
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Nov 6, 2014 19:47
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unseenlibrarian posted:The 'best' not-thought out implications about race in the Deadlands books is also in Back East the South, which basically says "Oh, race relations in the south have improved, they're about where they were at during WWII!" The problem with saying race relations in the CSA are about the same as they are during WWII in the U.S. is that in the real world the South lost the Civil war. Some racial issues came about because of the Reconstruction period. One of the causes of the KKK was the Reconstruction. The Confederacy lost the Civil war and then had the U.S. Government imposing harsh rules. Not saying whether Reconstruction was bad or not, but I believe it did create a backlash against it. The KKK might not have started if there wasn't Reconstruction taking place. Would there be racism? Yes. There would probably be various laws about segregation. Yeah, the comment about race relations being the same as they were during WWII is just incorrect because it neglects the effects of an alternate history.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:06
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unseenlibrarian posted:The 'best' not-thought out implications about race in the Deadlands books is also in Back East the South, which basically says "Oh, race relations in the south have improved, they're about where they were at during WWII!" To be fair, lynchings of African-Americans were really on their way out by that point, and the KKK had peaked in the 1920s and was in rapid decline in the '40s as far as I can tell, but there was still a definite degree of monstrous, violent racism going on to be sure. Any degree of violence like that is tragic, but it was at least a far cry from the plague of brutality that African-Americans faced around the turn of the century.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:16
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Hello, chat thread. Just wanted to let everyone know I am planning on doing the TG Secret Santa again this year. There were several requests last year to get the thread going earlier, so I'm gonna probably get around to launching it around the 15th ish. Figured a heads-up was in order.
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Nov 6, 2014 23:37
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Leperflesh posted:Hello, chat thread. Just wanted to let everyone know I am planning on doing the TG Secret Santa again this year. There were several requests last year to get the thread going earlier, so I'm gonna probably get around to launching it around the 15th ish. YESSSSSSSSSSSS 
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Nov 6, 2014 23:41
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Spincut posted:YESSSSSSSSSSSS
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Nov 6, 2014 23:45
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Actually I better do it earlier than that. Ideally I'd like to get assignments sorted in time for black friday. So I guess look for something, uh, early next week?
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Nov 6, 2014 23:49
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I was just wondering about it today, actually looked in trad games in case you'd put up a thread already! Looking forwards to it, you did a great job last year 
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Nov 7, 2014 01:42
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Slimnoid posted:Clock Towers Instead, I'm going to ask if anyone has any suggestions for Spotify playlists or Youtube playlists or such for background music during tabletop gaming. I tried to suggest we just set Rules of Nature on loop for our D&D 4e game, but for some reason the rest of the group didn't sound interested  Now that I think about it, many of the Castlevania soundtracks could probably be pretty fantastic.
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Nov 7, 2014 02:23
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Pretty much any video game or TV show music will work for background music, within reason. The key is to keep it fitting with whatever the scene is (city, battle, tense, etc.) and keep the volume down to a more low-key, subtle level. Just going by my collection of stuff I have used in games over the years: Assassin's Creed, Bastion, Beats Antique, Big O, Blazblue, Castlevania, Chrono Cross/Trigger, Command & Conquer, Cosmic Break, Demon's Crest, Deus Ex, DMC, E.S. Posthumus, Eternal Darkness, EVE Online, Final Fantasy, Forsaken, Fungoid Stream, Gears of War, God of War, Guilty Gear, Intervals, anything by Jake Kaufman, X-Ray Dog, Karl Sanders, Legacy of Kain, Legend of Zelda, Lustmord, Metal Gear Rising, Metroid, Mind Necrosis Factor, Nagual Art, Perturbator, Proctector 101, Quake, Rob Dougan, Sephiroth, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill, Sword of the Bersker~Guts Rage, System Shock 2, The Angelic Process, Timesplitters, Touhou, Turok 1 & 2, Ulver, Unreal Tournament, various Warhammer 40k games, and XCOM.
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Nov 7, 2014 02:40
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This weekend is Metatopia, the only convention that I know of specifically for games designers, rather than for players. There's some major small press names presenting panels, including Kenneth Hite, Vincent Baker, Avery McDaldno, and Fred Hicks. There's also going to be a whole lot of playtesting going on. While I'm certain a lot of it is going to be inside baseball, if anyone is interested, I could do a write up of my experiences after it's all over. I'm especially looking forward to playtesting Eclipse Phase: Fate Edition. Also, if any other goons are present, hit me up. We can talk about goony poo poo or whatever.
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Nov 7, 2014 03:21
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Meinberg posted:This weekend is Metatopia, the only convention that I know of specifically for games designers, rather than for players. There's some major small press names presenting panels, including Kenneth Hite, Vincent Baker, Avery McDaldno, and Fred Hicks. There's also going to be a whole lot of playtesting going on. Sounds like a pretty genteel place! Tell us how it goes!
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Nov 7, 2014 03:24
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Odd question, but is DrivethruRPG in Spanish for other people?
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Nov 7, 2014 03:44
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LongDarkNight posted:Odd question, but is DrivethruRPG in Spanish for other people? It's in english for me.
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Nov 7, 2014 04:16
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Leperflesh posted:Hello, chat thread. Just wanted to let everyone know I am planning on doing the TG Secret Santa again this year. There were several requests last year to get the thread going earlier, so I'm gonna probably get around to launching it around the 15th ish. Yesss so excited! 
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Nov 7, 2014 04:44
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LongDarkNight posted:Odd question, but is DrivethruRPG in Spanish for other people?
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Nov 7, 2014 04:46
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Davin Valkri posted:Sounds like a pretty genteel place! Tell us how it goes!
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Nov 7, 2014 05:12
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Leperflesh posted:Hello, chat thread. Just wanted to let everyone know I am planning on doing the TG Secret Santa again this year. There were several requests last year to get the thread going earlier, so I'm gonna probably get around to launching it around the 15th ish. Awesome, I've been looking forward to doing it again this year.
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Nov 7, 2014 09:27
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Ewen Cluney posted:I had it randomly switch to German on me; I was able to change it back with the language setting drop-down at the bottom of the page. Thanks.
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Nov 7, 2014 13:33
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this week is dragon week, please post your proest dragons           
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Nov 8, 2014 17:11
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     Source.
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