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Mors Rattus posted:Well, yes, but the trick is that they can't level up without killing Beasts. And Open Gate is a level up rather than a standard Heroic ability, so a freshly minted hero setting out for his first kill can't have any actual Hero Powers if he's going to be able to chase a Beast into the boss lair (where the Beast also powers up).
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Apr 29, 2016 00:19
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I Am Just a Box posted:It turns out, when you launch a Kickstarter and receive a response from a large proportion of your fanbase of general horror at huge swaths of the book's content, it's not actually feasible to try to rewrite everything problematic in a month instead of backing out of the campaign. Who knew? The bit in question was written after the kickstarter. Meaning he ignored the criticism and did it anyway.
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Apr 29, 2016 00:21
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I Am Just a Box posted:It turns out, when you launch a Kickstarter and receive a response from a large proportion of your fanbase of general horror at huge swaths of the book's content, it's not actually feasible to try to rewrite everything problematic in a month instead of backing out of the campaign. Who knew? You could honestly just delay it, at that point. Sure, people don't like when kickstarters go for years and years, but it's better that you realize that you need to delay and rewrite a product instead of releasing one that's horrible and saying "B-BUT IT SHIPPED ON TIME, RIGHT"
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Apr 29, 2016 00:24
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So high integrity Heroes are metaphorically the local police chief who is neighbor to a horribly abusive father but throws his hands up and says 'Welp, a boy needs his father'? Because that's loving disgusting and misses one of the most important concepts of a hero on a global level: the willingness to put yourself in harms way or die to make the world better.
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Apr 29, 2016 00:47
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This is looking less like a game and more like some self-described misanthropic nerd manifesto by the post.
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Apr 29, 2016 00:51
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Tasoth posted:So high integrity Heroes are metaphorically the local police chief who is neighbor to a horribly abusive father but throws his hands up and says 'Welp, a boy needs his father'? Because that's loving disgusting and misses one of the most important concepts of a hero on a global level: the willingness to put yourself in harms way or die to make the world better. Yes, because the game is written from the point of view of "What beasts do is good and necessary". Within that lens High integrity heroes are doing the right thing. The fact that the game never offers an alternative to "What beasts do is good and necessary" is a failure of the designer.
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Apr 29, 2016 00:56
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I mean poo poo, 'Beasts hassle people with difficult but surmountable challenges that help them surpass their limitations and hang-ups, until they are strong enough to become Heroes and strike down the Beast so the cycle can begin again elsewhere' seems like it writes itself. It probably already exists somewhere
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Apr 29, 2016 02:22
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RentACop posted:I mean poo poo, 'Beasts hassle people with difficult but surmountable challenges that help them surpass their limitations and hang-ups, until they are strong enough to become Heroes and strike down the Beast so the cycle can begin again elsewhere' seems like it writes itself. It probably already exists somewhere You're about the seventh or eighth person I've seen (semi-)independently come up with that exact concept.
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Apr 29, 2016 02:25
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RentACop posted:I mean poo poo, 'Beasts hassle people with difficult but surmountable challenges that help them surpass their limitations and hang-ups, until they are strong enough to become Heroes and strike down the Beast so the cycle can begin again elsewhere' seems like it writes itself. It probably already exists somewhere I think that would make me hate them more, somehow. gently caress off, I don't need a supernatural personal trainer, I don't need to run a marathon or Git Gud, just let me play games in bed and eat bad food in peace. And I thought Beasts were supposed to be nihilistic? Forcing self-improvement is like the opposite of that. If it leads to slothful heroes who reluctantly get off their asses to get the self-righteous murder machines to chill out it'd be all worth it. Doresh posted:Tumblr: The Denial - A Storytelling game about First World Problems. Real talk: We need more games about transforming mundane problems into mythic drama. Unknown Armies is probably the best at that.
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Apr 29, 2016 02:30
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You lock the nerd out of his house and begin dog-earing his monogatari books. He can get the spare key from the neighbors to stop you, but to do that he must Talk To a Girl
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Apr 29, 2016 02:45
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RentACop posted:You lock the nerd out of his house and begin dog-earing his monogatari books. He can get the spare key from the neighbors to stop you, but to do that he must Talk To a Girl It's WoD, the girl is probably a vampire. The self-improvement thing can probably be done by other splats. That's the whole point of Mage, and they've got that trippy initiation thing. Vampires physically make you sexier and better, werewolves are probably big fans of forcing city kids to experience nature, etc.
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Apr 29, 2016 02:50
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RentACop posted:Talk To a Girl Roll +Cool. On a 7-9 pick one *you accomplish your immediate objective *she doesn't think you're a weird creep *you do not run away in humiliation. On a 10+ pick two.
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Apr 29, 2016 02:55
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Count Chocula posted:I think that would make me hate them more, somehow. gently caress off, I don't need a supernatural personal trainer, I don't need to run a marathon or Git Gud, just let me play games in bed and eat bad food in peace. And I thought Beasts were supposed to be nihilistic? Forcing self-improvement is like the opposite of that. The....gently caress? It's a damned game, the game isn't telling you to be healthier. And that's not what they were talking about in the first place. Count Chocula posted:It's WoD, the girl is probably a vampire. No vampire doesn't, it hasn't done that since oWoD. No werewolf isn't. Is this just part of a joke now?
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Apr 29, 2016 02:58
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RentACop posted:I mean poo poo, 'Beasts hassle people with difficult but surmountable challenges that help them surpass their limitations and hang-ups, until they are strong enough to become Heroes and strike down the Beast so the cycle can begin again elsewhere' seems like it writes itself. It probably already exists somewhere At this point, what separates Heroes from Hunters? I mean, how is this different from other supernatural creatures doing literally just that? Beast just doesn't need to exist, is sorta the thing. It adds nothing new. Even when you go beyond the fact that it's the Suicide Squad movie in book form, it just doesn't really have a point.
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Apr 29, 2016 03:16
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I'm actually quite curious about that, knowing very little about CoD. How does a Hero stack up to a Hunter, anyway?
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Apr 29, 2016 03:33
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You can literally sell all the awful parts of your life to a Demon, which is a sort of self-improvement, though not quite the one intended here.
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Apr 29, 2016 03:44
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ProfessorCirno posted:At this point, what separates Heroes from Hunters? I mean, how is this different from other supernatural creatures doing literally just that? I guess I would say, a Hero is not in the business of killing monsters but is more a Cinncinatus-type; a Hero kills the Beast and then returns back to their normal life, forgetting most of the trauma but retaining enough to keep the lessons learned and a dim awareness of the supernatural. They're that one friend you had who everyone thought was going off the deep end for one reason or another but totally turned their life around Though honestly I'm just grabbing things out of the air to support a sentence I typed to make fun of an rpg and I know sweet gently caress all about the setting aside from dribs of vampire and werewolf
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Apr 29, 2016 03:45
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If we're going strictly off the text of the book. A Hunter probably made a choice to do what they do. A Hero is a literal physical NPC. They're so one dimensional the why of what they do is completely ancellary. They are heroes and heroes kill beasts.
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Apr 29, 2016 03:54
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 Psionic Artifacts of Athas part 7: Locally Grown Organic Artifacts So, now we're back into actual Artifacts...sort of. You see these are life-shaped artifacts. And they kind of highlight one of the major issues with life-shaping in Dark Sun: the writers just can't decide if its magical or not. On the one hand almost every life-shaped item presented (including ancient rhulhisti ones) falls under the category of "soft sci-fi biotech"...the sort of stuff that could be theoretically created through guided evolution and/or genetic manipulation. Then you get the weird stuff...the Pristine Tower is probably the "prime" example, especially since it has such a large role in the setting's history. How does bio-manipulation give you a device to drain and harness energy directly from the sun? Who knows? That more or less sums up the rest of these artifacts. A few kind of make sense...but part of the problem is we have very little information about what was going on in the Blue Age. We know they didn't have wizardry or psionics...the heavy implication is that clerical magic existed but was largely considered a curiosity (a little weird since a high level cleric has powers that put life-shaping to shame). Druidism is simply not mentioned. Well...did they have things like demons? Undead? supernatural creatures? No clue. The opening for the chapter claims that these artifacts are the product of the life-shapers experimenting with the creation of intelligent or free-willed creations...except that the majority of these artifacts are not intelligent. Some have curses or "built in" agendas that they force on their bearer...but they are largely not sentient beings. Even if they were, that doesn't explain how being intelligent gives them magic powers. So with that resounding  we start with the life-shaped artifacts.  The Centennial Brain Apparently called "centennial" because the brain is a melding of 101 of the greatest Rhulhisti minds (literally). The creation of a mad life-shaper who murdered them, took their brains and squashed them together. Basically its an artifact version of the Overmind from Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs and does exactly what you'd expect of a giant brain: thinks a lot. The whole thing is 8 feet in diameter and covered in glowing runes (wait...what? They really are forgetting that life-shaping isn't magic aren't they?). The brain has developed psionic powers over the millennia but it is utterly helpless without a "host" to channel its powers through. The brain has immeasurable intelligence. It can communicate telepathically with anyone touching it and knows most anything or knows how to find out anything it doesn't know. It refuses to deal with philosophical nonsense however like the meaning of life or the nature of morality. It mostly doesn't give a poo poo about people. The brain knows every psionic power there is, but can't use them itself (which is weird). Instead someone must touch the brain in order to serve as a channel for the power, using their own power points, level and ability scores. Every time you use the brain the GM rolls 1d10 in secret, once these rolls add up to 100 or more then the brain absorbs your mind, leaving you a mindless slave. The brain then uses this slave to channel its powers until their body gives out from the strain (usually a year or two). Oh, and several life-shaped artifacts don't have suggested means of destruction, they simply have their own AC and HD and presumably can simply be killed by chopping them into pieces. Given the centennial brain is a big, unmoving pile of meat I'm shocked it hasn't just been eaten by some random predator. It has AC 5 and 16 HD.  The Corundum Wormskin Why do so many life-shaped items look like horrible fleshlights? The corundum wormskin is an example of a case where the writers created something that seems like it could be a powerful life-shaped objects...but forgot that the Blue Age was called the Blue Age because the world was covered in water. The premise of the wormskin is that the halflings created sink worms (Athas's sandworm ripoff) in order to excavate and mine for gemstones...except we know from Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs that they don't mine or indeed care about mineral wealth at all. Sinkworms are also not aquatic. Anyway, the corundum sinkworm supposedly was the accidental product of this breeding program which turned on its creators. It was killed but this small piece was indestructible and retains the super-sink-worm's abilities. Basically this artifact turns you into a watered-down King Leto from Dune. The corundum wormskin is a small "sheath" of corundum (the mineral that rubies and sapphires are made from) which is conveniently just long enough to slip over a human's finger. It fuses with the skin and becomes irremovable and begins to grow to cover the entire body. Every month AC improves by one until it hits -2, along with a slower progressing charisma and dexterity penalty. After 12 months you lose your human sentience and literally become a sink-worm with a gemstone skin. At that point you must become an NPC for another two years as you grow into a full-sized worm. You will then allow the largest male sinkworm to mate with you, lay an egg and burrow into the earth, never to be seen again. The egg then hatches, revealing...you! You have your old class, level and memories back and are fully playable again. Your AC, charisma and dex have all returned to normal although you have a gemstone finger. You also have the powers of a Worm Lord now. This gives you the equivalent of Tremorsense 120' on sand so long as you don't wear shoes and lets you burrow at your movement speed through sand or silt and you don't suffocate underground. You can also phase through 90' of rock once per day and by performing a 10-round-long dance you can summon a sinkworm once per week, serving you for 24 hours so long as it remains in your presence. Plus a bunch of random abilities: one each from Detection, Divination, Elemental earth and minor spell-like powers. Oh, and there's a 1% chance whenever you summon a sinkworm that it'll be the worm you mated with (exes are always a pain) who is immune to your control and will attack you. So, put on a finger sheath, spend two years as an NPC and in return you get a modest selection of supernatural powers...the equivalent of maybe two decent mid-level magic items. That's a rip-off. Really its an item that is only interesting for an NPC and even then its hardly powerful enough to make that big a difference outside of specific circumstances. Oh, and the entry forgot to include any rules for what happens to the wormskin itself. A straight reading seems to indicate it is a one-use item as your original crystal sinkworm body disappears forever into the center of the earth and your new Worm Lord body has a solid-crystal finger but no indication that this somehow turns back into the hollow crystal tube if the Worm Lord dies. But there's indication of there being multiple corundum sinkworms, so presumably the life-cycle must continue. Nor are any guidelines provided on what would happen if the crystal sinkworm was killed before it lays an egg. The wormskin has AC of -4 and 1-20 HD depending on its life-stage.  I am Groot! The Green Rhul Despite my general critique of this book I quite like the Green Rhul. It's cool (who doesn't want to walk around in leafy power armor?) and it actually makes a fair amount of sense as a piece of life-shaped technology. The Green Rhul is a nine foot tall plant that you can wear as basically organic power-armor. This artifact is intelligent (18) and speaks the language of the ancient rhulhisti. It usually permits people to enter it (there's a seam in the back) unless it is already bearing a rider, at which point tendrils punch into your skin and bond with your nervous system. This allows the Rhul to communicate telepathically with its rider (ignoring language barriers) and the rider can share the Rhul's senses to see and hear what it does. If the Green Rhul is willing it can also follow orders or requests independently without being ridden....or not because the very next paragraph states that the rider provides the neural hook-ups it needs to operate its muscles and it cannot move without an occupant. Druids apparently have legends about the green rhul, claiming that they created it, a claim that is clearly false. They do have a legend that a druid did find the Rhul and used it to wage war against a city-state, however once the curse kicked in the druid marched into the silt-sea to die (why the rhul allowed this is unclear)...which is pretty ridiculous when you see how mild the curse is. While inside the Rhul the wearer has AC 0 and all damage goes to the Rhul and not the occupant (the Rhul has 8 HD, making this a fairly bad deal for most mid-to-high level characters) Psionics and magic could potentially bypass this protection but must be specifically targeted at the occupant. The Rhul has a strength of 24, a speed of 9. All other Attributes are as the character riding...although it apparently has a full suite of attributes itself (Dx-13, Con-24, Int-19, Wis-11, Chr-3). It's already contradicted itself with the intelligence (and the difference between 18 and 19 is pretty big in 2e) and its unclear how it can have its own Dex score if it can't move without a rider and with a rider it uses the rider's dex. The rhul is immune to poison, gasses, disease, and "any environmental effects" (what that means is unclear). The host is likewise protected and doesn't need to breath, eat or drink within the rhul. The rhul also shares its combat experience with the rider: all opponents must declare their actions for the round first then the rider can take actions based on that info. This is only presented with the assumption that a PC is riding the rhul and that the opponents are NPCs...its pretty awkward for players to have to declare their actions in advance considering they should be able to act based on previous character's actions. The rhul can also "plant" itself to feed itself. An hour of sunshine feeds it and its rider for a day, and it can't heal if it is denied sunshine. It has also developed psionic powers, it has 100 PSP,s and one random science and three random devotions. The rider can use these powers at will, drawing from the rhul's PSP supply. The Rhul's curse is that it transforms its occupant into a halfling (this is what freaked the druid out so badly that he walked the rhul into the silt sea). And it will gradually take control of its occupant to allow it to live as a free being (since it needs an occupant to allow it to move). The text provides no guidelines for this, instead using the term "artifact possession" and "artifact transformation", as though we are supposed to know what they mean. These are terms from the book of artifacts where they have very specific mechanics...which are not reprinted in the Psionic Artifacts of Athas or used in any other artifact entry in this book (even ones that possess and/or transform the user). Unlike the first two life-shaped artifacts the Rhul has the standard artifact indestructibility. Reducing it to 0 HP just renders it inactive (healing 1 HP per day). Even turning it to ash will cause one of the pieces to eventually sprout into a new Rhul. It could be permanently destroyed by the touch of the descendant of the first true druid (why?), an ancient halfling (meaning one from the blue age itself) must sacrifice itself by riding the Rhul, or it can be burned by the breath of the Dragon (who is already dead...).  The Jade Marquess The Jade Marquess is a wonderful exercise in making no loving sense. In fact, if I had to guess I'd say it's probably two artifacts awkwardly smashed together...or a more standard artifact given a "makeover" as a life-shaped object. The Marquess is a ship that was supposedly designed in the Blue Age, back when the world was covered in water, explicitly for the purpose of sailing on land. In fact it can't sail in water at all!! It also very distinctly looks like a normal ship crafted of carved wood, not a piece of life-shaped technology, which you may recall looks more like this:  Real ships have curves The history makes this even weirder: we get a single short paragraph detailing the fact that it was made in the blue age for unknown reasons. Then we get a much longer story about how the Marquess appears in elven legends where it was a gift to the elves by earth elementals (a backstory that makes a lot more sense) and how the elves became awesome land-pirates. The main function of the Marquess is that it can sail on land at a speed of 12 and on silt at a speed of 18. It can't climb inclines greater than 30 degrees or sail over large rock outcroppings. It doesn't phase through earth, it literally sails on top of the ground, carving a big trench behind her. How this works is unclear. Whoever is at the helm can control the Marquess and command all of her functions. One of the weirder aspects of the Marquess is that her size varies depending on how much food she's eaten and how many HP she has. The Marquess has 30 HD when fully fed and is 120 feet long, with three masts and four deck levels. However, when shrunk her features are reduced proportionally and at her smallest (3 HD) she is only a canoe. She can shrink if not fed properly (which is annoying but not crippling) but the big problem is that damage shrinks her. Every 5 points of damage causes her to lose a foot in length...which means even modest damage could suddenly cause you to not have enough room for your crew or cargo (something that is not addressed at all). Even worse is that the Jade Marquess's weaponry is available only at certain sizes, meaning damage could easily disable your weapons. Oh, and another weird thing. The Jade Marquess' HD are always 1/4th her size (so 30 HD when at her full 120 foot length, 3 when a 12 foot canoe). So...that means that damage reduces her HD along with her size...which means that the more damage she takes the less hit points she has (which is less of a tautology than it sounds). Again, the effects of this are not actually addressed. Indeed, no rules are provided for what happens when the Marquess is brought to 0 Hp and how fast it heals. Despite this the artifact entry grandiosely claims "No storm, spell or creature can sink the Jade Marquess" which I guess is true since it sails on land. The Marquess is immune to spells that would change her "shape or nature" (what is her nature?) and she is immune to mind control (of course at no point is there any indication that the Marquess has a personality, intelligence or desires beyond simple hunger). Plus she is immune to all psionics. The Marquess has built in weaponry depending on her size: *40 feet+: a weird thing on the front that has a random offensive power *60 feet +: a second, identical thing that fires from the rear. *80 feet +: a side-mounted weapon with another random power from the same table. *100 feet +: a second weapon on the opposite side with an identical power. Keep in mind that due to the nature of these tables each weapon can probably only fire once per day, making for an underwhelming power. The curse of the Jade Marquess is two-fold. First she has to devour living beings or she'll shrink. Growing requires she consume the appropriate number of HD worth of living creatures per week and she'll shrink if she consumes less than half her HD in creatures. It's not clear but presumably anything between half and full is sufficient for her to simply maintain her current size? This is a fairly mild requirement but it does bring up one big problem with the Marquess: its not very impressive. She moves slowly and requires regular feeding...you might as well just travel by caravan. She's not exceptionally tough or durable and while she comes with some weapons they're very limited use and not that impressive. Oh, and if she's currently shrinking she has a 25% chance to chase down and try and eat living creatures she comes across with a bite that inflicts 1d6 damage per 20 feet...something that would actually be a decent weapon at full size but there's no indication that the captain can order her to try and bite or devour enemies. The second part of the curse is that anyone who sails her becomes tied to the ship and cannot leave for more than a day without succumbing to a geas to return. When they die they rise as undead and follow in search of the marquess (as a result it has twice as many encounters with undead as normal...whatever that means. Suggested means of destruction are having the undead spirit of her first captain sail her into water where she will dissolve, an elf who is the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter unto 11 generations must willingly sacrifice themselves by being eaten...or she must be tricked into eating a moonbeam...WTF? Anyway, that's all for now. Next we'll be finishing up the living artifacts.
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Apr 29, 2016 04:29
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A campaign based around a good landship could be fun.
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Apr 29, 2016 06:21
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Honestly the way I'd do a "Supernatural monster opposed by heroes" game that sorta-kinda vaguely pulls from the same themes as Beast is start from the premise of "Both sides are being hosed over by the force of narrative. PC beasts and PC heroes are the ones who've realized this. The bad end is to fall into your role on -either- side and do what the story wants. The good end is to go punch the narrative in the face, possibly by organizing a road trip to piss on the grave of Joseph Campbell and the Brothers Grimm. You could even have a morality stat with reasons to have it really high or really low, like hunger; low Story means you've been successfully fighting against the narrative; you get bonuses to go unnoticed, to avoid falling into patterns typical for your type. High Story means you've been going along, but by going along you get more powerful abilities, because you're a lot closer to being a full on dragon or kraken or whatever, which may let you fight against your roll more easily, or face off against enemies who've decided to go with flow. Sadly, even this theme's basically close to all the Talespinning stuff in 1E Changeling, and to some extent how their durances went, so eh.
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Apr 29, 2016 06:36
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Roland Jones posted:You can literally sell all the awful parts of your life to a Demon, which is a sort of self-improvement, though not quite the one intended here. (Not that you'd be able to tell, Demons have the best poker face possible.)
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Apr 29, 2016 07:40
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly the way I'd do a "Supernatural monster opposed by heroes" game that sorta-kinda vaguely pulls from the same themes as Beast is start from the premise of "Both sides are being hosed over by the force of narrative. PC beasts and PC heroes are the ones who've realized this. The bad end is to fall into your role on -either- side and do what the story wants. The good end is to go punch the narrative in the face, possibly by organizing a road trip to piss on the grave of Joseph Campbell and the Brothers Grimm. This needs Jenna Moran.
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Apr 29, 2016 08:25
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Count Chocula posted:A campaign based around a good landship could be fun. Indeed, and if it weren't for the annoying size-changing shenanigans the Jade Marquess could make a very interesting artifact. It has just enough durability and firepower to make it useful and its obsession curse is unpleasant but provides an interesting series of plot hooks and story potential, while at the same time giving the PCs a very cool toy. But what we got was something that, if it gets hit with a fireball, is going to poop out its cargo bay and spontaneously lose weapons. Not very user friendly. Also the whole life-shaped aspect feels extremely tacked on. A literal boat of jade gifted from a powerful Earth Elemental or Genie prince (with a hidden curse) is a cool backstory. A water-based culture building a boat that can't sail on water is just plain dumb.
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Apr 29, 2016 09:21
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Count Chocula posted:This needs Jenna Moran. So, most of the time I wouldn't agree with this guy, but this time--
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Apr 29, 2016 10:44
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly the way I'd do a "Supernatural monster opposed by heroes" game that sorta-kinda vaguely pulls from the same themes as Beast is start from the premise of "Both sides are being hosed over by the force of narrative. PC beasts and PC heroes are the ones who've realized this. The bad end is to fall into your role on -either- side and do what the story wants. The good end is to go punch the narrative in the face, possibly by organizing a road trip to piss on the grave of Joseph Campbell and the Brothers Grimm. This is like the 6th time I've seen someone independently arrive at this concept for Beast which speaks to how much more it would appeal to people. I mean, even if you want to go with the 'Beasts represent the oppressed and marginalized' having the story, the source of that systemic oppression, be the actual antagonist would work much better as is.
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Apr 29, 2016 14:02
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Monathin posted:You could honestly just delay it, at that point. Sure, people don't like when kickstarters go for years and years, but it's better that you realize that you need to delay and rewrite a product instead of releasing one that's horrible and saying "B-BUT IT SHIPPED ON TIME, RIGHT" I take a month-long delay over something that ships on time as a broken mess. That's how I roll with video games, and this should work with RPGs as well. Tasoth posted:So high integrity Heroes are metaphorically the local police chief who is neighbor to a horribly abusive father but throws his hands up and says 'Welp, a boy needs his father'? Because that's loving disgusting and misses one of the most important concepts of a hero on a global level: the willingness to put yourself in harms way or die to make the world better. "Beasts will be Beasts." Count Chocula posted:Real talk: We need more games about transforming mundane problems into mythic drama. Unknown Armies is probably the best at that. Why am I suddenly thinking about Gurren Lagann, except now it's about Gamergate?
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Apr 29, 2016 16:37
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Night10194 posted:This is like the 6th time I've seen someone independently arrive at this concept for Beast which speaks to how much more it would appeal to people. To be fair probably 2 or 3 of those other times were also me since I think that's been my proposed fix before, I just look at Beast and go "Yeah, not worth the effort"
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Apr 29, 2016 16:48
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Perhaps if one were to imagine Beast: The Primordial the game as one of the actual Beasts it presents, it feeds by making people incredibly uncomfortable with the stuff it says and the lesson ultimately is "rawr you can't change me, you should use that creative energy I bestowed upon you to make your own thing free of my influence also rawr again".
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Apr 29, 2016 17:15
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Hostile V posted:Perhaps if one were to imagine Beast: The Primordial the game as one of the actual Beasts it presents, it feeds by making people incredibly uncomfortable with the stuff it says and the lesson ultimately is "rawr you can't change me, you should use that creative energy I bestowed upon you to make your own thing free of my influence also rawr again". Maybe the real Beast: The Primordial was the friends we made along the way.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:09
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Hostile V posted:Perhaps if one were to imagine Beast: The Primordial the game as one of the actual Beasts it presents, it feeds by making people incredibly uncomfortable with the stuff it says and the lesson ultimately is "rawr you can't change me, you should use that creative energy I bestowed upon you to make your own thing free of my influence also rawr again". I forgive Beast because now I know that if anything kills OPP it won't be Exalted 
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Apr 29, 2016 18:15
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Bedlamdan posted:I forgive Beast because now I know that if anything kills OPP it won't be Exalted Well let's be fair here, it could always be both.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:31
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Speaking of Exalted, should have the next part up later this evening. Gonna get into character creation and a little more into why I think they've fixed the overarching "Eclipses are Useless" problem from 2e, as well as a little talk about the Southeast since Alien Rope Burn requested I go into it some and it is pretty neat.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:16
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No Thank You, Evil! (4) Continuing with the setting; Out The Window is described as the area of Storia that's.. well, not regular fantasy stuff. "Space travel and undersea adventures, race cars and rockets.." Well, except there are sort of variants of those in the others, and obviously none of these have ever been in a boo-.. ok, I'll cut that out now.
Finally, Under the Bed is where spooky things live. They're not all evil, but they are a bit scary, and it's mentioned that the area should probably only be used for older players. Because younger ones wouldn't like a school where ghosts go to learn how to be scary, but would be fine with crowds of innocent people being trapped forever in a twisted mall. (Actually, come to think of it, they probably wouldn't reason that out.. but I still don't think they'd find a ghost school scary.)
So, the setting's a mixed bag: quite a few neat ideas, quite a few sections that are blatantly out of place, some bad internal consistency and some utterly terrible integration with the system. We then get a quick list of the "twelve true treasures of Storia" which are intended to be used as general McGuffins:
Next up, the typically surreal Cypher monsters, and a look at the sample adventures, which continue the Monte Cook theme nicely. hyphz fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 19:25
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. He can't actually steer Shark Bait, who just goes where she chooses looking for Captain Pearl. Also, two of the potential locations for Pearl Parker are "she's hiding out with the BlackJack Gang" and "she was put in jail by Lucy Lawful" so your kids may have to negotiate with obvious villains or get into direct conflict with one of the setting's auxiliary heroes to deal with this. Shark Bait is level 8 and, like the giant, never fails at anything. She should probably just be making a roll to work out where Pearl is.
. The plants are looked after by a snake named Lily Cobra, who by and large tries to make sure that nobody gets harmed in the garden, but is also rather nervous around humans.
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Kai Tave posted:Well let's be fair here, it could always be both. No, no, it survived Beast fine too. Whatever kills it will be worse!
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Apr 29, 2016 19:49
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Bedlamdan posted:No, no, it survived Beast fine too. Raperacismurder: The Awesoming.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:05
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Pimp: the Backhanding 2nd Edition. 
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Apr 29, 2016 20:09
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I would say that I would think they'd have learned their lessons from Infernals, but... yeah.
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Apr 29, 2016 21:48
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Ir's important to remember that the part of Onyx Path that makes WoD and the part that makes Exalted have little to no crossover.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:11
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Mors Rattus posted:Ir's important to remember that the part of Onyx Path that makes WoD and the part that makes Exalted have little to no crossover. It should also be noted for the umpteenth time that the Exalted developers are proud of paying literally no attention to anything else the company does, and have zero interest in almost anything but Exalted and some oWoD stuff. I can only assume the feeling is mutual from the other wing of the company.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:27
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