LatwPIAT posted:

A lot of the Crafts that make up the Disparate Alliance were first described in Book of Crafts, so I decided to check it out for some context for these groups that are now suddenly all so important. Really, the Book of Crafts is itself worth a review here, but for now I'll just make a note of the most egregious and offensive thing I found in there.

The Wu-Keng are society of evil manipulative Nephandic child-snatching footbinding Chinese transwomen who wield great power through men they've seduced by acting demure. The book constantly refers to them as men or "women" . As a transwoman, it did not make me particularly happy... (The book also suggests to the ST that they should put on a Chinese accent when roleplaying one.)

Nessus posted:

In honor of this detailed inspection of White Wolf properties I have prepared a handy guide to World of Darkness game lines.

Winter Stormer posted:

Ahl al-batin actually is used by some Arabic speakers to refer to members of certain Islamic mystical traditions (e.g. Sufis - if you want more info on the reason, look up dhahir/zahir and batin). The batin being used is باطن (baatin, literally 'inner' but also 'hidden', 'secret'), which does come from the same root as بطين (batiin, 'big-bellied'). The -i- thing is Persian, but otherwise this name sounds pretty good to me. I don't think "the subtle ones" is intended to be a literal translation.

Ahl al-kitab refers to Jews and Christians, so it'd be an odd choice.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I mean a generalized implementation with advice on its use like Dramasystem gets in Hillfolk. As it is, if you want to use GUMSHOE for your own settings, you have to reverse-engineer it from an existing implementation AFAIK.

Libertad! posted:

But when Hollywood came along audiences didn't want to see said groups as heroes in their Western tales, which led to the impression that cowboys were all or mostly white.

Rand Brittain posted:

Sadly, as far as I know, the White Wolf era of Ravenloft never got added to either company's digital stable.

Spiderfist Island posted:

Count Chocula posted:

Was it Paul Dini who loved Zatanna so much he married a woman who looks just like her? She's kinda a witch.

Spiderfist Island posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

I think there was also a study that even a small/limited/regional nuclear war, such as an exchange of warheads by Pakistan and India, could still drop global temperatures enough to have catastrophic effects on agriculture.

Count Chocula posted:

Isn't Canada already a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Queen the technical head of state?

Just Dan Again posted:

I looked up GSS and its expansions on Drivethru, and for some reason the "often bought with" section showed Hc Svnt Dracones. It's only $3... I could look into the madness with my own eyes...

Kurieg posted:

oriongates posted:

Count Chocula posted:

Aren't there Dark Sun halflings somewhere in Baldur's Gate 2? I think they're part of the Wizard's Strongehold Quest.

wiegieman posted:

It's Sigil, though. Post-mortality supermen roll through there all the time, and they behave if they know what's good for them.

Like, a single planetar could conquer Athas.

Luminous Obscurity posted:

Beast doesn't know what its metaphor is.

Nessus posted:

I thought it was the other way around, that Athas was such a titanic cosmic shithole that if stuff from Athas leaked out it would be like unleashing cats and rats into the tender ecology of a Polynesian island. If people could leave Athas, they would in droves, but they'd be like the Fremen in Dune.

Kavak posted:

Wait, what did Lot5R miss? Sengoku Jidai warfare?

Zereth posted:

One of the things L5R does, as I recall, is poo poo on ronin mechanically and otherwise at every opportunity.

Meanwhile in reality traveling all over the place and getting into swordfights with lots of different people who fight differently is the way to be the best swordfighter. Pretty sure Miyamoto Mushashi was a ronin for example.

Halloween Jack posted:

Between this and the Kickstarter thread I am in love with so much new stuff. I may do Fragged Empire at some point if no one takes up that banner.

To Protect Flavor posted:

Bought into 3e Exalted in part because of the ongoing review here. Gotta say, despite the reputation, it seems like a fun time.

Then again, my group's been slogging through a Hero System campaign of late, so maybe I'm just desperate.

Mors Rattus posted:

Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition



Meet the first half of why 4chan hates this book. No, really.

Rand Brittain posted:

Once upon a time, Mystra decided that if she wasn't careful, the knowledge of magic might die out altogether! So, she decided to appoint a special mortal champion who would make sure that knowledge was always available. She gave that champion special powers, and a bunch of cool perks! Then she decided that the office of Magister would be transferred to whoever killed the previous Magister.

There then follow the histories of all the Magisters, and they are basically all "and then he spent the rest of his life in hiding and flight from all the people out to kill him and steal his job."

At no point does the book recognize the cognitive dissonance involved here.

(Also there's all kinds of standard 2e Realms pointless detail, like about all the different kinds of bizarre creatures you get turned into upon retirement.)

The Cult of the Dragon posted:

“And naught will be left save shattered thrones, with no
rulers but the dead. Dragons shall rule the world entire,
and . . .”

Sammaster the Mad translated the passage thusly:

“And naught will be left save shattered thrones with no
rulers. But the dead dragons shall rule the world entire,
and . . .”

Hostile V posted:

Oh yeah no there is zero thought about what would happen if the Deltas decided to take over all of Costa Rica instead. It's probably not going to come up in later books either.

Mr. Maltose posted:

The best Idigam theory is all of them, at once, always. Sure it seems like it makes no sense but on the other hand gently caress you it's Idigam.

Kavak posted:

In that case I'm going to look at the occupation borders!

North Africa appears to be right for just before the Battle of El-Alamein. I'm not sure what those occupied bits are in Tunisia, because Torch was in November and he doesn't consider Vichy France Axis. Also does he actually say the Italians invaded Libya? Because it was their colony before even WWI, so by that standard everything in Africa has been invaded (Which is basically right but neither here nor there)

In Russia, the Germans had almost finished their push to the Don River in July of 1942, and the infamous assault on Stalingrad was that August. The map has them well past the city and occupying all of the Caucasus, including the oil fields that were the objective of the entire offensive. I understand these maps aren't the most precise thing, but he could have at least not shaded in a region the Germans never reached at all! That alone shows how much he knows about the war itself outside maybe the United States and its battles.

In Asia, he appears to have changed his mind and make Vichy Indochina into Axis territory. Also I'm pretty sure the Japanese weren't that far into Burma yet.

FAKE EDIT: What the gently caress is Sparky/the author's deal with non-Latin alphabets? Is that something that comes up later in the line?

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, to be fair, there's stuff like him setting fire to a surrendering monastery and murdering all the survivors who tried to escape the flames that leaves an impression. While he was hardly the only heartless monster of the Warring States period, his success meant he got to be really, really famous for his massacres, his outspoken (and bloody) impiety, the tendency for competition in his family to end up dead... granted, part of the Nobunaga's villainous reputation was that it was in the interest of those who unified Japan to demonize him, but he didn't make it very hard for them to do so.

Robindaybird posted:

The Ikko-Ikki were more or less anti-feudal massive peasant revolts, weren't they?

LatwPIAT posted:

One possibly-apocryphal story I've heard about how the katana came to have such a fearsome reputation in the west is that the popular conception of the katana comes from US naval officers who visited after gunboat diplomacy opened Japan. The officers compared the katana against their own swords and found the katana far superior.

Their own swords being ceremonial swords not intended for combat.

Tatum Girlparts posted:

that loving sleeve bugs me so much. At first I thought it was part of the chest, like an underhsirt thing that was meant to recreate the whole 'one arm free so you can get your sword easy' style and was like 'that's dumb but ok' but only now, looking at it fully, I see it's just a rando sleeve.

Why would one of the empire's best warriors want this, Wick, why would she tell her smith 'yea I need armor...no no, for my upper body I just want to protect my tits and ONE arm. No trust me on this I got it'.

Night10194 posted:

What we get is they're that guy from every old sitcom or adventure story who fucks everything up and betrays everyone but then everyone has a laugh at them and moves on instead of getting rid of the obvious backstabbing prick.

The part I hate the most about them is how unsubtle they are. Like... They're constantly talking about how clever they are and twirling their drat mustaches and patting themselves on the back to the point that it's impossible to imagine being fooled by that pack of idiots.

Count Chocula posted:

A related article informs me that 'bushido' was made up in the 19th century, which I didn't know. Making all of L5R's 'honor' stuff even sillier. https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/

golden bubble posted:

So basically the difference between what chivalry is for late Medieval writers, and what chivalry is for late Medieval knights and men-at-arms.

Nessus posted:

Oh like YOU wouldn't use Vicissitude to throw your junk at your political enemies.

So this is Pieterzoon's thing, huh? I remember him being Johnny Ventrue in that "Gehenna" scenario where the Camarilla goes "gently caress it, True Blood time, we need the kine to help us out here" and breaks the Masquerade. It is actually not impossible that he inspired Christian Grey; all it would require was the 50 Shades lady to have read this dumb book in addition to Twilight, and that doesn't seem like much of a leap.

White Wolf Wiki posted:

Jan suffers from a extreme case of the Ventrue Clan's weakness in that he can only feed from rape victims. After being ambushed in Washington DC by Sabbat, his entire herd is wiped out and though he is saved by Theo Bell, he has to use his dominate powers to cause a rape and then again to erase the memory of it in the victim in order to feed after the loss of his herd.

Nessus posted:

I always wondered: Can Ventrue automatically tell if someone is their kind of food, or do they have to take a bite first?

Loxbourne posted:

Did anything actually HAPPEN in that L5R adventure, or was it just ~OMINOUSNESSNESSNESSNESS~ ? There's no way the PCs can change the outcome in any way or force a better resolution (although I did like the way players could potentially get more info from the Scorpion dude than the "canon" version). The whole thing should be a one-session one-shot on the way to something better.

Zereth posted:

I'm going to guess No Kaagi You Are the Shadow.

EverettLO posted:

Rocks fall, people dishonorably die.

FMguru posted:

What I remember most about Tomb of Iuchiban was that it came with a large blank grid map and a bunch of punch out tiles to represent the rooms and the semi-random way they were arranged, and that it added nothing to the module and seemed to be there solely to justify the effort and expense of making it a boxed module.

It's not even like TOI is an old-school mapping puzzle like many classic D&D adventures (including Tomb of Horrors) - it's just a series of linked rooms, each one of which has A Clever Trap in the middle and An Exit or two on the other side of the Clever Trap. Plus the whole thing is full of handwavey nonsense about how the shadowlands taint is strong enough to warp space and time so the geometry is unreliable and doesn't always make sense, which is the opposite of the effect created by laying square tiles on a square-gridded map.

Just baffling.

Hostile V posted:

China: The Manchu Dynasty (really the Qing Dynasty) is in charge of China. 20 years ago they lost the Opium War to the British who have started to flood the nation with missionaries, trading post and cheap Afghan poppies. China possesses a strong magical background, like the Mandarin Sorcerers, but modern weapons and tactics proved a bit much for them. Nowadays China has to deal with every major power forcing them to trade and keep the borders open. The other thing they have to contend with is Hong Xiuquan and his religious movement rebellion in the aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebels are currently in control of most of South China, but there's 8 more years before they historically lose to the Qing government.