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  Ninja Burger: Fast Food Assassins Rewinding the PDQ timeline a little bit here because I managed to track down my copy of Ninja Burger. Apparently I have two accounts at Drivethrurpg. Ninja Burger was the first PDQ product by Aethereal Forge, who would eventually produce Vox, and up until Jaws of the Six Serpents and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies came out it was probably the PDQ game with the best production values. If you're not familiar, Ninja Burger was a turn of the millennia joke site similar to Real Ultimate Power. I was first introduced to it through the ninja-burger card game, which I always found to be a lot of fun. After discovering PDQ one of the first things I wanted to do with the system was use it to turn the card game into an RPG (I was not aware that the "1st edition" of the Ninja Burger RPG already existed). Well, Ninja Burger beat me to the punch and released a PDQ version of Ninja Burger themselves, the 2nd edition of the Ninja Burger RPG. This is that game. Introduction The name pretty much sums it up. Ninja Burger is a fast food delivery franchise owned, run, and staffed by ninjas. They promise delivery within 30 minutes or they will commit seppuku. Unlike Vox, Ninja Burger thankfully does not take itself seriously. Well, for the most part at least. We do get a 9 paragraph essay on the nature of imaginative play and ninjas in popular consciousness...but that's easy to skip past. Here is the in-game history of Ninja Burger: It was founded in the 1950s when fast food was becoming prominent. Because ninja burger employed real ninjas they could cater to exclusive clientele: the rich and powerful who find themselves in places where getting fast and greasy food would be impossible: politicians locked in military bunkers on high alert, wealthy explorers scaling mount everest, soldiers pinned down behind enemy lines. Ninja burger has been involved in most major historical events, but you don't hear about it because (of course) they're ninjas. Eventually the ninja burger franchise began to branch out as the rich elite are a bit of a small market. Now they'll deliver to anyone who needs their food delivered quickly, quietly and discretely. The first Ninja Burger location was in San Francisco in Chinatown, which is still the company's primary headquarters and main dispatch/call center. The Ninja Burger company relies not only on ancient secret arts but also extremely advanced modern technology. This is their primary delivery vehicle:  The VR Rating is a concept introduced in order to try and set the theme of the Ninja Burger game and it refers to the Violence/Realism rating. These ratings are +2, 0, and -2 for each. Violence +2 is like a Mortal Kombat game. Limbs go flying on most deliveries and the "Seppuku Rule" is in force, or at least the "finger rule" (where you can cut off your fingers to atone for dishonorable conduct). Violence 0 is like an action movie. PC death will probably only happen if you're incredibly stupid or you break the rules of the genre (jumping out a plane with no chute, trying to block a bullet with your kidney). Violence -2 is cartoon violence. permanent death is pretty much not in the cards. Grenades may blacken your face and knock you out but no one is getting blown to bits. Realism +2 Basically means anything goes. Aliens could crash in the middle of town and everyone will complain about the traffic. You can show up to a delivery with a giant brain leech trying to gnaw through your mask and no one will comment. Realism 0 is "comic book" realism. There are mutants, talking monkeys, aliens, magic, etc. Realism -2 is mostly the real world. People may act strangely (for instance starting up a fast food franchise staffed entirely by ninjas), but nothing physically impossible happens. For the most part there's no specific effects from the VR ratings, however there are going to be sidebars scattered throughout that represent optional changes related to the VR score of a campaign. There are also "sample concepts" related to different VR rating combos: Ninja Burger 101 (V0, R-2) this is basically Ninja Burger being run as though it were a real company in the real world. They have tremendous resources, highly trained staff recruited from ex-special forces or intelligence agents, and a good working relationship with several major governments. Delivery issues are mostly logistical and deal with the real world complications of getting food to their clients quickly and discretely. Enemies are mostly a few other "elite" fast food franchises and corporate espionage. Crouching Monkey, Hidden Robot (V-2, R+2) This is Ninja Burger as a saturday morning cartoon and toy line. Every week there's a new set of mutants, aliens or thawed out nazis who somehow are interfering with your deliveries. If it weren't for them though, deliveries anywhere and anytime would probably be a snap. Biggie Sized Trouble In Chinatown (V0, R0) The weird stuff is out there but ordinary people never see it...and that's how it needs to be. Make sure that you get your customers their order and fight off those vampires who caught the scent of the ketchup without letting anyone know what's really going on. Burger Wars, Inc (V+2, R-2) This is cyberpunk ninja burger. The year is 20(2d6+10) and Ninja Burger is a mega-corp engaged in the fast food wars with other vicious themed franchises. Cybernetics, genetic mutation and high tech gadgets are common weapons in the war for customer's hearts. Real Ultimate Ninja (V+2, R+2) This the "flip out and kill people" version of ninjas, and a setting where basically anything can happen and you can try just about anything so long as it sounds fun. Grab a guitar and shred out a solo to try and melt a robot's brain? Sounds good. Going back in time to deliver food to historical figures. Easy. About Ninja Burger Employees Next we've got a set of four concepts that sum up the ninja burger employee philosophy: 1) Ninja Burger will deliver to anyone, anywhere, anytime. They're 24-hours, multinational and hold no particular loyalty to any government or philosophy. Since everyone is a potential customer it's considered bad for business to put the general public at risk and can result in paycheck deductions. 2) Ninja Burger's mission statement is "Guaranteed delivery within 30 minutes or less or we commit seppuku". However, it is up to the individual franchise whether or not this slogan is to be taken literally or not. Some of the more lenient franchises only demand the ninja cut off a finger or garnish the failure's wages. 3) Company Honor before Personal Honor. The first goal of a NB employee is to deliver food, and the second is to defend the company against its competitors. Ultimately you're expected to place these goals above your own needs and desires. If you need to kamikaze a helicopter into the side of a building in order to make that the delivery happen, so be it (and its coming out of your paycheck). 4) Ninja Burger employees do not exist. Ninja Burger deliveries should always be as stealthy and low-key as possible. The company will publicly deny knowledge of any employee captured or killed in the line of duty and its best to minimize casualties (other than competitors) whenever possible. ---------------------------------------------- Character Creation Ninja Burger characters are pretty standard for PDQ. There are four bits: Your Name, Job, Qualities, and Background. Your Job is the specific role you fill as a NB employee. Each delivery team consists of 3-6 ninjas and usually has a mix of different positions: *Ninja Chef The backbone of Ninja Burger. These guys usually go on missions in case something happens to the food en route. If the bag gets squished or the fries get cold you'll need to be there to whip up a replacement. *Ninja Deliverator This is the guy who gets the food to the customer's face-hole. They're usually the best at combat, breaking and entering and stealth. Basically classic ninjas. *Ninja Driver Your ride. The guy who makes sure everyone can get to the delivery site on-time. *Ninja Navigator The driver's best friend. Also typically responsible for knowing building layouts and so on. *Ninja Spotter This is the guy who watches everyone's back and keeps an eye out for trouble. Often backs up the Deliverator.  Worth noting, your Job doesn't have a strict mechanical effect, your Qualities cover that (although you can take a Job as a Quality). Everyone starts with an Average [0] Ninja Quality which is basically a big, extra-broad Quality covering everything Ninja: unarmed combat, fighting with swords, staffs, shurikens, knives, spears, riding swimming, playing with gunpowder, espionage, infiltration, stealth, disguise, meteorology, geography, philosophy, meditation, and fast food. Since you're only Average [0] that doesn't mean much yet. But if you advance to Good [+2] or higher its a big bonus. Other than the Ninja Quality everyone gets 3 Quality Ranks (that's 3 Good [+2], one Master [+6] or one Good [+2] and one Expert [+4]) and a Poor [-2] Weakness. Finally you've got your Background which includes appearance, attitude, personal history but also includes your Element and Clan. There are six elements: Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Light and Dark. There is no set list of Clans, the naming format is [Color] [Verb]ing [Animal] such as "Blue Leaping Dolphins" or "Off-White Quivering Hamsters". You should also pick a "Matter of Honor", some sort of action you're personally forbidden from. If you have trouble coming up with ideas there's a slightly excessive set of tables:  Honor is a pretty overburdened system for Ninjas. In a more serious game it would be an abysmal system. As a beer-and-pretzels game it's somewhat acceptable. Basically everyone starts with 2d6 Honor Points. Honor serves as your social status (ninjas of equal rank are meant to defer to those with higher honor), it's used as "action points" in game and also as "experience points" for character improvement during downtime. When a ninja is faced with a conflict to either corporate honor (the four points above) or their personal Matter of Honor they face a Challenge of Honor and may increase their Honor score. Or it may decrease if they screw up. More to come on that later. It is possible to have a negative honor score, which can be fatal if the seppuku rule is in effect. Character improvement costs Honor as mentioned before. 5 Honor points lets you improve a Quality by one Rank or gets you a new Good [+2] Quality. Your Ninja Quality has two ways it can be improved at the GM's option: easy or really, really hard. The easy option is to simply allow Ninja to be boosted like any other Quality. Naturally this will lead to everyone dumping most of their honor into becoming Master [+6] ninja. The alternative is far on the other end of the spectrum. In order to raise your ninja quality you must use, successfully and appropriately, the ninja skill for each of the 20 individual ninja sub-skills (that is unarmed combat, swordfighting, staff fighting, shurikens, stealth, geography, etc, etc). Especially with the "successfully and appropriately", that's going to be a very hefty order to fill. If you're using the optional rule where everyone starts as Poor [-2] Ninja trainees at least they suggest giving everyone the option to check off ten of the uses ahead of time, so you don't have to worry about how you'll figure out how to shoehorn in a meteorology challenge and avoid failing on your 2d6-2 roll.  Next: Basic rules and other stuff
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Apr 17, 2014 14:04
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oriongates posted:The VR Rating is a concept introduced in order to try and set the theme of the Ninja Burger game and it refers to the Violence/Realism rating. These ratings are +2, 0, and -2 for each. Is there an associated die roll for this to explain why it's +2 and -2 instead of just +1 and -1? Does the book make mention of a Realism +1 scenario?
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Apr 17, 2014 15:18
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All PDQ modifiers are by powers of two, so it's using the same notation.
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Apr 17, 2014 16:01
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 Spellnapped!: In Which the Principle Players are Introduced, the Setting Is Established, and the Adventure Begins. As previously mentioned, the book is written as the journals of Tom Olam, a game designer for Hypertech Inc. The story begins with Tom on vacation in Europe, visiting scenic Neuschwanstein (New Swan Rock) castle in Bavaria. If you’ve never seen it, here’s a picture:  If you couldn’t tell, this is the basis for most fairy-tale castles you’ve seen in Disney films, in particular Cinderella’s Castle, which is the centerpiece of Disney’s Magic Kingdom and features prominently in the Disney logo. Neuschwanstein was built as a sort of dream-home for the eccentric and reclusive King Ludwig II of Bavaria, before he mysteriously died the day after being declared insane, and in no way was assassinated for being a crazy recluse that payed for the castle by plunging Bavaria into debt. While in Neuschwanstein, Tom gets distracted sketching the architecture of the castle and loses his tour-group. He notices but isn’t particularly bothered, up until a magic hole made of rainbows and fire sucks him into another dimension.  Then we get a rough overview of the setting that I’m skipping, as it’ll all be filled in later. The only important thing it tells you is this: The world of Castle Falkenstein is a mixed up version of Europe, called New Europa in this world, circa the mid 1800s, just with crazy steampunk technology, magick, faeries, and other such things running around. The book often does this, inserting what is essentially setting info in between the narrative sections, so forgive me if it seems like I’m jumping between topics. The point of this is to simultaneously show you the game’s world, as well as tell a story that is in essence the exact sort of adventure you’re planned to play in the game. Unlike most other books with a focus on what are essentially GMPCs doing stuff, it is made obvious that they aren’t special superpeople doing things the players will never get to do (ala Deadlands, many White Wolf books, older Forgotten Realms), but are typical examples of PCs and the sorts of adventures you SHOULD be running! But, we must return to the story for a moment. Upon waking he discovers who spellnapped him: Grey Morrolan, Wizard of the Illuminated Brotherhood of Bayern (Yes, the Illuminati) and Lord Auberon Valerix, High King of the Faerie and Lord of the Seelie Court.  See, they were attempting to get, well, something to help them (Why they need help will be explained later. The book is only vaguely chronological), but instead of being specific they just used a spell that pulled whatever would be most useful to them from another dimension, and for some reason they get a game developer from 1994 Earth. They are rather less than impressed. Back to Lore now! So to contextualize the other characters we are to meet, the book feels that it must first design the setting we will be meeting them in: The Kingdom of Bayern (An archaic name for Bavaria), and in particular the eponymous…  It’s interesting to note that Falkenstein (Falcon Stone), at least the Castle the game is named after, does not exist in our world. At least, not outside of paintings and designs. It was planned to be a sort of Neuschwanstein II, if Ludwig II hadn’t gotten mysteriously not-alive.So, already you got the weirdness of a castle that only existed in our world conceptually. Then you add in the fact that it wasn’t built by men, but faeries. Or faerie. See, the castle was created by Lord Auberon pretty much from scratch, built not by hands but by Magick, and as such the whole thing is all sortsa wacky. The castle is so massive nobody has so far actually mapped it out, rooms appear and disappear, constantly changing, and the thing even passes through alien dimensions. Go wandering too deep into the castle and you may never return, and strangers speaking strange tongues and wearing strange clothes have just appeared, wandering in from distant rooms confused and lost. Then there’s the massive cave system that stretches miles down into the Earth that is so saturated with magick it’s basically a death sentence to explore it. They don’t say much, except that it is likely where Faeries first came to New Europa and it may in fact be the most powerfully magickal place in the world. As you might imagine, it’s rarely used by the Bayern government, and acts more in a symbolic function, though if an event of state is big and important enough they hold it here.  Now we come to lovely scenic Bayern. Or Bavaria, if you speak English. This is pre-Germanic unification, so Bayern is an independent nation, and in fact is the second largest Germanic state next to Prussia. The politics of Bayern will be explored later, as of now what is important is the feel of the country. Bayern is a proto-typical Fairy-Tale kingdom, mostly filled with rolling hills and glades full of peaceful rustic villages, and the more playful and friendly sorts of Fae abound. So, lots of little wooden houses with colorful flower gardens, cheerful red faced peasant-folk who love guests and are hospitable to a fault to anyone except vampires (or worse, Anarchists!), and inns where you can always find an affordable bed the size of a small house and an ornate stein full of the Best Beer in the World (According to the Bayernese). The cities are well developed, if not nearly as cosmopolitan and impressive as Paris or London. Construction is of brick and cobble, with Old Munchen (Munich) being the largest and most populous city, the center of both government and culture. As for non-human residents, the wilds of Bayern are teeming with the Fae, in particular the nicer sorts. Brownies help with the housework, Goblins play pranks on the village people, Pixies dance among the fields and flowers, etc. etc. Of note is the existence of the Weisse Damen, or White Lady, a type of forest Faerie unique to Bayern who live in the deep woods. They act as protectors, particularly of children and guide them out of the woods back home if they become lost at night. In the south Bayern is bordered by the mighty Alps, home to quite a number of non-Humans who you may see in Bayern. The high peaks of the mountains are the traditional homes of Dragons, and are also haunted by Trolls, Giants, and other nasty Fae who take refuge in the high passes to ambush or extort travelers. Inside the mountains are many Dwarf cities, making the mountains the heart of New Europan engineering (You’ll learn about Dwarfs later).  Oh hey, if you’re sharp eyed you may have noticed something weird about that map. If you didn’t, either you didn’t actually look at the map, or you don’t know where Bavaria is in the real world. Just, look close. See, up there? In the top left? Now do you notice it? So, what the hell is an ocean doing in central Europe? The Inner sea stretches from just south of Amsterdam all the way to just north of Nuremberg. It’s about “half again the size of Lake Superior in the United States” and is several thousand feet deep at at its widest about three hundred miles across. So, how did it get there? According to local lore, way back in prehistory, a Faerie lord climbed up to the top of the Alps and just ripped a giant hole in central New Europa. So, now Bavaria has a northern coast and Wurzburg is a port-town. Next Time: Spellnapped! Part Zwei; We Meet the Rest of our Players, and Learn about Ladies, Dwarves, Kings, Faeries, and Smart Career Choices for The Young Gentle(wo)man
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Apr 17, 2014 17:02
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Rifts Conversion Book 2: Pantheons of the Megaverse: Part 15: "Dark Olympus: no, not a new local goth club" So basically these are alien and vampire intelligences and demons and other nasty beings that have taken up the Greek motif to try and tap into some of that reverence for the classical that apparently permeates the whole megaverse since Earth was really not in a habitable state for a while there until recently. This ‘pantheon’ is at war with itself, with two sides of evil actually fighting instead of having splugorth tea parties or whatever. The real Greek gods would be super-pissed to find about these guys (and there’s basically no way Hecate doesn’t know, given her writeup) but since handing the PCs popcorn and watching deities duke it out from the sidelines isn’t much fun, it’s not likely a conflict that will lead to anything.  the face of evil intelligence Anyway, Jupiter, so-called for clarity of indexing I assume, is your typical evil intelligence out to hurt and kill and cause chaos and feast on blood and whatever. Apparently he was promoting defamatory cults in case you wanted to run into some of those in Beyond the Supernatural or something. He has MDC broken out by hit location, but 30K main body which is at the lower end of the god spectrum. It’s augmented by a glowing blue energy field which certainly makes him inconspicuous even in human form. Can summon lesser and major demons 3x a day which might actually be more dangerous than he himself is. He also can possess things with fragments of his essence and is vulnerable to silver, rune, millennium weapons, etc. Lots of magical knowledge, real pain is when he teleports out only to return another day. Not much of interest here really. Hercules the destroyer Well, it’s true Hercules wasn’t always the nicest guy but this one specifically serves Jupiter and is an unspecified species of ‘demon’. He’s violent and apparently naturally named ‘Hyrr’Klean’ which I really wish authors would stop doing. 1500 MDC so you could take this guy out, totally. Just do it fast, he has a 55% dimensional teleport so you might be able to get him before he runs away. Also he hates the dudes posing as Gilgamesh and Endiku Longhair. Supposedly this guy goes in and terrorizes cities before Jupiter moves in to take over but honestly he doesn’t really have the stats to back that up--I complain about the huge god-numbers on these guys but you get a whole Coalition regiment firing on a clear target and god-things start exploding. Just part of the whole balance weirdness of Rifts. Mamers another demon servant of Jupiter Mamers is apparently a demon given great power by Jupiter and is ‘so similar’ to Ares that they might actually become friends as long as nobody interfered with higher powers’ plans and realized the two of them are idiots. Apparently he’s a real jerk in the Atlantis arena and has humiliated several Atlantean champions on the sands so they aren’t keen on him.  3,000 MDC and is species ‘unique demon servant’, okay. He has a ‘rough code of honor’ which mostly means he obeys orders from Jupiter and keeps his word if given. He has a greatest run weapon spear that drinks souls, returns when thrown, 1D4x10 damage and an indestructible shield. Also a rune sword that seems like an afterthought. Cupid (Terlin) Because Eros wasn’t annoying magic-roofie enough, we have Cupid as well. Apparently he is a ‘Terlin’ which is something from Villains Unlimited, which sounds like kind of a Gremlin except with a magic bow and arrows to make people fall inappropriately in love. Where Eros’s block just sort of hinted at star-crossed hijinks, Cupid’s straight up encourages inappropriate and destructive relationships to be forced on PCs and others. It can be nothing but fun right? Only 200 MDC but can shrink to six inches high, animate small objects, open a dimensional portal to his bedroom--a golden bed with velvet covers, with hidden manacles and closets filled with torture instruments. Uh, yeah. He also gives advice to victims of his love-attacks like “When a girl says no, sometimes she means yes,”  So basically this is the worst thing so far, I mean it’s not like Greek myth was full of consensual sex, but Palladium usually avoids the topic of sexuality as much as possible except for magic rape arrows guy. All his arrows have a magic save of 15 or higher, but really he’s just best not included in a game. Mercury the messenger, a fragment of Jupiter. Mercury is basically a personality fragment of Jupiter and not a free-thinker or prankster like his Greek-named counterpart. He runs really fast and is bloodthirsty and sadistic but not cautious. This has caused him to be destroyed several times, but the life essence just returns to Jupiter, who remakes him. Honestly, someone, somewhere has to have a method for trapping these things. Hades clearly does. That might be worth a quest into the Underworld. He’s not very tough or very interesting and has a really vague description that makes me think of this more than anything:  Pluto: Vampire Intelligence. Because these were fascinating to read about before. Apparently Jupiter has killed Pluto’s master vampire several times and honestly it seems like it’d just be easier to give up and go somewhere else but whatever evil is actually fighting evil, let’s watch. Vampires and Vampire intelligences of course have some really dumb weakness to silver, wood, running water, and sunlight. He’s no pushover though he’s much weaker than Jupiter as a whole, unless he gets a good vampire factory running, so perhaps his obsession with that guy is for the best. He’s not very interesting otherwise. He didn’t buy into the ‘Pluto’ thing until ‘Phobos’ talked him into it. Phobos Renegade Godling  house harkonnen is very disappointed in you Phobos is a Godling with the actual Godling class, claims to Ares’s son expelled for ‘dreadful crimes’ though it’s up to the GM if this is true. Given his Diabolic alignment, it seems likely. He’s not quite a god, has a few unique abilities, and didn’t want to serve gods or even close to godlike-beings, thus turning down Jupiter and joining ‘Pluto’ instead. He protects vampires from hunters through trickery and betrayal and even suggests that he could infiltrate and attack Reid’s Rangers, which, well, good riddance. But really there is a lot of god/god-like activity in Mexico, plus the vampires. Anyway he’s just a mean, poofy-haired dude who is pretty tuff but certainly not unbeatable if found out and could actually be a credible enemy for a group of PCs if they did not then have to start fighting the rest of this annoying non-pantheon. The Furies “These monsters are the fusion of mortal women with a tiny fragment of Jupiter’s essence.”  He picks women who have been wronged or abused and are already insane and then tricks them with lies of power and makes them into minions. Well, okay, Zeus-likes are always jerks, it’s true. Apparently a character can make a psychology -40% roll and take several weeks to try and deprogram a fury back to a human mental state. They’re not super-tough, 4D6x10 MDC and they can hurt vampires though with what I am not clear--they have no listed natural damage and their equipment is ‘usually none’. So that bunch isn’t terribly interesting, though this book provides a lot more varied material for Vampire Kingdoms than Vampire Kingdoms did on its own oddly enough. It’s just that a lot of it is weird importing from way abroad. But combine these guys with the Aztecs and then the actual vampire intelligences and then Reid’s Rangers versus the Sons of Queztalcoatl and whatever and you might actually have something. We’re not done with Greeks yet though. We got one group of evil pretenders, now we get the con-artist scammers using a Greek theme. occamsnailfile fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 00:21
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Holy poo poo Castle Falkenstein owns. I wonder if everything gets English names in the German version. 
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Apr 18, 2014 02:59
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occamsnailfile posted:Cupid (Terlin) Wow, I had never spotted that he's a Terlin. gently caress. For those not familiar: Villains Unlimited, a supplement for Heroes Unlimited, had the "Dread Micro-Wizards of Chaos". These were Terlins, devised by Steve Sheiring (the "Treacher" in "Crisis of Treachery"). They were supernatural creatures from who the gently caress cares wherever which are... gremliny things that take the form of small children, could shrink down to tiny size, animate toys, or use magic spells. They aren't really played for laughs like might be expected (it notes that they do torture and kill people), and superheroes are supposed to of course get trapped in being seen beating a child down to stop them. Whee. So Cupid is not only telling people to rape, he looks like a child. Oh, and for some reason the writeup in Villains Unlimited uses the phrase "natural seductiveness". I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, but just in case, I'm going to go wash my keyboard down with bleach. 
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Apr 18, 2014 04:57
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theironjef posted:Is there an associated die roll for this to explain why it's +2 and -2 instead of just +1 and -1? Does the book make mention of a Realism +1 scenario? Not quite. It mostly just seems to be because PDQ works in even numbers. There are a few optional rules that basically involve upshifting or downshifting (+2 or -2) for certain settings but you could easily replace the +2 with "high" and the -2 with "low" and it works out the same. You never make "VR rolls" or anything.
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Apr 18, 2014 05:05
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 War and Tenra At this point, it should come as no surprise that Tenra is lousy with wars. Everybody is constantly waging war against their neighbors. Space and resources are limited, and every domain thinks that it should get more of both than the other guy. War also doesn't look like it used to.  First and foremost among the changes to the face of warfare is the kimenkyo, mass-produced Armours and Kongohki (I haven't talked about them yet, have I? They're fun) are being deployed to the battlefield en masse for previously unimagined levels of carnage. Infantry, meanwhile, are using new firearms that can decimate entire platoons in seconds. It's like World War I, but with giant robots and cyborgs who could kill you at any moment.  This is an ashigaru, the typical soldier of Tenra's battlefields. The old katana has been replaced with an old gun, using simple gunpowder instead of an of the more ridiculous nonsense wielded by the upper echelons. The ashigaru has a simple statblock given here - 3 in every attribute, 1 in every skill, one gun with damage +5. More on that when I get to combat. Tenra's battlefield is one caught in the midst of rapid evolution, between the mundane technological advances and the Sufficiently Advanced Technology coming down from the Northern Priesthood. Trench warfare is common, but people are also devising Armours that can roll over or into trenches without so much as stopping. Battles have enormous casualties, and those who survive have their limbs replaced with weapons and are sent back out to kill even more people. Because battles are so bloody and costly now, alot of emphasis is placed on reconnaissance and pre-engagement strategy - the "quiet" war. Most domains have patrols of specialized Armours on their borders, reacting to threats by sending swift messages back to the capital (via ninja). More powerful lords might have Onmyouji capable of sharing their senses with remote Shikigami for even faster reporting. The intelligence from these advanced scouts can turn a bloody, endless battle into a swift beheading.  THESE AREN'T YOUR DAD'S HORSES Cavalry have mostly died out in the modern war. Dudes charging on horses are pretty much no match for a wall of guys with guns. However, they've seen something of a resurgence in the form of Dragon Knights - elite soldiers with rifles, riding on top of soulgem-enhanced super horses. They move in, they shoot everything to poo poo, they move out. So, how about those Onmyouji?  The Taoist spellcasters are physically frail, but that doesn't mean they don't have their own place in this ridiculous hellscape of a battlefield. Their primary place is in the skies - Armours, Samurai and Kongohki can wreak havoc on the ground, but Shikigami can loving fly. While Onmyouji are an immensely valuable resource on the battlefield, they're also capricious fuckhead wizards. Most of them are massively individualistic AND not motivated by greed, making it an ordeal to convince them to lend their services to your army.  Wars in Tenra are much bigger than the ancient Japanese wars that inspired them. They involve hundreds of thousands of soldiers on average - the largest-scale war in Tenra's history involved a combined total of over 1.6 million warriors. In the past, the Priesthood was often called upon to intervene and mediate to help prevent open warfare, but with the North/South division, that's a really bad idea these days. In a tradition dating back to ancient times (but changing a bit over the years, battles have a formal, standardized way of beginning. The aggressor's army sends one Armour that fires a noisemaking arrow into the sky as a declaration of intent. The defending army does the same to acknowledge, and the battle begins - first with artillery barrage from a distance, then gradually getting messier and more direct as it escalates. When the war is over, heroics are rewarded - officers who performed well can expect territory or new titles, conscripts or mercenaries are rewarded in hard cash. Cowards and the incompetent can expect punishments as severe as the rewards for success are grand.  Each army is led by a commander-in-chief, usually a regent, who has command over all the warrior families and armies tha make up the domain's military. However, most soldiers swear loyalty first to their immediate leader, rather than the commander-in-chief, which leads to a lot of divisive paranoia and mistrust between branches. To combat this insubordination, in addition to their generals and tacticians, the commander-in-chief employs military observers who are paid handsomely to keep a close eye on the vassal lords and spot treason before it comes out into the open. Next: Combat rules!
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Apr 18, 2014 05:19
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Wartetsubo 40k. 
InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 05:33
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ProfessorProf posted:So, how about those Onmyouji? I'm surprised, in retrospect, that this isn't associated with the Kuze-Shu.
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Apr 18, 2014 05:51
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 Ninja Burger, Part 2: Ninja Rules So, this part has the core rules. These are almost completely identical to the standard PDQ rules so I won't go into them. However, it does have some of the more fun art in the book so I will go ahead and throw that up here. Acting Ninja is Ninja Burger's equivalent of Being Badass from the core-rules (basically, you get a +2 bonus for cool descriptions, awesome ideas, etc). For clarity the rules make a distinction between "being ninja" (i.e. doing things that a ninja does normally) and Acting Ninja (doing things in a particularly awesome way, deserving of a bonus). Summed up in this illustration:    VR Rules There are a few optional VR rules scattered about here, both for Violence level. The first is an option to add a game's Violence level to the damage of a successful attack, ensuring that attacks are more or less damaging. A variant option is presented where this is only the case for attacks that inflict "lethal" damage. Chapter 4: The Dispatcher The Dispatcher is Ninja Burger's name for the Game Master, however there's one important distinction. The Dispatcher is also an actual character role played by the GM. They are the voice on the other end of your ninja headsets feeding you mission updates and monitoring your status. Basically a fast food version of Oracle. Of course the Dispatcher still has to wear the "GM hat" when describing things or role-playing NPCs, but the game encourages them as much as possible to speak to the PCs "in character" as the dispatcher. The GM should also create stats for their ninja dispatcher just like the other starting character, using the dispatcher's Qualities to help out characters with Challenges and the like. Some of the suggestions are pushing the "GM as a character" aspect a bit too much (there's really no reason your dispatcher should be telling you "in character" what you see when you come into a room), but overall its a neat idea. Next we've got a random delivery generator:  The neighborhood is referring to a neighborhood in San Francisco (the default setting), which is a little bit disappointing given the premise promises a lot of really ridiculous delivery locations (mountaintops, secret bunkers, underwater space stations). And then we've got the optional complications table which the dispatcher is encouraged to use whenever things are going too smoothly.  Next are Bad Guys, the opponents of honorable ninja burger employees. Bad Guys come in 5 standard "sizes" which determine how powerful they are: Kid-Sized, Small, Medium, Large and Super. This is basically their threat level. Kid-Sized enemies are things like the family dog, minor henchmen, kids, etc. They get one Good [+2] Quality and one Poor [-2] Weakness. Small sized threats are your faceless mooks, rookies, mall cops and so on who get one Average [0] and two Good [+2] Qualities and a Poor [-2] Weakness. A Medium threat is someone like a soldier or cop and has one Good [+2] and one Expert [+4] Quality and a Poor [-2] Weakness. Large threats are significant opponents like high ranking henchmen or enemy ninja and they have two Good [+2] Qualities and one Expert [+4] Quality with a Poor [-2] Weakness. Finally the super-sized threats are "bosses" who have a Master [+6] and an Expert [+4] Quality plus a Poor [-2] weakness. We next get a set of example opponents in different categories. Evil Ninjas  Robots and Computers  Modern Day Warriors (despite the name and picture these are modern day versions of ancient warriors)  Pets  Evil Primates  Pirates (of course)  There's also a brief write up of Ninja Burger's competitors. Basically take an existing fast food or franchise and alliterate it with something: monkeydonalds, ghurka burger, pirate pizza, tiki taco, etc. There's also a couple of VR Factor rules here as well. The first is the "inverse ninja" rule based on Realism. In case where you're dealing with multiple ninjas at once you get a shift to your rolls every time the number of ninjas double. Whether this shift is positive or negative depends on the Realism factor. So for +2 Realism (which is low realism, in case you're confused by the modifier) you get a +2 bonus to your rolls every time the number of opponents doubles. So facing eight ninjas at once means you get +6 to any rolls against them and will likely destroy them in short order. However, for -2 Realism you suffer the equivalent penalty, so a -6 to rolls for those 8 ninjas you're fighting meaning you're dead meat. It's not quite clear if this is meant to apply only to actual ninjas or if it applies to any opponents. The second relates to the list of ninja burger competitors. The competitors can be randomly generated by rolling 2d6 and they range from least to most ludicrous, starting with pirate pizza and samurai burger and ending with Domo Antipasto (italian food run by robots) and monkeydonalds. You simply add the Realism factor to the 2d6 roll so a high realism (-2) game will result in more "normal" results and exclude monkeys and robots while a low realism game will make them more likely (although it somewhat questionably will exclude pirate pizza and samurai burger). Really, none of the competitors other than monkeydonalds and domo antipasto are any more or less ridiculous than any of the others. I'm not sure how a burger joint run by actual samurai (#3 on the list) is more or less realistic than a Cuban Guerrilla themed banana stand (#10). Next we have more Honor Rules, going into detail on what Honor can be used for other than character improvement. The Seppuku Rule Every time a character does something dishonorable they lose one Honor point. Any time Honor becomes negative the GM can require the player to make an Honor Roll, this is 2d6 plus your Ninja Quality minus any negative Honor. So an Average [0] Ninja with -5 Honor rolls at 2d6 +0 -5. The difficulty is 7, so that guy's screwed. Failure means that the urge to commit seppuku grows too strong and you must end your life. Otherwise you manage to deal with your shame and keep going. Typically only one check is made per game session, although really dishonorable acts might prompt another. They shouldn't be made when in the throes of a sacred mission such as a delivery or protecting clan honor, you can kill yourself after the job's done. You can play as an "Honorless Dog", a character with no personal Matter of Honor who is not subject to the seppuku rule. However, if you dip below -5 Honor you'll probably find that other ninjas are happy to do the job for you. You also start with 5 less honor than normal ninjas (which can, from a 2d6 roll, mean you start with negative honor out of the gate). Lenient franchises might offer another way out for those who have dishonored themselves: offering a finger as atonement. You immediately gain 1d6 honor and can ignore a failed Honor Roll (only one digit per session and only when you're already in the negatives). If a character does commit seppuku their replacement gets 2d6 extra Honor as compensation. Honor is also used as a loose form of rank within the Ninja Burger franchise. Anyone with 25 or more Honor is considered a Crew Trainer and 50 or more means you're a Manager. Obviously this means that the higher ranked characters will actually have less skill (not having cashed in Honor for character improvement) which the book points out is exactly in line with management in the real world. Money and Salary Being employees of Ninja Burger you naturally get a salary. This works out to, roughly and after taxes, 1$/hour per point of Honor. So assuming a 40 hour work week an average starting ninja character (7 Honor from a 2d6 roll) will take home 280$. Low Honor characters presumably suffered paycheck deductions, demotions or took time off to train and improve themselves. High honor characters get bonuses, promotions and overtime. The minimum hourly pay is 0, no negative money. Bonuses are also possible, issued by the Dispatcher. Good Teamwork 50$ to each member. Hazard Pay 1d6 x100$ for the team as a whole if someone is injured during a mission, 2d6 x100$ if every team member is injured. MVP 100$ bonus to award to whoever did the best on the team for a mission. The vote for this is secret, but if everyone gets only one vote no one gets it. Gaining Market Share +25$ per defeated competitor employee, to the team as a whole. Team Spirit 100$ to the employee who has done the best job of boosting morale in the team. And of course, there are benefits: training facilities, food and lodging (if the employee wishes, living on site is not required), basic equipment (uniform, personal gps, satellite headset, and some job specific gear). Health insurance is not provided but Ninja Burger stores have full medical suites which provides free care. And there's the Ninja Burger Store. The Ninja Burger Store is a 24 hour, on demand employee store for just about anything a ninja needs. You can purchase from the store at any time, on or off the clock. Purchases can be delivered anywhere within the same city in 2d6 minutes for triple normal price. This is the best way to get ahold of important items in the heat of delivery. We get a page or so of common weapons, tools, and vehicles that might be purchased. Of course, since PDQ tends to ignore equipment for the most part this doesn't actually mean much. The weapons especially don't really serve much purpose: why pay 250 (or 750 for delivery) of a crossbow when, for all intents and purposes it's pretty much identical to a Bow (150). Or the 350$ Naginati vs the 50$ tanto. Finally we come to Ninja Magic which is an optional feature depending on the game's VR rating and personal preferences of the GM. There are two types of magic: Focus and Flashy. Focus is "internal" effects that mostly just give you some kind of personal "invisible" benefit, while Flashy are obviously magical and often "external". It's not quite clear how Ninja Magic is actually used but my best guess is that you need to take Ninja Magic as a Quality which then gives you access some or all of the Ninja Hand Signs to produce magical effects. When making a Ninja Magic check the TN is typically going to be the same as a normal action, but a failed roll results in backlash which ranges from lost honor (you can always choose to simply take a 1d6 Honor hit instead of suffering another consequence) to Damage Ranks, temporary amnesia, wrong target(s), etc. The actual effects are based on the hand-sign used:  *Rin: Focus +2 on the next physical or mental action. Flashy You gain the temporary Quality Good [+2] Ubermensch for the rest of the Scene which can be used for any physical or mental actions but you automatically fail any social or "other" actions (including the use of ninja magic). *Kyo: Focus your next successful attack inflicts +2 damage. Flashy Shoot a ball of elemental energy based on your element, essentially a ranged attack with your Ninja Magic Quality. *Toh: Focus +2 on your next social Flashy for a scene you have the Good [+2] Buddha-Like Quality which applies to Social actions and wisdom, but you automatically fail any physical actions or ninja magic. *Sha: Focus You heal 1 damage rank, can only be used once per scene. Flashy you get the Good [+2] Supernatural Healing Quality for the Scene. This Quality can be used to resist diseases or poisons and adds +2 to your healing roll at the end of a scene, this can also be applied to someone you touch. *Kai: Focus You go first next turn Flashy You fall unconscious and your heart slows. you become aware of all living things within a mile and know who wants to harm you. While in this state you cannot act but you never take more than 1 damage rank from any source of harm. *Jin: Focus you get +2 to your next defensive action. Flashy you get the Good [+2] Psychic Quality for the rest of the scene. This allows you to attempt to read thoughts or added to social rolls. however you automatically fail any physical or magical rolls. *Retsu: Focus You get +2 to your next offensive action. Flashy You can step out of normal time and space and can choose to step back at any time to interfere or intercept someone else's action. *Zai: Focus You can "swap" the properties of one element for another such as walking on water like it was earth, seeing in darkness like it was light, etc. This lasts one action. Flashy You can either swap or simply ignore an element. if you ignore it and the element does not match yours then you take 1 Damage Rank per turn. This lasts for an action. *Zen: Focus You automatically succeed on your next complicated situation. Flashy You can swap your Quality ranks around. This lasts for a scene and during that time you are completely unaffected by any bonuses or penalties. Needless to say it doesn't take much examination to see that the different hand signs are hardly "balanced" against each other (clearly the focus version of Retsu beats Kyo, and Rin beats Retsu for instance), but its serviceable enough for a quicky one-shot game. Next Time Waaaay too much time describing San Francisco and a couple of ninja burger adventures.
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Apr 18, 2014 10:24
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Finally, a system for a Samurai Pizza Cats game!
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Apr 18, 2014 10:33
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Okay, I GOTTA get me Ninja Burger now. Those enemy traits had me in stitches.
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Apr 18, 2014 13:06
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InfiniteJesters posted:Okay, I GOTTA get me Ninja Burger now. I don't own it myself but there is actually an updated "No Honor" edition which may feature a few key rule edits. As the title implies one of the main ones is ditching the honor system, which is fairly over-burdened. Might be worth considering if you're looking to getting the most up-to-date version.
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Apr 18, 2014 13:13
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Ghurka Burger, Jesus Christ. How is this not the most popular game ever?
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Apr 18, 2014 14:30
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Oddly, this is far and away our most popular episode. More than twice as listened to as our 2nd most popular one. People are bonkers for Haven. Maybe just got linked in here more than once or something.
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Apr 18, 2014 16:40
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Rifts Conversion Book 2: Pantheons of the Megaverse: Part 16: "Thunder Lizard Warlock is my new band name." The Olympian Club is a group of ‘multi-dimensional con-men’ which is not a terrible concept if you just stop there, but we’re going to continue. It was founded a thousand years ago by a Thunder Lizard Warlock. In Rifts of course Thunder Lizards are a species of dragon, not dinosaurs. This particular dragon goes by “Zeus the Thunderer” and he assembled a bunch of co-conspirators, including “Hades”, a “time raider” which I assume is just a typo for temporal raider, a mutant super-being called Hercules (oh boy), a Conversion-book titan going by “Athena,” and assorted others. They are straight up god-pretenders who are looking to bilk money and power out of folks who don’t realize they aren’t worshipping the real gods--which, given the way a lot of the actual god-figures behave and how little they give back, there isn’t a huge amount of difference in some respects. These guys just don’t actually gain power from worship directly and live in a pocket dimension where they keep all their riches. “Any penetration into the pocket dimension will immediately be detected,” of course. The group is considering operations on Rifts Earth and like to take the side of underdogs, for some reason--to keep it interesting as well as lucrative I guess. They avoid real gods of any kind since they’d basically immediately be found out, they will do business with the Splugorth but don’t like them, alien and vampire intelligences are not reliable allies and cause messes, and they think gargoyles are kinda cool for some reason. They’re mentioned as a possible thing for PCs to join if they’re powerful and selfish enough, and then goes on to detail the guardian forces: 60 Iron Golems from Rifts Main, 60 Wolfen warriors equipped like CS soldiers from 3rd to 8th level and 40 gargoyle warriors from 2nd to 5th. Just so PCs didn’t start getting ideas about winning. Then we get some writeups for individual members. I’m going to gloss over a lot of this I expect. The first is “Zeus the Thunderer” of course, whose real name is “Trellacryth” and they refer to him that way to avoid confusion most of the time. He has gotten really good at playing sky-god and can fool a lot of people. He’s also loyal to his team and never leaves a man behind--he’s actually even Anarchist alignment. He’s got 6500 MDC which puts him on par with some of the very weakest gods, and 12th level in ‘Dragon’ as well as 8th in Air and Water Warlocking. He has a bunch of magic and psionics and all the adult dragon powers cranked up to 12 which makes him reasonably formidable, and he has a Lightning Spear rune weapon that’s pretty sweet.  this isn’t like a brilliant piece or anything but it’s interesting that they had Breaux do these guys, contrasted to Martin on the Greek gods proper and even the alien intelligences pretending to be Greek gods, the styles are quite different. What were we talking about before I started looking at pictures? Oh yeah. Their Hercules imposter is just called “Hercules” and he’s actually Herbert Rowland from Heroes Unlimited Earth and has super-powers. Honestly, could somebody imitate Theseus or something just once? DC and Marvel both use Hercules in-world and we have three more renditions here. This book was published a little bit early for 300-style Spartanophilia but a “Leonidas” would be funny. Anyway, Herbert was a villain and got sucked into a dimensional rift during a fight, awoke in another dimension and ended up eventually joining with the Olympus club, where his Miscreant alignment serves him well. Also, he discovered the joy of mega-damage conversion in-character, as suddenly mundane slings and arrows could not harm him, whereas Heroes Unlimited guys actually would have to worry about a sufficient quantity of bullets. He’s not even remotely in the range of god-beings with 710 MDC, and he can do MD with his hands but a party of (patient) PCs could take him out, especially since he only has four attacks a round and is half-damage vulnerable to poison. He would be a decent mid-boss. Next is a Tattooed Man going by Ares the Renegade. He was a Splugorth slave and performed well so got extra training but was not made into a ‘Maxi-Man’ for some reason. He was sent to war a few times and got separated from his team in a vampire dimension and Trellacryth invited him to join as a replacement for the last “Ares” who had died. He’s not particularly bad, just much happier being a rich con-man than a Splugorth slave and so avoids them at all costs. He has a bunch of the more useful tattoos, individually detailed; I’ll spare you. You get this instead:  whoa there sailor, go easy on the ink Now we have “Archimedes” which is our first historical imitator. Real name Zach Tierney, human from an alternate world that advanced faster due to alien technology. His history reads a little disjointedly as he was building power armor to fight the aliens when “Zeus” recruited him out of nowhere. Zach is basically the stereotypical “young prodigy” character which is an archetype I hate. He’s a 10th level rogue scientist and techno-wizard with some additional magical knowledge. He’s designed custom power armor for the Wolfen who guard the pocket dimension and his “Atlas Assault Bot” which has a built-in rune sword (that weighs 600lbs) and a 50ft 1000 MDC body and several techno-wizard modifications--this is the kind of thing PCs would love to be able to build but you’d never be able to get the levels for it, Rifts doesn’t even generally have rules for changing classes even though tons of NPCs do it. Also they don’t stat the custom Wolfen armor, assume CS soldier I guess.  if one remembers the specific gargoyle size-comparison chart from Triax, this is actually pretty much to scale. Next is Vulcan the Techno-Wizard, a dwarf from a fantasy world that wasn’t specifically Palladium because it had some technology. He was extremely gifted in the artifice of that realm and basically kept a prisoner so he’d keep pumping out marvels. One day “Zeus” and crew broke into his lab and set him free, and he joined straight up. Since he was a weak little SDC being who wanted be in combat, he got one of the absurdly expensive actually useful symbiotes to become a bio-borg. On his first mission, several innocent people were killed, and as a dude who had grown up mostly playing video games, the real thing was suddenly not so appealing. Nowadays he mostly stays out of combat and builds things for his club. He’s also trying to figure out rune magic which is a dangerous game since the Splugorth guard their secrets jealously. Friends with Archimedes obviously. Athena the Wise is one of the monster manual titans who disappointed her parents by not going into the family paladinning business. Years of grueling study and combat training resulted in a child who did not want to spend all her time fighting evil, she just wanted to play magic x-box once in a while. Having been schooled in magic philosophy against her will for so long, she was good at making up deep-sounding but empty sayings, and so became the club’s Athena. She’s anti-authoritarian mostly, greeting the world with a general “you’re not my dad” attitude. 6th level line walker and warrior, with a holy sword she stole when she ran away which was “created by the god Thoth” millenia ago. Venus the adventurer is an elf from a now-extinct world whose first experience with rifting sounds like the most common scenario: open rift, be overwhelmed by demons. She became one of the greatest sorcerers among her people as they wandered in the dimensional deserts for fifty years, and then found a place where they could settle. Ylliriel (elves, man) didn’t want to give up the life of a homeless refugee and so abandoned her people right after that and kept going, and eventually joined up with the Club. She took up the role of Venus “reluctantly,” being a woman of action, though she does try to do what she does in style. She has some decent magical knowledge and an artifact of unknown origin, a tiara of course, that gives her a 600 MDC aura three times per day, and some techno-wizard gadgets to let her fly, swim, run fast, lift cars, etc.  i hope this is an in-character promotional photo and/or Breaux tracing from an 80s album cover Lord Hades is a Temporal Raider from England, one of the less-evil of this generally not super-evil breed. He is more interested in money than murder, though he’s capable of the latter. Trellacryth (man does that sound like a Splugorth name on purpose?) met him at an interdimensional market when he was attacked by a Temporal Wizard former pupil who had robbed his master’s hoards before the strike. After being rescued he had no choice but to join the club. He’s fairly brooding and alien, being a temporal raider, and is slowly learning what ‘jokes’ mean and sometimes takes dead animal jokes literally with ‘gross results’. He’s 12th level, which means he has a lot of the fairly powerful temporal spells, along with the raider’s array of natural abilities. So he’d be fierce and difficult to overcome, with capability of escape, but not impossible. That’s all the statted-out club people. Some of these guys are completely within the range of things a PC could fight or interact with, and even have reasonably interesting personalities. Working together as a team, they would be extremely dangerous, but they’re not really evil, probably not more evil (as written) than a lot of PC groups, they are just as willing to loot from humans as they are from gargoyles, depending on the day. They could reasonably show up anywhere for some inscrutable and/or annoying purpose, and might be as likely to hire or co-opt the PCs as try to murder them out of hand. I feel like I can sort of detect Siembieda’s direct intervention in some of the earlier god writeups where something has to be totally evil if it’s evil and so on, and here Carella maybe had more of a free hand. It’s often very hard to judge balance in Rifts--parties can vary so tremendously and employ really destructive tactics sometimes, so I don’t want to say this group (other than maybe Trellacryth) are overpowered, though instant perfect intrusion detection is kind of  If you stripped off the ‘Greek’ theme and assigned some other pantheon or even a made-up set of names, it’d work just as well--the Greek trappings only seem useful for places that might have heard of Zeus, which admittedly seems to be many in a broad universe.As a whole the main gods range from fairly direct interpretations to ‘women are terrible, terrible whores’, and are too powerful to be more than passing presences in a campaign unless you’re running a really strong show or just hate your group. They’re better than the Aztecs, but that wasn't a high bar to clear.
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Apr 19, 2014 02:27
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oriongates posted:I don't own it myself but there is actually an updated "No Honor" edition which may feature a few key rule edits. As the title implies one of the main ones is ditching the honor system, which is fairly over-burdened. Might be worth considering if you're looking to getting the most up-to-date version. There are at least 4 versions in that case. I still have the first one which is an A5 cardboard bound leaflet and uses the BEER system (which is normally Brawn, Endurance, Extraneous and Reactions, but they changed it to Strength, Agility, KI and Endurance to have SAKE). Then there's a much larger second edition but I can't remember what system it used, but it did have the dispatcher-as-GM thing. Ninja Burger 1e posted:If ever a character commits seppuku when they were not supposed to, they have instead committed harakiri, a vast stain on their honour which follows them into their next life. The player's next ninja will only be allowed to master the Geography skill and must be named Wang. hyphz fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Apr 19, 2014 |
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Apr 19, 2014 04:39
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hyphz posted:There are at least 4 versions in that case. I still have the first one which is an A5 cardboard bound leaflet and uses the BEER system (which is normally Brawn, Endurance, Extraneous and Reactions, but they changed it to Strength, Agility, KI and Endurance to have SAKE). Then there's a much larger second edition but I can't remember what system it used, but it did have the dispatcher-as-GM thing. Actually the version I'm reviewing is the 2nd edition one, that's the one that started using PDQ. No Honor Edition is kind of a "2.5" edition that still uses PDQ but ups the lethality and ditches a few extra bits to make it a bit more like the first edition.
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Apr 19, 2014 05:07
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Ninja Burger Part 3: The Rest Chapter 5: The City By The Bay Now we come to the setting chapter detailing the city of San Francisco. Now, I've got to say as a setting document for Ninja Burger, the world-wide fast food delivery service for anyone and everyone it's a pretty disappointing chapter. As a guidebook to San Francisco it's amazing. Seriously, this is probably the most detailed city write-up I've ever seen in any RPG I own. It's 28 pages long, includes 8 maps (4 road maps of varying levels of detail, a map of alcatraz, monster park stadium, golden gate park, and the san francisco zoo), several skyline photos of different areas, about a page dedicated to the city's history, half a page to its traffic, and half to its weather. There's brief info on nearby locations and a breakdown of the 35 neighborhoods or regions in the city (called "delivery zones"). And the thing is, this could be really cool if that much time was dedicated to "game material". Perhaps notes on where you might find lots of competitor franchises, evil white ninja hideouts, experimental robot factories, or focus on the weirder or unique areas like Alcatraz...but really almost all of this is pure, factual information from the real world. This is a 28 page guidebook to the city of SF as it exists in the real world. The only nod to the game are "encounter charts" for different regions...and all of those are extremely mundane. As an example, here's a random write-up for one of the neighborhoods.  It just strikes me as a lot of wasted potential. All of this material is fairly easy to find for anyone who's dedicated to making their city "true to life" and anyone else will likely find it easier to just to wing it. Not to mention that it doesn't really jive well with the concept of the game...isn't Ninja Burger meant to be able to get you your food anywhere in the world within 30 minutes? It seems like a lot of local focus for a company that should be parachuting their team into remote jungles or launching them into space. I mean, lets compare some of the location cards from the Ninja Burger Card Game:   It's just weird to dedicate over a quarter of the book to a fairly dry description of San Francisco. Now, after the long list of San Francisco locations we do get some ninja burger specific material on the Ninja Burger HQ. The place is a huge underground facility below the original NB franchise, which resembles an old-fashioned diner.  Below are huge kitchens, training facilities, employee dorms, vehicle bays and tunnels leading to the rest of the city. These tunnels come up at a few different locations to facilitate rapid delivery: Yerba Beuna Island (containing a secret dock housing company boats and subs), Mt. Sutro (which has their private helipads and light aircraft as well as Dispatch's sattelite uplinks), and Fort Funston (linking to the docks to allow employees from overseas to get in easily). ' Ninja Burger Adventures  This is the intro to the Ninja Burger tradition of building adventure scenarios via loose movie parodies. In this adventure the Ninjas are new employees who have done amazingly well at the basic Ninja Burger training. They have caught the attention of Staff Trainer Bill, who has decided to test their potential with his personal "gauntlet". The PCs are taken out of their regular training course and informed that due to a sudden employee shortage they're being sent into the field before completing their full training. Their mission is to bring two Ninja Burgers and a large soda to a trailer in Monster Park for a "Bill", which is currently hosting a game between the 49s and Cardinals and the customer wants their food before 7 PM. Upon arriving at the trailer the ninja who comes to the door will be yanked in by a woman in a yellow jumpsuit with two eyepatches. This is Patches, a blind ninja who sees via her ninja discipline. Along with her is Bob, a ragged looking man with a shotgun.  Patches will insult and threaten the ninjas, claiming that she never ordered anything and doesn't know any Bill. She'll try and incite the PCs to combat but won't attack first. If the PCs don't seem to want to fight the police will show up to make things more tense (remember, if you get arrested the company will disavow any knowledge of you). If the PCs flee Patches will hunt them down with her super-keen senses. No matter how the confrontation plays out, after it is over the dispatcher will announce that Bill has called in to cancel his order...a grave insult to Ninja Burger. The ninjas must hunt him down to exact revenge. The "hint" to track Bill down is probably going to throw off most people. Patches has a note on her from Bill stating they'll meet for a round of darts at "the usual place" after her business is done and the trailer is full of dart trophies from a bar called the Fox and Whistle. Of course if the PCs don't search Patches (not making the connection that she's really working for Bill all along), avoid a fight, or have left the trailer during the course of the fight...well hopefully the Dispatcher can trace the call or something. Of course Bill isn't actually at the Fox and Whistle. Several of the patrons are dangerous though: an assistant manager of Pirate Pizza is playing darts, some criminals are discussing their latest heist at a poker table, etc. To find Bill the PCs will have to notice a fellow called Twitch (actually a fellow ninja) who, upon hearing Bill's name will fling a knife into a map (pinpointing the San Francisco Zoo) and vanish in a flash of smoke (quite possible setting off a fight with the pirates). If the PCs don't catch the clue then the Dispatcher might just need to slip in an emergency delivery to the Zoo in order to get them back on track.  If the PCs search through the Zoo they'll find no sign of Bill, but they will be attacked by a primate army led by the Zookeeper. This is probably the hardest fight in the game...in fact it's borderline impossible for most characters, due to the stats for the monkey army. Their Qualities are fairly basic: Good [+2] Screaming Horde and Poor [-2] Morale. However, there are 99 monkeys in all. They're treated as a single character but they get to make an attack against every PC in a round and a every point of damage decreases the number of Monkeys by one. Given that the Ninjas are Average [0] and only have 3 Quality Ranks, they're likely to have a combat-based modifier of only +2 or +4....meaning it would probably take 10-15 rounds of combat to whittle down 99 monkeys and by that time the monkeys will certainly have inflicted some significant damage or simply taken out the PCs. There are some advantageous rules. After 10 monkeys are taken out they panic (suffering a -2 penalty to their rolls) for one round until the Zookeeper gets them back into shape. Once the Monkey's numbers drop to 50 their Screaming Horde Quality drops to Average and they panic again...but then the Gorilla Guerrillas show up (4 apes with Expert [+4] Fists of Fighting Fury and Average [0] Fling Feces). Honestly at this point the PCs are probably screwed. And of course there's also the Zookeeper but he's not too impressive (Good [+2] Ninja, Good [+2] Evasion, Poor [-2] Hygiene). If the PCs are badass enough to deal with the monkey horde, a monkey on a motorbike zooms away and the Dispatcher instructs them to follow the ape. The monkey will lead them through a chase scene through the zoo. The monkey will finally take them to the Japanese Tea Garden in the Golden Gate park. At the tea garden the PCs will encounter Bill's right-hand woman, a white-robed ninja named Hinagami Asuka. She offers a combat to the death and if the PCs are victorious she will reveal Bill's location with her dying breath (Ninjas are god-drat serious about their training excercises). She's not likely to last very long though...she's only an Average [0] Ninja and her only combat Quality is Expert [+4] Spearwoman. After being defeated she'll reveal Bill is hiding in tunnels under Alcatraz. The Dispatcher requisitions a stealth boat to infiltrate Alcatraz. Before leaving the docks the PCs will be ambushed by the police (if they encountered them earlier in the evening) or by pizza pirate crew. Either fight is pretty deadly...the PCs are probably outnumbered and the attackers are typically packing a +4 modifier on attack and defense... Alcatraz itself is apparently secretly in use again, serving as a prison where the police keep captured combatants from the Fast Food wars: samurai, ghurkas, vikings, etc. Naturally ninjas have infiltrated the security at this prison and make sure that high value ninja burger employees conveniently escape. Bill's tunnel is beneath one of the bottom-most cells, leading to a secret chamber full of fine art and souvenirs. And of course Bill.  When confronted Bill will reveal that this has all been an elaborate training exercise and congratulate the PCs for accomplishing what no other trainees have managed...unless the PCs have displayed a significant lack of honor during the mission. If Bill thinks the PCs haven't honored the franchise then he may demand they commit seppuku. Likewise if the PCs have strictly avoided combat as much as possible he may demand a fight to test their bloodlust (no small challenge as Bill is a Master [+6] Ninja). Success means the PCs are declared employees of the month. Appendix We've got a set of short TV/Movie adventure seeds (numbered to be rolled via 1d6 x 1d6). Here's some examples: quote:3: Big Trouble In Little China In search of a stolen truck in Chinatown a trucker and his friend stumble into the plot of immortal chinese sorcerers, monsters and gangsters. Guarded by the legendary 3 Storms the trucker has managed to call in an order for two burgers and two colas. Better hurry before he's dropped into the Hell of Slowly Starving. quote:9: The Hulk Exposed to gamma rays, a scientist has developed a habit of turning into a giant green monster when things don't go his way. Deliver 24 cheeseburgers, and don't be late. Don't make him hungry, you wouldn't like him when he's hungry. quote:6: Star Trek The Voyage Home A group of strangely dressed gentlemen insists that they are here from the future to save some whales. They're also quite hungry, and have placed an order for one of everything on the menu. Get to them before the authorities track them down. Next we get some japanese vocabulary for ninja terms, fast food terms, counting and some common phrases. Also instructions for making a paper shuriken. A ninja burger menu (available online here: http://ninjaburger.com/order/menu.shtml) and character sheets. Then we go back to adventure plots with 4 short adventures, again based on movie puns: Diet Hard: There's a guy stuck in a building full of terrorists with nothing to lose and he needs a meal. Get past the terrorists and get him fed. Burger She Wrote: upon delivering to a loft apartment a dead body is discovered. You must track down the killer to ensure that the order is paid for. House on Hamburger Hill To win a hefty bet a group of ghost hunters are staying in a haunted mansion. However their food has mysteriously disappeared and no other food joint will deliver to this place. The Meatrix A young hacker, who goes by the handle Prius, has placed an order with the new, completely robitically automated fast food chain "The Meatrix" He is their first customer and you're there to ensure he gets a complimentary delivery of Ninja Burgers and stop the robots from taking over the fast food market. And there we go! Like I mentioned Ninja Burger is probably the best early PDQ game as far as production values go. It's also hilarious and really creative. It's a little shaky on the mechanics in some areas and could definitely benefit from some of the later innovations (Techniques and Minion rules especially could definitely improve it). It also has kind of a love-hate relationship with it's over-the-top concept swinging from completely ridiculous to oddly mundane at the drop of a hat. Overall though, definitely glad I found it. I may decide to drop the 4 bucks to get the No Honor Edition to see what improvements were made.
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Apr 19, 2014 11:50
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And That's really it for PDQ in general, but just in case anyone's interested there's a few PDQ products out there I didn't cover that still bear mentioning: *Legends Walk A supplement for Truth and Justice by Tim Gray (who did Questers and Jaws) focusing on creating mythically themed Super-Heroes. It's a PDQ conversion of a stand-alone system for mythic supers. Essentially super-heroes have a mythic Source for their powers (gods, heroes or monsters of legend). It's a little bit chunkier than standard T&J since it's trying to tie in ideas from the original system but it's a neat possibility for those interested in the premise. *Adventure into Darkness Another Truth and Justice Supplement by Atomic Overmind Press. Essentially lovecraftian comic book adventures is the premise. I don't own this one so I can't say too much, but its definitely out there! *Serpent's Teeth This is a supplement for Jaws of the Six Serpents. It's a collection of adventures, game options and setting material for the Six Serpents world by Tim and several fans. *Acthung! Cthulhu A version of PDQ designed for horror-based gameplay, for the Acthung! Cthulhu world. Since this one was written by me, I figure I'm not the best one to F&F it, but if anyone else wants to feel free. Not sure what I may try and do next. I'll browse through my collection and see if anything stands out ripe for talking about.
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Apr 19, 2014 14:08
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Rifts Conversion Book 2: Pantheons of the Megaverse: Part 18: "She is spoiled, even for a goddess." Gods of India So, we start with a disclaimer that points out these gods are part of an living religion, and that these are fictionalized versions, and they're not trying to describe Hinduism, everyone! Of course, with the inclusion of a living religion, I have to wonder why larger, monotheistic religions aren't included. The reasons are obvious, but ultimately were I Christian I think I'd find it more offensive. Sure, what is statted can be killed, as they say, but ultimately the takehome is that Jehovah doesn't matter. Balder, Isis, and friggin' Camatotz all get to make their impact on the world, but Ol' Allah is just a lousy thumbsitter, if he even exists at all. Personally, I'm not really bothered by it myself other than the obvious double standard, one maintained since the original Deities & Demigods - polytheists are fair game, but you never gently caress with monotheists. So, first you had the Vedic Pantheon, but then the Brahmanic Pantheon busted in on their territory, and the gods went to war. The Brahmanic were able to trounce the Vedics badly enough to take over for the most part, so the Vedics were merged into their own pantheon. There's also the Indian Gods of Evil (subtle name, there) who are made up of evil gods from both pantheons, now teamed up forever, I suppose. Then we also have the Asuras, who are demon lords, and the Immortals, which is a group of monsters that fakes godhood. Then we get politics!
These were originally the Aryan gods! But then they fought the Brahmanic gods and lost a lot of their power in the following compromise. As such, evil forces have sometimes been able to manipulate the Vedas' resentment to their own advantage. Varuna Guardian of the Universe  Beetle on his back. A god of the skies, Varuna oversaw things like rain and justice, but since their surrender, he was demoted to being a god of the seas. He secretly fumes about the whole thing and has been looking for a way to destroy the Brahma, and has allied with demons to seek a means to do so. He helped get the Splugorth to invade their world, and had tried to set himself up to be the big hero that defeated the invasion. He failed, and it didn't work out. He feels really guilty now, and is terrified of others finding out. He used to be a "Cosmic Guardian", whatever that is, and knows alot about other dimensions and rivals to the power of gods. He's Brahma's main advisor on Earthly affairs, because Brahma can't be bothered to look for snakes in the grass. And I guess he’s more “Benedict Arnold of the Universe” than “Guardian of the Universe”, but I’m just being picky. God number 40k/8k, can manipulate all warlock elements (mainly air and water, but fire and earth to a lesser extent), regen, teleport, healing, dim-sum, summons elementals, can make a boat out of a log, is a psionic sensitive and has mental attacks and defenses. Also he has a magical lasso that automatically snares on a hit. This is, of course, a drastic simplification of a multi-faceted and complex god, but I just have one thing to say - where's Makara? Where's his riding crocodile? Seriously, this is Rifts, and they couldn't fit in a giant crocodile mount? Bah! Indra God of Storms & Warriors - Demon Slayer  Prayer carpet… of DOOM! With a title like that, what can I really add? Well, Indra was the second-in-command of the pantheon, but for all practical purposes used to be in charge. He was given a potion to fight Siva during the war, but the potion unexpectedly wore off and Siva beat his potionless butt in a berserker raaage. He's pretty pissed about the situation, and considers Vishnu to be a lousy capitulator, but knows he doesn't have a chance against the leaders of the pantheon. He sees himself as the savior of mankind, but is really an arrogant dick who really does it out of ego instead of benevolence. In actual mythology, he was pretty arrogant and impetuous, but not quite the outright assholiness we have on display here. 53k mdc 10k on Earth +2k when he's hopped up on soma he has a thunderbolt spear that controls the weather can throw lightning bolts has two kris daggers that drink souls (which I guess fits with his anarchist alignment) a soma potion that pumps him up he has a plasma rifle for some goddamn reason and a flying disc that goes at Mach 8 silently (gently caress sonic booms I suppose) and a white elephant with 3k MDC that goes 60 MPH which must just look totally fuckin silly invisibility regen teleport can make sound effects like BOOM or KRAKADADOOM and shoot lightning and do air and water magic and middling regular magic and electrohydrokinesis and ESP and gently caress it I'm out Tvashtri God of Magic No art. So he's the Vedic smith, but he's rivals with Indra, on account of Indra killing his son. When the Brahmanics came make war, Tvashtri stood by and also sabotaged Indra's soma to it's wear off so Siva could kick Indra's junkie rear end. Yeah, it turns out Indra is a total soma junkie, and often Tvashtri will withhold it or spike it with hosed-up poo poo to torment Indra. Also, he loves humanity, but basically gives no fucks and is always being snarky towards greater gods. Anyway, regen, teleport, can cancel out any magic (!) with a successful roll, is a high-level sorcerer, knows all circle, ward, rune, and herb magic, and keeps the secret of making soma. Oh, and he's a telepath with a shapeshifting weapon that can copy five different weapons from Rifts World Book Two: Atlantis. In mythology, he made the thunderbolt Indra used to kill Vritra, a monster. In other mythology, he made Vritra to get revenge on Indra. Think about that the next time you see a character written differently for no good reason. Ancient myth was written by the original hack writers. Agni God of Fire  Traded in legs for bonus arms. This a fire god apparently related to fire elementals, but is more human-ish. I wonder how that happens, given elementals are entirely human forces? Is he a inhuman fanboy of humans? I don't get it. In any case, he used to be a rival for Indra, but Parvati kicked his rear end in the war and he's settled down and become a more humble, nice personification of fire. He really likes humans, for whatever reason. 30K/6K MDC, 15' tall and only 400 lbs., regens but super-regens when in fire, is super-good at fire magic but not so great at other magic, healing psychic powers and pyrokinesis, can summon elementals and can shoot a holy flame that does big damage to evil supernatural creatures, but he's vulnerable to water and cold attacks. Agni is a big deal in Hindu mythology because he's the one who picks up sacrifices from the flames. Also, India named its first strategic nuclear missile for him. These facts feel troublingly related. Soma God of the Moon  No don’t scratch your chin nooooo Unshockingly, Soma is the god of soma, as well, as well as the moon and madness and druuugs. The Brahmanic gods don't care for his druuugs and have kicked him out a few times because of it, but Indra is good friends with him. (I don't understand why Indra needs to turn to Tvashtri for his fix, then? No idea.) He also is, of course, pals with Dionysus, and they get so loving drunk together like you would not believe. He's also interested in the Millennium Trees (presumably for smoking) and Juicer technology (for making his own hopped-up drug warriors). He's also super-moody, and there is a random roll to see if he's:
Wikipedia posted:In Hindu art, the god Soma was depicted as a bull or bird, and sometimes as an embryo, but rarely as an adult human. Man, did they miss out on having a hideous embryo drug god. Talk about your bad trips! He's also obviously a mashup the Vedic gods Soma (god of that drug) and Chandra (god of the moon). Oh, and though there have been attempts to find a real "Soma" plant, but scholars have been unable to pin down a root for the legend, figurative or otherwise. Surya God of the Sun Artless A god of the sun and weather, Surya is basically a super-paladin sorts of god that hates demons and vampires, not necessarily in that order. He basically turned his back on the other Vedic gods, recognizing Indra and Varuna for the tremendous assholes that they happen to be in this particular fictional continuity. He's big on law and order and is the cop god protecting humanity, and is by the book and has no sense of humor to speak of. Oh, and he used to be symbolized by the swastika, but thanks to Nazis he's totally sick of it and inclined to just smite anybody using it. He's also putting together a group of godling spies to discover more about about eeevil forces on Earth. So! 50k MDC, 10K when on Earth, regeneration, he's laserproof, can teleport, turn dead, heal people, use fire or air magic, has all sensitive and physical psionic powers, plus all the kinesises, can summon seraphs (fire angels), and cast light that heals most creatures and hurts the undead and alien intelligences, as well as frightens those with evil alignments. "Oh no, my wounds are healing! I'm afraid!" He also has a "Sun Staff" that can cast light and fire spells, as if he needs it. Not much to say about the real Surya other than he's a big-deal real god. In legend, he was such a big deal even some demons and rakshasas followed him as part of his entourage, because following him got them to overcome their evil ways. Ratri Goddess of Shadows  Cosmic jazz hands. A goddess of the night, Ratri is basically the the late show counterpart to Surya, and protects people from the shadows. Apparently this really freaks out evil folks, because the Shadow Knows, or whatever. (Ah, cartoon villainy.) Vampires in particular are afraid of her, and she's backdropped many vampire intelligences (well, not really, but she has beaten them). Like Surya, she basically walked away from the Vedic pantheon as a form of pass-agg protest. She's kind and caring, but conversely ruthless. Numerics! 20k / 4k MDC, super-nightvision (sees through magic darkness, or things that meld with shadows), can sense vampires and supernatural evil, teleport, fly, "impervious to vampires" (whatever that means), regens (faster in shadow), can summon shadow beasts (from a spell in the corebook), middling magic, sensitive psionics, create shadows, talk to shadows and find out what they're hiding, and recognize "creatures of darkness". Creatures of darkness include vampires, dybbuks, dar'ota, werebeasts (?), djinns (?), undead, gods of night/death/shadows, and "all true creatures of the night", even through all disguises. Oh, and she has "The Shadowblade" that can negate magic and murder "creatures of the night" well enough. Of course, it says something for Rifts combat rules that a god wielding "The Shadowblade", specifically made for vamp-killing, will require two swipes to kill many vampires.  In actual mythology she's apparently the counterpart to Usha, a goddess of the dawn not included in this book. Also she's apparently "gloomy and infertile" and "brings barrenness". Thanks, internet. Sarasvati Water Goddess  Too lazy to even pose, I guess. A goddess of rivers, lakes, arts, and science. Apparently she's a pushy, spoiled god and was married to both Vishnu and Brahma, and Vishnu divorced her while Brahma took on a second wife. Brahma and her are still pretty close. In any case, she loves artists and scientists, and also hates pollution and is likely to smite polluters. To mortals, she's kind and generous, but to other gods she tends to be petty and short-tempered. 20k/4k MDC, regens, turns dead, teleport, has a healing touch, has high-level water spells, low-level normal spells, has all basic psionic powers plus hydrokinesis and other crap, and can grant the "gift of inspiration" that gives other people a bonus on certain skills. Also, she has a magical M.D.C. peacock, but it tragically has no magic peacock M.D.C. attacks. In actual mythology she's part of a feminine triad with Lakshmi (not in this book) and Parvati (detailed later). Oh, and all books are a manifestation of her power, so there's that. Next: It's time for Brahmania!
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Apr 19, 2014 23:39
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I just got done reading a LotFP adventure called Death Frost Doom. Wow is it full of bullshit. It has to be the most stupid screw the players over adventure path that I've seen in a long long time. I may have to post a full review here once I get some sleep.
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Apr 20, 2014 06:39
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Rulebook Heavily already did it, but the review has apparently fallen into the dark abyss of the Archives.
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Apr 20, 2014 08:54
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The last thread was goldmined, so any review on the wiki can be read at your leisure!
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Apr 20, 2014 10:05
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Mr. Maltose posted:The last thread was goldmined, so any review on the wiki can be read at your leisure! I don't think that's correct. When I clicked the link for the adventure Death Frost Doom, I was redirected to the page telling me I need an archive upgrade.
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Apr 20, 2014 10:20
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The last thread is in "Comedy Purgatory", yes, but the original thread (which DFD was in) was just left for archives. This has seriously been going on since 2011, sweet christ.
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Apr 20, 2014 10:23
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I would really like to do Wraeththu some time, but there's no PDF version available and I'm not about to spend $40 on a joke.quote:Legendmaking Part 1: This Joke Breaks Wikis Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Apr 20, 2014 |
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Apr 20, 2014 14:59
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Halloween Jack posted:I would really like to do Wraeththu some time, but there's no PDF version available and I'm not about to spend $40 on a joke.
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Apr 20, 2014 15:05
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Dang you're right. Guess I should refrain from posting before checking the wiki.
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Apr 20, 2014 15:07
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Me too, apparently! I had no idea that had been covered. I was just listening to the Haven episode of System Mastery, and it actually reminded of what I'd heard about Wraeththu. I know that sounds weird, but hear me out: In both cases, the game wasn't just about a setting, it was the author's attempt to make the best, most "realistic" and comprehensive universal system at the same time.
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Apr 20, 2014 15:18
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Isn't that basically the premise of every RPG heartbreaker ever, though? 
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Apr 20, 2014 15:20
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Halloween Jack posted:Me too, apparently! I had no idea that had been covered. I was just listening to the Haven episode of System Mastery, and it actually reminded of what I'd heard about Wraeththu. I know that sounds weird, but hear me out: In both cases, the game wasn't just about a setting, it was the author's attempt to make the best, most "realistic" and comprehensive universal system at the same time. Actually we're suffering through another one of those right now. Recording tonight. Goddamn 90s and their games that are 100 times more realistic that D&D which is for noobs and babies.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:00
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Rifts Conversion Book 2: Pantheons of the Megaverse: Part 19: "He is the Rambo of the gods, preferring action to words and with no patience for arguements, small talk or delays." The Pantheon of Brahma Apparently these gods were driven out of their original dimension by demons and "evil gods", and as such have become big foes of the "powers of Darkness". They asked for refuge in India, and Varuna was willing to hear them out, but Indra was like fuckemletsfight (no doubt while high as a kite on soma). They had a big fight, but Vishnu basically turncoated over to Brahma's side and that was the big event that halted their godwar. When the magic went away, they retreated to another dimension, but the Splugorth came along to kick them out again. It notes that it's up to the GM if they've come back to Earth or not, but this section seems a bit pointless if they haven't. I suppose you could do more if you have a world-hopping campaign, but there really isn't support in Rifts for that at this point beyond Wormwood... which explicitly doesn't have any gods. Brahma the Wise  Finds shaving and haircuts… complicated. The head of the Indian gods, Brahma is one of the biggest gods on this or any other world. As such, his concerns are above that of mortals, and generally other gods as well. He is one of the few charged with making sure the "Unnameable Beings" don't awaken - basically, various universe-busting beings, like the Old Ones from the Palladium RPG. He basically invests a lot of magic visiting them in limbo and keeping them quiescent. He does this every two months or so, and is weakened for several weeks afterward. As such, most of the actual leadership of the pantheon is handled by Vishnu and Siva. He blows off mortals for the most part. One annoying thing is that Brahma is presented as one of the chief triad of gods with Vishnu and Siva. To be fair, Vishnu and Siva are widely worshipped in the real world, and deserve their place there, but Brahma is more respected and acknowledged within the religion than worshipped. The goddess that should be there as part of the triad is probably Lakshimi, the goddess of wealth and another extremely important god to the religion that doesn't even show up here. 120K/24K MDC, can "see all spectrums of light and radiation", turn invisible, super-regens, immune to heat and cold but not fire whaaaat, turns dead, teleports, can always sense rifts, cast all normal and temporal magic, has all basic psychic powers, plus a lot of superkinetic powers, know people's alignments, and know their true nature. Oh, and he can shoot eyebeams from all four of his heads to create a radius that does damage to all evil beings, and crazy damage to all supernatural evil beings, and is extra hard to dodge. Oh, and he can summon up to 50,000 spirits of light. He has special bow that can fire energy arrows, cursed arrows, or anti-vampire arrows. He also has beads of power that he can draw upon for extra power, throw as explosives, to cancel magic, and a magic book that lets him cast any spell he does not innately know except for rune magic or bio-wizardry. Rifts Conversion Book Two: Pantheons of the Megaverse posted:Brahma NEVER lets the book out of his sight! The mythological figure is, if anything, more standoffish, but not much amusing or embarrassing to add. Vishnu the Preserver  Chinhorns. Perfect. Originally part of the Vedic pantheon of as a god of light, Vishnu saw Indra for the tremendous jerk that he is, joined up with Brahma. After their victory, Brahma brought Vishnu on as a an equal to become part of the Divine Triad with Brahma and Siva (presumably it was just a Divine Duo before?). Siva is less thrilled with this, and there's a rivalry between the two of them. What's more, Varuna has given him the cold shoulder for millennia as a result. More recently, Vishnu got crippled by the Splugorth and has been sending out "Avatars" in his place while he recovers. Powers: 75K/15K MDC, regenerates, turns read, teleports, healing others, all normal and fire spells, all physical and sensitive psionics, telekinetics, and has a special power where he can meditate and radiate light that gives combat penalties to evil and combat bonuses to good figures. He also has a power given to him by Brahma to fragment his power to be born into a mortal form as a godling. One, Krishna, is described later in this section. It notes others like Kalki might show up in later books, but I don't believe they do. Oh, and he has "Sudarsana the Discus", which does big damage against evil and disrupts teleport attempts, a magic shell called Panchajanya that can make a force field, "Kaunodaki the Mace" which is good at pummeling evil and great against pummeling vampires, as well as creating TIME HOLES, and Sarnga the magic bow which is pretty much just a magic bow. Vishnu is a wayyy bigger deal than presented here in actual Hinduism, as a practically all-powerful god who sends avatars to battle evil. For whatever reason, Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and his consort and an important part of the feminine triad in the actual mythology, is not here. Krishna The Avatar  More like Bish-na, amirite? And Krishna is one of Vishnu's most powerful avatars, and was targeted by a number of gods and demons, including Indra, and he whupped them all by being clever. He's Vishnu's Superman Red and is all cocky and dashing. He has 14k/3k MDC; apparently Avatars have a flat 3d6 x 1000 (ha ha, gently caress you godlings) MDC. Regen, invisible, turn dead, teleport, healing touch, knows kung fu, mid-range magic, all sensitive and physical psionics, plus auto mind blockin'. Oh, and he gets to borrow Kaunodaki every so often. In mythology, Vishnu "mentally transmitted" his essence into Krishna's mom, making him his own dad. Also an awfully big deal with real people. Siva the Destroyer  Yes, you can say it: mecha-Siva. The bad cop of the Divine Triad, Siva is a fierce god of stabbing evil. And women that try to seduce him, apparently, because he's so pious. So he's all about stabbing evil and anybody who threatens to sex him. Also, he's about healing in medicine! And slaying devils. Also, enslaving devils. He's a very confused god. He also makes fun of Indra for being a soma addict constantly, because he's not what you'd call a graceful winner. Siva and Brahma basically put up with his poo poo because he's good at demon-stabs, but that may not last forever. Also sometimes he pretends to be a ghost to gently caress with mortals. 70k/14k MDC, invisibility, resistant to all energy attacks, regens, turns dead, teleports, healing touches, all normal spells and all psychic powers, and has a third eye that lets him go a all wave motion cannon about ten times a day or so and does 2d6 x 100 M.D.C. damage. He has Pinaka, a trident that casts air or water spells, Ajagawa, a magic bow, Khatwanga, a magic mace, an Impaler sword, and magic cobras that bite with a weakening poison. Despite his power armor-wearing appearance above, none of that is reflected in his statblock. The petty, warhungry Siva (Shiva, actually) we see here is pretty well completely at odds with the mythical Shiva, who is indeed destructive, but is also conversely peaceful, and destroys in the sense that all things must end. Also, in the mythology he nearly killed the other god with fire from his third eye, actually. But Parvati saved her. Which helps make the whole thing make a lot more sense - she was trying to seduce a married god. Parvati  Shops at the same hattery Galactus frequents. Parvati is... another god of destroying demons and order. 'Kay. Apparently she's Siva's wife, so she's also the god of being Siva's wife. She beat up Agni during the war, but there's they respect each other instead of Agni resenting it at all. In fact, she nearly got killed fighting the Splugoth, but Agni rescued her. Siva's worried that Parvati is in love with Agni now, and it turns out he's right. Maybe Siva shouldn't be so anti-loving if he wants to keep a wife, but... 40K/8K invisible regen teleport healing TOUCH, knows all domestic skills of course she does has middling spellcasting senstive psionics, psi-sword psi-shield MIND BOLT, Sashonu, a magic sword that does magic damage can can be replicated for each of her ten arms but does less damage but doesn't give more attacks so why the gently caress is that useful Parvati is a sort of ur-goddess that has absorbed the mythology and aspects of many, many other female deities over the years, and in some less orthodox versions of Hinduism, she fills the role of head god in Shiva's place. Skanda God of War  Played by Schwartznegger in the film. Ares!!!... waitno This is the son of Siva and Parvati, and he's a hot-blooded warrior for good. He's been taught by Brahma and is one of the few gods that knows about his trips to the "Nether Worlds", whatever those are, but will never talk about it, so why does it matter? Hm. Anyway, he's got no time for love, only for war. He's also been organizing sneak attacks against the Splugorth on their home world, and now he's disappeared. It's said that if the Splugorth capture him, he'll be forced to fight in gladitorial battles which never backfires except that it does. Also he is the Rambo of the gods. invis regen teleport 12 ATTACKS oh night 25K/5K MDC (wait it says he's a better warrior than Siva but Siva could clearly whup him like a red-bandanna'd stepchild, whups), and he has a Sword of Atlantis, a Giant Plasma Sword, Plasma Cannon, and a Techno-Wizard War Helmet. All his nonmagical equipment is crrrraaaaapppp Skanda is actually more popularly known as Murugan, and is often called the god of the Tamil people. Also, he rides a war peacock, which is sadly missing here. Ganesa The Elephant God  Suddenly, anthro. Not actually a god of elephants, but a god that is an elephant, but not really, he just has a head of an elephant! Phew! He's the "remover of obstacles" and the "provider of widsom", and he is super-smart and learned. He even foresaw the return of magic, but was... off by a few centuries, and didn't predict that nuclear war would cause it. So his foresight is pretty blurry, I suppose. Wait, nuclear war caused the Rifts? It's been implied, but never that explicitly stated, as far as I can recall. Also Indra is an rear end in a top hat to him for being a tubby, what a shock. Oh, and he's uncovered another world filled with mutant animals that blah blah blah it's the After the Bomb setting! It turns out he's a patron of furries and other animal-people hybrids. 20K/4K, regen turn ded telepor fly around healying PREHENSILE TRUNK AND SUPER-SMELL weak magic sensitive psi super-skilled magic club magic discus GIANT RIDING RAT THAT GOES 60 MPH! Oh, and he'll hate Merlin or the Angel of Death... if he ever learns about them. Ganesa is a proper variant of the god more widely know as Ganesha. Though he's not a dominant god in terms of heirarchy, he wins a lot of popularity contests. He's often more generally the lord of obstacles, period, placing them and removing them, which seems like a pretty good deific scam to me. Also, myths can't decide if he's the son of Shiva and Parvati, or just spontaneously pregnated inside Parvati, or found by Parvati Garuda The Bird God  Caw!] He's... another punisher of devils, but also fights serpents and dragons! He hates dragons a bunch, because, I dunno, maybe they ate his eggs, whatever. Indra made fun of him once, so Garuda beat him up, and as you may expect by now, Indra holds a grudge. (Who doesn't Indra hold a grudge against, at this point?) Anyway, he's a big ally of Vishnu and sometimes carries him around, and also likes furries and featheries and scalies and the like. 40k/8k MDC, can change size from 30' to birdie, regen, teleport, turn dead, healing poke, weak magic, sensitive and healing psionics, not much else. Apparently when the mythical Garuda was first born, he appeared as a cosmic fire that would destroy the universe, but the gods asked him to cool it, and he did. So he's a pretty easygoing god, I guess. Also, once he beat up all the gods and flew through a set of whirling blades on an adventure, so I guess he isn't afraid of anything. Hanuman The Monkey King  Wielding the double battle phallus. He's had all the adventures of myth ever and so he's been given a lot of power and is just below the Divine Triad. Like all the others he fights evil... yeah, yeah.... and anyway he's been missing for awhile as he's gone off adventuring, but it turns out he's trying to find out about Brahma's secret trips to the Nether World! Dun dun dun! You want to know where this book has gotten me? Hanuman is rad. Hanuman is slick. And yet, looking at this statblock, all I can do is hate Hanuman. 20K MDC normally! 60K as a giant! 4K MDC normally on Earth! 12K MDC on Earth as a giant! Ugh. Invisibel regens teleport turn dead "natural climber" super-smell PREHENSILE TAIL AND FEET alter size damaging roar wimpy magic no psionics NO EQUIPMENT. The myths have it so he once tried to eat the sun because he thought it was a fruit. Also once people doubted his religousity, so he tore his chest open to show that the gods were literally embodied in his heart. So there's that. Next: Kali, or: how to misunderstand other people's religions.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:20
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They really messed up on the trimurti/tridevi. From what I know of Hinduism, while the three masculine gods are responsible for carrying out acts under their domains, they are actually powerless. The font of their power is their wives, from which what they can do flows. Not having Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva is wrong. And Hanuman is way more awesome in the myths. He has been struck by Indra and almost killed, at which point his father Vayu made him mostly immortal. He has leaped from India to Lanka while hunting for Rama's wife, set Lanka on fire by growing his tail constantly after the rakshasa set it on fire, lifted up an entire mountain and carried it to the battlefront so that his fellow soldiers could be cured of a poison by a plant that only grew on it and went toe to toe with some of the heavy hitters in the rakhasas ranks. When it was all done and rewards were handed out, Rama and Sita gave him a necklace of jewels, which he promptly began examining in great detail. When they asked why, he said he was looking to see if Rama and Sita were in at as he never wanted to be without them. Which lead to the instance of them showing him they were always in his heart. Hanuman as a character symbolizes the loyal and true follower and is also responsible for the stories of Sun Wu Kong as his myth was carried east with buddhism.
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Apr 20, 2014 19:35
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theironjef posted:Actually we're suffering through another one of those right now. Recording tonight. Goddamn 90s and their games that are 100 times more realistic that D&D which is for noobs and babies.
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Apr 20, 2014 19:40
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Okay I read through the Death Frost Doom review and Rulesbook Heavily did a good job but left out the second worst part of the adventure(nothing is as bad as the plant thing). In the high priest's room there is a pit that is apparently the nostril of a sleeping giant. If the party obstructs or travels down the pit this wakes up the giant who gets up destroying the entire mountain, killing everyone inside or on it no save. Yup a literal rocks fall everyone dies "trap" with zero warning or relevance to the adventure. The giant is never explained or elaborated on. In fact given the semi-explained giant in "Better than any Man" I think mysterious buried giants may be something Raggi has a fixation on. Another thing that has to do with Better than Any Man. Apparently the goblin hill section with the insect shrine was originally a separate adventure from the witch controlled town. It was stapled onto the actually interesting adventure to make a deadline.
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Apr 20, 2014 20:14
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I surprised that nobody's linked the Ninja Burger commercial yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVVcYvMVkso
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Apr 20, 2014 21:15
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So he's all about stabbing evil and anybody who threatens to sex him. Alien Rope Burn posted:Skanda is actually more popularly known as Murugan, and is often called the god of the Tamil people. Also, he rides a war peacock, which is sadly missing here. AKA Kartikeya - which is the name used for him in the Amar Chitra Katha comics - IIRC they also mention other names, but I'd need to find them and check. Alien Rope Burn posted:Ganesa is a proper variant of the god more widely know as Ganesha. Though he's not a dominant god in terms of heirarchy, he wins a lot of popularity contests. He's often more generally the lord of obstacles, period, placing them and removing them, which seems like a pretty good deific scam to me. Also, myths can't decide if he's the son of Shiva and Parvati, or just spontaneously pregnated inside Parvati, or found by Parvati Shiva returns and demands to see Parvati, Ganesh says no, and strikes Shiva, injuring him. Rather annoyed by now and not knowing that Ganesh is Parvati's child, Shiva leaves again, and comes back with his followers - an army of warrior-sadhus and the like. Ganesha fights them all to a standstill, until Shiva finally beheads him. Tired of all the noise outside, Parvati emerges and demands to know WTF Shiva was thinking by beheading her son, and that if they wanted to get back together he'd better make things right. Re-attaching Ganesh's own head wasn't on the agenda, so Shiva and his troops head off (see what I did there?) to find a suitable replacement, eventually coming back with the head of a young elephant. Parvati forgives Shiva, Ganesh becomes Ganesh as we know him, and all is happiness and flowers. The Rifts Ganesh has both his tusks, but traditionally he's only depicted with one. This is because he took the dictation of the Mahabharata, but only if Vyasa who was dictating could do so without stopping. When his pen wore down, he broke off his tusk to be able to continue writing. Alien Rope Burn posted:Garuda Angrymog fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Apr 20, 2014 |
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Apr 20, 2014 21:29
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