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FMguru posted:Yeah, WEG was really two companies: the 1980s WEG which made excellent boardgames (Tank Leader! RAF! Web and Starship! Junta! Tales of the Arabian Nights!), Paranoia, Torg, and Star Wars 1E, and 1990s WEG which spiraled down until it was shipping junk like the $30 hardback RPG supplement for Star Wars "The Truce At Bakura", Paranoia 5E, and RPGs based on the Species and Tank Girl properties. Oh, and one of the strangest, least-loved RPGs ever - Shatterzone. How could I forget about Tales of the Arabian Nights? That is a game worth tracking down immediately. It is absolutely superb.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:30
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FMguru posted:Star Wars 1E, and 1990s WEG which spiraled down until it was shipping junk like the $30 hardback RPG supplement for Star Wars "The Truce At Bakura", Without that, how would we have ever known that the Ssi-Ruuvi were velociraptor men with tentacles coming out of their noses. Best worst Star Wars villains ever!
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Jul 25, 2014 17:34
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kaynorr posted:You could probably do Capcom Monster Hunter without too much effort, because close-range melee/ranged combat with lowtech weapons is one of those things that GURPS does really well. The only real jarring part is that like most tabletop RPGs the numbers don't get really big, so you can't slowly whittle down the health of a giant bag of hitpoints. It would be about avoid attacks and making a lot of low-chance hits until someone gets lucky. Another of GURPS virtues is that a single hit can have a lot of knock on effects such as shock, knockdown, limb crippling, etc. - so the nature of the fight slowly changes as you make significant hits. Yeah, but for real MH goodness you need to have some sort of mechanics for carving mosnters and turning them into gear. And possibly a little town management on the side.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:34
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Evil Mastermind posted:Yeah, but for real MH goodness you need to have some sort of mechanics for carving mosnters and turning them into gear. And possibly a little town management on the side. That'd actually make for a pretty good use of the Exalted engine. Big drat monsters, social charms for town development, would probably need to strip out all the "poor little cursed me" junk that White Wolf thinks counts for fun times and beef up the craft engine, but after that it's good stuff.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:38
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MalcolmSheppard posted:What I did was send a kind of elevator pitch with this in mind: I would write, design, layout and co-publish an RPG with them that used a revision of Palladium's house system in exchange for a decent royalty. The idea that they'd have any interest in system revisions just makes me want to squeeze your cheeks because that's so adorable.  Good on you for trying! I'm just speaking from Palladium folks I'd talked to and from interviews Kevin has given, but he seems to live in a bubble where Palladium is a streamlined and low-profile system (no, seriously, he says this repeatedly) and of the important of having one system to rule them, because people hate learning new systems, etc. He lives in a world where unequal characters actually make a game more... well, I'll just quote him, because trying to follow his logic is... Kevin Siembieda posted:Game balance is ALWAYS a concern and a key aspect of every rule, power, weapon and character. It has to be.  occamsnailfile posted:I even like GURPS and have played more of it than D&D but I'll agree that it needs yet another edition (one free of direct Steve influence) and some trimming. Its particular balance of crunch ended up working for me more than other crunchy systems usually do. I was a huge GURPS player, but 4e threw me off by trying to throw everything into one book. It struck me as the kind of thing that may have appealed to GURPS fans at the time, but wouldn't do much to make it accessible to new players. In addition, it didn't do much to solve the essential balance issues in GURPS, particularly with Dexterity and Intelligence dominance, and that left me pretty unsatisfied. Honestly I think what would serve it will is to do very lean versions of the system oriented around genres that are standalone, with rules appropriate to it. Something like the classic Man to Man, only with rules focused around the game being presented. Maybe Fantasy has more detailed melee and magic rules, Special Ops has detailed rules for ambushes and fire arms, and so on. I wouldn't mind playing GURPS again, but loosing at the kitchen sink that is 4e just makes me feel slightly ill in having to navigate hundreds of pages just to obtain the ten or so pages of material I actually need. It'd also be the kind of system that would be interesting to see implemented in database form rather than book form, that'd make working around it a lot easier if I could just search through rules or by tags or the like - 'modern', 'universal', 'magic', etc.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:38
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FMguru posted:Actually, there were three companies: I forgot that guy who bought out their IP in the 2000s and tried to relaunch it, only to become the dictionary definition of a nerd with a dream and a line of credit but less than zero business sense. What a trainwreck that was. That would be Eric Gibson, who had a dream of revitalizing the d6 system as a hot new OGL property with a line of GURPS-esque multi-purpose supplements, but the big draw at the time was that Bill Coffin (the same guy who once ripped Kevin Sembieda a new one on RPGnet after years of frustratedly working for Palladium, among other things) was penning a brand new epic sci-fi game called Septimus about refugees from a collapsing interstellar empire seeking refuge in a mysterious Dyson Sphere only to find out that there's an RPG setting going on inside. Septimus got people pretty hype (myself included), which got people hype for The New WEG by association. Then, like you say, it turned into a complete trainwreck. Septimus the game was pretty much done and ready to be printed but delays kept cropping up, necessitating that the print date keep getting pushed back...and pushed back...and pushed back...and eventually it all just sort of fell apart. Did I mention that a bunch of people pre-ordered Septimus (myself included)? I did actually get my pre-order money refunded after a while, though I have no idea how many other people did, and Eric Gibson had the typical RPGnet angry game designer flounce when people wouldn't stop being mean to him over his complete and utter clusterfuck. Bill Coffin did actually wind up releasing Septimus in digital format for free if you want to check it out. The punchline is that it's mostly kind of forgettable.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:54
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Kai Tave posted:I did actually get my pre-order money refunded after a while, though I have no idea how many other people did, and Eric Gibson had the typical RPGnet angry game designer flounce when people wouldn't stop being mean to him over his complete and utter clusterfuck. Bill Coffin did actually wind up releasing Septimus in digital format for free if you want to check it out. The punchline is that it's mostly kind of forgettable. Eric Gibson posted:I'm done trying to explain myself to people who don't want an explaination but just wish to turn words around and read into what I write. Note that the "sense of entitlement" he's railing against is "an expectation of something in return for the $50 I ponied up a year ago, even if it's only an honest explanation of why I haven't gotten anything yet."
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Jul 25, 2014 18:06
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Man, that brings me back. Christ what an rear end in a top hat. And yeah, the greatest missed opportunity of the Septimus debacle is that Kickstarter wasn't around then to make it into an even bigger trainwreck. edit; oh poo poo, I totally missed this one the first time around. Eric Gibson posted:Which is why I do not now, nor can I ever foresee me soliciting handouts or charity. It is against my principals as an Objectivist. What I have asked of people is -- patience, which that alone is a difficult thing for me to ask for. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 18:28
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FMguru posted:Note that the "sense of entitlement" he's railing against is "an expectation of something in return for the $50 I ponied up a year ago, even if it's only an honest explanation of why I haven't gotten anything yet." At least we still have GMS championing that stance.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:42
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kaynorr posted:They've tried to change that in the last few years with the Dungeon Fantasy and Monster Hunter lines, which are roughly analogous to buying a LEGO kit that you can make into an X-Wing or a Camaro or what-have-you. It's a valiant effort, but doesn't really play to GURPS' strengths which are largely in insanely flexible character creation. Infinite Worlds or Transhuman Space did far better jobs of that, but just didn't sell enough. I threw a classic groggy fit when 4E came out, but while I still think that swathes of the new core could be cut without tears, I eventually pried my head out of my rear end. That stuff though-- that just left me cold. Like, I understand and appreciate the utility of character templates and a Chinese menu where you choose 20 points from Column A and 10 from B, and get a roughly functional character of that archetype without slogging through Evil Stevie's Skills Dumpster. That's hugely helpful, especially for new players. Dungeon Fantasy just seemed to take it to an unfunny extreme for something the designer claimed was '...by turns cheesy, silly, and munchkin.'
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Jul 25, 2014 19:18
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FMguru posted:1990s WEG which spiraled down until it was shipping junk like the $30 hardback RPG supplement for Star Wars "The Truce At Bakura", Paranoia 5E, and RPGs based on the Species and Tank Girl properties. Oh, and one of the strangest, least-loved RPGs ever - Shatterzone. 1. Finish Dune 2. Go back and finish Eldritch Skies 3. Immortal: Claudia Christian Edition 4. Masterbook: World of Tales from the Crypt Green Intern posted:Holy crap, that's impressive sleuthing. I'll start my reread this weekend. Might take a bit to actually get some content down for the thread. John Tynes posted:Archon was originally going to publish Unknown Armies. Greg Stolze, Thomas Manning, and I assembled the whole book, laid out, illustrated, edited, ready to go, without anything from Archon. The last couple weeks before the drop-dead press deadline for GenCon, I couldn't ever reach the head of Archon on the phone or email. The morning of the deadline I had the book files on CD, a printout made, and the whole thing ready to ship to the printer, but I needed to know how to get them paid. I made one last call to the head of Archon, left a message saying it was now or never, and that was that. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 19:20
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Halloween Jack posted:It gets worse! I saw a bit of commentary by Stolze about the whole Archon/UA deal when I was looking around last night. He didn't really say anything negative about Archon, but did note that after a certain point, Lisa Mann (the owner) just sort of...disappeared.
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Jul 25, 2014 19:39
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Bieeardo posted:I threw a classic groggy fit when 4E came out, but while I still think that swathes of the new core could be cut without tears, I eventually pried my head out of my rear end. That stuff though-- that just left me cold. Like, I understand and appreciate the utility of character templates and a Chinese menu where you choose 20 points from Column A and 10 from B, and get a roughly functional character of that archetype without slogging through Evil Stevie's Skills Dumpster. That's hugely helpful, especially for new players. Dungeon Fantasy just seemed to take it to an unfunny extreme for something the designer claimed was '...by turns cheesy, silly, and munchkin.' I've played a bunch of all three of the GURPS "instant games" and they are all pretty good, but each of them could stand to be their own standalone thing, maybe using Lite as a base instead of the two main books. Chargen in GURPS Action for new players was good in the sense that they could pick a template and choose their options, but there was still a good few hours of book-flipping. Monster Hunters is probably their best one, in the sense that the special powers and abilities are laid out in the first book instead of having to reference others. All that said, I've pretty much had enough of GURPS in general. Someone else said that it's pretty good about scalability in terms of how complex you want to get, and I sort of agree, but it really doesn't do a good job of explaining that.
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Jul 25, 2014 20:32
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Lynx Winters posted:All that said, I've pretty much had enough of GURPS in general. Someone else said that it's pretty good about scalability in terms of how complex you want to get, and I sort of agree, but it really doesn't do a good job of explaining that. That was the biggest problem I had trying to convince people to play or run GURPS during the 3E years. People took one look at the Basic Set (and god help you if you had the Compendiums near to hand) and balked. Or worse, they insisted on using every part of the buffalo and things ground to a screeching halt.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:45
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Ultimately, GURPS isn't really that universal, it basically works around most human-level genres, but once you get into the high-scale supernatural or superhuman realms - and don't even get me started on Vehicles - the math rapidly unravels. But if you want to run a low fantasy game, espionage, investigative, or anything else relatively "realistic", it functions rather well. But something like GURPS IOU nicely highlighted how not to use GURPS.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:53
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Evil Mastermind posted:WEG got a lot of leeway because they had the Star Wars licence (and the game was good for it's time), Paranoia (which is where all the good writers they had were focused), and Torg (which was very different from everything else available at the time). FMguru posted:Yeah, WEG was really two companies: the 1980s WEG which made excellent boardgames (Tank Leader! RAF! Web and Starship! Junta! Tales of the Arabian Nights!), Paranoia, Torg, and Star Wars 1E, and 1990s WEG which spiraled down until it was shipping junk like the $30 hardback RPG supplement for Star Wars "The Truce At Bakura", Paranoia 5E, and RPGs based on the Species and Tank Girl properties. Oh, and one of the strangest, least-loved RPGs ever - Shatterzone. Evil Mastermind posted:I think it's not so much generic systems as 90's generic systems, which were more about modeling EVERYTHING you might conceivable want to do mechanically. You still see lingering bits of that mindset nowadays, though, in things like crafting skills or people worrying about the difficulty in moving up a hill. Alien Rope Burn posted:GURPS IOU  (I'd have done it, but I haven't played GURPS since like 1997 so I wouldn't do it justice.)
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Jul 25, 2014 22:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Ultimately, GURPS isn't really that universal, it basically works around most human-level genres, but once you get into the high-scale supernatural or superhuman realms - and don't even get me started on Vehicles - the math rapidly unravels. But if you want to run a low fantasy game, espionage, investigative, or anything else relatively "realistic", it functions rather well. But something like GURPS IOU nicely highlighted how not to use GURPS. Yeah, GURPS maps nicely in the space from gritty-"realism" to action movie "realism", and shines at things like modern horror, hard SF, conspiracy, and historical eras (or "historical era but with magic"), or mashed-up genres. But it really is on the GM to set up a campaign frame and choose a focus - just handing the 4E core (or 3E core + compendia) to someone and saying "create a character" and expecting them to pick through 200 pages of skills, ads, disads, quirks, powers, and modifiers is just too much to ask of someone who isn't already a full paid-up member of the Church Of GURPS. Same with GMs who look at all the optional rules and try to run a game with 95% of them on, which is where you get horror stories of 3 seconds worth of combat taking two hours of table time to adjudicate. GURPS also has the problem that the most vocal and dedicated parts of its fanbase (and the ones who most reliably by the supplements) are the most detail/realism-obsessed part, always up for splitting hairs and demanding even more equations with more variables, which results in things like Vehicles and Tactical Shooting.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:25
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Asimo posted:Compare that to the classic example of 90's GURPS where they expected you to do gritty fantasy, modern horror, super heroes, and far-future sci-fi with characters that were theoretically point balanced between. It's not like there's been some hard transition point, but it's still a pretty clear long term trend.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:32
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FMguru posted:Goblins and Discworld and Black Ops are also settings that are ill-served by the GURPS ruleset. One of the things I love about Goblins and Discworld is just how much they fly in the face of bog-standard GURPS. Goblins, you start off with a racial package that weighs in as a disadvantage. Someone shivs you and throws you in the river, you spend the rest of the night floating along, nursing a kidney wound that probably won't kill you, and planning your revenge. Discworld, someone shivs you and shoves you in the river, you'll probably just bounce. And the mechanical sidebars just kind of look directly at you and throw their hands up. And I love, love, love the fluff for Black Ops, but Jesus. 700-odd point characters, of which you've got like 20 points for personalization.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:49
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Asimo posted:Why has that not been reviewed yet? FATE is just nu-FUDGE.  I only did like three or so chapters of my GURPS IOU writeup, I should fix that, I suppose.
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Jul 26, 2014 04:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:FATE is just nu-FUDGE. If you don't have the time I could always give it a shot. I've got the book and it's one of my favorite settings which I have never, ever played using the intended system.
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Jul 26, 2014 06:24
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 Frostcraft Welcome to the "catch-all" chapter of Indigo Ice. New weapons, feats, spells, and magic items are all in here, ready for us to look at.  Weapons Indigo Ice gives us a total of 14 new weapons: the aquabomb, aquabus, aquannon, bayonet, chisel spear, eel spear, fizzlepop pistol, fizzlepop musket, ice blade, ice claws, pneumatic blade, pneumatic spear, skith, and ulu. Most of these are self-explanatory, such as the chisel spear being a spear with a chisel-shaped end (which helps against Earth subtype creatures in combat), ice claws being claws made to climb ice, and the aquabus being an arquebus that works underwater. The ones that are probably worth the most actual discussion are the pneumatics, eel spear, fizzlepops, and the skith, so let's actually talk about them rather than talk about talking about them.
Feats Well, I guess this answers that previous question. Most of the 25 new feats in Indigo Ice are either racial feats or feats to boost the Angakkuq's tupilaq, and the squawks get the most boring to recount ones with a bunch of set of combat maneuvers tied to the skith and one that grants a natural bite attack with a serrated beak. The ice elves aren't much better, with three feats that add minor cold damage to either unarmed strikes with Fists of Ice melee weapons with Freezing Weapons, or grapples with Icy Grasp. Hell, the rest aren't exactly amazing to discuss either. Thanor have Midwinter Hide (+1 natural armor and cold resistance 5) and Tearing Tusks (1 point of bleed damage and 19-20 critical threat range on the thanor's natural attack), the crystolix get Aweless (the panic and frightened conditions are reduced to shaken if the fear effect is spell-like or supernatural) and Selling Ice in Isinblare (Wisdom bonus added to Appraise and Diplomacy checks), aglooliks have Kul's Intuition (reroll a failed Disable Device check) and Redundant Processes (roll twice and take the higher result when making a Craft check), and the ningen can take Cryptid Anonymity (cast invisibility 3 times a day) and Expanded Senses (the ningen's water sense ability gets an extra 10 feet of range). Mind you, all of these feats are certainly likely to be useful, but it's hard to get excited about them. On top of these racial and tupilaq feats, there are three feats that are made for a slightly more general audience. The feat Icy Berserker is applicable to any character who can go into a rage (Barbarian or otherwise), and grants them the Cold subtype as long as they are in the rage. Similarly, Rime Rouser grants the Cold subtype to any creature summoned by a spellcaster with the feat handy. And then there's Piercing Cold...oh, Piercing Cold. This metamagic feat allows a spell with the Cold descriptor to be ridiculously cold. Like, so drat cold that cold things get cold. This allows the spell to ignore any cold resistance, or still deal half damage to a creature that otherwise has cold immunity. I'm fairly sure there was some sort of dumb exploit in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 with a similar feat, but I can't remember the specifics. Spells Do you like ice? If not, well...good for you, actually. There are only a handful of new spells in Indigo Ice, and surprisingly few of them have to deal with ice. It's like an inverse of the logic behind the feats.
Magic Items The last part of this rather extended chapter is a look at magic items, starting with the Frostburn weapon quality. This quality makes a weapon deal cold damage rather than whatever damage type it normally deals, but also has the added sinister effect of making it impossible for the target to naturally heal the damage taken from the frostburn weapon unless they get to moderate or warmer temperatures. Again, hope the party has a Cleric (or someone who can cast temperature-altering magic, at least). There are also a grand total of three new fully statted magic items. The Centaceph Pistol is a +1 fizzlepop pistol that has 100 charges of the mageboil spell rather than the usual needle ammunition, the Heart of Ice is a red gemstone frozen in ever-ice that can cast several cold spells (ice-water jet at will, frost once per hour, encapsulate, frazil ice, and icy tomb three times per day, and icy sphere and glacial current once per day) and automatically bestows the Piercing Cold metamagic feat if you cast them while directly touching the Heart of Ice to the target, and the Skith of Skating is a +1 keen frost skith that allows a squawk to skate at six times their base speed rather than the four of a normal skith. Indigo Ice Setting As we near the finish line for this title, we have finally reached the obligatory setting fluff chapter. As mentioned way back in the intro post for this book, Isinblare is the name for the polar reaches of the Cerulean Seas. There are, of course, two poles – Feldorheim is the north pole, and Fiskheim is the south pole. So how the hell did two places on the opposite sides of the planet get a collective name? Well, the answer to that is magic, because of course it would be magic. There are teleportation mirrors littered across the collective expanse of Isinblare, remnants of one of the human empires from the time before the Great Flood. These “Shining Folk” originally had most of their holdings in Feldorheim, where they kept the aglooliks as a slave race. An eventual rebellion lead by an agloolik named Kul lead to the creation of the mirrors that lead to Fiskheim as a last resort. Of course, Fiskheim was (and still is) a region sacred to the squawks, who took the invasion about as well as totalitarian warmonger swole-penguins could be expected to. Thus the Shining Folk bit the dust long before the Great Flood even happened, their magic mirrors and the technological prowess the aglooliks gained from them being the only remnants of their legacy. The fall of the Shining Folk and the Great Flood effectively created a great migration between the two halves of Isinblare through the magic mirrors. The crystolix and ice elves of Fiskheim headed north, while the thanor and selkies of Feldorheim spread south. The squawk mostly stayed in their sacred homeland after multiple failed attempts at conquering Feldorheim made the squawk emperor of the time decree that it was illegal for squawks to own land in the shameful north. There were also those who spread both ways from the middle, such as the nomadic ningen of the temperate currents and the nommo of the Cerulean Seas proper. The nommo are rightfully feared for having gone on a big power trip of hoarding the magic mirrors and enslaving the elves and seafolk of Isinblare when they first arrived, and even centuries later their aloof attitude hasn't really helped them gain any more favor. Religion Rather than following the “one god for each alignment” pantheon of the Cerulean Seas, Isinblare has six unique deities that intermingle with missionaries from that far-off tropical realm.
Polar Sea Bestiary And here it is, the final chapter. What better way to end off a book than with the best part of any RPG supplement? There's twenty new creatures to head through, so no time to waste with long intros. I never liked long intros anyway. Silly things, barring entry to actual content. Akhlut, Fiskheim (CR 7 Huge Animal) The akhlut is a creature from Inuit mythology, being a monstrous predator that fuses the traits of wolf and orca together. Akhlut stats were already given in Pathfinder Bestiary III, but those were for an appropriately grandiose and legendary creature, being a CR 13 Magical Beast capable of fully shapeshifting into wolf or orca form and with the Cold subtype attached. The official Paizo akhlut from the Bestiary III are referred to here as Feldorheim akhlut. Down south, they have the Fiskheim akhlut, a normal animal (well, as “normal” as an orca-wolf hybrid can get) that is a favored mount of the ice elves. The Fiskheim akhlut can see in even the most blinding blizzards, is amphibious, and has a particularly vicious bite that has an 18-20 critical hit threat range. Otherwise, though? It's sort of just what you'd end up with if you statted up a really big polar bear.  Bear, Nanoqaluk (CR 5 Large Animal) Speaking of polar bears, this creature is literally a fish and a polar bear fused together. The nanoqaluk is a genetic engineering experiment of the ice elves that was originally meant to save the polar bear from extinction, but has ended up as a beast of war in the centuries afterward. It also happens to feel really pointless when you place it right after the akhlut. The nanoqaluk is smaller and can breathe both water and air, but otherwise it feels strange to say that the ice elves have a favored sea bear mount and then give them another favored sea bear mount as literally the next entry. Brother of Frost (Class Level-Dependent Medium Outsider [Air, Water]) These guys basically look like blue-scaled lizardfolk and act like lizardfolk, but the similarity is purely cosmetic. They are actually human cultists from before the Great Flood who fused themselves with frost salamanders. Strangely, even though they were fused with frost salamanders and go so far as to be able to sustain themselves eating only ice (but like cold meat too much to do so fully), they do not have the Cold subtype, instead having a mere cold resistance 5. As characters, they are keyed toward being mixed martial-caster characters, with a +2 to Charisma and Constitution (but -2 to Wisdom), a +1 boost to caster levels with Water domain spells, and the ability to cast frostbite once per day as a spell-like ability.  Cryoviathan (CR 18 Colossal Magical Beast [Cold]) These immense icicle-studded sea serpents of the poles are the stuff of legends, appearing only briefly between decades of slumber and said to be capable of consuming entire villages. It can back up that fearsome reputation, too – with a simple exhaling breath it can create a mile-radius blizzard once per day, striking its icy hide with a melee attack results in 6d6 cold damage in retaliation and the possibility of the weapon just straight up breaking, nearly any ship can be easily capsized as it surfaces, and when particularly angered it will rear up and slam its entire immense weight down on a foe. Dragon, Orchestra (CR 5 Small to CR 18 Gargantuan Dragon [Cold, Water]) Because true dragons never go out of style, Indigo Ice has a brand new type of song dragon in the orchestra dragon. These guys resemble massive scaly and spiky orcas and think of themselves as the arbiters of the natural order. They roam the seas from pole to pole with their orca posse, looking for people who are upsetting the balance of nature so they can then proceed to beat them up. They are capable of extending combat bonuses to attack or armor class to their orca pod, make their orca pod immune to cold damage, share spells with their orca pod, and generally coordinate them at will. Of course, orchestra dragons aren't entirely dependent on their orca pals, being capable of exhuding a slowing breath weapon and utilizing powerful bite, claw, and tail attacks. A great wyrm orchestra dragon can even pull a “rocks fall, everyone dies” and summon a massive (600 feet in width and length, 300 feet in height) iceberg once per day.  Kairuku (CR 1 Medium Animal) Believe it or not, these man-sized penguins are not merely a fantasy dire animal. Kairuku grebneffi lived in New Zealand during the Oligocene period around 25 million years ago, and was actually one of a long lineage of giant penguins that existed in the region in the deep past. In the world of Isinblare, they are ridden into battle by the squawks, who apparently see nothing at all strange about penguins domesticating bigger penguins to ride into battle as some sort of omni-penguin war force. Unfortunately, no matter how well trained they are, a kairuku loves to steal shiny objects and will use its ranks in Sleight of Hand to do just that even to its master's allies. Kraken, Polar (CR 15 Huge Magical Beast [Cold]) A twisted amalgamation of deep sea creatures, the polar kraken has the body of a massive squid combined with the lure of an anglerfish and the horrendous maw of a lamprey, all combined into a translucent package capable of sliding through ice as if it wasn't even there. Unfortunately, all it is is just a big pop scare monster to have ambush your players. Now, I have nothing against the idea of a monster being just a monster, but the problem with it in this case is that the polar kraken has an Intelligence score of 19. A creature with an intellect nearly double that of the average human is stated implicitly in the fluff to pretty much do nothing but normal apex predator stuff, being “degenerate” compared to the warm-water scheming empire-building kraken. If they're so degenerate, why not actually cut their Intelligence score? Why give them such a high Intelligence if they aren't even allowed to use it? It baffles me. Ice Lich (CR +2 Template) If a normal lich somehow isn't enough for you, the icy wastes of Isinblare are home to this fearsome frosty variant of the classic undead arcanist. On top of all the normal traits you'd get from the lich template, the ice lich has a compound aura that has both a fear effect and a chilling component that turns water around the ice lich into difficult to see through slush and deals 1d10 cold damage per round. In addition, rather than having the paralyzing touch of a standard lich, the ice lich has what is referred to as “rime touch”. Getting affected by the rime touch means you are entombed in ice and sustained by a magical force, unmoving but very much alive. The fluff even states that an ice lich will usually keep rime touched foes as trophies, thawing them out from time to time just to interrogate them before sealing them up again, which eventually drives these poor “trophies” insane.  Ningen – Atshen (CR 3 Large Humanoid) and Qilanappa (CR 6 Large Humanoid) Two more forms of ningen, being based on orcas and narwhals respectively rather than beluga whales like the talilajuk. The atshen are aggressive and popular as mercenaries due to their ability to shapeshift from size Large to size Small, with little else being told about them in the fluff. That's a shame, too. These ningen take their name from a cannibal giant in Inuit mythology that becomes larger and larger the more flesh he consumes, and is protected by a guardian spirit that makes him difficult to combat even for a shaman. When you think about that, “angry mer-orca” isn't quite as impressive. The qilanappa have no such burden of naming history, but aren't elaborated on much either. They are stated to be effectively the game wardens of the ocean, being especially protective of the narwhals they resemble. A qilanappa is capable of teleporting anywhere within a 5 mile radius once per round, but only if there is only up to a single person actively watching them. Maybe the reason they carry a spear in tandem with their natural spear-like tusk is because they want to gouge everyone's eyes out to teleport freely.  Orcoth (CR 10 Huge Magical Beast) While the nanoqaluk was engineered out of pity for a critically endangered species and eventually utilized as a combat mount, the orcoth was created by the ice elves to be a living siege weapon from day one. Its massive bulk grants it a hefty natural armor bonus (+20, specifically), which is combined with a cornucopia of natural weapons – a powerful fluked tail, massive jaws, thick claws, and even a weaponized blowhole. Yes, it seriously has a weaponized blowhole, as it can spew a jet of water that acts as a breath weapon that deals 2d6 bludgeoning damage. Of course, every armor has its weak spot, and the orcoth's is that it is incredibly indecisive. Kill its ice elf handlers, and it flails around violently a little before attacking anything in sight, stand around doing nothing, or run away at random. Qalupalik (CR 5 Medium Fey) Another creature from Inuit lore, the qalupalik, or qalapilluk, is a sea hag that acts as what folklorists refer to as “nursery bogies” – a monster specifically created to scare children out of a specific behavior. In the case of qalupalik, the warning is to not go too close to the edge of the ice alone, lest she reach out of the water and take the child. Indigo Ice takes a much more sympathetic view on this creature, turning her from a boogeyman figure to a somewhat tragic entity. The game's qalupalik are fey that cannot reproduce on their own, so must take and transmute humanoid children in order to keep their species going. An Isinblare qalupalik may even lay her own life down if it saves a child in distress. Strangely enough, while she has a suffocating grapple attack, the qalupalik here has no actual transformation ability. This is something that the qalupalik in the Pathfinder Bestiary IV actually does have, so I guess you could graft that power over if you wanted to use this version rather than the more traditional evil creature Paizo put out.  Seals – Fantail (CR 1 Medium Animal), Pelagiarctos (CR 7 Large Animal), and Waterhorse (CR 5 Huge Animal) A triple threat of a fantasy animal, a prehistoric creature, and a creature of folklore. The fantail seal is created specifically as a guard animal, its one unique trait being an ear-piercing screech that drowns out all sound within a 60 foot radius. This ties directly into Pelagiarctos, a Miocene walrus that was built more like a leopard seal than the walruses we have still alive today, as Pelagiarctos in Isinblare use the fantail seal as an early indicator of potential prey being in the area. For whatever reason, the authors have envisioned this animal as being a horrendous roidbeast – if you damage the Pelagiarctos in combat, it will go into a Barbarian rage until either it or you are dead. Then there's the waterhorse. The origin of this creature comes to us all the way from the Victorian era. Zoologist Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans wrote in 1892 that he believed the source of sea serpent legends was some manner of immense seal with both a long neck and tail, which he confidently dubbed Megophias megophias. This idea was later resurrected by Bernard Heuvelmans, the "Father of Cryptozoology", in 1968 when he suggested that long-necked sea and lake monsters such as the Loch Ness Monster were most likely huge long-necked fur seals that he gave the hypothetical scientific name Megalotaria longicollis. The waterhorse as statted here is an unimpressive creature with no ability scores above 20, 8 natural HD, and none of the supernatural abilities that mark the "true" lake monsters and sea serpents found in the first three Pathfinder Bestiaries. Its only unique ability is to "pluck" a foe Medium-size or smaller and either chew it each round it successfully grapples or drop it straight down 20 feet. Thanor Paladins will pay a lot of money for a successfully domesticated waterhorse to use as a mount, too.  Sunhunter (CR 7 Large Magical Beast) Behold, the most ridiculous monster in the frozen north! The sunhunter is some manner of big cat-like predator of the glacial expanse, stalking prey by boring holes in the ice with concentrated solar beams and hiding in wait. These solar beams can also be used to create a blinding flash in a 50 foot radius (which lasts for an impressive 2d6 rounds if the target doesn't succeed on their DC 18 Fortitude save) or straight up convert the solar beams into a breath weapon-style attack that deals a whopping 6d6 untyped damage. There is a catch, however, in that the sunhunter can only use its solar beam a number of times per day equal to its Constitution modifier, with two hours of staying in direct sunlight restoring a single use if it is still the same day. Thanors consider the sunhunter to be a sacred animal and will defend them from those who seek to harm them, so pray that a thanor isn't a party member if you end up having to fight one of these freaky fin-cats. Tizheruk (CR 14 Gargantuan Magical Beast [Cold]) The tizheruk is a sea serpent from Inuit folklore, said to swiftly and silently grab fishermen without being seen in spite of its immense size. Indigo Ice depicts the creature rather differently, rendering it as an immense ice lizard that is an intelligent trickster spirit. They love to screw around with the residents of Isinblare, offering aid to those who go along with the pranks and eating those who react with hostility. This effectively takes the “harassment fey” monster archetype and applies it to a massive, clever Komodo dragon who can unleash a 10d6 sonic damage breath weapon and cast Trickery domain Cleric spells. I can seldom imagine something more horrifying. Trueform, Hydrurgan (CR 3 Large Magical Beast) The hydrurgans are awakened leopard seals that are known for being stoic, self-sufficient, and silent compared to the communal selkies. This hasn't exactly served them well, though, as the militant squawks have purged them to near extinction. What hydrurgans are left are either reclusive hermits or aggressive guerrillas that strike back against the squawk empire. Whale, Icebreaker (CR 13 Gargantuan Animal) Imagine a sperm whale that has its whole head extended into a thorny mess of horns – that's basically what the icebreaker whale is. And I don't just mean that physical description-wise, as it's also basically what the stats are. Their horns are used for both gore attacks and to plow through ice at half their normal swim speed. Various prey animals aren't the only thing icebreaker whales gore, as the text states they are aggressive enough to attack ships as well. Most of the warrior races of Isinblare have made attempts to domesticate them for use as a weapon of war as a result.  Winter Hulk (CR 6 Large Construct [Cold]) Our last monster for this title is a golem...sort of. It effectively looks and acts like a golem, magic immunity and everything, but is actually piloted by a Small humanoid fish called an ice hermit. The ice hermit has average human intelligence but engages in no acts beyond being hungry and territorial. Final Thoughts Indigo Ice is the niche title of a niche title. That alone does not drat a title to failure, though. While some parts may have been boring to attempt to recount, in actual game practice things like the feats would most likely be pretty helpful, as would the new weapons. What propels Indigo Ice upward a bit is that is succeeds in having bland but mechanically useful things tempered by actually flavorful and mechanically useful things as well. The Congulair is a pretty decent martial class that has a trippy as hell flavor to it, the races are great for the setting, and most of the creatures (issues such as the polar kraken notwithstanding) are at the very least interesting flavor-wise if not necessarily mechanically amazing. In the end, Indigo Ice is good at what it is: a niche title about aquatic polar escapades. Combined with one of the more broad polar sourcebooks such as Wizards of the Coast's Frostburn or MonkeyGod Enterprises' Frost and Fur? It could transform into something truly great. Next Time... I'll probably be doing some random stuff before the next Cerulean Seas book. Nothing that constitutes starting a whole new series before Cerulean Seas books are finished, as much as I want to review things like Conspiracy X, so one-off books and bestiaries can be expected. Definitely at least one d20 Modern title I've been eying a fair bit. Maybe you'll even see some GURPS reviews since those have been discussed and I do have a large GURPS collection. We'll see.
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Jul 26, 2014 20:47
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To be honest, I have periodically thought about just handling most of my games in a universal system like GURPS or BRP, but whenever I approach them, they just come across to me as serviceable, a little clunky, and largely insipid. PresidentBeard posted:Really? It seemed to have a similar murderhobo and random magic killing you for no reason. Unless I'm misremembering how the Dying Earth stories actually ran. It's been a long time since I read any of them. So if I'm completely misrepresenting them my bad. Second, mechanical support for characters like Cugel doesn't appear until Supplement I: Greyhawk. OD&D itself just has fighting-men, clerics, and magic-users, and magic-users don't really live up to Dying Earth wizards like Turjan, who is more than capable of wielding a sword and far from helpless without his spells. The most Dying Earth stuff in OD&D is not in the rules, or anywhere else in the text, but with the playstyle we associate with that era of D&D--bullshitting your way out of trouble, being unsure if creatures you encounter will attack on sight, and trying to avoid actually using the combat rules by hiding, sneaking, and coming up with baroque ways of bushwhacking your enemies. Ultimately, OD&D is a set-piece wargame as much as anything, and rules support for character power is either "magic" or "lots of weapons and armor." Cugel, in particular, falls entirely into the nebulous gap where D&D gives you the freedom to make poo poo up. If you read those books after having played D&D, there are times when Cugel almost seems to be playing on Vance's indulgence like an old-school D&D player wheedling the DM. All of the Dying Earth stories, from the eponymous short story collection to the Rhialto novellas, are picaresques about getting into and out of peril, and OD&D really doesn't model that. And I'm not saying that from an arrogant modern perspective of "Well, it doesn't have rules for drama and personality," I mean it really just doesn't model those adventures at all beyond letting you have wilderness encounters where you roll to see if you can talk to creatures instead of fighting them. Apropos of nothing, Vance wrote a sword-and-planet series called Planet of Adventure, and it's far more lively than John Carter. I'm believe Gygax read at least some of it, but its influence doesn't appear in D&D. I recommend it to anyone interested in running old-school D&D in a sword-and-planet style. (It's one of Vance's series that, altogether, are shorter than one Jordan or GRRM novel, so it's a very quick read.)
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Jul 27, 2014 18:07
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Thanks for that rather thorough explanation.
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Jul 27, 2014 21:54
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Rifts Mercenaries Part 7: "He has recently been inspired to seduce and then murder her, but this is a long-term endeavor." Braddock's Bad Boys For some reason, they get no description or flavor text before going into the characters. We do get the company's stat block, and their main focuses are weapons, vehicles, and having a large operational budget. So on to the NPCs:     Colonel, Janet, Lars, and Dawud.
We get a breakdown of their unit and equipment, and are pretty huge at 300-400 troops and 400-600 support personnel, a ton of vehicles and robots and very good armaments. The adventure idea here is Braddock's Last Stand, where the a unit of Bad Boys led by Janet were hired to taken out raiders, only to run into a huge Xiticix nest and get surrounded and cut off. Braddock could hire the PCs to help them break the siege. There could be a mountain man to seek out to find ancient tunnels (or a military complex) to sneak in. Maybe the PCs get trapped with the unit and have to try and sneak out, but might have to deal with Lars trying to off them because he's generically crazy. It ends with a note that they can be found anywhere, but are generally opposed by the Coalition States. This company feels like it had Siembieda writing it, but there's no clear authorship. Next: How do you control a robot? By blowing it to hell, naturally. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jul 28, 2014 |
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Jul 28, 2014 12:11
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Next: How do you control a robot? By blowing it to hell, naturally.
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Jul 28, 2014 12:18
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PresidentBeard posted:Thanks for that rather thorough explanation.
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Jul 28, 2014 16:22
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Alien Rope Burn posted:They had some misadventures before being rescued by the Colonel and he was recruited... even though he's a D-Bee? Well, wh'ev. BerkerkLurk fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jul 29, 2014 |
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Jul 28, 2014 20:18
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Halloween Jack posted:Bear in mind that there are old-schoolers who would tell you that I'm an idiot and that they had many thoroughly Vancian adventures with OD&D. They will likely, in the same breath, tell you that they don't use the rules that often. I like the ideas present in the Rules Cyclopedia enough but a lot of the rules are dumb. Specifically the weapon masteries and strongholds I tend to port into other fantasy oriented games when possible.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:48
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Just as an update on the Noir writeup: it's going to take me a while. I didn't get a chance to read the book over the weekend, and I'm pretty busy for the next couple weeks. Maybe I can get an intro post up sometime soon, though.
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Jul 28, 2014 23:38
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Darker Dungeons is a pretty decent read if you like the ideas from Rules Cyclopedia but don't like all of the rules; they tried to modernise some of the rules, and make them all more consistent.
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Jul 29, 2014 02:23
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Rifts Mercenaries Part 8: "For a change, the CS is correct in calling Captain Chen and her mercenaries the "dupes" of a dangerous alien power." Robot Control A group of mercs that specializes in taking out large and/or mechanized targets, Robot Control is sponsored by Naruni Enterprises, who apparently are a transdimensional group of arms merchants- (At this point Siembieda yanks away the mic from Carella two paragraphs into his description.) "So these Naruni guys are trying to take over the world, but the totally awesome Coalition is trying to spread the truth about them! Even like Triax and Northern Gun hate these guys I don't have to tell you why! Even Splynncryth hates their asses. Naruni are a bunch of chumps and Robot Control are their tools!" (Siembieda drops the mic, which Carella scrambles to pick up.) Tactics Robot Control uses spy drones, magic, and psychics to pinpoint a target's location before usually attacking close-in where a robot can't use its ranged weapons (not true in the rules, but it's a nice thought), and take out its legs or sensors before going in for the kill. Rifts Mercenaries posted:The symbol of Robot Control is a simple, cartoon-like drawing of a female figure in combat armor standing over a robot, its eyes crossed and springs and wires protruding from an open wound. I think that makes this the anime-est of the mercenary companies in this book. And then we move on to NPCs!      Lucia, Arrak, Luigi, Grunt's Armor, and Joe. Grunt and Eowyna not pictured.
Finally, we have adventure ideas. There's Robot Madness, where an unspecified supernatural force takes over a robot factory and starts to pump out eeevil robots, and it's up to Robot Control (and some PCs) to stop them. Maybe ARCHIE (Rifts Sourcebook) finds out and a tries to investigate, maybe the players are trapped in the factory and have to be a wrench in the works, or maybe it gets taken over by Mechanoids, whatever. The other is Spies, Spies Everywhere where the PCs are hired to infiltrate and spy on Robot Control, and maybe even kidnap Trader Joe. There could be competing spies or assassins after Trader Joe. Maybe if they kidnap Joe, it's a double-cross and they might need to save Joe for secret Coalition or other baddies. And finally, Robot Control is going to want revenge on the PCs, or might team up with them against an evil employer. Basically any Shadowrun adventure ever. It's weird the way Siembieda editorializes like a maniac in the middle of this, it's breathtakingly pass-aggy. I get the impression he had severe reservations about a company that might sell even the lowliest PC super-weapons and tried to pick away at the very idea from the beginning. Next: The subtlety of evil: Armageddon Unlimited.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:23
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Having been reading Phase World lately ( spoiler warning ) the discord over Naruni dominance is ongoing and I just do not see what the problem is. I mean aside from them being super-powerful, KS was really, really insistent that Rifts Earth stuff is still totally better, you guys, really, these alien punks are chumps! and you can sorta still see the mic-grabbing going on. At the least though you can just not buy Naruni guns and they won't come after you if you do that, though your enemies who did might.It's also interesting how they like poke at the edges of Mechanoids without ever actually letting that metaplot resolve as they did with Coalition War.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:41
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 We've just wrapped and posted our 24th episode, the time travel headscratcher C°ntinuum - Roleplaying in the Yet. It's confusing for a couple of reasons. First off, it's almost impossible to imagine anyone actually playing this successfully. Second, this drat thing costs like 80 dollars on Amazon, and there are people willing to kick you directly in the dick on any street corner for a fraction of that. Anyway, we're thrilled to put this one down and leave it there, this leaves us cruising in towards our 25th episode, which is also our one-year podcast anniversary, so we're gonna do something special.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:43
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occamsnailfile posted:It's also interesting how they like poke at the edges of Mechanoids without ever actually letting that metaplot resolve as they did with Coalition War. Presumably that thread has been waiting in limbo for Mechanoid Space to be published. What, it's only been delayed 15 years, it could still come out! 
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Jul 29, 2014 19:05
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C°ntinuum always struck me as being kind of brilliant, and kind of like it was made for people think Mage just isn't wanky enough.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:55
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It has some really clever ideas and some really neat writing and it was written by someone who is literally insane.
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Jul 29, 2014 20:04
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It's Timecube the game. Like if it didn't mention D10s and "you will need some players" and the like, it would be a manifesto instead.
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Jul 29, 2014 20:07
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Mors Rattus posted:It has some really clever ideas and some really neat writing and it was written by someone who is literally insane. Basically this is what I took away from it. It's like someone went "But how would time travel actually play out?" and then disappeared for 10 years. When he returned, haggard and wild-eyed, he had a stack of papers marked C°ntinuum. "I know their secrets, now", he whispered to nobody before erupting with mad laughter. His insane cackling echos in his soft, white room to this day. What I'm saying is this book is cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
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Jul 29, 2014 20:11
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Mors Rattus posted:It has some really clever ideas and some really neat writing and it was written by someone who is literally insane.
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Jul 29, 2014 20:12
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