Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 7 hours!
Are BtS characters ineffectual? Because reading through ForkBanger's review, it looks like any smart players would choose the classes that get fireballs and lightning bolts.

BtS was really bad even for its time (late 80s). The only thing it had going for it was its concept: it was explicitly about taking up machineguns and going after weird alien monsters, as opposed to cosmic horror (CoC) or Hammer horror (CHILL).

That article is basically reviewing the cover of the book and nothing else. Even at that time, there were other games that could do the same thing better, without being incredibly tedious in character creation and a total mess in actual play.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Halloween Jack posted:

Are BtS characters ineffectual? Because reading through ForkBanger's review, it looks like any smart players would choose the classes that get fireballs and lightning bolts.

BtS was really bad even for its time (late 80s). The only thing it had going for it was its concept: it was explicitly about taking up machineguns and going after weird alien monsters, as opposed to cosmic horror (CoC) or Hammer horror (CHILL).

That article is basically reviewing the cover of the book and nothing else. Even at that time, there were other games that could do the same thing better, without being incredibly tedious in character creation and a total mess in actual play.

Well no, I said that some of them are great and some are terrible. Basically the wizards are good stuff, and a few of the psychics. Then you have a lot of bumbly researcher types that basically are skill classes in a game where the skills should be religiously avoided.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Bieeardo posted:

Reminds me of how multiple splats liked to claim that Rasputin was one of theirs all along.
Everybody knows Rasputin was a time-traveling robot. Sheesh.

Rasputin from Raidou Kuzunoha is the canon Rasputin. I don't care what you're playing, he's the real one.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Also it suffers from some of the supernatural powers being fantastically utilitarian and others being crap in a bucket. Which is better - being able to Eat Fire as long as you can stuff it in your mouth, or psychically Extinguish Fire from a distance with a radius of 10'? It also has Autistic Psychic Savant class, which personally I find super loving offensive. It also has the Nega-Psychic, who negates psychic and magic powers around them, which if you play it, will dick over literally over 3/4ths of the other classes in the game. It has all the usual Palladium issues, from slow combat to a ridiculous skill list (it even has a Use Rope- I'm sorry, a Rope Works skill). Some of the monsters are more silly than scary (the Goqua, a "master of deception" that looks like a 20' slug dinosaur thing, so you have people getting manipulated by a creature that looks like a rejected Pokémon). And, lastly, the adventures are really bad, particularly "Teeny-Bopper Terror or The Tomb of the Perpetually Cool Adolescents", where you're forced to play 13-year old girl "victims" which have none of the cool psychic powers or classes which make up most of the book. (That's the opening adventure presented, even!)

It's not to say you can't have fun with the idea of "psychics with guns vs. otherdimensional invaders" (that is the meat of the game, not 80s movies horror like the review suggests for some reason) but it's a game with problems.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Nov 12, 2014

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Also it suffers from some of the supernatural powers being fantastically utilitarian and others being crap in a bucket. Which is better - being able to Eat Fire as long as you can stuff in in your mouth, or psychically Extinguish Fire from a distance with a radius of 10'? It also has Autistic Psychic Savant class, which personally I find super loving offensive. It also has the Nega-Psychic, who negates psychic and magic powers around them, which if you play it, will dick over literally over 3/4ths of the other classes in the game. It has all the usual Palladium issues, from slow combat to a ridiculous skill list (it even has a Use Rope- I'm sorry, a Rope Works skill). Some of the monsters are more silly than scary (the Goqua, a "master of deception" that looks like a 20' slug dinosaur thing). And, lastly, the adventures are really bad, particularly "Teeny-Bopper Terror or The Tomb of the Perpetually Cool Adolescents", where you're forced to play 13-year old girl "victims" which have none of the cool psychic powers or classes which make up most of the book. (That's the opening adventure presented, even!)

It's not to say you can't have fun with the idea of "psychics with guns vs. otherdimensional invaders" (that is the meat of the game, not 80s movies horror like the review suggests for some reason) but it's a game with problems.

And while they aren't fixed by replacing most of the classes with rad ninjas, cyborgs, and wacky inventors, it certainly acts as a palliative.

Edit: And if you're running Revised Ninjas and Superspies, that's still not enough fixing, because whatever moron at Palladium decided to take a martial art each away from the Dedicated and Worldly Martial artists didn't realize that left the Worldly as a terrible version of any one of the agents. Give the dedicated back his three and the worldly his two and then let them fight Dybbuks and Tectonic Entities.

Was the Autistic also from a revised/2nd edition? I don't remember seeing that in my old-rear end copy.

theironjef fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 12, 2014

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

theironjef posted:

Edit: And if you're running Revised Ninjas and Superspies, that's still not enough fixing, because whatever moron at Palladium decided to take a martial art each away from the Dedicated and Worldly Martial artists didn't realize that left the Worldly as a terrible version of any one of the agents. Give the dedicated back his three and the worldly his two and then let them fight Dybbuks and Tectonic Entities.

Was the Autistic also from a revised/2nd edition? I don't remember seeing that in my old-rear end copy.

Honestly replacing the classes in Beyond the Supernatural with Ninjas & Superspies classes would probably make for a creepier game; they have a lot fewer tools with which to confront a lot of the monster types. Actually, crossing it with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might make things at least sufficiently surreal to keep things creepy, while robbing the player types of just being able to psychic things away (and given the turtles have crossed over with horror relatively often, it'd fit rather well).

Yeah, the Autistic was from 2nd edition. It's the first class in the book.

Beyond the Supernatural 2e posted:

The psychic stared out the window for a minute, turned, and without looking directly at the reporter said, "I nuh ... know people think I'm a retard, Muh, Mister Sheridan. Buh but, um, that's where they're wrong. Yep, wrong. I'm not stu ... stupid. Buh but I'm different. I'm different. I know . . . different. It's okay. I am what I am ... um ... like Popeye." he added with a childish giggle.

"And what are you, Simon?" asked the reporter.

"Um, a hero - like Popeye. I help people."

"Help people how?"

Simon squirmed in his seat, and looked side to side. "You know, Mister. You know. Yep. Yu know."

"Yeah, I know, but can you tell me?"

"Protect them."

"From what?"

"Evil."

"What kind of evil? "

"The buh ... bad kind. The kind people duh, don't, urn be-lieve in. I know where the evil, um, hides. And I duh ... don't let it hurt people. "

"How, Simon? How do you stop the evil?"

"I don't like bad things. Nuh ... no. Don't like it. Um, did I show you muh ... my butterfly collection? It's pretty."

:cripes:

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Honestly replacing the classes in Beyond the Supernatural with Ninjas & Superspies classes would probably make for a creepier game; they have a lot fewer tools with which to confront a lot of the monster types. Actually, crossing it with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might make things at least sufficiently surreal to keep things creepy, while robbing the player types of just being able to psychic things away (and given the turtles have crossed over with horror relatively often, it'd fit rather well).

Yeah, the Autistic was from 2nd edition. It's the first class in the book.


:cripes:

We did that too. But it's not replace, just supplant. So our couple years of horrible BTS play were basically one year of "psychics, ninjas, cyborgs, and mad inventors (and technically parapsychologists that no one takes)" and then a second year of "All that plus the mutant animals we have access to," which made for a great first game where our established party met a mutant hummingbird that wanted to hang out.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
"And where do you live, Simon?"

"I live in lovely magical retard stories, Doc."

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

gently caress that poo poo. "Magical Autist" stories should be taken out and shot along with their writers.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Robindaybird posted:

gently caress that poo poo. "Magical Autist" stories should be taken out and shot along with their writers.

Steven King would be more bullet than man.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

theironjef posted:

Steven King would be more bullet than man.

point still stands. Yes, I am not a fan of the man's work.

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Bieeardo posted:

"And where do you live, Simon?"

"I live in lovely magical retard stories, Doc."

Man, Session 9 doesn't deserve to be lumped with that poo poo.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
You're right. Session 9 was pretty much everything BTS isn't.

Eldad Assarach
May 1, 2014
As somebody with Asperger's Syndrome, I am ineffably pissed off with Palladium for even considering that this was a good idea.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.



Synnibarr Part 2! After this, we'll be thrilled to get back to nice shoddy fly-by-night softcover garbage from the 90s. Or anything. I'd happily get back to the salt mines to get away from this book, if I had ever been in a salt mine before.

Tsilkani
Jul 28, 2013

You guys need to find a copy of SenZar and review that. It's supposed to be even crazier than Synnibarr.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Tsilkani posted:

You guys need to find a copy of SenZar and review that. It's supposed to be even crazier than Synnibarr.

I'll add that to the shortlist then.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Tsilkani posted:

You guys need to find a copy of SenZar and review that. It's supposed to be even crazier than Synnibarr.

I have wanted SenZar for the longest time. It doesn't exist in PDF that I am aware of, and finding a hard copy is expensive. But from what I've read, while it's crazy as hell, it's actually playable, even decent as a 90s game about gonzo powergaming fantasy.

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora
I have a copy of SenZar: Role Playing For The Next Millennium. It lives on the Shelf of Poor Decisions next to the DBZ books. It is, without a doubt, the most metal-album-cover-inspired fantasy game I've ever seen. I wouldn't say it's crazier than Synnibarr, but while Synnibarr reads like it was made by a bunch of 13-year-olds with too much candy, SenZar reads more like it was made by a bunch of 17-year-olds with too many Spawn comics.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



SenZar seems like it might be playable, unlike Synnibarr which is just "technically the system looks like it doesn't actively break down unless you're an Alchemist".

EDIT: I guess I should find some time and willpower to review it since I also have a bestiary. So I might be able to run some simulated combats or rope some guys into running some actual combats to see how the combat system shakes out. (The core book doesn't have anything to fight in it.)

ZeeToo
Feb 20, 2008

I'm a kitty!

Testament: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era, part 9

Magic items! New weapon abilities... actually some interesting ones here. Counterstrike weapons are meant for your first person shooters light offhand weapon or the like: when an enemy misses in melee, make an attack with it. Phoenix weapons seem like more of an armor ability, but okay. If killed with a given energy attack, make a will save. Succeed, and the weapon crumbles and you get back to full HP. Serpent weapons you already kinda know. Throw weapon down, it turns into a snake. Spell Echoing lets you copy arcane spells used around you! They have to be no higher than the weapon's enhancement bonus, or basically "way down the power scale for same-level encounters", but it's so close to being awesome. The armor, sadly, doesn't have anything as cool. The closest is the Virtue armor. Give up your armor's enhancement bonus, but someone else gets it.



Other magical items... magic incenses. 25 gp for an ounce of one that will let you make reflex saves against magic missiles. For fifteen minutes. That's about the average quality. Oh, here's one where you dunk a hippo statue in water, then hold it up to the sun to get a bonus to swim checks.

Let's get on to the artifacts instead, shall we? There's one that sort of stands out above all the rest, obviously.



Yes, the first major artifact of Testament is the Ark of the Covenant. It can feed 60 people a day, thanks to magically refilling manna. It holds the Rod of Aaron, a major artifact in its own right with power to cause grievous wounds, control plants and the weather, turn into a snake (via a different set of rules than the Serpent weapons above, for some reason) and more. Oh, and it has no charges and no limits on use. Not sure if that's intentional or not. It also has the Tablets of the Law, which radiate extra-strength Magic Circle Against Evil.

But, of course, there's also the main event. Touch the Ark without being both a Levite Priest and ritually clean? Piety check DC30 vs instant death. If you succeed, you suffer 10d6 damage and more per two points of negative piety you possess. Now, I'm sorry, I have to stop to bitch about the math again. Piety is a single integer. If you have enough negative piety to suffer one point of bonus damage, then your save versus instant death requires you to roll at least a thirty-one on a d20. I wrote that out just so you could be sure it wasn't a typo.

If you try to actually damage the Ark, two CR 22 angels made of absolute bullshit show up and stomp all over you. There's no rules on how viable destroying the Ark is if you actually win that fight.

In other artifacts, the Mantle of Elijah gives you five levels in Levite Priest. If you already have levels, they stack. That's not just caster levels; you get all their class features; it calls out arcane spell resistance, for instance. I'm not sure if that includes hit dice and saving throws and base attack bonus. The book is silent on that. Remember that the Levite Priest is the class that can cast all spells spontaneously.

If you aren't an Israelite, Babylonians get Tablets of Destiny that let you cast Limited Wish twice per day for free.

There are a few other artifacts, but nothing of much interest.


Next time, though... hoo boy. Next up is the Biblical Bestiary! Riddle me this: when is a hippo an elephant?

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
I'm guessing it somehow relates to the Behemoth? Is the Behemoth presented as some kind of giant elephant monster?

e: I got so intrigued by this I did some Googling around and found someone's notes and house rules for Testament, and one of their complaints was that the illustration for the Behemoth didn't match its Biblical description and was more akin to the Behemoth from Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss, which is basically and elephant demon. So, did I guess right?

Ratpick fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Nov 13, 2014

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...

ZeeToo posted:

Ark of the Covenant

In the interests of power gaming and unadulterated munchkinism -- Can I fashion the Ark to something? Say, a battering ram to be wielded by Levite Priests, and force opponents to touch it in order to melt their faces? And would that be a melee touch attack?

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Davin Valkri posted:

And now you've got me wondering what 90s media looked like in countries that had a lot more reason to be happy, broadly speaking. I'm probably wrong, but I can't see that sort of "pseudo-dark and nihilistic" mood prevailing in, say, Poland or the Baltic states.

(And I don't think it's just you, either. I turned 18 in 2009, and I remember seeing stuff like the Men in Black cartoon, Gargoyles, SWAT Kats...then again, there was also stuff like Pokemon, Freakazoid!, and Samurai Pizza Cats, so it wasn't all darkness :3: )

Well, to answer something asked and probably forgotten a long time ago... I grew up in the 90s and in the Baltics. The kids watched American cartoons and TV series (sometimes German or French, but not much), but I don't think it left much of a mark. Meanwhile adults were having to deal with poo poo like privatization (and what went bad with it), Russian blockades and stuff. But basically a lot of people had much catching up to do with the West. Meanwhile the nerds and stuff were in deep, deep underground, because they didn't really exist before 1991, and computers got widespread only later. Then again, hardcore geeks were hardcore and I think that there's still a great overlap between geeks and metalheads/punks. Like 50% of people you'd play RPGs with.

ZeeToo
Feb 20, 2008

I'm a kitty!

Ratpick posted:

I'm guessing it somehow relates to the Behemoth? Is the Behemoth presented as some kind of giant elephant monster?

e: I got so intrigued by this I did some Googling around and found someone's notes and house rules for Testament, and one of their complaints was that the illustration for the Behemoth didn't match its Biblical description and was more akin to the Behemoth from Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss, which is basically and elephant demon. So, did I guess right?

Yep, that's it. I'll go over it a bit in depth with illustrations when I get to it.


ZorajitZorajit posted:

In the interests of power gaming and unadulterated munchkinism -- Can I fashion the Ark to something? Say, a battering ram to be wielded by Levite Priests, and force opponents to touch it in order to melt their faces? And would that be a melee touch attack?

Yes, you certainly could. To start with, however, you'd suffer a -4 nonproficiency penalty for swinging around a 440 lb gold-embossed holy relic. Second, you're saddled with encumbrance. As it's so heavy, you'd need at least a 23 strength to be able to lift it as far as your head. A mere 16 str would be enough let you cart it around by yourself, but sadly in that case you can only move 5 feet per round as a full-round action.

The difficulty, from there, would be identifying what it does, as that's kind of a gray area that requires you to bullshit your DM. It might be a melee touch attack. It might be a regular melee attack, on the understanding that rubbing it against a guy's armor or shield as he tries not to touch it doesn't 'count'. It might not even count at all on a really pedantic level because he has to take an action to touch it according to a stupidly literalist reading of the rules.

Another promising angle to take would be setting the Ark down and then arguing that a 4x3x3 box rounds up to basically being a 5x5x5 piece of cover, and that if an attack misses you by less than the bonus from cover (+4 AC), then it struck the cover. So you hunker down behind it, then wait for the other guy to hit it with a stray arrow and summon two angels that make solars look underpowered.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

ZeeToo posted:

Another promising angle to take would be setting the Ark down and then arguing that a 4x3x3 box rounds up to basically being a 5x5x5 piece of cover, and that if an attack misses you by less than the bonus from cover (+4 AC), then it struck the cover. So you hunker down behind it, then wait for the other guy to hit it with a stray arrow and summon two angels that make solars look underpowered.
Tricking your enemies into messing with the Ark, and waiting for the Ark's self-defense system to wipe out those enemies while you hide, is a pretty canonical use for the thing.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

theironjef posted:



Synnibarr Part 2! After this, we'll be thrilled to get back to nice shoddy fly-by-night softcover garbage from the 90s. Or anything. I'd happily get back to the salt mines to get away from this book, if I had ever been in a salt mine before.

What, you're not going to cover the supplement, The Ultimate Adventurer's Guide? (Reminded that I really need to pick up a copy of that.)

You referred to not being able to increase your strength with $$$, but that's actually not true! You can get an Alchemist to do it for you, and costs $25,000,000 per 100 strength, or $250,000 per 1 strength. That goes along with the hilarious costs for buying spells where hiring somebody to cast a spell literally is 1/4000th the cost to actually purchase it yourself, which means for most spells you're better hiring a wizard - or a horde of wizards - to cast it. "Yeah, so, I was looking at the cost of Bolt of Annihilation and realized it was forty times cheaper to hire a hundred wizards on retainer to cast it whenever I need something killed."

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Tsilkani posted:

You guys need to find a copy of SenZar and review that. It's supposed to be even crazier than Synnibarr.

I actually own a copy of SenZar that I managed to get at a reasonable proce. It is nothing but walls of text.

I really want a copy of original Synnibarr to place next to it.

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.

Davin Valkri posted:

Funny you should mention that, because at least one other vampire game being reviewed here calls out the Yugoslav Wars by name. Where's GimpinBlack with regards to Nights' Black Agents?

I am a bad reviewer and I should feel bad. I still need to finish Trollbabe, too.

Unfortunately, I doubt I'll have time for either before Christmas.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Evil Mastermind posted:

I really want a copy of original Synnibarr to place next to it.
Do you mean first or second edition?

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

First. I want the original undistilled crazy.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



It's pretty much second edition with terrible organization and without cybernetics and probably some other things, hell if I'm going to compare my copies closely.

Azran
Sep 3, 2012

And what should one do to be remembered?
Hey Fatal thread. First of all it is an awesome thread. Second, I saw the IKRPG analysis was never finished, they didn't even get to the actual rules. Mind if I do it over? Dunno if I'm supposed to ask or whatever. :v:

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

:justpost:

ZeeToo
Feb 20, 2008

I'm a kitty!

Testament: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era, part 10

So. Monsters. They give us an outline of what sort of monster is appropriate for a Testament campaign and what isn't, along with a chart for Monster Manual creatures and, of course, the new ones. This is the only point where anything but contradictory inference would tell you that it's a humans-only campaign: "[F]antasy races (such as ogres and orcs) don't have a role in a Testament game unless the GM is choosing to transpose races of[sic] various nationalities". This is on page 115 of a 240-ish book and many chapters past character creation.

Swell.

Okay, monsters. The first one is the Cherub. These guys are the ones that show up to defend the Ark. It gives nod to the depiction of angels in Ezekiel, but tells us they usually look mildly more humanoid.



Okay, onto the bullshit. These guys are CR 22, but they have 30 hit dice, fast healing 20, five natural attacks that do at least 4d8+9, a perfect fly speed as fast as an all-out run for a human, immunity or resistance to basically everything including spells, the ability to see TWENTY TIMES!!! better than a human in dim lighting, complete immunity to dispel magic/antimagic, permanent globe of invulnerability, a lightning smite that's very similar to the Ark's save-or-die, and spell like abilities.

Now, these aren't the usual glut of spell-like abilities that every powerful outsider gets. No, these are special because most of the list is quickened, so they can be cast as a minor action. This includes spells that explicitly can't be quickened, like Greater Planar Ally six times a day.

So these guys are effectively completely invulnerable to things you try to do, fly fast enough to casually keep up with you at a dead sprint, you can't hide from them, and as they effortlessly float up to you they can freely curse you with impotence and other fun things and that's without them calling for save-or-die and the endless back-up of their calling spells. It's hard to see why the Lord needs human warriors, when he can just have one of these guys solo armies, whip dragons and devastate whole regions.


Another angel of note is the Mazzal. These are the ones that Levite Priests can turn into for a level nine slot. They're CR 13, with 14 HD. The only thing that they can do better than a cleric that's at least level 17 (to cast this), is do some infinite quickened healing spells. That's not very useful.


Flip over and it's the Seraph, a 25 CR/40 HD angel that can do everything a Cherub can, except Seraphim can do it with even bigger numbers and a lot more fire. With unlimited quickened blade barriers, these guys can not just rout armies but straight-up butcher the entire force, along with unlimited quickened greater planar allies that means that just one of these guys can summon a permanent 18 HD outsider every three seconds, and can do so forever thanks to the magic of outsiders not needing rest. So one Seraph is not only the sort of crazy number porn that outscales all but the most broken PCs in any role, he also outnumbers his opponents thanks to his ability to summon a horde of celestial superbeings at will and depopulate Heaven to create a new paradise on earth.


Oh, yeah. All the angels are on Israel's side, incidentally. No other nation gets angels.


Now, onto differently-dumb things. Behemoth. The Book of Job gives us a description of this monster, which describes something with a great big tail but the ability to both drink up whole rivers and still hide under trees. I couldn't tell you what that's supposed to look like, but I've heard people claim the big herbivore dinosaurs, for instance.

Testament describes Behemoth as "Behemoth is vaguely hippopotamus-like in appearance, with charcoal black skin, a long, powerful tail, and sharp teeth of white iron." Emphasis added. So what's the art for it?



That seems right. Anyway, Behemoth is so big that it knocks down all other land creatures and can cause earthquakes, as the spell, at will if it chooses. It can strip an acre bare of vegetation in one round, has high damage reduction, and for some reason it can cast quickened discern lies.:confused:

Behemoth has no ranged attacks and, while tough, has no ability to keep up with the absurd quick-healing quadruple-speed magic bullshitters of angels listed above and does roughly on-par damage so naturally it's two CR higher than a Cherub.


There are a number more of these monsters that deserve attention, so we'll be spending some time here.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Behemoth almost certainly represents a hippo. Everyone in that region was goddamn terrified of hippos, with extremely good reason. Imagine all you had was bronze age tech and try to fight one of those things.

AmiYumi
Oct 10, 2005

I FORGOT TO HAIL KING TORG

ZeeToo posted:

"[F]antasy races (such as ogres and orcs) don't have a role in a Testament game unless the GM is choosing to transpose races of[sic] various nationalities".
So, uh, are we just gonna gloss over this? 'cuz this seems all kinds of racism-ey.

Ningyou
Aug 14, 2005

we aaaaare
not your kind of pearls
you seem kind of pho~ny
everything's a liiiiie

we aaaare
not your kind of pearls
something in your make~up
don't see eye to e~y~e



Hi, i'm ningyou and I'm a masochist not just in the sexy way but also in the monotonous self-loathing way.

Why is this relevant? Why is this good for you? WELLLLLLLL GUESS WHAT. This means that I'm doing another chapter of this book without a months-long wait to recharge! Soooooo without further ado let's move on to Chapter Three: Gathering Leaves.

We start off with more IC narration this time, this chapter framed as...

Introducing
For your entertainment and elucidation
Runcible Pooka-Nose's Field Guide to the Autumn People, Volume 1
Compiled, Researched, and Written by Runcible Pooka-Nose, Fuzzy Scholar, Troubadour Poet, and Pooka-at-Large (At the Behest of His Most Illustrious Fuzziness, The Grand Pooka)


Yep.

Also the opening bit is written in what looks like a cross between Papyrus and that cheesy faux-Celtic font every ~Irish pub~ ever uses so that just adds to the whole thing. Changeling, everyone!

Anyways, Rumspringa McWhimsy starts out with a bit about how humans have a weird fascination with fae, and they come up with all sorts of superstitions about fae that are not only wrong but ~mundane~, as mundane as those mundanes are! Breaking eggs to dispel glamours, getting Nockers to leave homes by leaving a suit out...those silly mundies just don't understand changelings.

Of course, this isn't a one-way street, and Ranchero McFastcasual has been watching humans too! Most of them are boooooring, and some of them - the Autumn People - are dangerously boring, but Rammingspeed McEuphemism is on the case.

Human-watching is a dangerous activity; in fact, they consider it against the law in some situations. The safest place to do it is in a heavily populated area. If you watch carefully, you may see the Autumn People at work. They hide from us, but watching the most herdlike of humans, the Autumn People, can become an enthralling activity. Sit down on a park bench with a nice cold drink and a pair of binoculars, and you'll see what I mean.

Let us away to the shopping mall! To the bus stop, the video arcade, and the bingo parlor! Grab your bag of carrots, tuck your ears under your hat, and come with me! The Sleepers await!


White font on blinding red background. That was not pleasant. :gonk:

So! There are three types of Autumn People, we're told.

1. Mundanes who are SO DULL OH MY GOD and have been so thoroughly conditioned to believe magic isn't real that it becomes harder to use magic around them.
2. Changelings who are so afraid of GOIN' ON A TRIP TO WHIMSYTOWN (it's like flavortown except the guy fieri analogue is so much worse like who wouldn't retreat into themselves) that they never break through their not-cocoon and unconsciously develop Banal not-magic that suppresses Glamour and makes everything around them more Banal and help i misread "Heavy Sleepers" as "Horny Sleepers" at first and now i can't not read it that way laughing too much augh
3. GRAAAAAAAAANPA FEY HUEY BEIN' A HATER The Dauntain.
They hold onto their false reason and misperceptions for the sake of their own sanity. The Dauntain know of the existence of magic, and they actively seek it out and destroy it. The soldiers of Autumn, however, usually have only partial knowledge of the Kithain. Many of them act out of fear, striking out at a world they only partly understand. To them, the changelings are dangerous lunatics, menaces to the world, or reminders of their own failure.

See? Just like Rummy Mcfaestalicious said. Haters.

Aaaaand we're back to OOC narration for the most part.

It starts with a surprisingly not-dumb point: all sorts of supernatural wackiness can go on in WW games, especially multigenre games, but often humans get left by the wayside, and people forget that even the WoD is humans' world, if only by dint of numbers. It strains suspension of disbelief when there are too many supernatural whatever in a city, Changeling is meant as a relatively low-powered game anyways and lends itself to "mellower play" than, say, Werewolf, and having bog-standard hyoomans around makes strange characters even stranger by contrast.

The Kithain are the guardians of creativity and imagination, and by eliciting it from the mortals around them, they keep the spirit of the Mythic Age alive. Through Reverie and Ravaging, mortals are a source of Glamour, but because of Banality, they are a troublesome nuisance. The Storyteller can choose from several methods of how to integrate them in a chronicle.

Okay, refresher here: Reverie is ~cultivating~ a human 'til they boil over with Glamour by playing muse. Ravaging is straight up mind rape.

(Fun fact! Looking this up to doublecheck terms i found out that people have made LARP rules for Ravaging and thinking of that playing out irl is kiiiiiiiinda making my skin crawl.)

Anyways, after this bit, there's a bunch of words about mortals as allies! Because, you know, they're def not hyoomans but sometimes changelings need things like "medical aid, research assistance, and even police protection," because they're stuck in mostly-human bodies in humanville for the foreseeable future. Smart fae look for human friends, but keep them in the dark. Most of the time. Sometimes, super super low-Banality mortals frolic right into the Dreaming on their way back from a Radical Art-in or w/e! This is okay, though, because Banality makes their memories fog right up afterwards. Also, sometimes Reverie'd humans find out what's really being done to them and sometimes there's a benefit to Legolas McRapist the changeling telling them the whole story.

Kithain treasure these companions dearly, for human friends and lovers can bring a sense of objectivity to their lives that many fae lack. It can work the other way as well - a mortal caught up in faerie politics can become ensnared in romantic involvement.

Hi i'm ningyou the horrible turboqueer puppetgirl English major and "ensnared in romantic involvement" makes me wince. WHO TALKS LIKE THIS

Insightful children have also been known to cross into the Dreaming quite easily. Their innocence protects them from harm, and childlings are always eager to come to their aid if necessary. Storytellers, musicians, enchanted glades, and even ghostly allies have been known to make this possible. If Lewis Carroll hadn't been in the right field of flowers when he told stories to his young friend Alice, maybe Alice in Wonderland wouldn't have been written...

uhhhhhhhh okay dude

Mortals become sympathetic once they attain the proper frame of mind.

Read: low permanent Banality. Humans with 3 Banality (the low end for small children with active imaginations, and starting Banality for r  e  a  l  t  e  e  n  f  a  e) or lower start having hallucinations of chimera, and changelings ooze ~mystery~ or discomfort to them because of course they do. Humans with 1 Banality (starting Banality for Childlings :v: ) can straight up see fae miens, but need an Occult roll to understand what they're seeing. It's difficult to get a human's Banality so low, we're told, but there are ways! Ways like "prolonged exposure to the supernatural" and "just saying screw it and feeding them faerie food and drink." You have to be careful with whimsy-roofieing, though, because this can bring their Banality down to zero, and 0 Banality humans can't leave the Dreaming if they don't get exposed to enough Banality (and if I remember right, the Dreaming reacts violently to banal stuff? Sooooooo.)

But, hey. No use crying over spilt ~mundanes~, right?

Playing fantastic creatures is easy. We can all imagine how simple life would be if we had magical powers or superhuman abilities. In this game, however, you must play a normal person in a normal world. You must protect yourself from the world of imagination by playing someone who is perfectly ordinary. We all know how easy it is to kill a vampire or roam the earth as an undead zombie. This, however, is nothing compared to filling out a tax form or getting car insurance.
-Gunter Haagen-Daaz, from the Introduction to Black Dog Game Factory's Human: The Protagonist


Expect White Wolf to not be ridiculously unsubtle once, shame on them. Expect White Wolf to not be ridiculously unsubtle twice, shame on me.

...actually I guess that could use some explaining. Side note! Black Dog Game Factory was the actual IRL imprint for ~adult~ books (and by adult I mean ridiculous grimdark goreporn like Freak Legion: a Guide to Fomori and the loving *spectres* book for Wraith, most memorable for art of vivisected flapper-dommes :nws: and this....whateveritis :nms: ), but it was also the Not White Wolf You Guise Honest analogue in the WoD.

It was also also a subsidiary of Pentex, a company that was basically a Captain Planet villain with none of the nuance. (So of course it's a major oWerewolf antagonist.) Pentex pretty much existed solely to ruin the environment and blah blah wyrm blah bloo WEEOOOWEEOOO LITERALLY EVERYTHING WE SELL IS TAINTED IN SOME WAY AND CORRUPTS ALL WHO TOUCH IT

So seeing that in this book surely doesn't make my eyes roll so far up that they're now in the ceiling. Noooo. I-I mean, gosh, why would it? (STILL TYPING THO let me tell you i have excellent muscle memory)

Heart-rending tragedy and the onset of insanity have their places in the game, but a comedic approach to mundanes is easier and more entertaining. Although the fae seem unusual, most humans are even stranger from a faerie point of view. Any encounter with mundanes can bring the possibility of adventure. Freaking the mundanes is always a delightful way to spend an afternoon. In the bizarre instance of your chronicle becoming too serious, setting up a few strawmen as opposition in your stories is an excellent way to restore the confidence of your heroes.

Gosh, what whimsy-drenched alternateen in tyool 1995 doesn't wait oh my god they're serious this isn't IC at all and they're dead serious

A bunch of templates follow, and I am just going to post them here because holy poo poo there is so much going on here


OMG gently caress YOU YOURE NOT THE BOSS OF ME MOM dot jpeg

...okay, child safety harnesses are kind of weird and child beauty pageants are p gross (albeit for reasons other than THIS EXOTIC SPECIES CALLED "MOM" MADE ME WEAR AN OVERLY FUSSY DRESS GODDDDD), but holy poo poo. Like maybe it's just me, but some of this reads as misogynistic as the FUK U MOM YOU GROUNDED ME NOW ILL PUT YOU IN THE GROUND stuff in the first chapter. There are some Good Moms who are ~friends to childlings everywhere~, but these moms have the gall to use strollers and put their kids in warm clothing and carry band-aids and kleenex in their purses and call other kids cute and fret over unaccompanied children or kids in abusive homes and look exhausted and worry. And not just that! They "establish vantage points" over anywhere "where kids might potentially have fun." Horrible, right?


Oh god which alternate-universe Walter is this is there a hidden season of Fringe where everyone but Other Other Evil Lady Walter is teens and the whole thing's framed as a changeling/mage crossover larp and no one talks about it because it is utterly uncomfortable to watch

So...librarians who bother shelving books in some kind of order and don't want children and/or adult-shaped children ~getting into hijinks~ and making a ton of noise are "like a Venus Flytrap, constructing an exotic deception to snare the unwary and teach them 'proper values.' " These librarians haaaaaaate "imaginative children's books and enlightening fairy tales," and keep the shelves "pure of dangerous ideas that someone else might deem inoffensive to mysterious third parties who are apparently too frightened to speak for themselves."
You can just hear the writer going HHHHHEH TAKE THAT CHRISTIANS (and shouldn't it be 'deem offensive?')

Real talk though have these people ever met a librarian?

There's a bit more about how ~females of the species~ dress (dude you've been talking about nothing but ~females~ here) and hoarders infiltrating libraries in the guise of "normal, efficient librarians" to "discredit the profession," and then some wacky anecdote about Unseelie childlings MAKING A NO-FUN LIBRARIAN WHO TOOK AWAY BOOKS 'COS THEY WERE "INAPPROPRIATE" FOR "CHILDREN" PAY by luring her to the children's section after everyone else was gone and terrorizing her until she collapsed so she'd reshelve the books. (Because, uh....somehow? That lowered her Banality and made her see the light.)

Y-yeah, haha, that's...that's hilarious?


GOD GRANDMA I DON'T CARE ABOUT YR STAMP COLLECTION dot jpeg

Again, they're only talking about ~females~ here. Less resentful than the last two, but more...UGH HOW DARE A-DULTS BE INTERESTED IN THINGS I DON'T LIKE LIKE IF YOUR EYES WERE OPEN LIKE ME YOU'D HAVE LESS ~MUNDANE~ HOBBIES HOW DARE THEY TALK TO ME FUK U GRANDMAAAAA


Aaaand here's the one explicitly male template. It's some kind of weird mashup of college bro stereotypes and nerds/otaku/whatever with bad hygiene (because people who buy The Autumn People in complete earnestness have room to look down on other nerds sure okay).

Bros who drink beer (gasp!) and say stuff like DUUUUUUDE BEER BABES (double gasp!), people who are super into Vampire and suck the fun out of everything, and fat smelly dads who wear collared shirts. Let it not be said that the writers didn't know exactly who their audience was.

meanwhile that 'being ensorcelled or w/e and convinced you're a sentient flower being chased by hungry rabbits' thing would be -- what's the word? "extremely my poo poo" yeah that's it -- if LITERALLY ANYONE OTHER THAN RUMPLESTILTSKIN MCSKIRMISH were saying it.




so businesspeople are literally subhuman disease on legs except for the ones who do wacky fun stuff outside of work like dancing to 80s music and drinking cheap beer (wait i thought drinking beer was bad???) *they're* nearly-human ok got it

also the narrator can't decide if THOSE SOULLESS CORPORATE DRONES WHO DEFINE THEIR IDENTITY BY THEIR JOB TITLES AND DON'T CARE WHOSE LIVES THEY DESTROY FOR SOULLESS PROFITS are nonspecific animals or bees in a hive endlessly, mindlessly doing Bee Stuff or cockroaches worshipping a pile of poo poo

oh my god this is fight club with bunny-eared mallgoths and faerie princesses

either that or my old housemates wrote this (see, you prolly think i'm joking! you'd think that. buuuuuut my wife and i spent last May in a ~freegan anarchist collective house~ because of reasons and it was...welllll let's just say that reading this book is making me wince a lot not just because the writing is awful but also because evoking ~~memories~~.)

Meanwhile, this one has the worst IC bit apart from the librarian one.

"Now about this children's book you've written," the suit said. "I think we can increase the sales of your book by using some creative marketing. When you've been in marketing as long as I have, you realise the potential of cross-selling. In exchange for a small percentage of your profits, this line of children's clothing our company has designed is practically free advertising for your book!"

"Oh yes!" his flunky added. We'll make
Mr. Bunny's Happy Day a classic in no time! We'll increase his visibility on the Recognizability Index, streamline his appearance based on user surveys, and take a few of the more objectionable passages out. And look at the lovely prototypes we have of the jackets!"

"And the lining is made of real rabbit fur!" The suit continued. "Now, shall we discuss this over lunch? I'm dying for a bite," he said.

So I bit him. What can I say? The classics always work.


Because it's totes hilar and sO rAnDuM to *literally bite someone* for talking at you in corporatespeak about merchandising and focus-testing and w/e, right? And totally a thing a children's book author would do, right? They don't even like money. Why, they live in adorable cottages made out of imagination-stuff and fill their bellies with satisfied warmfuzzies and childlike joy.~

Thankfully, that's the end of the chapter. Chapter 4: The One About the Haters coming...sometime. I don't know. I need to detox from this awful book.

i'm not actually a masochist ok

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Now all I can think of for them is The Hateocracy, really. (That's really giving this book too much credit, though.)

Of course it's just achingly 90s-era White Wolf to make their own fans into an antagonist archetype, too. :golfclap:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Oh my God did they seriously add in "Your LARPing rival" as an actual, statted antagonist? Goddammit White Wolf why do you have to suck so much sometimes? :negative:

I wish I could sit back and laugh at how bad they used to be, but they keep dipping back into the pandering awfulness. Changing Breeds, the "Everything You Ever Wanted" section in the Werewolf Chronicler's Guide, the huge blowup with the Exalted 3rd Edition Kickstarter*- they're like a favorite musician who keeps relapsing into addiction except instead of drugs its puerile writing and creepy sex stuff.

*That wasn't really pandering but it was still shameful.

  • Locked thread