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theironjef posted:As I recall it's pretty murdery too. Like the new batch of ninja turtles with their new set of weapons (I want to say Tonfa, Manriki-Gusari, and Yari) straight up murder some mooks in the comic. Well, the turtles weren't all that kid-friendly to begin with. In the first instalment of the TNMT comic they straight up murdered the Shredder with sharp weapons. It was only with the 80s animated series that the turtles became family friendly, which made the first TNMT movie really weird because it liberally mixed elements of the animated series with the darker comic, so you got the turtles with animation-informed personalities and color-coded headbands while at the same time the story and its themes were more in line with the comics.
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Nov 21, 2014 20:45
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Well, they try and get Shredder to commit seppuku after trashing him pretty badly. Shredder tries to murder them with a grenade, but Donatello knocks him and his grenade off the building, where he's blown to pieces. (The Foot Clan later literally piece him back together.) Of course, the original issue is a fond parody of the gritty comics of the era, so it's pretty over the top. The later comics have a lot more straightforward humor, but they rarely hesitate to stab a dangerous mook.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:43
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Oh lord, I never finished this, did I? Let's try and breeze through the rest of the first book; once you get past the central "cannibal fairy action" conceit, it's still a wargame corebook (a.k.a. kind of boring). Nasty Hits: If the attacking fairy's card (trumps included) is 4+ greater than the defender's, it counts as a Nasty Hit and deals two points of damage. If it's 8+ higher, it deals three points of damage (which is a hell of a lot in this system, remember). IIRC, Nasty Hits feature prominently in the campaign rules in a later supplement. Special Cards: Jokers and The Infamous Ace of Spades follow their own special rules. Jokers in ranged combat either hit miss the target or hit anything else in the attacker's line of sight (defending player's choice), while Jokers in hand-to-hand either deal one damage to the attacker or heal one point of damage from the defender's Meat (choice up to whoever played the Joker). The Infamous Ace of Spades automatically counts as a three-damage Nasty Hit when used in combat, no matter who plays it, and also inflicts a debilitating wound that lasts until healed. I believe there are rules for other debilitating wounds somewhere else in the line, but the corebook version is a simple "all movement cut in half, including flight." Weapons: Weapons add cards to the attacker's hand, subtract cards from the defender's hand, and/or let the attacker split their hand and make multiple attacks. Some of them also have special qualities, like Riot (can be used while  A fairy that gets in a successful rush (flutter or pounce, as appropriate) can start Each fairy gets a +1 card bonus to attack on their turn, and can choose to deal damage as usual or escape (and move, including making a pounce right back onto the other fairy to start Outside Interference: Other fairies can attack Alternately, other fairies can join into a tussle already in progress by moving up to it and declaring "I WANNA WRASSLE*!" The next bit I just need to quote Fairy Meat posted:If either player uses a Joker in wrestling, the fairies make eye contact and experience one of those awkward moments (you know how that is). No damage is dealt by either fairy, as they pause for a moment to evaluate the nature of their relationship.  Next Time: Frenzy  , Thralls  , Mushrooms , and I'll run down the spell list to finish off the corebook and get to something more interesting.*THERE IT IS, no wonder I thought it was called "Wrasslin'"
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Nov 22, 2014 04:29
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 Also known as Robots Punching Things: The RPG  Currently popular due to the successful miniature wargames Warmachine and Hordes, the Iron Kingdoms as setting appeared for the first time in the Witchfire Trilogy (2001=: The Longest Night, Shadow of the Exile and The Legion of the Lost. They were pretty successful, as you may have guessed. Privateer Press kept expanding their catalogue with more d20 products, chief amongst them the Monsternomicon in 2002, which was really loving good. They ended up releasing a setting campaign guide and just two years after it all started, they released Warmachine: Prime, the first version of their wargame. For a while, they stopped supporting the d20 RPG and focused on the wargames and the fiction of the Iron Kingdoms, producing an engaging setting and some rock-solid wargames, including the sister game to Warmachine, Hordes. They kept releasing some material here and there for the RPG through their magazine, but it was just minor stuff.  On September 19 of 2012, they published their newest RPG, whose system was based on the one used in their wargames, with some minor modifications. On the one hand, this is absolutely great since the RPG has a slow release schedule, so you can port stuff from the wargame to the RPG with only a modicum of effort required. There's also the fact that the ruleset is incredibly well-written, and avoids natural language in favor of clear and concise rules. There's no comparison between the rules arguments in Warhammer and the ones in Warmachine/Hordes. On the other hand, it's a really crunchy system where the combat is basically a miniature skirmish game, and some people might prefer games with a lighter emphasis on rules. The system uses 2d6 exclusively, and unless you convert distances to hexagons, you will need a ruler or a measuring tape. There's facing, there's flanking, there's tokens you use to track conditions on units, etc. In my opinion, it owns and that's why I'm doing this writeup in the first place.   Anyways, all the events in the setting take place in the continent of Immoren, especifically the Western part. There are other continents in the world of Caen, but terrible things live there and no one has managed to go there and return. Basically no one even attempts the journey in the first place, but that's not something you can say of the residents of these other continents, as you'll see. You have a pretty standard display of races, you have humans (the main driving force of the setting), dwarves, elves, goblins, ogres, trolls, etc. What's interesting is what the setting does with these races. The Elvish (Iosan) and Dwarf (Rhullic) nations were already pretty advanced by the time Humans start to appear. Gods are a real and powerful presence in the setting, and when Humanity finds The Canon of True Law in the ruins of Icthier, the worship of Menoth (an Old Testament-style deity) starts.  Menoth grants Humanity the access to fire, and raises the first wall. This would prove instrumental against the Molgur, wild tribes sworn to the primeval god of destruction, the Devourer Wurm.  Menoth and the Wurm are basically opposites, order and chaos. Menoth provides his faithful with the technology and resources needed to fight back against the Molgur, but refuses to intervene in any other way. Menoth is kind of a dick - he asks for complete dedication to him, and is a wrathful deity, but he has a hands-off approach. The Wurm just doesn't care, since he basically owns Urcaen, which is basically a metaphyisical afterlife. There are rivers and forests and cliffs and poo poo. Whenever someone dies, they get to be chased around by the Wurm and his spiritual followers. Yay. Menoth raises the City of Souls, where his faithful will reside once they die, and will man the walls, keeping the chaos of the Wurm away. Meanwhile, the Rhullic clans end a civil war and the Iosan elves try and create a bridge that connects Caen to the realm where their gods reside, the Veld. The gods can at last join their offspring in the material realm, but the bridge explodes while the Iosan gods cross it, destroying elvish civilization. Whoops. This forces to remaining Iosans, who are on the verge of extinction, to cross the newly created Bloodstone Marshes (a hellish desert made by the destruction of their god brige) while being harassed by the tribes that hated them, chief amongst them the Skorne. But hey - at least their gods are with them. Meanwhile, Humanity manages to get its poo poo together and forges their first civilized kingdom, Morrdh. Meanwhile, far away, the first dragon, Toruk creates its offspring because he wants individuals to adore him. Dragons in the setting are immortal unless their soul stone, their Athanc, is destroyed. Which is incredibly difficult. They can separate shards of their athanc to create more dragons - so Toruk is basically weakening himself to create other dragons. Dragons being dicks, there's no way this will backfire. No sir. A succession of Priest Kings rise and fall, forming the kingdom of Khard and the hold of Caspia, which will be two of the most important regions in the entirety of Immoren, in what will be known as the Warlord Era. But then something happens, a pair of twins are born: Morrow and Thamar. The twins generate a schism in the Menoth faith, and ascend after the March to Caspia - they are now gods.   The cult of Morrow starts to expand, mainly because Morrow is not a dick like Menoth, but the latter is way stronger. Tribes in Khador fight for dominance while the Menoth priests start a purge (Menoth priests are basically the Gestapo). The Trollkin, relatives of full-blood trolls, start to migrate north on their own, no longer part of the crushed Molgur tribes, who had been bled dry by the war against Humanity. In other news, the elven gods left to search for answers regarding how to go back to the Veld; a printing press was developed by the humans and Toruk's offspring has started a draconic civil war where their father is hunting them down to eat their athancs. One of these is more important than the other ones! The dragons had fled into Western Immoren, rallied and fought Toruk back into a standstill. Toruk went into the Scharde Isles to lick his wounds, overpowered the pirate kings residing there and named himself Lord Toruk of Cryx. Since dragons in this setting are basically anathema to life, Cryx gets corrupted by Toruk's presence and becomes a land full of undead and terrible things.  The brightest of his offspring, Everblight, decided to lay down near Morrdh, where he begins toying with the Blight dragons generate, being the only one who actually learns how to use it to craft dragonspawn. Morrdh was named "the Black Kingdom" for a reason, and they used magic against their many, many enemies. Everblight struck a deal, offering his insight while he crashed in Morrdh's proverbial couch. He got brazen, started acting recklessly and Toruk found out he was residing there. He made the Morddh lords betray his son, and took matters into his own hand. Everblight almost got devoured, but he managed to escape his father by leading him into the lair of one of his brothers.  Everblight owns. But Morddh got disintegrated and no one knew why. A group of Iosan elves find their god of winter, Nyssor, inside an icy chasm, frozen. They decide to settle north, becoming the Nyss, winter elves.  Oh, and humanity managed to make the first steam engine. Congrats.  And then something big happens. The Orgoth invade.  The Orgoth are from another continent, and are basically viking in steroids, who wield black magic. They begin conquering the human realms, who had spread out into thousands of independent warring states. The Orgoth society was extremely militaristic and, two centuries later, they had completely occupied human Immoren. Their attempts to invade Cryx and Ios were repelled extremely hard, and they kept a truce with the dwarves. Only humans were poo poo out of luck. And then Thamar, Morrow's sister imparts The Gift on mankined. Magic. She actually negotiated it with... something or someone. The elves suffer The Rivening, making almost all the Iosan clerics go mad and lose their power. Iosans not being able to catch a break is kind of a recurring theme. Scyrah, one of the elven godesses, returns but refuses to speak of the Iosan god's fate, falling into a coma.  Humanity starts to develop their magic talent, penning down the theory behind magic and its implementation regarding technology. The Orgoth start crushing down rebellions, till someone invents the first firearm. The war starts to go against the Orgoth for a bit, till their tried and true tactic of "kill everything" manages to give them the upper hand again. Then, the Immoreans start building something else. Something bigger.  The Colossals start being built in Caspia and Khard. To gain time, the rebels decide to give information regarding the Khardian factories to the Orgoth, and manage to crank out the first Colossal while the Khardian facilities are butchered. The Orgoth are starting to get beaten more handily now, and they decide to go all-out, using all kinds of terrible shadow magic. The last Orgoth depart the continent, their hand forced due to some disease murdering the everloving poo poo out of their civilization across the sea. The Rebellion marks year 0 in the Western Immoren calendar, the Orgoth were finally expulsed in 201 After Rebellion. A Council of Ten is elected during the newly-arrived Era of the Iron Kingdoms, where the Corvis Treaties are signed, establishing the new Iron Kingdoms: Cygnar, Khador, Ord and Llael (and Cryx technically counts but they are dicks).    (Llael and Ord are minor, they don't get cool art) A bunch of poo poo happens from here on onwards - the Khadorians are pissed as hell due to the way they were thrown to the wolves during the Rebellion, the Trollkin rise up in arms when the Corvis Treaties promises regarding their captured lands went ignored. They start gathering alongside their full-blooded cousins, the actual trolls and manage something no one expected:  They start destroying Colossals. This forces the Iron Kingdoms to make smaller robots, called Warjacks. The Trollkin are finally beat back. Khador (Russia/Germany) tries to invade Ord and Llael (basically Portugal and France), and are defeated after Cygnar (UK/France) joins in their support. The Cult of Cyriss (think steampunk Adeptus Mechanicum) appears. There's another schism in Cygnar, where Menoth followers (Menites) are forced to inhabit the shithole of a desert that stretches to the right of Cygnar, forming the newest Iron Kingdom: the Protectorate of Menoth (WH40K's Imperium) after the civil killed the Menite equivalent of a Pope.  Meanwhile, Everblight had decided to leave near Ios. He corrupted Iosans in the tunnels below the elven empire till he's discovered. He burns down the city of Issyrah before being torn apart by the Iosan forces. His athanc is sent to the Top of the World to be buried, where he manages to convince an Ogryn called Thagrosh to insert it into his chest. Thagrosh and Everblight create the Legion as they descend on top of the Nyss, leaving their race on the brink of extinction.   Elves and Trollkin are, indeed, the punching bag of the setting. There's another civil war in Cygnar, where the king's brother overthrows his despotic rule (Inquisition, political purges and all) through a bloody coup. The overthrown king, Vinter Raelthorne, escapes, leaving his brother Leto in power. Meanwhile the Protectorate starts converting the Idrian desert tribes to their cause, while smuggling warjack parts from Khador to create their own army. Ios starts being even more isolationist. In the years where the RPG starts, the following stuff is happening: - The dwarves have sat back to enjoy the riches brought by their trade relations with literally the entire continent while sending mercenaries out to make a profit from the wars flaring up between the Iron Kingdoms.  - The militaristic Skorne (remember those guys?) empire started marching across the Marshes towards Cygnar while being led by the overthrown (but rightful king) Vinter.  - Khador has occupied Llael (  ) while starting a war with Cygnar, Ord sits uncomfortably in the middle.  - Everblight is rolling all over the north while amassing a huge Nyss and draconic army, with the idea of killing Toruk.  - The Druids of Orboros (the guys who keep the Devourer Wurm in check) start being more hostile towards civization in a desperate attempt to stave off the IK-equivalent of Armaggedon (brought by the Wurm turning his attention back to Caen)  - The Trollkin start rallying their tribes to fight for their rights.  - Cryx starts to attack more ruthlessly the coast of Cygnar while creating a hidden factory city below the continent.  - The Retribution of Scyrah, an Iosan extremist faction, decides that Human magic is what killed their gods and start accruing favor inside their homeland, eventually marching to war to end with human sorcery. Not because they think this is how they will survive, oh no. They just want to murder as many humans as possible before the end.  - The Protectorate of Menoth has tried and failed to invade the Cygnarian capital, getting their Combat Pope murdered once again. Now, they try to liberate (and convert) Llael.  - The Cult of Cyriss goes to war.  -Eldritch horrors stir in the depths and corners of the earth.   - Mercenaries are living the dream.  And that would be a fast version of the entire history of the setting. I hope you've enjoyed the trip so far, I'm planning to revisit factions in detail after going through the mechanics.Next time, character creation and actual game mechanics
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Nov 22, 2014 16:22
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 Grabbed from FFG, so copyright GW and/or FFG. Warhammer Fantasy and 40,000 (“40K”) have been around as miniatures wargaming lines since the 80s, but oddly enough the futuristic (and notoriously “grimdark”) 40K line never received a tabletop roleplay option until relatively recently. So it was something of a surprise that in 2008, Games Workshop’s Black Industries label actually published Dark Heresy, wherein the player characters are henchmen of the Inquisition trying to stomp out heresy in the Imperium of Man. The system itself was based on the older editions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP 3E is a wholly different beast) and received at least moderate success for a TRPG. Shortly after its publication Games Workshop decided to discontinue publishing the Dark Heresy line, but this wasn’t the end for the game itself as Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights to publish it under a license they’ve held since then. Considering how vast the 40K setting is, Dark Heresy wasn’t going to fit everyone’s game; thus Fantasy Flight decided to branch out and print additional game lines to focus on other aspects that’d make for interesting narratives.
Given the header image, I’ll be showing off Black Crusade for F&F for two reasons. First, out of all the 40K TRPG lines Black Crusade is probably the one that least bothers itself with the standard grimdark tone of the setting. Player characters are encouraged to be over-the-top  and revel in it in order to gain more precious Infamy. Second (and more personally), I’ve been GMing in-person for five people and I’ve felt obligated to share insights on the matter.Next time: An introduction to the setting and to the basic mechanics.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:04
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There are two ways to play Black Crusade: Ridiculous power metal melodrama and Shenanigans. One involves quests across blasted hellscapes to accomplish insanely ambitious goals, similar to Rogue Trader. The other involves landing a shuttle on a pirate king and stealing Khorne's lawn chair. Played right, Black Crusade is awesome.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:39
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Night10194 posted:There are two ways to play Black Crusade: Ridiculous power metal melodrama and Shenanigans. One involves quests across blasted hellscapes to accomplish insanely ambitious goals, similar to Rogue Trader. The other involves landing a shuttle on a pirate king and stealing Khorne's lawn chair. The correct Rogue Trader approach is landing a shuttle on a pirate king and stealing Khorne's lawn chair to sell at an interstellar auction only to betray everyone in attendance and sell them to the Inquisition in return for wealth, fame, and privilege.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:54
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Admittedly 'I sell everyone to the Inquisition for wealth, fame, and prestige' would also be a hell of an ending to a BC campaign.
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Nov 22, 2014 18:54
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I played in a game of Rogue Trader once. I played Captain Baron von Munchausen. It was fun.
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Nov 22, 2014 19:10
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Night10194 posted:Admittedly 'I sell everyone to the Inquisition for wealth, fame, and prestige' would also be a hell of an ending to a BC campaign. Then the Rogue Traders keep Khorne's lawn chair because whatever else you say about the Blood God, he's got good taste and it's a perfect accent to your private conservatory on your flagship.
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Nov 22, 2014 19:50
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Night10194 posted:There are two ways to play Black Crusade: Ridiculous power metal melodrama and Shenanigans. One involves quests across blasted hellscapes to accomplish insanely ambitious goals, similar to Rogue Trader. The other involves landing a shuttle on a pirate king and stealing Khorne's lawn chair. Personally I'm a fan of combining the two approaches, especially because the former has a tendency to become the latter without any prompting. Fiasco's tagline is remarkably appropriate for Black Crusade, given that they're both games about powerful ambition and poor impulse control.
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Nov 22, 2014 20:02
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The very first 40K rulebook, subtitled Rogue Trader, was in fact a RPG first with a miniatures rules module, but the miniatures system (and figures themselves) rapidly eclipsed the RPG. I don't know anyone who played 1E 40K as an RPG.
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Nov 22, 2014 20:15
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Midjack posted:The very first 40K rulebook, subtitled Rogue Trader, was in fact a RPG first with a miniatures rules module, but the miniatures system (and figures themselves) rapidly eclipsed the RPG. I don't know anyone who played 1E 40K as an RPG.
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Nov 22, 2014 20:29
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Cythereal posted:The correct Rogue Trader approach is landing a shuttle on a pirate king and stealing Khorne's lawn chair to sell at an interstellar auction only to betray everyone in attendance and sell them to the Inquisition in return for wealth, fame, and privilege. I've always avoided it because every description of play I've ever heard is basically concentrated monkey cheese. I assume it's way more fun to play than to hear about.
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Nov 22, 2014 21:52
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theironjef posted:I've always avoided it because every description of play I've ever heard is basically concentrated monkey cheese. I assume it's way more fun to play than to hear about. The game certainly encourages a light-hearted approach to the setting, but really it's down to the people and DM playing it rather than the system. For good or ill, Rogue Trader and Black Crusade tend to attract goofier types of games and players. More seriously-minded players and DMs tend to prefer Dark Heresy or Deathwatch.
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Nov 22, 2014 21:56
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There's basically three ways to treat Warhammer 40,000:
Of these, Dark Heresy is type 3, Rogue Trader type 1, Deathwatch and Only War can be any of them depending on what tone you want, and Black Crusade starts as 2 and ends as 1.
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Nov 22, 2014 22:01
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Rogue Trader does tend to attract more people who want to play aliens, because, well, it's the only outlet for that. Which is almost necessarily going to lead to a less orthodox game.
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Nov 22, 2014 22:20
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theironjef posted:I've always avoided it because every description of play I've ever heard is basically concentrated monkey cheese. I assume it's way more fun to play than to hear about. Rogue Trader (the FFG version) is basically the ultimate extension of Shadowrun's or D&D's "kill everything, steal everything" themes writ large. You start out with so much money that the game doesn't even keep track of individual money units, you own a kilometer-long starship that can bombard planets from orbit, but the entire point of the game is "get even richer, no, richer than that, more rich." Fundamentally it's a game that's about reveling in the sort of ridiculous player-character behavior that other games only implicitly encourage rather than explicitly telling you "yeah, you should totally go pick a fight with that daemon over there because its horns would look baller over your mantlepiece." I wouldn't call it monkey cheese but I don't think it's intended to be a very serious, dramatic game either, no.
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Nov 22, 2014 22:48
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"Mirror-Universe Star Trek Crew" is a good tone to set for Rogue Trader
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Nov 22, 2014 22:57
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theironjef posted:I've always avoided it because every description of play I've ever heard is basically concentrated monkey cheese. I assume it's way more fun to play than to hear about. I've never enjoyed Rogue Trader. I've never had a good campaign of Rogue Trader. The kind of characters it creates are the kind of people I'd generally prefer to see get kicked in the dick rather than write for or play as. But that's more a matter of taste between myself and my regular players versus any indictment of the game.
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Nov 22, 2014 23:09
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Pththya-lyi posted:"Mirror-Universe Star Trek Crew" is a good tone to set for Rogue Trader Also Saints' Row 40K: In the glittering darkness of the 40th millennium, there is only bling. Dark Heresy works similar well if you think of it more as Paranoia 40K. This was illustrated in a chatlog from Maptools that got screencapped and passed around... quote:Player 1: I psychically throw open the doors
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Nov 22, 2014 23:38
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Dark Heresy only works well as a grimdark Paranoia because that's the sort of game that was delivered rather than the one that was promised, which was "badass Throne agents like in Eisenhorn." 1E Dark Heresy was honestly not a very good game ruleswise either.
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Nov 23, 2014 00:04
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How's Dark Heresy 2nd Ed for Eisenhorning it up?
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Nov 23, 2014 02:19
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Forums Terrorist posted:How's Dark Heresy 2nd Ed for Eisenhorning it up? DH2.0 adopts a number of good changes that FFG gradually developed over the line...no more pseudo-level "ranks," the psychic power system incorporating the "fettered/push" system which lets psykers attempt to do poo poo without always having to wonder if this time they use the 40K equivalent of a cantrip if they're going to derail the entire session, tracking individual prices is gone in favor of an Influence stat, etc. In addition to this starting level characters get some pretty solid perks...ways of spending Fate Points to auto-succeed on certain tasks, a few choice bits of starting equipment, things like that. It's still low on the power scale as opposed to something like Rogue Trader or Black Crusade, you still aren't going to start out as a Hero of the Imperium right off the bat unless the GM hands out some extra starting XP but the overall impression is that a fresh-faced DH2.0 character is someone who's shown some genuine promise to be recruited by the Inquisition as opposed to DH1.0 where starting acolytes were basically a collection of schmucks rounded up by the Inquisitor's third assistant Vice Interrogator to go stumblefuck around a cave somewhere and die. Inquisitors themselves are still an elite advance that takes a hefty chunk of XP to work your way up to though, so attempting to recreate the Eisenhorn dynamic where the Inquisitor himself comes along on adventures with his agents is going to require starting things off at a higher level.
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Nov 23, 2014 02:36
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I'd like to get back to preserving F&Fs off-site, especially since the wiki index seems to be falling behind, but I remember maybe someone else picked up the slack while I was being a big dumb baby. Or is the index still being maintained and I'm still dumb?
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Nov 23, 2014 06:03
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The main thing with Rogue Trader is that it's setting itself up as sort of the opposite of a lot of previous sci-fi RPGs. in that a lot of previous games figured that PCs would be in the Han Solo/Firefly/Traveller mode, just poor dudes on a lovely ship barely scraping by. Rogue Trader, you've got a massive ship, thousands of people working under you, and instead of trying to get away with smuggling space bear asses to from the space bear planet to a planet where they just loving love bear asses, you're negotiating the contracts to strip mine an entire asteroid belt or landing on a lost colony to explain how no, their shining throne king is another aspect of the emperor of mankind. So I think it gets extra-gonzo in actual play just as sort of a reaction to time served as space bear rear end-haulers. unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 06:13
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Plague of Hats posted:I'd like to get back to preserving F&Fs off-site, especially since the wiki index seems to be falling behind, but I remember maybe someone else picked up the slack while I was being a big dumb baby. Or is the index still being maintained and I'm still dumb? The index is not maintained. I personally went to the work of making sure my own F&Fs are up to date, but I don't know if anybody else has. There's also the offsite index created by Inklesspen, but it's based off of the wiki and isn't any more up-to-date that I'm aware of. (It's a great site, but most F&Fs are being lost like tears in the rain right now.)
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Nov 23, 2014 06:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The index is not maintained. I personally went to the work of making sure my own F&Fs are up to date, but I don't know if anybody else has. There's also the offsite index created by Inklesspen, but it's based off of the wiki and isn't any more up-to-date that I'm aware of. (It's a great site, but most F&Fs are being lost like tears in the rain right now.) Yeah, part of my motivation is catching up with what's been posted lately so that it doesn't become impossible.
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Nov 23, 2014 06:28
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unseenlibrarian posted:The main thing with Rogue Trader is that it's setting itself up as sort of the opposite of a lot of previous sci-fi RPGs. in that a lot of previous games figured that PCs would be in the Han Solo/Firefly/Traveller mode, just poor dudes on a lovely ship barely scraping by. That's some of it. Even the most run-down ramshackle Rogue Trader still has an enormous ship crewed by thousands of people armed with guns that can level cities and a piece of paper that basically gives him carte blanche to go do whatever he deems necessary to get rich or die trying. It isn't a game that really encourages a staid, reserved sort of approach to things, and beyond that is the fact that unlike Only War or Deathwatch where you exist in a chain of command and get given missions, in Rogue Trader the player-characters are explicitly at the top of the pyramid. This means that it's entirely self-directed, which means that campaign goals aren't a question of "can we do this?" so much as "what do we need to do to make this happen?"
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Nov 23, 2014 06:32
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People really whined like crazy that Rogue Trader didn't do what every other sci-fi RPG had already done. (That is, low-rent space truckers.)
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Nov 23, 2014 07:06
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Well that was kind of dumb of them because unlike DH1.0 where one thing got promised and another delivered, Rogue Trader was never, to the best of my recollection, ever billed as being a game about low-rent space truckers at all. You can absolutely play the last remnant of an all-but-defunct dynasty in a (comparatively) tiny ship scrabbling for profit, it's just that even a down-on-her-luck Rogue Trader is still someone who operates on a level well above that of 99% of the rest of the schmucks in the galaxy. You'll never be counting your individual pennies and wondering if you'll be able to afford food this month because the designers, and I'm inclined to agree with them on this one, think that poo poo is boring.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:15
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Well I'm talking about the kind of people on forums who want every game to be a "toolkit" that does anything and everything while also somehow having a flavour of its own. No such game exists, so...
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Nov 23, 2014 07:19
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All I'm hearing is more support for my "those people are dumb" theory. Back when the 40K RPG line was brand new it was straight-up announced that there were going to be multiple lines of core books, each focused on a different thing (though at the time the only ones that were set in stone were Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch) and each of which would be correspondingly varied in baseline power level. Or to put it another way the 40K line is a toolkit that's being released one standalone line at a time.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:25
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Kai Tave posted:Well that was kind of dumb of them because unlike DH1.0 where one thing got promised and another delivered, Rogue Trader was never, to the best of my recollection, ever billed as being a game about low-rent space truckers at all. I think half the reason I liked DH1.0 as much as I did was because I've never read Eisenhorn and I kinda liked the idea of being a bunch of bumbling human-intel agents who get thrown at problems until you start to succeed and eventually become indispensable. I like having that option around alongside the various flavors of 'be elite badasses', which is fun too.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:26
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I think RT was my favorite sub-line because it gave the least fucks about all the garbage that dominates every last other thing for 40k nowadays. PS There was an RPG-y game for 40k in the 90s (or late 80s?) called Inquisitor. It was still "minis" centered, but you played single action-figure scale dudes through scenarios more complex than standard wargame stuff. There might have been a GM-like role, but I don't quite recall. It was the now-typical 1-100 system at core, with crazy poo poo like space marines having 200+ Strength.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:29
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Plague of Hats posted:I think RT was my favorite sub-line because it gave the least fucks about all the garbage that dominates every last other thing for 40k nowadays. Well understandably FFG has to turn everything they make for the 40K games over to GW for approval and so they can't just go crazy-nuts and do whatever they want but by all accounts it's the stuff that has to do with Space Marines, aka GW's main cash cow, that they give the most exacting scrutiny to and everything that isn't Space Marine centric gets more leeway. Honestly while FFG's editing and proofreading is often hot garbage and the systems the games use are decent but not anything spectacular a lot of the setting stuff they've come up with is fantastic and packed full of plot hooks and adventure seeds. The Black Crusade setting of the Screaming Vortex in particular is pretty great. Supposedly (from what I've heard through that paragon of reliability known as the tradgames rumormill) with the new DH2.0 book FFG is getting even more leeway to do their own thing so hopefully we might see them revisit some of their other lines along the way, Rogue Trader could certainly use some updating.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:38
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My first ever experience with the Rogue Trader rpg, a bunch of Imperial Navy deserters tried to stage a desperate boarding action to take over our ship while the Rogue Trader was away. I remember coming up with a plan to try and corral the boarders into a killzone, still thinking like I would in any other rpg. Then the Rogue Trader manages to get back and promptly negotiates with the boarders: they join our crew and get paid, and the Navy is never alerted to where the deserters went. The leader of the deserters agrees, and then gets punched in the gut by the Rogue Trader and thrown in the brig for putting his fellow crew members in danger. I can't think of any other rpg where you can just throw money at any and all of your problems, which requires the players and the GM to get creative about what would be a fun challenge. Regular enemies are no threat, because the PC's will have the best equipment money can buy (and more), and could just throw a personal army at whatever they want. Or nuke the planet from orbit. Or call in favors with the Inquisition or Space Marines. And the players have a ship, so if something gets too dangerous and there's no money to be made, they can and will gently caress off to some other system. Basically, Rogue Trader is weird because it requires the players to create their own goals they care about, and the GM needs to find ways to attack the PC's wallets instead of throwing physical threats at them. It's not an easy system to "get", but it's absolutely amazing when everything comes together.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:51
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I may have posted on the wrong quote. I have little beef with Rogue Trader, all the random monkey cheese stories I hear tend to come from the one where people play Chaos Marines. Lots of "Then I mailed vomit to his children and took a poo poo in his ear" stuff.
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Nov 23, 2014 18:29
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theironjef posted:I may have posted on the wrong quote. I have little beef with Rogue Trader, all the random monkey cheese stories I hear tend to come from the one where people play Chaos Marines. Lots of "Then I mailed vomit to his children and took a poo poo in his ear" stuff. Chaos Marines are, as a rule of thumb, even worse characters than normal Marines. Like normal Marines, they can be interesting or fun, but it's kinda the exception. Though we did have a Chaos Marine in one of my BC campaigns get Illusion of Normalcy (People cannot see your mutations, or tell you're a Marine, without being a psyker) and go off and pretend to be a rogue trader while questing to make the most absurd shotgun in the galaxy. That was pretty funny.
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Nov 23, 2014 18:55
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NGDBSS posted:I'd never actually seen it and I wasn't certain how much was TRPG and how much was miniatures combat. Care to expand? Let me see if I can find the old book. If it's at mom and dad's house I'll just have to go off memory. I also have that Z-G CCG/figure game for Exiles that I need to write up.
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Nov 23, 2014 18:55
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