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homerlaw posted:Libertarian MRAs? That's the worst of all possible combinations, barring adding White Supremacists to the mix. How would posthuman white supremacy even loving work? Oh wait, I know how it exactly work: they'd just convince Anglo-Saxon society is superior to all other cultural forms and genetically bleach non-originally-white members until they're "white". Like they do almost in real life.
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Jan 6, 2015 23:38
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The Deleter posted:How does that wrist mounted gatling even work, like where is the ammo feed, where is the ammo even? How is that going to fire anything of a calibre better than rimfire? If it's lasers, why not draw a less dumb-looking laser gun instead? I'm focusing on this one thing so I dont have to look at the creature it's attatched to because goddamn it. No the laser is on the other arm. Amongst other things, the gatling's handle is in the worst possible position to actually be able to grab it with his other hand to stabilize it. Said cat-person-thing has tech armor-plating everywhere except for its sculpted abs and it's loincloth. As well as Liefeld pouches. Mors Rattus posted:The worst part is that I loving recognize that thing. I mean, not specifically, but I have run into the sci fi furry centaur people before and I have to ask: is that picture a picture of a stupid hermaphrodite thing? I'm willing to bet that this thing is also a hermaphrodite. Because for some reason once "Centaur" enters the furry equation the likelyhood of it also being a hermaphrodite approaches infinity.
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Jan 6, 2015 23:39
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Young Freud posted:How would posthuman white supremacy even loving work? 
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Jan 6, 2015 23:42
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The best part of The Iron Dream is all the mail the author received talking about how it was a great sci-fi yarn but the pointless alt-history about hitler really dragged the story down.
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Jan 6, 2015 23:46
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The thing about posthuman/transhuman sci-fi and libertarianism is that even Eclipse Phase devotes space to entire idological clades that are basically "Libertarians in space." I'm not at all trying to argue that this masterpiece of furry hermaphroditic libertarian posthumanism is at all going to be good, I'm just pointing out that it's not terribly uncommon for transhumanist sci-fi to do things like have libertarian communities that manage to function without tearing themselves apart thanks to the application of things like magic nanotech and a reputation economy that might also as well be magic.
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Jan 6, 2015 23:47
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Kai Tave posted:reputation economy that might also as well be magic. Any sufficiently advanced economics is indistinguishable from magic.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:07
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Carados posted:Any sufficiently advanced economics is indistinguishable from magic. In the sense that magic is largely bullshit, yes 
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Jan 7, 2015 00:21
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Kai Tave posted:The thing about posthuman/transhuman sci-fi and libertarianism is that even Eclipse Phase devotes space to entire idological clades that are basically "Libertarians in space." I'm not at all trying to argue that this masterpiece of furry hermaphroditic libertarian posthumanism is at all going to be good, I'm just pointing out that it's not terribly uncommon for transhumanist sci-fi to do things like have libertarian communities that manage to function without tearing themselves apart thanks to the application of things like magic nanotech and a reputation economy that might also as well be magic. Ess we're trapped in the period where we think SWM anarchists aren't secretly-even-to-themselves homerlaw posted:Libertarian MRAs? That's the worst of all possible combinations, barring adding White Supremacists to the mix. nazis.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:23
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I'm guessing this is Eclipse Phase for people who felt it lacked enough animal dicks. Downloading it for free from Drive-Thru RPG now.  Let's see what happens.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:25
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Oh god, I just convinced a friend to buy this. He's been on an awful RPG kick right now and he does have the collected works of Chris Fields, so he's biting the bullet and buying this.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:26
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Does that thing have a chainsaw for a leg? How many fetishes am I looking at here?
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Jan 7, 2015 00:28
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I have that exact paperback on my bookshelf next to SS-GB.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:28
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Young Freud posted:Oh god, I just convinced a friend to buy this. He's been on an awful RPG kick right now and he does have the collected works of Chris Fields, so he's biting the bullet and buying this. How many of those can there possibly be? Was Chris Fields prolific?
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Jan 7, 2015 00:29
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PurpleXVI posted:Let's see what happens. Purple, have you even recovered from the Chris Fields stuff yet?
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Jan 7, 2015 00:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:Purple, have you even recovered from the Chris Fields stuff yet? Probably not, but I kind of miss reviewing terrible poo poo and it feels like ages since I last found something that got my blood heated up enough to review it. Still waiting on that loving Gor RPG from Desborough, so may as well warm up until that hits with a soft, disgusting splat, plopping all over the internet, waiting to be shoveled up and disposed of. Night10194 posted:How many of those can there possibly be? Was Chris Fields prolific? Oh, you have no idea. I think he's got at least two dozen things of his own on Drive-Thru, but you have to keep in mind that a good few of them are just, like, small supplements/splatbooks or, quite literally, single-class add-ons for stuff, often his own RPG's which, I hope, no one actually buys to play.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:34
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Night10194 posted:How many of those can there possibly be? Was Chris Fields prolific? Yes, but it's hard to find all his poo poo because some stuff's gotten pulled and he's had to jump between publishers a few times because his stuff is just... that terrible.
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Jan 7, 2015 01:03
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Is that a Reaver furry? Like, some space dog man got hijacked by a space-bug and now is more horrific than it originally was? Because they seriously missed some good design influence from biohorror movies.
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Jan 7, 2015 02:42
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Well, I'm fairly sure that I won't be able to compete with libertarian space furry cyborgs, but I decided on what I was going to cover next and I'm sticking to it. Introduction to the Overview Licensing...Licensing Never Changes In the early to mid 2000s, d20 systems like Dungeons & Dragons 3E and d20 Modern were very much the new hotness. Unsurprisingly, the new hotness attracted those with dollar signs in their eyes to engage in various license opportunities, whose quality varied from good to very much the opposite. D20 versions of everything from Conan the Barbarian to Star Wars and Star Trek cropped up across the board. This practice isn't unique to the d20 system, of course: Unisystem had an Army of Darkness game, Cortex has had varying products under its system from Supernatural to Firefly, and GURPS has had everything from Discworld to webcomics licensed under its name. Still, the point has to be made to establish the atmosphere that our comedic drama takes place in. The first player in this tale is Interplay Entertainment. The company behind games such as Wasteland and Clay Fighter, Interplay was facing the threat of bankruptcy for the second time in its life during 2006. In an attempt to keep afloat, the license to one of the company's popular post-apocalyptic series, Fallout, was licensed out to the other two players in this story: Bethesda Softworks and Glutton Creeper Games. Bethesda was given the rights to create two Fallout games two years earlier, and Glutton Creeper Games was granted the license in order to create a d20 Modern Fallout RPG. Roll forward to 2007, and the Fallout brand has been completely turned over to Bethesda as Interplay tries to escape its second time facing bankruptcy. Bethesda decides that the best course of action surrounding the hanging thread of the d20 Fallout RPG is to order a cease and desist to Glutton Creeper Games, threatening legal action due to purported damages to the Fallout brand were the d20 Fallout RPG and Fallout 3 to both come out. I'm not a lawyer, so I won't pretend to know whether or not any of the legal actions that transpired between the two were logical or simply two groups hashing it out. What I do know is the end results of this whole kerfuffle.  Lying, Game Professional Style Later in 2007, Glutton Creeper Games produced a d20 Modern book entitled Exodus: Post-Apocalyptic Roleplaying. The setting is the post-apocalyptic American Southwest 32 years after the If you couldn't guess, Exodus: Post-Apocalyptic Roleplaying is an exercise in just how much you can get away with treading the line, and somehow it manages to succeed. Rather than undergoing a metamorphosis from a caterpillar into a butterfly during Glutton Creeper's loss of the Fallout license, what instead happened was that the caterpillar glued on some cardboard wings and donned a mask with "NOT A CATERPILLAR" crudely scrawled on it in crayon. I almost dissuaded myself from reviewing Exodus about a year back because I wasn't sure there was enough material to have any words beyond that it was a mediocre d20 Modern setting book with some odd rules choices, but then I reread it and it hit me that there is such a low effort to mask what the product once was that there is even a prestige class to replicate a single unique Fallout NPC! Hell, there are even some things that are straight up still using Fallout names. Hopefully, this look at Exodus will help share the wonderment of flipping through it and seeing just how brazen Glutton Creeper Games was when it made this product. As the "core" material is split up into a player's guide, GM guide, and bestiary just like a certain popular roleplaying game, we'll be looking at the player's guide (entitled the "Survivor's Guide") first. For the sake of brevity and avoiding redundancy, I'll be skipping over anything that is a reprint of material that is standard to the System Reference Document (d20 in general or d20 Modern in particular), beyond maybe posting some dumb or amusing image of "Rad Boy" associated with said rules, and focus mainly on two things: trying to fairly cover new rules the game provides and being boggled by how much crap somehow got past Bethesda's radar.
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Jan 7, 2015 02:59
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Fossilized Rappy posted:If you couldn't guess, Exodus: Post-Apocalyptic Roleplaying is an exercise in just how much you can get away with treading the line, and somehow it manages to succeed. Rather than undergoing a metamorphosis from a caterpillar into a butterfly during Glutton Creeper's loss of the Fallout license, what instead happened was that the caterpillar glued on some cardboard wings and donned a mask with "NOT A CATERPILLAR" crudely scrawled on it in crayon. I almost dissuaded myself from reviewing Exodus about a year back because I wasn't sure there was enough material to have any words beyond that it was a mediocre d20 Modern setting book with some odd rules choices, but then I reread it and it hit me that there is such a low effort to mask what the product once was that there is even a prestige class to replicate a single unique Fallout NPC! Hell, there are even some things that are straight up still using Fallout names. Even by those standards, this sounds pretty egregious.
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Jan 7, 2015 03:04
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Hell, I'd say "Popular Thing X But With The Serial Numbers Filed Off" is one of the founding ideals and cornerstones of gaming.
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Jan 7, 2015 03:18
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FMguru posted:Games that are essentially "Popular Thing X But With The Serial Numbers Filed Off" show up quite often in RPGing. Cyberpunk 2020 was an unofficial adaptation of William Gibson's "Sprawl" cyberpunk novels, Vampire is Anne Rice's "Interview" novels, Conspiracy X is X-Files, there was a very handsome D20 book that was essentially Harry Potter with some names changed, and on and on. I think my favorite d20 We couldn't secure the license game was Exorsystems. Guess what it wasn't a game of. Go on... 
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Jan 7, 2015 03:19
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"So I just saw extreme ghostbusters. You need to make an XGB game." "Sir do you know how hard it will be to get that license?" "IS THIS THE FACE OF A MAN WHO CARES!?"
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Jan 7, 2015 03:41
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Fossilized Rappy posted:prestige class to replicate a single unique Fallout NPC! I'm going to guess Harold. Because who doesn't want to have a tree growing out of them? And because this is d20 and everything must be modeled mechanically. Everything
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Jan 7, 2015 03:45
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Young Freud posted:Because Posthuman Studios, makers of Eclipse Phase, recently purged MRAs and MRA discussion on their forums within the last year. Mr. Maltose posted:The best part of The Iron Dream is all the mail the author received talking about how it was a great sci-fi yarn but the pointless alt-history about hitler really dragged the story down. NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 04:34
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To be fair to Exorsystems it was actually one of the few decent d20Modern books I've read. It had a decent monster chapter, some ok busting mechanics, and the art conveyed more of a Real Ghostbusters feel than the XGB cover would suggest. Hell, when I have some time in February or March I'll review it for the thread.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:27
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NutritiousSnack posted:they still are ardent defenders of CthulluTech however because lol. Are you sure? Last I checked Posthuman and Catalyst parted ways.
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Jan 7, 2015 07:49
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theironjef posted:
So, this is basically FATAL Lite. The giant skill and occupation list, the “realism”, the way it treats women, it’s all the same. The “sexy” occupations being the only ones capable of making money is definitely from FATAL.
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Jan 7, 2015 12:14
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8one6 posted:I think my favorite d20 We couldn't secure the license game was Exorsystems. Ah, it's about collecting misplaced Splinter Cell goggles.
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Jan 7, 2015 15:03
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Green Intern posted:Ah, it's about collecting misplaced Splinter Cell goggles. I figured you got play as an OSHA inspector identifying insufficient personal protective equipment.
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Jan 7, 2015 15:15
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(-10) Has no Dick.
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Jan 7, 2015 15:38
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FMguru posted:Games that are essentially "Popular Thing X But With The Serial Numbers Filed Off" show up quite often in RPGing. Cyberpunk 2020 was an unofficial adaptation of William Gibson's "Sprawl" cyberpunk novels, Vampire is Anne Rice's "Interview" novels, Conspiracy X is X-Files, there was a very handsome D20 book that was essentially Harry Potter with some names changed, and on and on. Pieces of Peace posted:I'm going to guess Harold. Because who doesn't want to have a tree growing out of them? And because this is d20 and everything must be modeled mechanically. Everything
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Jan 7, 2015 15:44
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Bieeardo posted:(-10) Has no Dick. (-10) Is a Woman?
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Jan 7, 2015 15:51
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Platonicsolid posted:(-10) Is a Woman? The glassteel ceiling is all too real. 
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Jan 7, 2015 16:30
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Fossilized Rappy posted:Got it in one. It's been a while since I've played it, but that's actually an available perk for Ghoul troopers in Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. The idea was that you'd get fruit regularly from the tree but the implementation was bugged.
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Jan 7, 2015 16:44
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Kavak posted:So, this is basically FATAL Lite. The giant skill and occupation list, the “realism”, the way it treats women, it’s all the same. The “sexy” occupations being the only ones capable of making money is definitely from FATAL. Good that'll get us out of covering FATAL for a while. This book made me so mad. The slap dash nature of it, the ludicrous cheesecake, the "realism." What's with these industry guys that pick one thing they saw in a documentary about medieval life and run it into the ground as if that's a setting?
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Jan 7, 2015 16:59
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theironjef posted:Good that'll get us out of covering FATAL for a while. This book made me so mad. The slap dash nature of it, the ludicrous cheesecake, the "realism." What's with these industry guys that pick one thing they saw in a documentary about medieval life and run it into the ground as if that's a setting? The weird mixture of Maxim-targeting titwank fantasy artwork and church lady moralizing was kind of original, I guess.
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Jan 7, 2015 17:10
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FMguru posted:Listening to the podcast, I was really struck by how half-assed the whole thing was (Fantasy Imperium, not SM). Usually these Fantasy Heartbreakers are an obvious passion project for the person making them - that's part of what makes them so heartbreaking, the way someone pours their heart and soul and credit card balance into producing yet another forgettable AD&D-but-with-more-rules clone. But it sounds like this guy just lost interest in it halfway through and couldn't be bothered to finish the manuscript, much less edit it or proof it. That's an impressive level of contempt for your paying audience. I was thinking I'd defend the guy for at least being textually sex-positive (like the art is just ludicrous, there's some wet dress fairies in the back that were done by Greg Land, etc.) since there's not really a set of rules for how much hookers get hanged, or a chart by which STDs are acquired, but then I remembered that there are spells, prayers, and medicines to help a woman get pregnant, but none for prevention or contraception, which is pretty odd and unrealistic given the setting (seriously, even with black magic added?). I guess the prayer of Coitus Interruptus would have looked weird next to all the Stations of the Cross and Our Fathers.
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Jan 7, 2015 17:19
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theironjef posted:Good that'll get us out of covering FATAL for a while. This book made me so mad. The slap dash nature of it, the ludicrous cheesecake, the "realism." What's with these industry guys that pick one thing they saw in a documentary about medieval life and run it into the ground as if that's a setting?
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Jan 7, 2015 17:34
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Halloween Jack posted:Honestly, it goes all the way back to Gygax and beyond. Gary was, I think, the kind of guy who would read a piece about something historical and became extremely enthusiastic about it, and that's how we got Dragon articles about heraldry and forestry in Greyhawk. But his games were reportedly pretty loose and featured 8-bit style "Wouldst thou like to rest in the inn and recover thy HP?" stuff even if they were brutally hard. It's always like just D&D except the author is really mad about the bullshit crossbow loading time, or the incubation period of old-timey diseases. Like "Man I like this RPG but I saw an episode of Ancient Warfare and I can no longer tolerate these crossbow loading shenanigans. It's time someone came up with a better way!"
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Jan 7, 2015 17:40
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FMguru posted:Games that are essentially "Popular Thing X But With The Serial Numbers Filed Off" show up quite often in RPGing. Cyberpunk 2020 was an unofficial adaptation of William Gibson's "Sprawl" cyberpunk novels, Vampire is Anne Rice's "Interview" novels, Conspiracy X is X-Files, there was a very handsome D20 book that was essentially Harry Potter with some names changed, and on and on. I gotta put my foot down and call bullshit on this. CP2020 is much more American-centric and was a bit more tuned back than Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy. You could tell that guys at R. Talsorian had their own ideas on the genre by the time Home Of The Brave and the world books started coming out. For example, the big power bloc wasn't Japan but the EU. There wasn't an East Asia book for at least two years. Shadowrun has more blatant riffs on Gibson's cyberpunk, especially with them straight up calling the metropolitan area around Seattle "The Sprawl", Ono-Sendai popping up in places, an archetype called "Street Samurai", etc.
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Jan 7, 2015 20:26
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