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Doresh
Jan 7, 2015
Oh boy, the actual mechanics of HSD didn't take long to collapse in on itself. All this madness about how government was the root of all evil and everyone's a beautiful, furry snowflake all the corporations are bowing to, and now we're getting into species stereotypes and pack mentality never mentioned before?

Dragons are apparently only for kewl NPCs or something.

And now time for me to step into the ring myself.

Thrash: Anime and Fighting Game Martial Arts RPG

Ooh! There's a second arm growing out of my elbow!

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with Ewen Cluney, or at least his work. He's the creative mind behind Magical Burst (aka "Not Madoka Magica: The RPG") and the translator of Maid RPG (aka "Why does my fun and whacky harem RPG have creepy hentai stuff every couple pages?"). Pretty cool dude, all in all.
His earliest success goes back all the way to around 1998 with Thrash, a spiritual successor to White Wolf's Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game (or SF:STG, as I will abbreviate it). It was one of the homebrew systems in the late 90's to early 00's, spawning several fansites and quite a lot of fan-made content. It also helds a special place in my cold heart for being my second RPG system and my first homebrew experience.
Compared to Ewen's later output, Thrash has a lot of crunch, is a bit vague at times and a tad bit on the broken side. But we'll get to that later (seriously, the actual rules start at Chapter 6)

So without much further ado, let me bow down to my personal homebrew hero by riffing his earliest smash hit. Hey, you gotta start somewhere.

(I'll be doing Thrash 1.8 for this. There's a Thrash 2.0, but that one never went beyond Beta status, does not represent Thrash at the peak of its popularity, and is generally better thought out and not as riffable.)

Chapter 1: Introduction

quote:

"Violent fighting to begin again..."
-- King of Fighters '96
In the world of Thrash, we apparently quote sentence fragments of anthropomorphic video game personifications.

I'm not sure if this can even count as a chapter as it's barely over a page long. It doesn't have a "What is a roleplaying game?" section you see in every commercial production, and the very first paragraph has some weird bits in it.

quote:

Capcom’s Street Fighter II changed the face of video games forever by introducing the world to a new style of game, where two characters faced off in a one-on-one fight to the finish. This has since spawned countless other similar games, to the point that it has created an entire genre of video games, collectively known as Fighting Games.

So after claiming that SF2 invented the fighting game genre (I presume SF1 was a sim game or something), the text goes on to state that Thrash is a "book-and-dice" RPG about the kind of crazy martial arts as seen in anime and fighting games. This game only covers the core rules without any sort of setting, but it informs us that there will be sourcebooks converting popular fighting games - which is actually true. Nifty.

quote:

The Thrash system is heavily based on the now out-of-print Street Fighter Storytelling Game from White Wolf, as well as Mekton Z, and, to a lesser extent, Ninjas & Superspies.

I don't know anything about Ninjas & Superspies, but the other two games make this sound very "promising". Sadly, it doesn't mean that we will be able to demolish our foes with an Infinite Burst Value Cartwheel Kick to the head location. It just means the game takes several elements from the Storytelling Game and bundles them with Interlock-ish resolution mechanics (Attribute + Skill + d10, to spoiler a bit).
It also goes on to inform us that this game is about hyper-charged martial arts. Not that you would expect realistic depictions of martial arts styles if you can breathe fire and teleport all over the place.

quote:

Thrash is not intended to be a particularly complex or in-depth game. The object in roleplaying is to have fun, but in Thrash that may at times be the sole concern. furthermore, the rules are designed to play relatively quickly, since the game is intended to simulate extremely fast-paced martial arts combat. To play Thrash you will need only this book, some pencils and papers, and some dice (10-sided and 6-sided)

Keep the "not particularly complex" and "relatively quickly" parts in mind. Also, the game uses plenty of d4s and even a d12 at one point, though no d8s, which is a bit odd IMO.

There's a bit of historical background to Thrash, which apparently started as a homebrew sourcebook for SF:STG called "Warrior's World", which I can't for the live of me find anywhere anymore.

quote:

Design Theory of Thrash
One of the most important things to remember about Thrash they [sic] way the system is designed to work. It functions in much the opposite of how other RPGs do. Rather than picking items from a list in the book to define your character, you create your character and their abilities in story terms, and then create that using the rules.

This might make it sound like some kind of freeform FATE-ish kind of deal, but you're actually still "picking items from a list in the book", but with customization options. It's essentially a semi-effects-based game, with specific maneuvers (aka moves) instead of general effects/powers.

quote:

Thrash is not a game for munchkins! Admittedly the rules are easy to abuse.

At least he's honest about it :allears:

So anyways, a short talk about how storytelling is more important than making broken characters, using a short rant about a Athena Asamiya conversion one guy did as an example. Okay...

On to sourcebooks! At time of the PDF's first release, there were two "official" :airquote: sourcebooks in the form of Karyu Densetsu (an original campaign setting, currently only available with archive.org-fu) and a generic Thrash Sourcebook.
Planned future sourcebooks were to include Street Fighter (did happen), Ranma 1/2 (did sorta happen, there's a fan-made anime sourcebook with heavy Ranma tones), DarkStalkers (nope), King of Fighters (did happen, but again fan-made), Samurai Shodown (dito), Metal Rage (the Mekton Z crossover that never happened, though there is a fan-made mecha supplement) and Road Thrash (the combat racing sourcebook that also never happened. Man, I miss Road Rash :saddowns:).

Sure, there aren't nearly as many "official" sourcebooks as planned, but man, there's A LOT of unofficial stuff.

After a version history, a now defunct homepage link, a couple thanks and a disclaimer, the first chapter ends! Took up a bit more space than expected o_O

Oh well, next post then!

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Rohan Kishibe
Oct 29, 2011

Frankly, I don't like you
and I never have.

Tasoth posted:

Y'know, if they wanted to make one of those groups the mad killers, it should have been the weasels. Sure, cats are killers and most are pretty big, but their prey tends to be roughly on par with them in regards to size. A least weasel? They can bring down rabbits with are significantly bigger than them. It'd be like a lion climbing on top of an adult elephant and killing it by severing its spine. But the split between felidae and canidae makes some sense within that group as order Carnivora has a feliformes and caniformes supergrouping that divides carnivores into whether their phenotype shares more in common with cats or dogs. Still doesn't make half assing the reptiles acceptable or even forgetting something like goatmen or deer people.

Weasels are great antagonists to use in Mouse Guard. Your little group is a bunch of Mice who are like a mix between monster hunters, rangers and knights, and Weasels are the Mongol Horde except they are all four or five times your size and they will loving eat you.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Young Freud posted:

The big surprise out of this? No Vulpines. Where's an furry thing without foxes?

Actually, this is a really funny thing... About a year back I was looking for scientific articles about the correlation between being a furry and bestiality because it had come up in a discussion about whether-and-if-so-for-what-reasons furries were annoying, and I wanted harder numbers than various people's hearsay. (For the record, my search was not conclusive.) I came across this survey, which sheds some interesting light on the fursonas of furries. In particular, the most popular animals are "hybrid", "wolf", "fox", "dog", and "big cat", and "dragon", in descending order. The most popular hybrids are "Dog/Wolf", "Fox/Wolf", "Dragon/Wolf", "Cat/Fox", "Tiger/Wolf", "Dog/Fox"... you get the picture. Most furries seem not overly concerned with exactly what kind of animal they are; 71.4% of all wolves and 68.3% of all foxes have no species specified.

Looking at this survey, (which should not be taken as definitive, etc.), it's odd that:
  • Reptiles are playable, but rodents are not. Reptiles rank 13th, while rodents rank 10th; more people want to be ratmen and mousegirls than want to be snakemen and alligator-ladies.
  • As above, but with rabbits (rank 11)
  • Minks, martens, and stoats (unplayable mustilidae) are more popular than badgers (playable mustilidae)
  • Crocodiles, chameleons, and Komodo dragons (unplayable reptiles) are more popular than iguanas (playable reptiles)
  • Ravens are the most popular bird-persona, yet not playable. The second-most popular bird-persona is owls, which are unplayable by fiat.
  • Despite what you might believe, eagles and hawks are not that popular. Penguins are more popular than eagles, and bluejays, parrots, ducks, and falcons are more popular than hawks.
  • Snow leopards are more popular than cheetahs, but not playable. Cougars are not very popular at all actually, being less popular than panthers, lynxes, and leopards (also not playable)
  • Otters are way more popular than ferrets. The Mustilidae stereotype should clearly be about them being kind of lazy people who like water, not wackiness.

Purple XVI also totally forgot to tell us just how ridiculous the bonuses you get to different proficiencies are for the various species. Most of them are just ridiculously stereotypical, like Intimidate for "scary" predators and Deception for sneaky foxes, but sometimes they have only the weakest connection to any sensible reality. (Though to be "fair", Eclipse Phase was poo poo about this too in the Player's Guide.)
  • Gecko -> Medicine
  • Iguana -> Coercion
  • Weasel -> Operate¨
  • Skunk -> Express
  • Tiger -> Inspire

Also, the most hilarious thing: one species of bird-people is "bird", distinct from hawks, eagles, and crows. So you can play bird-hawk, bird-crow, bird-hawk. or bird-bird.

LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Jan 17, 2015

ascendance
Feb 19, 2013

Doresh posted:

So after claiming that SF2 invented the fighting game genre (I presume SF1 was a sim game or something), the text goes on to state that Thrash is a "book-and-dice" RPG about the kind of crazy martial arts as seen in anime and fighting games.
This is actually not an inaccurate claim. SF2 added the giant cast of characters which has since become a staple of the fighting game genre. In SF1, you had the choice of Ken and Ryu.

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib
SF2 was also the first competitive fighting game with combo moves (introduced by accident due to a bugcheck issue).

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

ascendance posted:

This is actually not an inaccurate claim. SF2 added the giant cast of characters which has since become a staple of the fighting game genre. In SF1, you had the choice of Ken and Ryu.

Street Fighter 1 is also a terrible game. Most fighters before Street Fighter 2 were awkward and stiff martial arts tournament sports games.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
How quickly we forget Yie Air Kung Fu

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

Kurieg posted:

How quickly we forget Yie Air Kung Fu

I did say most, YAKF was an exception. I'm pretty sure it was influential on Capcom too.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011
Was there ever a Mortal Kombat fan supplement or something because that seems like a weird blind spot.

MK159
Aug 26, 2008

Doresh posted:

In the world of Thrash, we apparently quote sentence fragments of anthropomorphic video game personifications.

It's kind of funny he writes it as a trailing off sentence fragment in the book, because the game itself flashes "VIOLENT FIGHTING TO COME AGAIN!" in giant bold white text on a solid black background as the very first part of the attract screen.

As for Thrash 2.0, it streamlines a lot of things, but still bogs down to agonizingly slow in combat and has some hilarious balance issues. It is trivially easy to make a character who only ever relies on one or two stats to do everything and has bumped those stats to the detriment of the others with no real penalty. Meanwhile a balanced out generalist is completely terrible and gets nothing for versatility. Maybe that would have been ironed out if it ever got out of beta?

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Young Freud posted:

I've actually joked about elephant people, because I've had a story idea where animals gain humanoid shapes, gait, and opposable thumbs, and how a furry society would develop: it would center around herbivores, with big mammals like elephants, rhinos, horses, and cattle being the leaders, since they would be the ones who would develop agriculture and thus civilization first. One of the first acts the herbivore civilization does when it gets organized is committing genocide the predator species, since their existence would be a continual threat against their own existence, and turning omnivorous species like wolves into second class citizens, less they might recidive into their carnivorous instincts.

Traveller did this. The K'Kree, one of the Major Races in the setting, as militant herbivores. There are a lot of limitations on a spacefaring species that's claustrophobic and herd-oriented, but you do NOT want them putting ground troops down on your planet if you eat anything that isn't obviously a plant.

Warlocktopus
Aug 19, 2006
Post Post-Modern Man
Oh my GOD Thrash. That takes me back to my early days on the internet. The idea of a homebrew RPG on the internet was so hopeful and shiny. We were so young.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
K'Kree are loving terrifying.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Actually, I just loving realized something. The actual start-of-book fluff mentions "aquatic races" and "herbivores" as some of the species created as Vectors, where the gently caress are they? Where are the cow people, the shark people and the manta people? The loving writers and crunch-designers of this book are so disconnected from each other that even Exalted starts looking coherent by comparison.

Also, with regards to "dragons" and the like, I suspect that we make those once we get into the "morphisms," where we take, say, a gator-guy and slap some wings and firebreath on him or something.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015
Can I be a dragon bird-bird :downs: ?!

ascendance posted:

This is actually not an inaccurate claim. SF2 added the giant cast of characters which has since become a staple of the fighting game genre. In SF1, you had the choice of Ken and Ryu.

True, but I would say that "The fighting game genre kinda sucked before SF2 showed them how it's done" is way more accurate than "There was nothing before SF2".

NutritiousSnack posted:

Was there ever a Mortal Kombat fan supplement or something because that seems like a weird blind spot.

Not to my knowledge. Seems Thrash primarily attracted fans of animu fighters (or anime in general). I did try to start a MK supplement, but my juveline past self got to less than a page before giving up on figuring out all the martial arts styles and the more exotic moves.

MK159 posted:

As for Thrash 2.0, it streamlines a lot of things, but still bogs down to agonizingly slow in combat and has some hilarious balance issues. It is trivially easy to make a character who only ever relies on one or two stats to do everything and has bumped those stats to the detriment of the others with no real penalty. Meanwhile a balanced out generalist is completely terrible and gets nothing for versatility. Maybe that would have been ironed out if it ever got out of beta?

I'd say things would've already looked much better if Thrash 2.0 didn't decide to go the SF:STG route of having you spend points on say "Kicks" and "Punches" separately, without actually penalizing you for ignoring one of them. This just amplified some of the problems presented in 1.8 (but I'm getting ahead of myself). I think this can be houseruled by just merging stuff together, though.

Doresh fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Jan 17, 2015

Pththya-lyi
Nov 8, 2009

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
For HSD I want you to build McGruff the Crime Dog, Agent of Spyglass. Let's treat this game with all the seriousness it deserves.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Hc Svnt Dracones
This post contains art of Mormon Charizard



Morphisms

So, in case everyone blocked it out, this setting has weird body shapes. I mean, weirder than being a cat or whatever, poo poo like "taurs." This is the chapter that has all of the weird deformities you can end up with, though you can bet that the amount actual treated as deformities with drawbacks are probably going to be minimal. We also can't just be Jeff Jenkins, Dog Detective Dude(Pththya, I want to point out that I made this comment before I saw your post, and only saw you when I previewed, so that's some weird loving hivemind), we have to pick a wacky physical trait. This is an RPG about being human, guys. Each deformity has a drawback, a perk and a "momentum trigger," i.e. if you do a thing in combat, it "triggers" your "momentum" and you get a momentum boost, which is some temporary advantage. Some are generic, some are just weird and meaningless.

quote:

You must pick a Morphism, but if you don’t want to have any of the anatomically bizarre ones, take note of the first option: Plantigrade/ Digitigrade. All this does is describe whether your character walks on feet that look somewhat human (with the heel on the ground) or on paw-like toes. Pick the one most suited to your mental image and your Morphism requirement has been met.

So anyway. Let's go through the list!

Plantigrade/Digitigrade: For some reason, having normal person/animal person legs just makes you better at fighting and gives you more proficiency points. I don't know why. This is just how the setting works.

Atypical Patterning: You look real wacky, refer to the below image just for how loving wacky you turn out. Looking like a GOFFYCK RAVER FURRY means you're camouflaged, no matter what your pattern is, as long as you're really acrobatic in fights, attacking enemies and then running away from them again. I'll also note that all of these weird deformities run with the whole "have a quote from each family of animal," despite them not being able to be stereotyped, and the ferret ones remain annoyingly fishmalky/hyperactive.



Hemivector: You look more human than most! Because humans are inferior to furries, you're more fragile, obviously, yet because humans are also sinister and deceitful, you become better at lying to people and talking them into things. Sneaky humans.

How did THAT get here?: Despite us being told about how the Vectors CLEANED UP THEIR GENES and MADE THEM MORE EFFICIENT, some weird mutation popped up in you anyway, and you get to mix and match animal traits. So you can be an alligator with feathery wings, a bird with fangs or something otherwise weird. It notes that these modifications are "non-functional," i.e. entirely cosmetic, and then a paragraph later notes that it just takes one brief doctor's visit and they become totally functional. Unless you actually do that, though, it's entirely a drawback that just makes you slower and, for some reason, it makes you a better wrestler/grappler in combat.


Mormon Charizard wants to tell you about Jesus

Hybrid: This finally explains a term I never really noticed much, earlier in the text, and hence skipped over. "Mutt-Reduction," which is a thing that means that while two given species can bang, and have kids, the kids won't look like a weird mix of the two, but instead purely inherits one parent's traits, appearance and family. Sometimes it fouls up, though, and the RACIAL PURITY of the Furry Space Future is despoiled, resulting in a Hybrid. It also means that anyone from either of your two parent species dislikes you, because RACIAL PURITY is good. The only advantage is that you get to pay for more "Gene Refreshment" boosts later on, whatever they are, I guess we'll learn. The "momentum" advantage for this one is the same as for the prior deformity, being "YOU ARE GOOD AT WRESTLING IF YOU PUNCH PEOPLE THREE TIMES IN A ROW."

Lateral: Remember those unfortunate furries that ended up with plain animal bodies because no one would do the merciful thing and abort them while they were in the types? This is them.

quote:

Being a tiny Gecko could be useful, but it also makes you rather vulnerable to boots. Lateralism affords the greatest advantage to disadvantage ratio of any of the Morphisms present here. Being able to slip through air ducts as a ferret or run at a cheetah’s true speed could be tremendously useful. But at the same time, you don’t have fingers or thumbs and you don’t stand upright. Consider your day to day tasks, and how many of them would be affected by even those simple changes.

Clearly the best use for this deformity would be to fluff your character as a pack of tiny geckos in a trenchcoat or suit who pretend to be a normal animal person. But I doubt the game would let you do anything quite that fun.

quote:

It’s worth noting, for the sake of roleplay and general association, that Laterals wear clothing. Despite the relative inconvenience of having to wiggle into pants, Laterals are Vectors: intelligent, integrated, contributing members of society who have been present since the earliest days of their existence. As such they are subject to the same rules of decency: you don’t wander around nude on the street. Laterals rarely begrudge it; they have as many feelings of modesty and as much desire to decorate themselves appealingly as any other person does. It’s a bit more difficult to get dressed without hands, but no one said having a rare morphism was easy. In most casual situations the illusion of decency is enough: a jacket, shirt, something to cover the majority of the body. Other people can then exercise the restraint of not looking where they shouldn’t. If nothing else, it keeps them from being confused for wild animals.

(Note that one of their bonuses is actually that they can be confused for wild animals, so, say goodbye to that minor bonus if you don't want people looking at your balls all day)

Good luck, you get to look like one of those pitiful animals whose owners make them wear pants, a shirt and some sort of retarded hat. Who even came up with this miserable loving idea? Also, I note that snake-species furries HAVE to take this. I guess this means that no snakes, first off, have any limbs at all, and secondly, that most of them are loving tiny. Unless you're a goddamn boa constrictor or something, what are you even gonna do? All you really CAN do is coil up on a chair all day and watch TV. At least a lateral, say, tiger, would have some paws to bop stuff, or a lateral bird would have a beak and claws to maneuver things around.

Aside from whatever advantages you might get, whatever minimal ones they might be, from your choice of animal, your only real advantages are in combat(socially and skill-monkey-wise you get completely shafted with massive penalties for just about anything more complex than pushing a button or saying hi), where you don't provoke HSD's version of Attacks of Opportunity and have a constant cover bonus due to odd size and shape. So you're great at fighting! With a body that can't wear most armor. And paws(or claws, if any), that can't wield most weapons. And. Well, I guess maybe we can glue a sword to your head.


This tiger looks so sad that someone made it wear a dress.

Micro-ism: You're tiny. Or, at least as tiny as your originator species was. I guess this is a better choice for Swarm Of Geckos Man than actual Lateralism, which just makes that modifier even more pointless. Their main advantage is, obviously, being absolute dodge monsters in combat, and the fact that they can still wield weapons(though they assume them as being some size categories larger), so they're basically Laterals except better, they even get the same permanent cover bonus on TOP of more dodge bonuses. This deformity is an excellent chance to highlight how loving annoying the Mustelidae quotes for all of them are, though.

quote:

Mustelidae: YOU’RE ADAWWWARABUUUUU!

Imagine that sort of poo poo for every single "morphism."

Note, that while Micro-ism applies hard maximums to some physical stats, lateralism does not, and while lateralism allows, even outside of the GM fiat usually required for multiple morphisms, and even suggests, combining with micro-ism, it's not required. So technically you can be a tiny Lateral animal with absurdly maxed physical stats. Play a loving sparrow and min/max your way to one-shotting people with one peck of your beak. I wonder if the game will let us do that.



Taurism: This is the only way for snakes to have limbs(arms only, though, no legs), which also buffs them up to normal human size, meaning that you can't be a tiny snake with a pair of beefy arms, like a horrible mutant Trogdor. Avians get another special variant of this, in that it just detaches their wings from their arms, actually making them angel-shaped, and explaining why they might be less poo poo at flying than other avians... though I'm not sure whether that would actually be the result. I mean, it actually seems like a way more awkward location for the wings with regards to actual flight(though perhaps better for dramatic posing, angels can look pretty cool).

One of their combat advantages is that you can attach a machinegun to their back and use them as a "stable firing platform." That's actually a reasonably entertaining idea. Aside from that, all they're good at is rushing enemies and shoving them around, which I guess is handy, assuming that this game has non-poo poo grappling rules. But what are the odds of that?


Can't be a furry RPG without fetishbait. Why is her midriff even exposed? Can't she afford clothes that fit?



Twin-Tailed:

quote:

Canidae: Alright, alright, I get it, you were young, you thought the kitsune look was hot, we’ve all been there, it’s time to get it removed. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s natural? Are...are you doing anything tonight?

Not, and I repeat, not, a furry fetish RPG, guys. Get it straight. But aside from helping someone at the game table get their rocks off, all it does is let you slap people around with your tail better in combat, and make you a mild pariah in social interaction.

With that out of the way, though, we can start to actually touch the system! Because now we're gonna do the things that actually affect our dice and things!

Actual character creation!


Beats the character sheet from Eoris, at least

So, anyway, note the Mind/Body/Community/Economy columns. We assign dice to those, we've got a D12, two D10's and a D8. For everything we roll using one of those columns, we use that die, and it's about rolling high, so obviously we've got one good, two average and one poor category. If we assume we put a D12 in Body, and need to roll to do something STRONG, and we've got five dice in STRENGTH, we roll 5D12, and we need an 8 or better on any one of those for a success. I've heard of worse systems. Most modifiers add or subtract dice, and specialties(called "proficiencies") add static modifiers to every die in the pool. So if we had a proficiency called BEING REAL STRONG, we'd be rolling 5x1d12+1, hoping one or more of them would be an 8 or better. If something is trying to do something to us, we roll a "save" instead, which is a single die(if we somehow use our Body to make a save, then a D12), plus one of our "defenses," which then has to beat whatever the difficulty of the incoming attack is. This is my understanding of the system so far.

And... it's actually not a bad system as such, I've certainly seen worse. Of course, it takes more than the core mechanic, we also have to assume that none of the numbers we get to use are completely unbalanced.

It's also not just aesthetics that the four columns are split into two blocks. We've got eight dots to assign to one block, and six for the other. Everything has one free dot to start with, we get another free dot from our choice of Family, and everything maxes out at three on chargen. Crunching a few numbers, this comes out to roughly ~70% chance of success for 3d12, ~65% for 3d10 and ~35% for 3d8, assuming no bonuses from proficiency, circumstance, morphism, etc. and that it's a totally standard out-of-combat roll. This, again, actually seems pretty fair. We can have a decent number of 3d12 and 3d10 skills to roll, and we start out with a reasonable chance of success, so we're not going to be failing at everything right out of the gate.

My main issue with the next part is the terrible terminology and some overlap.

Mind posted:

Mind:Dexterity represents your mind’s ability to wrap itself around new ideas and come up with creative ways to approach a situation.

...

Mind:Resilience represents your ability to bounce back from or resist mental trauma.

...

Mind:Acuity represents your ability to perceive patterns. In everything.

...

Mind:Strength represents your intelligence, in terms of sheer horsepower. It is how well you cogitate, how quickly you can compute a solution to a problem, or how much knowledge you can absorb and retain.

...

Mind:Presence represents your spiritual wholeness of being. A little abstract, but it plays a role in your ability to resist supernatural attack, operate supernatural equipment, and in some cases, exert your willpower over others.

For instance, Mind:Dexterity and Mind:Strength... how do I decide whether a situation needs RAW THINKING or CREATIVITY? Mind:Acuity feels like it should just have been called "perception," and Mind:Presence like it should just have been called "charisma" or something just a bit more traditional, though I appreciate the urge to try and stuff everything into a neat scheme, it doesn't always work out well.

Body posted:

Body:Dexterity represents your physical ability to manipulate small or complex tools, move, stretch, or contort.

...

Body:Resilience represents your ability to bounce back from or resist physical trauma.

...

Body:Acuity represents how acute your body’s sensory organs are. How well you see, how well you hear, how well you smell and what information you might pick up from your various senses.

...

Body:Strength represents the physical strength of your body. It also represents your endurance.

...

Body:Presence represents how wholly you embody the paragon of your being. Don’t confuse this for “beauty,” as it has nothing to do with whether or not you’re a pretty person.

A few minor oddities here, Body and Mind:Acuity could both overlap at points, it seems odd that Body:Strength is for Endurance, when there's a Body:Resilience right there, and I'm really not sure that any game needs more than one "Charisma"-esque stat. Though I do appreciate that they point out that Body:Presence can also be used for stealth, so stealth isn't purely a function of being dexterous(which often ends up being a god stat in a lot of skill-based RPG's), but also a function of knowing how to look unobtrusive. But seeing as how Body:Presence is entirely about LOOKING EXCEPTIONAL, it seems odd to put it in there, it would seem to fit better with Mind:Presence, in that it would seem to be an understanding of how your appearance works and how to modify it... if that makes any sense, I've been looking at this thing on and off for like, over an hour now, and it's probably doing bad things to my SAN score.

Community posted:

Community:Dexterity represents your ability to move throughout different communities without committing social mistakes.

...

Community:Resilience represents your ability to recover gracefully from failings in your reputation, or typecasting caused by your breed, career or morphism.

...

Community:Acuity represents your ability to pick up on problems, events or shifts in the local community simply by being there.

...

Community:Strength represents your reputation. It doesn’t necessarily make it a GOOD reputation, it’s just how widely your name is known in your community.

...

Community:Presence represents your influence throughout the communities of the galaxy. The higher the rating, the more fingers you have in other people’s pies.

This whole thing just gives me unpleasant flashbacks to Exalted and its desire to basically try and make "social combat" function like physical combat, right down to initiative rolls, but with arguments instead of swords. I repeat that I really think this is way too many kinds of charisma, and that a third kind of perception that only works on people, seems like a step too far in that category, too. You can already use Mind:Acuity to note if something's up just by people-watching, just look for patterns. And Body:Acuity should let you help spot anything that stands out or that people try to hide, simply by being eagle-eyed, so Community:Acuity seems to exist just to get shafted.

Economy posted:

This Stat governs many of the behaviors of your Ledger, which is one of the primary means characters use to advance their wealth and influence in HSD.

Economy:Dexterity represents the diversity of your Ledger. It helps keep your finances safe from market fluctuations and makes you more appealing to corps looking to hire someone with good market presence. In the balance process, this lets you re-roll the dice used to determine your credit value for the day.

...

Economy:Resilience represents the ability of your ledger to recover from outside attack.

...

Economy:Acuity represents your ledger’s ability to pick up on new opportunities and invest in your absence.

...

Economy:Strength represents the strength of your investments, and how much they pay. It also contributes to a corp’s willingness to pay you more for a contract, and your ability to demand more money for a sale.

...

Economy:Presence represents your physical footprint on the landscape of the corp market. You can use this Trait to “throw your money around,” which can get you admission to events or locations only interested in dealing with a certain class of individual.

I had a few gripes with the other three categories, but they were largely okay, perhaps with a few adjustments here and there, but this one is loving poo poo. Firstly, how can your ledger even be different from anyone else's? They're all running on the same, ancient calculations and software, that no one is allowed to edit and no one can hack. So everyone should just have flat 1's(defined as "normal") here. Secondly, outside attack? How is anyone even going to attack your ledger? It's unhackable, as we're told, and since everyone's investments are automated, how would anyone even attack yours, specifically? And hell, if ledgers CAN be attacked, sabotaged and people's finances actually damaged, doesn't that mean that, despite all we're told, there probably are, poor, suffering furries that can't afford all the necessities of the day?

And wait, "in my absence"? So ledgers AREN'T automated, after all, but actually require furry intervention to function? And if people can intervene, and hence potentially gently caress up, again, doesn't that mean that there are probably plenty of furries that DON'T have what they need, and the whole concept of the ledger as automated, behind-the-scenes welfare doesn't work? Colour me loving amazed.

As for the Strength and Presence, options, here, I mean, come on, aren't they basically Mind:Presence and Community:Presence? But with a modifier called "filthy loving rich" for Economy:Presence? The existence of this entire column is a terrible loving idea. Go home and revise your homework, furry designers. They even admit that this whole column, on the whole, gets less checks and has less game impact than the others, so can't players just loving dump this one hardcore down to its d8's and survive by stealing gear off dead enemies or starting the game by robbing some stores and whatever, since they can min/max themselves into unassailable superthieves/adventurers who now just need gear?

Now, what I will congratulate the devs on, even if they bungled it a bit, is the way they did their "specializing." It's a better version of White Wolf's Physical/Social/Mental split, in that even if you go Body, you've got some degree of social interaction to fall back on, if you go Mind, you've got something willpower-esque to fall back on. Unfortunately with the huge, missed thing that there's no combat whatsoever outside of Body, and nothing about knowing and thinking outside of Mind. The attempt at mixed categories, a sort of "archetypes," if you will, was a decent idea. Maybe if it had been something like... Savage/Civilized/Noble instead... Savage has RAW PHYSICAL CHARISMA, savage weapons(melee, brawling, etc), knows about nature, survival, that sort of thing. Civilized knows society, understands books, uses firearms, makes reasoned arguments for social interaction. Noble gets along socially by dressing in a way that impresses people(he has the money for shitloads of diamonds, after all, why not make a hat out of them?), has fancy, flashy weaponry, and uses his social connections as his form of "charisma."

But that's basically just designing a game from scratch, rather than pointing out how they could have not hosed up, so, eh.

At any rate, what I'd like to do at this point would be to read through the rest of the chargen, make fun of what needs making fun of for being stupid or poor design(and praise any of the, unlikely, gems to be found), then try and see how hard I can break the system. So, what sort of breaking should I aim for? Combat monsters? Invisible stealth guy? Something completely absurd like a five-inch gecko that Fist of the North Star's his enemies? Someone who breaks the game with money?

Rohan Kishibe
Oct 29, 2011

Frankly, I don't like you
and I never have.

PurpleXVI posted:

Someone who breaks the game with money?

Make Scrooge McDuck!

And hell, make Darwing Duck or Gizmo Duck too while you are at it.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

Prison Warden posted:

Make Scrooge McDuck!

And hell, make Darwing Duck or Gizmo Duck too while you are at it.

This, and also FoTNS gecko. I want to see how much stopping power you can pack into one of those.

hectorgrey
Oct 14, 2011

Prison Warden posted:

Make Scrooge McDuck!

Seconded. Something entertaining needs to come from this terrible, terrible game...

Erebro
Apr 28, 2013

hectorgrey posted:

Seconded. Something entertaining needs to come from this terrible, terrible game...

I'll add a third vote to that.

Though I wonder how creeped out he'd be by the libertarian wank ("Utopia? Freedom for all? Ultimate capitalism? And you don't need to abandon friends to get it? ...Is this entire world trying to sell me something?").

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Make a Digitigrade Tauric Hybrid Wolf-Dragon with Atypical Patterning and 32 tails just because I want to see what happens when you hurl absolutely everything at the system to see what sticks.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Kurieg posted:

Make a Digitigrade Tauric Hybrid Wolf-Dragon with Atypical Patterning and 32 tails just because I want to see what happens when you hurl absolutely everything at the system to see what sticks.

I'll second crafting some sort of weird furry sparkle dog abomination and make then as Mary sue-ish as possible.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Well, may as well make an entire party, then. Scrooge McDuck, Master of Money, Luchadore Gecko, half a foot high but still able to wreck you with a folding chair, and Darkblood Ravenfeather Whytewolf xXxSephirothxXx, the Chosen One. How's that sound?

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

PurpleXVI posted:

Well, may as well make an entire party, then. Scrooge McDuck, Master of Money, Luchadore Gecko, half a foot high but still able to wreck you with a folding chair, and Darkblood Ravenfeather Whytewolf xXxSephirothxXx, the Chosen One. How's that sound?

Sounds splendid. Though I would personally lean towards young Scrooge McDuck from his glory days at Klondike. If anyone can "beat" Slenderowl Earth, it's him. Oh, and his pal Kenshigecko.

And WTF is up with these Ledgers? The were already weird as background fluff, but now they're part of your stats?!

Thrash: Anime and Fighting Game Martial Arts RPG


Chapter 2: The Martial Arts

quote:

"Once there was a man who tried to make his skill ultimate. Because of that, it was no wonder he was involved in the troubles."
-- Samurai Shodown II
Knitting is serious business

This is a lot like that early chapter in SF:STG were the setting was drawn in broad strokes. Here, it's even broader because the game doesn't have a default setting. I'll just summarize it for you as it's not too interesting.

Realism and Lack Thereof: The game is not an "accurate" simulation of fighting games, but is intended to be a bit more realistic, like an anime adaption of a fighting game. So no spamming Hadokens all day, or blocking guns and swords with your arm (except when you buy block maneuvers that do allow just that).

The World: Just a reminder how most fighting games are set in the modern day (because you don't have to waste time on stuff like worldbuilding).

Goals: Nobody here learns martial arts for self-defense or other lame things. It's all about revenge, cash and other cool stuff.

Styles: Something about external/hard and internal/soft martial arts styles. Not that this has much of an effect in-game.

Honor: The same stuff you read in SF:STG about how honor is super important for most martial artists. Think of fighting tournaments as being Ned Stark conventions.

The Power of Chi: The main excuse for all those Hadokens and Sonic Booms. Like its predecessor, it separates chi into good/positive, and bad/negative chi. And unlike its predecessor, it actually has rules for having strong ties to either side of the chi.

Tournaments: Tournaments make for an easy excuse to have people beat the crap out of each other, which is why most fighting games revolve around one. They can range from 1-on-1 battles, oldschool King of Fighers elimination matches, tag team matches or all-out brawls. Most tournaments tend to have a problem with weapons (especially firearms). Funny how they never have problems with people throwing energy blasts at each other, or covering their body in fire. There's also the typical stuff about illegal gambling, managers fans, prizes, and so on.

Tournament Match Rules: Apart from reminding us that tournaments are generally dicks to normal people just trying to fend off the scary Hadoken-slingers and mutants with a stick, this little sections talks about the typical ways a match can end. Apart from the typical candidates of the time running out or one opponent getting knocked out, a figher can also just give up, which would make for a lulzy feature in an actual fighting game.

Teams: This is a roleplaying game, so of course the characters will usually form a team.

Women and the Martial Arts: Ugly chicks don't exist in the fighting game world. You're either doki doki kawaii desu ka, a hot waifu, or both. At least you're not required to run around like Mai.

Retirement: Boring stuff about what fighters tend to do after their career, using Terry Bogart as an example - because it's not like he's still appearing in every bloody King of Fighters game.

Weird Powers: Fighting games tend to include a lot of very strange poo-poo, like mutations, cybernetics and supernatural powers. All which is apparently more legal than using a bloody stick. For some reason, these things are only covered in an appendix at the end of the book, instead of being closer to the chargen chapter like everything else.

And with that the book fluidly moves on to the next chapter - by which I mean that the formatting does not separate the right column into chapter 2 and 3. Nice.



I will wait with making an example character till I covered the various styles available, which is Chapter 4. Suggestions are welcome, though I already have plans for a character exploiting the easiest trick in the book.

Doresh fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Jan 17, 2015

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

PurpleXVI posted:

Micro-ism: You're tiny.

You're also more kink-bait, thanks to the... noticeable micro/macro subset of the furry community.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Bieeardo posted:

You're also more kink-bait, thanks to the... noticeable micro/macro subset of the furry community.

Please don't make us talk about that. Just ugh. :gonk:

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I was thinking more about that bizarre "Don't let the species mix" racism. And the more I do the less sense it makes. Either you're all human or none of you are. The fact is that you *can* interbreed, and don't seem to have any issues with say, a wolf/cat pairing. But if a Catdog is born then you shun the child and the parents and the parents are expected to ostracize the child as well? You're a post scarcity society where you can 3d print up a city and go to a doctor to have your dragony bits 'turned on', what's the difference between little william wolf natively having stripes and retractable claws vs them being a body mod and fur tattoo after the fact?

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Kurieg posted:

I was thinking more about that bizarre "Don't let the species mix" racism. And the more I do the less sense it makes. Either you're all human or none of you are. The fact is that you *can* interbreed, and don't seem to have any issues with say, a wolf/cat pairing. But if a Catdog is born then you shun the child and the parents and the parents are expected to ostracize the child as well? You're a post scarcity society where you can 3d print up a city and go to a doctor to have your dragony bits 'turned on', what's the difference between little william wolf natively having stripes and retractable claws vs them being a body mod and fur tattoo after the fact?

Also being some sort of sparkletaur with multiple tails or whatever is perfectly fine and might even get you hit on by NPCs, but miscegenation? Get the gently caress out with that poo poo you deviant.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015
This is like an even dumber version of the X-Men paradox, were being born with a genetic mutation that activates around puberty makes you a freakish sub-human that will never be accepted by society (at least not for long), but getting a genetic mutation from an outside source makes you a friendly neighbourhood hero.

Heck, the latter is probably scarier. If it can happen to one random bloke, it can happen to anyone.

Doresh fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jan 17, 2015

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Humbug Scoolbus posted:

K'Kree are loving terrifying.

I'm really hoping we get to do the Fleet Book with K'Kree in them. Writing the fiction for them should be a lot of fun.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Doresh posted:

This is like an even dumber version of the X-Men paradox, were being born with a genetic mutation that activates around puberty makes you a freakish sub-human that will never be accepted by society (at least not for long), but getting a genetic mutation from an outside source makes you a friendly neighbourhood hero.

Heck, the latter is probably scarier. If it can happen to one random bloke, it can happen to anyone.

Yeah, it's why I'd love for Marvel to go back a redo the motivations of the mutant haters like Donald Pierce. The question isn't about evolution, the question is really unwanted evolution, with guys like Pierce trying to lead a humanity into transhumanist paradise for the rich and wealthy and being born with a mutation really means "you're too poor to get it fixed or get something better".

Libertad!
Oct 30, 2013

You can have the last word, but I'll have the last laugh!
I don't know if it's been addressed, but watching Hc Sivint Draconis' Kickstarter page the author described how the Vectors have no culture of their own and have the worst nightmare a society can get: "A BLANK SLATE!"

And yet it's been 700 years since they were created. This is plenty of time for just about any society to create its own culture. Hell, in Eclipse Phase it's only been 10 years since the Fall, and that massively changed the culture of the solar system!

Sixto Lezcano
Jul 11, 2007



There are a poo poo-ton of cultures in our world that have been around for less time than that. Maybe when you make someone into a furry they lose their creativity and their ability to innovate and everyone just sits around waiting for someone to hand them Culture.
Or maybe their culture is constantly destroying itself in an ouroboros of social justice warfare and problematic terms.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

Libertad! posted:

I don't know if it's been addressed, but watching Hc Sivint Draconis' Kickstarter page the author described how the Vectors have no culture of their own and have the worst nightmare a society can get: "A BLANK SLATE!"

And yet it's been 700 years since they were created. This is plenty of time for just about any society to create its own culture. Hell, in Eclipse Phase it's only been 10 years since the Fall, and that massively changed the culture of the solar system!

Once again, this is the entire goddamn point of Albedo, which is that they have founded a culture in the last couple hundred years and some of the cultures they founded are batshit insane murder rabbits. Like, people do not stay in cultureless voids for centuries! They interact and come up with stuff, sometimes it's smart, sometimes it's dumb, sometimes it's goddamn Space Woundwort.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Yeah, so far not a single thing that's been brought up really deals with any sort of existential crisis. The furries apparently have no religions, don't really care much that the humans all vanished, just casually founded a megacorporation to invent them new sports when they(for some reason) decided human sports wouldn't work on Mars, etc.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

It wouldn't surprise me if the 'no miscegenation' thing comes because the author is a believer in the 'Human Biodiversity Movement' or some other right wing claptrap to go with all the other right wing claptrap.

Tasoth
Dec 13, 2011
Hot poo poo, are furries silly about those morphisms. Being a digitigrade would loving suck as a biped. Imagine walking in stiletto heels every moment of your life. I also question how being small for lateralism/microism doesn't directly affect the intelligence of the characters. Although, if laterlism meant you were a significantly larger, but atavistic, version of the furry family, that be loving neat. John 'Sticky' Rourke, PI solving crimes as a labrador sized gecko in hat and coat would be fun.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

quote:

Community:Presence represents your influence throughout the communities of the galaxy. The higher the rating, the more fingers you have in other people’s pies.

Think we all missed this part: this is the first mention of the furries going extrasolar. In the stats.

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PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Mors Rattus posted:

Think we all missed this part: this is the first mention of the furries going extrasolar. In the stats.

To be fair, considering it's this loving book, someone on the writing team might just not know that a solar system isn't a galaxy. I think that's more likely but... you know, I don't, I don't loving know. gently caress this book.

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