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They knew exactly who they were selling to. (Furries. It's furries.)
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Jan 27, 2015 11:06
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He's also back on board to work on Mage20, IIRC. Did he ever actually release Powerchords? Because last I heard it was still down as "Only RPG kickstarter delayed longer than Far West"
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Jan 27, 2015 12:45
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Wasn't Changing Breeds the one with the full-page picture of the enormously muscular, naked satyr guy with a powder puff for a groin? ...which the artist, with much bitching about the Puritanical company that commissioned it, later put up on DeviantArt with an enormous wang?
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Jan 27, 2015 13:24
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Bieeardo posted:Wasn't Changing Breeds the one with the full-page picture of the enormously muscular, naked satyr guy with a powder puff for a groin? Yes. It was. BTW, I found out one of my nightclub friends dated Raven C.S. McCracken. I already knew about their relationship from Facebook, but yeah, apparently she knew him from the club scene up in Seattle. Apparently, she told me that his personal politics are kinda super-Libertarian, with him bitching about immigrants on his FB.
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Jan 27, 2015 13:57
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"An error of Koreshian proportions" is a phrase I really need to find an opportunity to drop. That whole sidebar is hilarious...and hilariously unprofessional.
Platonicsolid fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 14:45
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Around the time McCracken was running the Kickstarter to revive and revise Synnibarr, there was a scuffle because he posted some crazy rant about a woman he knew from a bar, who was attacked by her crazed, gun-wielding ex-boyfriend. McCracken somehow blamed the woman for putting the lives of everyone in the bar in danger, because she had lied to the ex about something. It doesn't surprise me that he's a wingnut sort-of right-winger. He's also a man in his forties who looks like he does. I wish I could find the issue of InQuest that contains his letter to the editor, a scathing reply to Synnibarr appearing in their "Worst RPGs ever" article. (I remember Immortal: the Invisible War and Aftermath! were also included.) Mainly he bragged about his martial arts skills.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:07
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Halloween Jack posted:Around the time McCracken was running the Kickstarter to revive and revise Synnibarr, there was a scuffle because he posted some crazy rant about a woman he knew from a bar, who was attacked by her crazed, gun-wielding ex-boyfriend. McCracken somehow blamed the woman for putting the lives of everyone in the bar in danger, because she had lied to the ex about something. It doesn't surprise me that he's a wingnut sort-of right-winger. He's also a man in his forties who looks like he does. It was multiple rants; he bragged that the new Synnibar system would correctly model the attack, and that he was going to write a novel about the incident.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:22
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The problem with the oWoD-nWoD transition is that they basically had to prune their fanbase, and while they did lose quite a few normal fans in the process they got rid of the crazies. There was a not-insignificant number of people who thought that Mage was actually a real and true documentary of the way the world actually worked. And that consensual reality was a real thing that the man was forcing on you. There were people who thought that Werewolf was real and that Gaia the earth mother actually existed and the only reason the world wasn't a glorious wonderous paradise was because of the evil patriarchy and that White Wolf was doing her work. By comparison Vampire was relatively sane, mostly because the Vampire subculture already existed to kind of codify that mindset. I know of at least one person who was banned from their forums for making death threats against White Wolf for cancelling oWoD and not including the Sons of Ether in nWoD. That is basically his only complaint and he sees it as a deep, personal betrayal. When the second Black Wednesday happened his response was "Good, I hope their children starve and the survivors learn to give their fans what they deserve." unseenlibrarian posted:He's also back on board to work on Mage20, IIRC. He's still one of the most prolific mage writers and the only person who worked on all of the Sorcerer's Crusade books, they'd be cribbing heavily from his work anyway. As long as they don't let him work alone and have a line editor read his work things should hopefully be okay.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:03
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Alien Rope Burn posted:What I don't get is that so many furry RPGs are so... drat... serious. I mean, Furry Pirates, Ironclaw, Albedo, and Hc Svnt Dracones are certainly of wildly varying quality, but there's not much room to play Disney's Robin Hood or anything that's even slightly "funny animal". I have to wonder if this is just a general tendency of nerd-dom to try and drag anything they loved from their youth into "maturity" or something specific to furs I'm just not aware of.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:16
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I can't be the only one here who saw Rock and Rule.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:40
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Halloween Jack posted:I can't be the only one here who saw Rock and Rule. Thanks, now I have "Send Love Through" stuck in my head.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:46
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My name is Mok, now thanks a lot.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:48
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Halloween Jack posted:I can't be the only one here who saw Rock and Rule. I think I watched that at school when I was still in single digits. Nelvana's weird art style was a staple of my childhood.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:12
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It played on TV when I was 6, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I tried to tell my friends about it and they didn't believe it existed and said it was stupid. Don't have friends, kids. Friends are terrible.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:26
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unseenlibrarian posted:Did he ever actually release Powerchords? Because last I heard it was still down as "Only RPG kickstarter delayed longer than Far West" I did some research on this for you, No. He's apparently still working on the introduction as of April of last year, and he's now been tapped for Mage 20. It's.. well.. it's Brucato writing quote:If blues is the Devil’s music, then its offspring – jazz, country, soul and rock – are its four horsemen. Thundering across electric highways, these fertile musicologies plunder everything they find.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:42
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Kurieg posted:I did some research on this for you, No. He's apparently still working on the introduction as of April of last year, and he's now been tapped for Mage 20. Some of it is really good, if a bit over the top, but he's definitely the type that needs an editor to keep him in check. I also think he might subscribe to some of the weirder views of reality that Grant Morrisson and Alan Moore might have.
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Jan 27, 2015 23:21
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The difference being that both Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are, at least some of the time, better writers than Satyros Phil Brucato, and also don't (to the best of my knowledge) write books about how rad it is to gently caress dogs.
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Jan 27, 2015 23:48
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Man, now I really want a tabletop game that uses Brutal Legend's Premise
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Jan 28, 2015 00:12
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Kurieg posted:I did some research on this for you, No. He's apparently still working on the introduction as of April of last year, and he's now been tapped for Mage 20. This is my poo poo - anything that lets you use music as magical/physical power just makes sense to me, like Wild Zero or something. It was pretty easy to do that in oMage though, from a Dreamspeaker bluesman to a Son of Ether with a lightning-shooting guitar. Are there any other games that support that? I remember a cool glam rock game. And oMage was more Morrison. The Invisibles reads like a Mage campaign half the time, and even talks about paradigms and consensus reality. I'm not sure who cribbed from who, but Morrison's PopMagic fits oMage. Alan Moore is pretty much straight Hermetic and his magical views as explicated in things like Promethea are really traditional Crowley/Kabbalah. The magical war between the two of them would make a great Mage or Unknown Armies campaign. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 01:10
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Count Chocula posted:This is my poo poo - anything that lets you use music as magical/physical power just makes sense to me, like Wild Zero or something... Guitar Wolf! 
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Jan 28, 2015 02:07
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Count Chocula posted:This is my poo poo - anything that lets you use music as magical/physical power just makes sense to me, like Wild Zero or something. It was pretty easy to do that in oMage though, from a Dreamspeaker bluesman to a Son of Ether with a lightning-shooting guitar. Are there any other games that support that? I remember a cool glam rock game. You're probably thinking of Starchildren: Velvet generation: http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=363
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Jan 28, 2015 12:09
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CommissarMega posted:Maybe it's because stuff like Toon already exists? I don't know, I'm just happy Ironclaw has turned out well. Seriously, outside the furry trappings, it's a good fantasy-Renaissance game. I'm more talking Talespin than Looney Tunes, which is all Toon really does. (Also Toon is over two decades old and kind of busted, sadly, even for what it is.) Mind, Albedo and Ironclaw are fine. It's just weird that there are a fair number of furry games and yet that particular genre of animal antics is essentially entirely unmined.
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Jan 28, 2015 12:19
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm more talking Talespin than Looney Tunes, which is all Toon really does. (Also Toon is over two decades old and kind of busted, sadly, even for what it is.) Mind, Albedo and Ironclaw are fine. It's just weird that there are a fair number of furry games and yet that particular genre of animal antics is essentially entirely unmined. Fans have tried. Here's the stats for Baloo in the Star Wars D6 engine: BALOO Height: 6'2" Sex: Male Age: 30+ DEXTERITY 3D Brawling parry 7D+1, dodge 5D, firearms 4D+1, grenade 5D+2, melee combat 4D, melee parry 4D+1, pickpocket 4D KNOWLEDGE 2D Aircraft 8D, bureaucracy 3D+2, business 4D, cultures 4D, intimidation 4D, languages 3D+1, locations 6D, streetwise 5D, survival 4D+1, value 5D MECHANICAL 3D+1 Aircraft piloting 8D, aircraft piloting: Conwing L-16: 10D, beast riding 4D, communications 4D, navigation 6D, rocket pack operation 3D+2, sea vessels 4D PERCEPTION 3D Bargain 7D+1, con 6D+2, gambling 5D+1, hide 5D, search 6D, sneak 5D+2 STRENGTH 3D+2 Brawling 7D+2, climb/jumping 4D, lifting 7D, stamina 6D, swimming 6D TECHNICAL 3D Aircraft repair 5D, demolitions 5D+2, first aid 4D, mechanical build/repair 5D, security: combination locks 6D+2 http://www.animationsource.org/tssourcepage/ It's been a while since I read the WEG Star Wars but it seems like they gave him some ludicrously good rolls there.
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Jan 28, 2015 16:21
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Being fair, if they're writing him up as an NPC for WEG Star Wars they're just being true to the books because even Luke Skywalker at the start of the trilogy had numbers higher than any starting PC.
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Jan 28, 2015 16:29
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16 years of Profession: poo poo farmer gives you lots of XP.
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Jan 28, 2015 16:41
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Kurieg posted:16 years of Profession: poo poo farmer gives you lots of XP. Please, Luke was a piss farmer. Where do you think they get the moister from.
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Jan 28, 2015 17:14
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 Breachworld Part 1: Overview That picture is the cover of the Breachworld book, and it pretty well encapsulates everything that the game promises: monsters, magic and science fiction thrown together in a single setting. A more cynical or straightforward person would describe it as Rifts and nothing more. Someone in the Kickstarter thread requested a F&F review of this game. In short, Breachworld is a pared down pastiche of Rifts that uses the Micro D6 engine. I think I backed the game because there was a big quote on the KS page by Kevin Siembieda saying positive things about the author. For someone as notorious as Siembieda to praise the author of a project so obviously similar to Rifts caught my attention. That, and the fact that a version of Rifts with sensible mechanics is something that every Rifts player in the past 20 years has been gunning for. I probably figured throwing in $30 on the odds it lived up to the possibility was a decent bet. I apologize up front but a lot of this review will be comparing the game to Rifts. There’s just no getting around it. Breachworld was put up on Kickstarter last year by Jason Richards, who I have come to find out was actually a former (and possibly current) freelancer for Palladium. The ‘current’ part, if accurate, probably explains the nice comments from Siembieda. Richards is listed as having written some Chaos Earth stuff, some of the later Rifts world books, and was one of the long term editors of The Rifter. I’d almost call this game his own Rifts Heartbreaker, but it doesn’t quite fit the definition since the author is established in the industry and seems to have a decent grasp of RPG trends. Like a lot of people who started out gaming in the early 1990s, I played a fair amount of Rifts until maybe 1999 or 2000. I still have good memories of playing even if the game I played only had a passing resemblance to the game as written. Palladium’s policy of cracking down on conversions seems to have left a strange vacuum where you would expect to find dozens of conversions to all sorts of systems. Some do exist, but they are few and far between. In interviews the author seems aware of how similar his project is to Rifts. He maintains that there are two distinct differences: that his game is intended for smaller scale stories and that he has included a distinct goal for the players to achieve. The first difference is questionable to me. If we compared this game to the Rifts corebook alone, you’d probably find a similar scale. Both are mostly at the human level and the actions of kingdoms are useful only as a backdrop. As Rifts developed, the scale grew as the power creeped until it became the monster you find today. I suspect if Breachworld continues to develop, the same problems could occur without careful maintenance of the line. The second difference is a bit more concrete. It appears your characters are intended to crusade against the breaches using a new technology that has been developed to close them. I’d be curious to see how many people actually stick to the plan, though. Part of the appeal of a gonzo post apocalyptic setting is the sheer freedom of possibility. In the couple of times I played Gamma World, we tended to get caught in things tangential to the plot the GM was trying to push. There is just too much to do and too much to see to keep on such a narrow path, and I doubt this game will manage it any better. This is not a big game. The PDF clocks in at 214 pages, about half of which is rules and character creation and the other half is everything else. The physical book that came from the KS is very solid. It is about the size of the FATE Core book and has the cover image seen at the beginning of this post. It’s hardcover, full color on decent paper, and has a fair amount of art. It definitely shows that the author is experienced in the publishing game. I expect this will be wrapped up in two or three more posts. Next will be a brief setting overview and character creation.
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Jan 28, 2015 18:20
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That man's legs don't match at all.
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Jan 28, 2015 18:31
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Green Intern posted:That man's legs don't match at all. You leave Stumpy Bill alone. He's the only one with a gun.
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Jan 28, 2015 18:57
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LeSquide posted:You leave Stumpy Bill alone. He's the only one with a gun. It's like his entire left leg is just a big foot.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:15
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So I'm looking at the F&F archive, and realized... there's no "Q" entry! Let's fix that, shall we? quote:Two barely conceivable beings have fought a war for a generation over Sajavedra, a barely legendary land far to the southeast. They wish to claim its rich harvests of souls and fields, its intricate network of ley lines and temples, for their own. The short version?.... WELCOME TO FANTASY loving VIETNAM!!! Qelong, by Kenneth Hite (Trail of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents) is a sandbox setting written for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, a B/X D&D retroclone with a focus on weird horror. Early D&D was often criticized in later years by players who disliked the high mortality rate of low-level characters that was the default of the setting, and so it was often derided on the Internet as "fantasy Vietnam." Hite cleverly decided to play on that stereotype and design a setting based around medieval Southeast Asia. Qelong is a land whose culture is modeled after ancient Cambodia, in the Khmer period. It is also the backdrop for a supernatural war that is a metaphor for the Vietnam War, and in general the many proxy wars fought in the Cold War for southeast Asia. The PC's are assumed to be foreigners who find themselves in a ravaged, supernaturally tainted land, beset on all sides by the horrors of war. They face danger from both the natives struggling to survive, and the foreign mercenaries who have come to this land like vultures to a fresh carcass. Cannibalism is rife, battle magic runs out of control, and perhaps even the great and terrible Qelong River itself may unfurl its coils and swallow the land whole. Will the PC's become this land's saviors, or will they become another Colonel Kurtz and carve out a twisted fiefdom for themselves? Next: An Introduction to Sajavedra and the Qelong River Valley Simian_Prime fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 19:22
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Green Intern posted:It's like his entire left leg is just a big foot. It goes pretty well with his weird "cloak for a left hand" thing. Also that one guy must open a lot of giant beers with that sword.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:22
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theironjef posted:It goes pretty well with his weird "cloak for a left hand" thing. Also that one guy must open a lot of giant beers with that sword. The Blade of Mike Robrew provides a +10 on Sunder Armor attempts.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:30
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Simian_Prime posted:WELCOME TO FANTASY loving VIETNAM!!! I take refuge in my faith in Ken Hite. The LotFP modules covered in this thread have usually been fascinating to read about, anyway, even when they sound terrible to play.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:41
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Kurieg posted:There was a not-insignificant number of people who thought that Mage was actually a real and true documentary of the way the world actually worked. And that consensual reality was a real thing that the man was forcing on you. There was a guy I knew from the local (bad) LARPs who believed he was a Cultist of Ecstasy for real and all of the books were true and being published as a Malkavian prank. The police started looking for him after they heard rumors of underage stuff. Rumor mill at the time also said he decided that several of his coven had sold him out to the technocracy, and may have been involved in two of them being found in the bay. He spent some time in prison for the underage stuff and is apparently on medication now, so there's one less customer for Brucato I guess.
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Jan 28, 2015 21:01
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I remember encountering otherkin for the first time, when Livejournal was still a big deal, and being absolutely baffled that these people could be so creatively bankrupt that they'd take mascara-streaked gaming books for their bibles. Years later, I'd hear about otakukin, and meet a man who wants to become some kind of thingy from the Wheel of Time in real life. It never clicked that for some of them, it went beyond wish-fulfillment and a sense of personal emptiness, and landed square in mental illness.
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Jan 28, 2015 21:16
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A good thing White Wolf wasn't around during the D&D paranoia days. Seems all the actual nutjobs were just waiting for them.Simian_Prime posted:So I'm looking at the F&F archive, and realized... there's no "Q" entry! Let's fix that, shall we? This also sounds like F&F could need a bit of Qin: The Warring States. Maybe after I've appeased the demand for more Dream Pod 9 stuff. LeSquide posted:You leave Stumpy Bill alone. He's the only one with a gun. Stumpy Bill, the greatest hero of them all. He faces every monster despite knowing full well that he can't outrun it. (Though I'm wondering where exactly he's aiming at...) Thrash: Anime and Fighting Game Martial Arts RPG  Appendix 1: Weird Powers Little addendum from last time: the Knuckle Fist and its derivatives actually do 2d4 base damage instead of 1d6 (making it even more broken than in the demonstration). Got kinda carried away with all those 1d6 maneuvers. Me fail, and sorry  Anyhow, let's move on to Weird Powers, which give you all kinds of freakish powers to hopefully make your character even more ridiculous! Aliens quote:"What are 'ya?! Some kind of bottom-feeding scum-sucking algae eater?!" This short paragraph gives some general guidelines for alien characters (or really any character that is more or less non-humanoid). It amounts to pre-defined attribute bonuses/penalties and generally coming up with new maneuvers, styles and possible Advantages/Disciplines to factor in their alien physiology (as say tentacle monsters can't really punch or kick). A bit vague, but at least there are style/maneuver creation rules in a later appendix, and many of the following Weird Powers have some unique abilities you can use as a guideline (or pick directly). Cybernetics Cyborgs do pop up in fighting games, but they tend to be a bit rare outside of Mortal Kombat (weird how this section mentions Fulgore and Omega Rugal, but not Jax or any of the cyborg ninjas. Oh well, you can't please everyone). In terms of roleplaying, cyborgs get the short end of the stick as other fighters tend to see them as "cheaters" (because teleporting, throwing fireballs and slicing stuff up with your fingers is totally fine), and some tournaments won't even allow them in. In game terms, being a cyborg is an advantage with levels, each of which replacing one of your body parts until your almost 100% machine at level 6. If you want to make an actual robot however, you have to wait for the Thrash Sourcebook. As a cyborg, your Strength will be set to 9 if you originally had a lower score (allowing you to safe a lot of attribute points at character creation if you just go with Strength 1 and then buy this advantage), and you can bump your Strength to 15 (the maximum Attribte score) without paying extra CPs or having to get that Advantage that raises your current limit from 10. Neat, though I'm not sure how that Strength minimum comes from. Do cybernetic implants give off steroids, or is an overdose part of the surgery? You also add your Cybernetics level to your Soak Bonus, which means this will at most stop 2 additional points of damage. You'd think a mostly metal body would do more here. Lastly, your artifical body parts allow you to cheat when it comes to purchasing stuff, substitution your Cybernetics level times 2 for any attribute requirement. This is about the cheapest way to get that amazing Flash Strike modifier without having to bump Focus and Will to pretty high levels. Cyborgs can also buy "Cybernetic Systems", which are a couple unique Advantages to get for your character - at least I think they're advantages, which is kinda important if you get those after character creation because everything's more expensive after that.
Elementals While you can already throw around fire, lightning and whatnot by taking modifiers and changing some descriptions, some characters are a lot more in tune with their elment of choice. This seems to be quite comming in the King of Fighters franchise, with characters like Kyo Kusanagi (magical pyrokinesis) or Kula Diamond (cryokinesis through science!). Being such an elemental gives you a passive bonus and access to special maneuvers related to your element (earth, air, fire, water, wood, metal, ice and electricity), one of which being the free Elemental Aura that does something different depending on your element, and you can get the Rage Burn super maneuver for 1 CP cheaper. I hope this is worth it, because as a 9 CP Advantage, this is pretty expensive. Could be a CP tax to enforce the rarity of multi-elemental characters. I'll follow the book and sort the elemental stuff in general maneuvers and elemental-specific maneuvers. The individual elements already appear in the general section to notify of their unique traits, but I'll move that information into its "proper" section. General Elemental Maneuvers I'll skip the Elemental Aura and Elemental Form maneuvers here, as they heavily depend on your element in question.
Air Elementals Air elementals can buy some maneuvers like Air Jump and Levitation cheapter than normal. Their Elemental Aura comes in the form of a protective wind current that gives you a soak bonus of +8 and can cause attackers to get thrown away from you. The elemental form is the same, but with a bigger soak bonus (+15).
Earth Elementals The power of the earth again makes a couple maneuvers cheaper, half of which are restorative maneuvers. The Elemental Aura gives a hefty Soak Bonus of +16, but reduces Agility by -2. Elemental Form makes that +24 and -3, respectively. I think I'd rather use something that does not reduce the game's god stat.
Electricity This one does not make some maneuvers cheaper, but instead makes all your Chi Blasts electricity-based for free (aka +1 Damage, - AP), and you can get Power Strike for just +1 CP. Elemental Aura sounds pretty nifty as it damages anyone hitting you based on your Focus and boosts all of your physical attacks by +1d6. Elemental Form is again the same, better.
Fire Fire grants the same passive bonuses as electricity (with Flaming Blasts granting +2 Damage instead of electricity-based ones, of course), but also makes Fire Breath cheaper. Elemental Aura and Form also work the same as electricity's.
Ice All Chi Blasts are Ice Blasts (+2 Damage, Dizzy lasts 2 turns), and you can upgrade them to Ice Crystal Blasts (+3 Damage, +2 Chi) for just +1 CP. Elemental Aura and Form are like earth's.
Metal Doesn't come with anything passive apart from the cheaper Rage Burn everyone gets. Other than that, it's like earth.
Water Also doesn't have passives apart from Rage Burn. Elemental Aura and Form work like with air, with the added bonus of fitting through small holes while in Elemental Form.
Wood It's basically the same as earth, with one fewer cheap maneuver and the option of turning the Elemental Aura into a "Leaf Shield" that works like the air version of Elemental Aura.
I tell ya, having D&D-esque spells written like fighting game maneuvers is weird. Monsters Nothing here of substance, except for "wait for that DarkStalkers sourcebooks that either never existed or at least does not exist anymore". Mutant Animals You're a furry, with access to further advantages to represent your animalistic abilities. I'm really not sure why this book makes so many distinctions between creatures. All the stuff you can get here would work just as well for aliens and monsters.
And here are three maneuvers your furry fighter can have:
Psychics Everyone knows that psychics like M. Bison or Athena don't really use telekinesis and mind reading, but are rather some kind of "psychic elemental" using lots of energy-based attacks - though that doesn't stop the book from presenting all those more traditional psychic powers. Like everything before in this appendix, being a psychic is an advantage, more specifically one that comes in levels like being a cyborg. You can buy focus maneuvers as psychic maneuvers, which are cheaper and use your Psychic level in place for Focus. Power Strike is also cheaper. Not really sure why you couldn't make this an advantage without level and have your Focus work normally. Sounds needlessly complicated. On to psychic disciplines. They're your standard affair, with telekinesis being called "psychokinesis" for some reason. And of course you get Telepathy which at high levels allows you to mind control people and trap them in a hallucination, killing them while their unconscous or just mess with them. Fun stuff. Now onto Psionic maneuvers (shouldn't that be "Psychic maneuvers"?)!
Sorcery These are a bunch of "Magic Paths", aka Disciplines that give you magic stuff to toy with. Some spells are require hour-long rituals, whereas most are fast enough to be used in combat - though those should be better prepared as scrolls beforehand, as spontaneous casting kinda blows here (spend 11 APs for 2 turns vs a scroll's 4 AP). Being a sorcerer requires lots of studying, and you get what is essentially Read Magic for free. To be really good as casting, you can get yourself the Sorcery "Style", which is priced like a style, but doesn't actually work as one. It's just a fancy Discipline boosting your spell rolls and Chi total. It also makes focus maneuvers cheaper and gives you a lot of meta-magic- and anti-magic-esque abilities, including an energy absorbtion ability that can easily make you completely immune against energy attacks, at no real AP cost from your side. The Magic Paths in question are 7 (at least according to the text; it's actually 9) total:
So far, the best course of actions seems to be to start as a nerdy weakling, only to then become a cyborg necromancer with Wood maneuvers (a cybernecrodruid, if you will), min-maxing your Strength and giving your the best debuffs in the book that will make your opponent very useless . Add Telepathy for extra lulz Next time, we look at the last 2 very short appendixes to give a final verdict! Doresh fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 21:18
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Yessod posted:There was a guy I knew from the local (bad) LARPs who believed he was a Cultist of Ecstasy for real and all of the books were true and being published as a Malkavian prank. The police started looking for him after they heard rumors of underage stuff. Rumor mill at the time also said he decided that several of his coven had sold him out to the technocracy, and may have been involved in two of them being found in the bay. He spent some time in prison for the underage stuff and is apparently on medication now, so there's one less customer for Brucato I guess. poo poo, and here I thought the guy who brought a replica gun to ours was bad. This one takes the cake.
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Jan 28, 2015 21:18
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Kellsterik posted:I take refuge in my faith in Ken Hite. The LotFP modules covered in this thread have usually been fascinating to read about, anyway, even when they sound terrible to play. I think you'll be pleased. James Raggi pretty much gave Hite free reign to write what he wanted, so Qelong is largely free of most of the flaws that plague LoFP supplements, like Raggi's editorializing and excessive shock-value tactics. Though not with its flaws, Hite presents us a bleak and terrifying setting with an appropriate sense of restraint, and it's also fun to play. anyway... Qelong, Part 1: The Introduction, or "Apocalypse How?" Kenneth Hite posted:Referee's Introduction LEVH: "I tap my swampland for two Black Mana - I mean, aakom - and summon the Cylinder!" TILIA: "Blue Counterspell! Put that Cylinder in the graveyard, along with your swamp!" LEVH: "Crap! I should have brought my red deck! Hmm... I got three swamps, guess I'll get rid of this one marked Qelong." TILIA: "So long, Qelong!"  quote:And the Cylinder's sorcery has, in its minor way, begun to deform the Qelong Valley. In this chapter we get a basic summary of the sandbox that is the Qelong River valley. The PC's are assumed to be outsiders, foreigners from distant lands that more closely match European medieval fantasy. Mercenaries, like the Varangians, will be the only familiar sorts of people (this will highlight the horror of their corruption even more). While The Cylinder makes a convenient focus for a PC adventuring party, the Referee (GM) encouraged to allow encounters to build organically as the players explore the region. Players should not expect to see EVERY encounter in a single campaign, and Qelong is so chock full of interesting stuff that there's always plenty more to go back to. The mood of the setting is mean to be reminiscent of war stories as well as fantasy adventure. Hite refers specifically to the movies Valhalla Rising, Apocalypse Now, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (particular the "war over the bridge" sequence). I'd also recommend Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and The Thin Red Line. (Though knowing most gamers, it will sometimes end up more like Tropic Thunder) The short chapter ends with some recommended hooks for PC's to travel to the valley. A Lawful party might be hired by a sage to deactivate the Cylinder. A Chaotic party might jump at the chance to sell the Cylinder's secrets to the highest bidder, or become warlords and carve out their own kingdom. A Neutral party might do one of the above, or just pursue a lucrative venture like raiding the legendary Mine of the Elephant. Finally, there is a list of rumors going around the valley that serve as adventure hooks, ranging from useful ("Do not deal violence lightly, as in these troubled times the spirits of the angry dead will linger on Earth") to vague but intriguing ("Seeing the Gaja Simha is an ill omen!"), with a few red herrings ("Dwarves are evil! Trust no dwarf that you meet!") PC's start with one random rumor each, and can pay off people to find out more. For now, I'll leave you with Hite's description of the "feel" of the setting. quote:I see the Qelong valley as a land of steam, smoke, mist, fog - high grasses and low mangroves, like the Dead Marshes or Beowulf's fen country. All of this grows not in a placid pastoral Olden Tyme, or even a gently corroded Dark Age, but in the path - or technically on the sidelines- of a great and incomprehensible war. Houses and farms are burned, villagers gaunt and feral. Dogs whine over the carcasses of their masters, then tear out the intestines to feed themselves. Men kill each other for a handful of rice, or for a woman who can be beaten into cooking it. All around, sorcerous echoes and explosions ripple the skies, but as a constant drumbeat of vile thunder, not as anything aimed at anyone in the same country. The Qelong Valley has been poisoned by accident and forgotten by its killers. Only the scavengers remain, and the worms that grow in the corpse.  Next: Exploration
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Jan 28, 2015 22:14
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Bieeardo posted:I remember encountering otherkin for the first time, when Livejournal was still a big deal, and being absolutely baffled that these people could be so creatively bankrupt that they'd take mascara-streaked gaming books for their bibles. Years later, I'd hear about otakukin, and meet a man who wants to become some kind of thingy from the Wheel of Time in real life. It never clicked that for some of them, it went beyond wish-fulfillment and a sense of personal emptiness, and landed square in mental illness. The worst stories I've ever read about that sort of thing were all about oChangeling. Supposedly someone committed suicide so they could go back to the faerie plane.
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Jan 28, 2015 22:19
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