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theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Kurieg posted:

Oh dear, are you doing Changing Breeds?

Nope. I don't think our next project has been covered yet in this hallowed grounds. I don't want to preempt future discussion too much, but we're reading Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millenium. Nice copy too, still has the CD-ROM insert from 2002 with even more insufferable NPCs to hate.

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Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
I just finished rereading the review of JAGS Wonderland. Wow. I noticed something particular about it. So, one area where story games and more traditional RPGs come together is that they give the PCs specific goals that everything else is built around. D&D is built around the dungeoncrawl. Shadowrun is highly mission-oriented.Meanwhile, Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts don't define a setting at all, but "doing the stuff that gives you XP" drives the action that the game is supposed to be about, by default.

Wonderland doesn't do this. It's part of a trend in games throughout the 90s and into the early 00s where you define the setting in great detail, then ostensibly let the players (or more likely the GM) determine what sort of story is told in it. Hopefully the text of the game provides strong hooks to build a campaign around, which usually show up in the form of organizations to join and a big evil to fight. The World of Darkness games certainly do this. If you don't keep that in mind, there's a tendency to overwrite the setting until the PCs are completely backed into a corner with all the poo poo they have to keep track of. (Immortal might be the ultimate example of this; you're a demigod who has to contend with immortal politics, the Big Bad living in the world of dreams, its evil minions coming after you, magic Bad Stuff that can happen when you use your powers, needing to feed on mortal life force, and past lives constantly trying to take over your brain.) Wonderland reminds me a bit of Dreamwalker, a game where you play agents who fight invading psychic aliens in the world of dreams, but it lacks that anchor. And I can't imagine doing the stuff where your Wonderland form is a giant lizard with camera eyes made out of cake. That's like the Morphus forms from Nightbane with twice the silliness and none of the splatterpunk aesthetic.

The other thing about the Wonderland review is that I wish we'd gotten some info on the JAGS system itself, since we don't have any other reviews of JAGS stuff. The last time I examined it was at least one edition of it ago. I recall that it uses a 4d6-4 (revised to 4d6, reroll 6s) resolution mechanic, basically in order to achieve a D20 with a bell curve. And like a lot of "simulationist" indie systems from that time period, it has stuff like derived values for hand-to-hand damages and other fiddly poo poo like that.

Will any of you admit to being hardcore simulationists, if that's the correct term? I'm sure plenty of people here played the Hero system, and I've played my share of fairly-complicated rulesets like Shadowrun. I'm sure some of you spent lots of time contending with the Palladium system (the ultimate in simulationism where 1 die roll = 1 shot) and someone even admitted to liking Phoenix Command. I'm thinking in particular of the independent, universal systems that popped up mostly in the 90s, that tried to be some sort of "realistic" but also multi-genre and accommodating rules for everything from magic and superpowers to vehicle combat. BTRC's CORPS and EABA systems spring immediately to mind, as well as Fuzion and to some extent, Mayfair's MEGS system. I went through a years-long phase where I was trying to find the perfect system, one that satisfied certain values of "realistic" while also accommodating supernatural stuff, playing quickly, and not requiring hours of prep. I don't think any such thing exists.

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Feb 4, 2015

Baofu
Jun 15, 2007

theironjef posted:

Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millenium.


I played in a LARP of this once. Monsignor Brucato was running it too (this was a long while before I knew about the whole Satyros deal). I had to leave early, but not before being absolutely confuzzled by having 2 characters named Janus and Janice (we were all playing pregens). That and one fellow who was playing a guy with a solipcist streak who I wanted to punch both in and out of character.

Baofu fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Feb 4, 2015

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
I like Wonderland as a setting, and was thinking its Checkerboards were a much more elegant, vastly less monkey cheese answer to There be Dragons' 'cuil' creepypasta-insert, but I've always been at a loss for actually trying to run it.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

EverettLO posted:

It’s…uh, actually a lot worse than I remembered from my own blasterproof Wookie experiences. I can’t believe I forgot to mention it. The Tusk might be the worst offender. If you put the character up to the maximum Might of 6D and include their racial perk of “Heavy Armor” you’ll be sitting on a soak score of 24. A shotgun does 5D+1 damage, which averages out to 18.5 damage per shot. Not even close to enough to bother the Tusk. You’ll be able to scratch it with that shotgun around 6% of the time, and actually do more than stun it less than 0.3%. Since Tusks are totally immune to stunning, 0.3% is your number.

Throwing a frag grenade in his lap will only hurt him about 3.6% of the time. Even the man-portable energy weapons are basically useless. To have a solid chance of hurting this Tusk, you need a truck mounted .50 caliber machine gun firing full auto, a plasma ejector, or something else that a human being couldn’t be expected to carry. God help your enemies if you manage to find a suit of plate armor that fits him. Then you have a soak total of 33 and even the plasma ejector is only hurting him about 17% of the time.

Since he has a Might of 6D, you give him a Battle Axe (+3D) and now he hits as hard as your plasma ejector or slightly less than a tank-mounted railgun.

Unfortunately this kind of nonsense is fairly deeply entrenched in the D6 system and all these revisions do not appear to have fixed it.

Let's grab my copy of D6 Space... well, you could get similarily beefy if you max Strength at 5D and get yourself Increased Attribute (though none of the official d6 Space racial templates use Increased Attribute, so good luck convincing your GM). Shotguns also deal 5D+1 damage, though the double-barreled variety can get that to 6D+1 damage by firing both barrels. You can further increase the damage by using an optional rule that gives you bonus damage based on the margin of success of your to-hit roll, which you may or may not want to combine with the hit location rules (aka heat shots). If anthing else fails, get a couple buddies together to group attack (pooling all the damage together before soaking). Probably manageable unless the target uses ceramic armor (+3D+1 soak) and your buddies are bad shots. Then you probably need assault rifles (6D damage, 8D with full auto, maybe up to 9D if you interpret the "single fire as multi" rule for an assault rifle as referring to its single-fire mode or its standard burst fire mode; the book can be a bit vague).

Did either MiniSix or Breachworld revert to Star Wars d6 standards where you add your entire physical attribute to melee damage, instead of only half of that like in d6 Space ? They did that to avoid situations like this o_O

D6 Space and its sisters actually had a way out of that trench: the optional hit point rules. With those, your Might/Strength only increases your hit points, not your soak, making it massed fire of weaker attacks much more lethal. Minions might become less likely to be one-shotted, but you can always adjust their hit points accordingly.

Doresh fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Feb 4, 2015

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Bieeardo posted:

I like Wonderland as a setting, and was thinking its Checkerboards were a much more elegant, vastly less monkey cheese answer to There be Dragons' 'cuil' creepypasta-insert, but I've always been at a loss for actually trying to run it.
My first impulse is to say that it needs a foreground element, where the PCs are given a cause and a mission, and a background element that looms throughout the campaign. For example, for the foreground, the PCs could be a government task force fighting the Wonderland on its own turf, a police unit hunting down CPDers who've been warped or possessed, or a company that stops terrorist groups from using chessboard-delving to attack their rivals. For the background element, you could have the government wanting to use Wonderland for nefarious purposes, the Underground spreading misinformation that needs to be combated, or corporations sowing advertising in Chessboard 1.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Halloween Jack posted:

Will any of you admit to being hardcore simulationists, if that's the correct term? I'm sure plenty of people here played the Hero system, and I've played my share of fairly-complicated rulesets like Shadowrun. I'm sure some of you spent lots of time contending with the Palladium system (the ultimate in simulationism where 1 die roll = 1 shot) and someone even admitted to liking Phoenix Command.

I was in three games where I used GURPS Vehicles; that's about as close as I came. Yes, that's right, I said "used". I loved design systems like that and I took a week I had in detention to figure out how to model Bonaparte Mini-Tank in that system. At one point I used it to break the GURPS Supers system (make a ridiculously rich character, then build a battlesuit with money and GURPS Vehicles that's way way beyond what you can purchase with points). Really, my time with GURPS is as about as close as I came.

But I never got into Phoenix Command; it's practically unplayable, but I still find the hit location rules pretty cool as a concept. Palladium has never really been simulationist, it's always had abstracted gunfire bursts. It's more D&D with a (bad) skill system and (bad) modern warfare rules bolted on.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Halloween Jack posted:

Will any of you admit to being hardcore simulationists, if that's the correct term?
*raises hand*

Well, I was once. I played original Rolemaster (in the parchment Arms Law and Claw Law days), before switching to GURPS, and I had a lot of love for Traveller and Megatraveller and their ridiculously detailed systems for calculating planetary albedos and flickering your starship's null-energy field so that it blended in with cosmic background radiation. Played Car Wars and collected all the equipment catalogs and made design spreadsheets. Bought and played both Star Fleet Battles and Advanced Squad Leader (but I never got into Europa or World in Flames, thank God)

I remember the exact moment I fell out of love with that style of gaming - it was when I bought Fire Fusion and Steel, the vehicle and weapon design system for Traveller. It's an amazing supplement (GURPS Vehicles is pretty much the same thing). Flipping through it was like flipping though a mechanical engineering textbook, and I realized that if I was going to sit down and master this system, I might as well just take a class in MechE. And then I wondered what all these details I'd been collecting and digesting really meant. My vision didn't blur and I didn't wake up in a filthy motel room a week later with a copy of Fiasco in my hand and a scar across my abdomen with no memory of how either got there, but I just lost my taste for really detailed RPGs. I still have all my GURPS books (even weird and rare ones like Conan and The Prisoner) and if someone wants to play I'm down, but I just can't be bothered. Real life is complicated enough, and if I want to sit down and learn a complicated thing, I'll teach myself something actually useful like regular expressions or MS-SQL.

That said, I totally recognize the appeal and legitimacy of simulation-style play, and have no problem with people choosing that as their preferred way to engage the hobby. I do have a problem with simulation-style games that are terrible, or simulation gamers who think they are society's elite because they distinguish between muskets using corned instead of fine-grain powder in their games, and fully reserve the right to make fun of those and them.

The big problem I have with sim-style games is that all these complicated rules are based on...what, exactly? When I got far enough in college and grad school to understand the sources that so many complicated games are based on, I discovered that there's no scholarly consensus on how medieval warfare worked or how medieval economies functioned, and that what consensus existed was forever shifting based on new research. Even Gary Gygax included historical armor types in AD&D that appear to have never existed in real life. A great example is SLA Marshall's research in how modern soldiers fight, which was tremendously influential in the design of many crunchy wargames (including my beloved ASL). Except later scholars went through his findings carefully and found that a lot of what he was saying was incorrect or disproven by later studies (it is very much not the case that most soldiers just fall to the ground uselessly and only two of three men in a ten-man squad actual fire their weapons to any effect in a given engagement). So that means my ASL rulebooks, all 300 pages of densely-written legal case rules, are based on very shaky assumptions.

One of my favorite moments on Usenet was when a bunch of people in rec.games.frp.misc were complaining about how completely unrealistic the combat rules in Twilight:2000 were, when the designer of the game showed up to conclusively argue his case based on real-life gun battles of the sort RPG players get into (Border Patrol versus smugglers, SWAT team versus well-armed bank robbers) and showed that all the "real" assumptions about how the gun fights "obviously" work were 100% incorrect. Most gunfights go on for between 30 minutes and several hours, hundreds of shots are fired for every one that hits someone, even PC-grade professionals revert to spray-and-pray covering fire 99% of the time, people hunker down and hide behind cover, whole chunks of time would go by without anyone doing anything, and even people wounded multiple times by gunshots stayed in the fight until the end. Some SWAT battle against a drug crew in 1980s Miami ended up with 5000 rounds fired, four people wounded (most multiply), and no one dead.

In short: when it comes to simulating real life 1) nobody knows nothing and 2) nerds are particularly bad at understanding how things work (which is how you get the D&D/Pathfinder design teams generalizing from their experience flipping computer mice into their hands, or nerds arguing long-disproven BIOTRUTHS as if they were cold hard rational scientific fact).

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Halloween Jack posted:

Will any of you admit to being hardcore simulationists, if that's the correct term?
Well, it depends. I like my systems to be internally consistent and offering the right amount of detail for what it's supposed to do, but I don't like systems who get so bogged down in stuff like muzzle velocity and ballistic curves that they forget to include the fun.

FMguru posted:

The big problem I have with sim-style games is that all these complicated rules are based on...what, exactly? When I got far enough in college and grad school to understand the sources that so many complicated games are based on, I discovered that there's no scholarly consensus on how medieval warfare worked or how medieval economies functioned, and that what consensus existed was forever shifting based on new research. Even Gary Gygax included historical armor types in AD&D that appear to have never existed in real life. A great example is SLA Marshall's research in how modern soldiers fight, which was tremendously influential in the design of many crunchy wargames (including my beloved ASL). Except later scholars went through his findings carefully and found that a lot of what he was saying was incorrect or disproven by later studies (it is very much not the case that most soldiers just fall to the ground uselessly and only two of three men in a ten-man squad actual fire their weapons to any effect in a given engagement). So that means my ASL rulebooks, all 300 pages of densely-written legal case rules, are based on very shaky assumptions.

One of my favorite moments on Usenet was when a bunch of people in rec.games.frp.misc were complaining about how completely unrealistic the combat rules in Twilight:2000 were, when the designer of the game showed up to conclusively argue his case based on real-life gun battles of the sort RPG players get into (Border Patrol versus smugglers, SWAT team versus well-armed bank robbers) and showed that all the "real" assumptions about how the gun fights "obviously" work were 100% incorrect. Most gunfights go on for between 30 minutes and several hours, hundreds of shots are fired for every one that hits someone, even PC-grade professionals revert to spray-and-pray covering fire 99% of the time, people hunker down and hide behind cover, whole chunks of time would go by without anyone doing anything, and even people wounded multiple times by gunshots stayed in the fight until the end. Some SWAT battle against a drug crew in 1980s Miami ended up with 5000 rounds fired, four people wounded (most multiply), and no one dead.

Ranting about supposed realism or lack thereof in a RPG is always futile, as our culture's fiction has brainwashed us with with action/combat tropes that just plain don't work that way in real-life, going from gun lethality to "you just don't parry stuff with your sword's blade".

Jovian Chronicles Second Edition RPG Player's Handbook


Chapter 2: The Solar Nations

This chapter starts wiht a brief overview of the solar system. This is also where the crazy goose chase (based on the homebrew Mekton campaign with which Jovian Chronicles got started) from last time is explained to be collectively known as the "Odyssey". It served as a wake-up call for the human colonists, who suddenly realized that Earth has not only recovered, but also meant business. Everyone's cranking up his military production for the poo-poo that will undoubtedly hit the fan sooner or later.

The two main players in this game are of course CEGA and the Jovian Confederation, who are both busy puzzling together just who was behind the whole Odyssey mess and playing the arms race game. The other solar nations aren't quite sure which side to pick when this Cold War should turn hot - except for the Venusians, who are suspiciously sitting back and twirling their mustaches.

The Solar Nations are presented in order of their distance to the sun:

Mercury

Thanks to its close proximity to the sun and with no proper atmosphere to speak of, Mercury's surface experiences some of the most extreme temperature shifts you can find in the whole solar system, with days that would roast you alive and nights so cold they make wandering naked through Antarctica sound like a nice jog over a tropical beach. Therefore, Mercurians primarily live on various orbital stations that always hide in Mercury's shadow to avoid boiling the inhabitants, with a couple others living in underground facilities.
Mercury's main shtick is being the trade nation, with their merchants steeled by living in and around on of the most hostile planets. Having a sort of "merchan conscription" going on also helps raising those trade skills. There's really no civilized place in the whole solar system where you can't find these guys.

Culture: The typical Mercurian is a smooth salesman, but they are a bit vary of strangers on their home turf, as they hate espionage.
As things are naturally a bit cramped underground and in orbital stations, Mercurians value privacy very highly. Just about everyone owns a "haven", a small room where nobody else is allowed to enter. Naturally, some Mercurians become merchants just so they can hang around in much more open locations.

Politics: Mercury is ruled by a democratically-elected Administrator who was usually a merchants because those guys can prove that they can get things done. They have a neutral stance towards everyone, as taking sides is bad for business. They are however a bit suspicous of Venus, as several Mercurian citizens hail from Venusian refugees (more on that in a moment).

Science & Military: As they live so close to the sun, it's only natural that Mercury has created the best in heat resistance and solar power. As space pirates aren't really a thing in most regions, they never really had to have any kind of military aside from a small token force. Nevertheless, they have recently started to invest heavily in bolstering their defenses in case any of the other nations wants to try something funny, including making their own Exo-Armor in the form of the Brimstone.

Guilds: Instead of your typical modern corporations, Mercury has oldschool merchant guilds, open only to fellow Mercurians. Pretty much every Mercurian is part of a guild thanks to the above merchant conscription, but they don't really have to be a merchant to keep the memberhsip.

Venus

Venus was terraformed by corporations who foresaw Earth's collapse and decided to leave ASAP and take most of their assets and cash with them. Not really affected by the collapse, they are now the richest of all the solar nations. If Mercurians are merchants, these guys are capitalists through and through.
Venus' terraforming is not perfect, and it will probably still take decades if not centuries before the planet looks anything like Earth. Currently, only the poles offer somewhat acceptable temperatures (60° C to be exact), and the atmosphere is too toxic to allow anything but dome cities.

Culture: Venus is a bit like a more realistic version of HSD's capitalistic furry wonderland (minus the furries, of course). The corporation you're working for provides you with everything from housing and entertainment, but thinks can understandably feel a bit oppressive. And don't even think about leaving Venus a whole lot. Still, every Venusian thrives to work hard to climb up the social ladder, on top of which the elite plays their subtle Game of Seats.
The official Venusian language and writing system is an insane mixture between English and Japanese everyone else can't really wrap their head around - which is exactly why they came up with it. They're that dickish.
Another oddity is Venus' education system, which separates student by their performance and not their age, with classes and college being rated in a Dan system not unlike what you see in Judo or Karate.
Suffice to say, not everyone is happy with having their corporation constantly looking over their shoulder, but these guys are currently just a small minority. Most of the people who didn't approve of the direction Venus was going (what with everyone being forced to talk like a deranged weeaboo) have already left the planet for Mercury decades ago.

Politics: As mentioned before, Venus is all about capitalism. The population is split up into city-states that are owned and run by a single corporation. If the inhabitant of the city-state has a problem with how things are being run, he can start a petition.
Foreign affairs are handled by a council consisting of representatives of each corporation. The more a corporation is worth, the more seats in the council it gets.
To the outside, they like to be seen as just as neutral as Mercury. The Odyssey incident however as made the other nations suspect their in league with CEGA, despite Venus' official denials.

Science & Military: Venusian science is (almost) the best there is. What they can't do themselves, they buy or steal. But like everyone else, they have yet to figure out what the deal with those Jovian lifeforms - the Jovian Floaters - is.
The Venusian HDF (Home Defense Force) might first come across as a bunch of buffoons performing air shows and parades, but that's just an act. They are well-trained and have a state-of-the-art fleet that is probably way bigger than they like to show.

More dickish behavior: Venus loves importing lots of stuff from other nations just so they think Venus depends on them. This helps them greatly in tricking foreign corporations, which among other things lead to the Venusian Bank slowly becoming the biggest there is. Did I mention they're a bit dickish?

Earth

As already mentioned a couple times, Earth has recovered from a great social and economic collpase, whose exact reasons and timeline have proven to be pretty hard to puzzle together, but it seems to have involved a global blackout, the mother of all Black Fridays and a plague on top of it (I'm pretty sure the Venusian ancestors had nothing at all to do with any of this). From the other planet's perspective, all contact with Earth was just gone in a moment, with all hell seeming to break loose on goold ol' Terra.
Suffice to say, none of the other solar nations expected Earth to come back with such a force as it did under CEGA rule.

Culture: Well, pretty much all the old cultures you know of are still going strong, with the people in orbit of course being a bit different because space does that to people.
As the mankind's homeland, is leading in exporting works of art, usually bought for some Earth nostalgia. All the major religions also come from Earth, so the planet has all the artifacts and holy places, making it the solar system's spiritual capital of sorts.
The collapse and being largely forgotten by the other nations had a noticable impact on the Earthlings' overall attitude. They've become rather imperialistic and would really like to rule over all those space hillbillies. They also like pulling a Venusian, speaking to visitors only in their mother tongue, which has a good chance of not being spoken outside of Earth (unless your mother tongue is English, Japanese, Cantonese, French or German).
Arrogance aside, the large majority of Earth's population is pretty poor an uneducated, with most countries still not having fully recovered. The only places with wealth and higher education are the various arcologies.

Politics: CEGA is a power-houngry, imperialistic government out to get all the other solar nations under its control. After all, everyone's from Earth, and it was Earth who made all these colonizations possible in the first place. Unfortunately for them, the other nations are not willing to just give up their independence. Heck, even the Venusians are a bit freaked out, fearing that all their bribed CEGA councillors might not help ensure their influence in the long run.
After the Odyssey incident, several council members are demanding proper investigations to be performed, while the propaganda machinery is busy blaming the popular rebel group STRIKE for what happened on Mars and the Moon.
It must be noted that CEGA does not speak for the entire Earth. Asia, South America and Africa are independent from CEGA (though at least South America is a good trading buddy). Tensions with CEGA are generally high, and skirmishes often break out at the borders.
CEGA themselves is also a bit torn, as the orbital stations and the Moon population is a lot more moderate than the guys on Earth.

Science & Military: With Earth itself having collapsed, it's the Moon and the orbital colonies who provide CEGA with new toys and technology. They're a bit behind the Jovians and Venusians though, and their spies kinda blow.
As with every imperialistic regime worth its salt, CEGA's pretty big in the military business. They've only recently started making Exo-Armor (albeit with very promising results), but they have more than enough warships to make up for this. Their military is split into two branches: The Naval Forces handle space stuff, whereas the normal Army keeps Earth under control.

Commerce & Industry: The corporations who stayed on Earth (or preferrably fled to the orbital stations) where hit pretty hard by the collapse, but most make a swift recovery after contact with the other solar nations had been re-established. They haven't made many friends however as they tend to demand special treatments.
Something that annoys Earthlings to no end is their dependence on importing terranforming equipment from Mars to get their own atmosphere and soil back in shape. At least pollution ain't really a problem anymore as you can now do everything in space.

Orbitals

This is the catch-all term for all the people living in the orbital stations around Earth, most iconic of which are the giant O'Neill cylinders. When all hell broke loose on Earth, the Orbitals and the Moon where too busy having to survive on their own to help their big brother. The money from the refugee corporations certainly helped here.

Culture: Orbital stations are a sort of melting pot, but they do tend to have one main culture, after whose homeland the station's day-night-cycles and climate is adjusted. Once they became self-sufficient, things went pretty cozy for them. They're definitely a lot more easy-going than Earthlings. This also explains why they didn't have much trouble falling under CEGA's rule, as CEGA's just protecting them from potential outside trouble. To CEGA's dismay, the Orbitals don't take their propaganda very seriously.

Politics: The Orbitals have their own council consisting of members from every station (or at least the stations that want to to). They're a bit at odds with CEGA as they're way more peaceful, with their own military having noticably less influence.

Science & Military: The orbitals deliver live support and ship design know-how to CEGA. Their own fleet is just as big as it needs to be.

Luna

Luna aka the Moon was home to some of the first human colonies outside of Earth. There are also a lot of CEGA military bases on moon, making the whole place a bit militaristic.

Culture: Having been cut off from Earth, the people of the Moon (called the "Selenites") had to learn to survive and follow strictly organized schedules, which has made them a bit serious and stiff. Things are however slowly relaxing in recent times.

Politics: They're similar to the Orbitals here. Most of them are pretty okay with having CEGA around as long as they ensure their safety. Resistence against CEGA can be found, however.
Tensions are especially high between the civilian population and the CEGA military presences after the Odyssey incident, with the rebels who died during it being seen as heroes.

Science & Military: The Moon offers many raw materials, which made the Selenites some of the finest miners around. They're pretty integral to CEGA's efforts. They don't really have much in terms of their own military, and what little there is only serves to defend them.

Mars

Mars' independence from Earth went much less smooth as on other planets, with one part of the population being glad to be free from Earth's shackles, while the ohers don't quite agreed on that. The end result was a civil war that split Mars in two factions: The free-spirited Martian Free Republic and the "order above else" Martian Federation. The relationship between those two is somewhat stable, if tense.

Culture: The Martian Federation has a bit of an East Germany vibe going on, what with a huge German influence, totalitarian rule trying to pass itself off as being democratic (with the Federation having a "Democratic Party" as opposed to East Germany being a "Democratic Republic") and the propaganda machinery twisting things around to make the Free Republic look inferior. There's also lots of bureacracy, and of course does Big Brother always watch you. Unlike East Germany, this system actually kinda works in keeping things prosperous and stable.
The Free Republic are your pioneers / space cowboys, valuing personal freedom over everything. They make great BFFs. They even give out friendship bracelets!

Politics: The Martian Federation covers 2/3 of Mars' surface, ruled by a Prime Minister, the current one being Klaus von Braun (because this is an anime-ish setting and anime Germans like puttin the nobility in places of power empire-style). The Free Republic has a convulted system involving four different councils.
Skirmishes on the borders are frequent, but both governments used to just ignore that, as they had to share Mars' orbital assets. This can however start to change after the space elevator went kablooie.
The Free Republic is obviously pro-Jovian. The Federation is on kinda good terms with CEGA, but they're suspecting that they are behind the destruction of the orbital elevator.

Science & Military: With Mars being an early target for terraforming (now having around 2/3 of Earth's atmospheric pressure), the Martians are quite big in bioengineering, exporting it all over the place.
On the military side, things look a bit grim. Both factions use outdated Jovian Exo-Armors, along with their own Exo-Suits and hovertanks, with the Free Republic using swift guerilla tactics to counter the much larger but less flexible Federation army. Neither of them has much of a fleet aside from some patrol crafts.

The Belt

This is the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, first colonized for mining purposes and now being a safe haven for refugees from the inner planets, with bases and colonies being built on top and inside of the various asteroids. As you can slap thrusters on those asteroids to get around, Belter lifestyle is highly nomadic.

Survival: Survival ain't easy out here. You gotta get things done and work together here. If you don't pay attention, you won't live for long.
Their main language of choice is "Spacer's Runic", the common tongue of this setting (though the book doesn't really get into more details on the language). Being more isolated than everyone else, they live in clan/tribal structures and don't really want to have anything to do with the other nations' Cold War going on.

Politics: Nothing general, really. Every asteroid does its own thing. Though they agree in that they neither want to meddle in other people's business, nor to they want the other people to meddle in their's.
Some of the larger colonies have a loose unnion going on for negotiations with the United Space Nations.

Science & Military: Engineers from the belt are highly valued in most nations (safe for Venus and Earth because those are dicks) because they really know how to keep things running. They don't really care much about scientific research, though.
It goes without saying that most colonies in the Belt don't have military at all. If things go sour, they just surrender. The larger ones have some outdated Exo-Suits and fighters to handle pirates, but that's about it.

Claims: Belters still mine a lot, and they get quite mad if you want to take their claim. Not that they could do much if an outside nation would just waltz in and mine stuff, though.
And this could very well happen, as CEGA, Mars and Jupiter and pestering them more and more about becoming mining buddies. They really don't want to take sides in this conflict, but a refusal could result in persuasion by force.

Jupiter

Originally only meant to house mining personell, the Jovian orbital stations became a fully-fledged solar nation after Earth's collapse resulted in a large influx of refugees. They had it pretty well out there, as Jupiter's various moons offered enough resources for everyone.
The Jovian Confederation consists of three states: Olympus (aka "everything around Jupiter itself") as well as Vanguard Mountain and Newhome from the Trojans, an asteroid field located at two of Jupiter's Lagrange Points which are quite far off (800 million km behind Jupiter, which is slightly more than the average distance between Jupiter and the sun).

Culture: The the Olympians tend to view the Trojans as hillbillies, who in turn poke fun of the fact that "Olympus" does sound a bit preposterous. Still, they're overall pretty similar and get along fine, so it's all in good fun.
As they've never really had to fight as hard for survival as most of the other solar nations, the Jovians don't quite get the other guys' issues, making them seem arrogant at first glance.

Politics: Seeing the distances involved with this Confederation, it comes to now surprise that each state has its own government, with a council known as the Agora speaking for the entire Confederation. The Agora is supervised by a president, with the current one drawing a fine line between being power-hungry and actually showing results.

Science & Military: The Jovians are at least as good as Venus, probably even more advanced. Their Exo-Armors are top-notch.
The Jovian Armed Forces (JAF) are one of the largest forces around, thanks to the huge area they need to control and because the Jovians took precautions after losing contact with Earth. CEGA's shenanigans only fuel their desire for more protection. Military training is harsh, but soldiers do enjoy a lot of freedom and flexibility in turn.
Should a war break out, it would be pretty easy for someone like CEGA to isolate the three sates from each other. As a preparation, the JAF is split in three independend branches (one for each state), and and they have an invasion fleet ready because they figured it's better to attack first than wait for the enemy to come to them.

The Jovian Floaters: These critters are large jellyfish living in Jupiter's atmosphere. They confuse the crap out of scientists because they couldn't have evolved on Jupiter and contain a protein that keeps their cell's DNA in top shape regardless of damage, granting them eternal life. Naturally, everyone's eager to find out how to apply those proteins to humans.

Saturn & Titan

Living on Titan is not easy, what with Saturn blocking most of the sunlight. Still there are lots of resources to be found (especially ethane), so of course you can expect humans to settle there. Titan is not a really a solar nation and "just" a mining colony, with the Jovians having the biggest influence around here.

Culture: Working on Titans puts you about as far away form human civilization as possible, so things are a bit isolated around here. The Titanians therefore like to stick together, identifying more with fellow workers instead of their homeland. They don't even so much as raised an eyebrow over the whole Cold War situation.

Politics: Titan is officially international territory, but that doesn't stop the already very influencial Jovians from treating it as their own property, trying to drive off rival mining companies from other solar nations. Suffice to say, the others are a bit pissed off - which might just explain the large increase in pirate attacks...

Science & Military: Titan's pretty well into chemical engineering and pharameutics. There's no real military here aside from some Exo-Suit-based security.

Phew, that was a lot to cover. Personally, I can imaging playing as a stereotypical Venusian to be rather lulzy - though I'm not sure if the other players would have as much fun. Probably safer to pick a Mercurian or something. They're like the Hanseatic League if the Hanseatic League was located next to a volcano.

Next Time: Organizations - including some weird hairstyles!

Doresh fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Feb 5, 2015

Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN

Halloween Jack posted:

My first impulse is to say that it needs a foreground element, where the PCs are given a cause and a mission, and a background element that looms throughout the campaign. For example, for the foreground, the PCs could be a government task force fighting the Wonderland on its own turf, a police unit hunting down CPDers who've been warped or possessed, or a company that stops terrorist groups from using chessboard-delving to attack their rivals. For the background element, you could have the government wanting to use Wonderland for nefarious purposes, the Underground spreading misinformation that needs to be combated, or corporations sowing advertising in Chessboard 1.

From my memory of Wonderland, i'd want to play supernatural psychiatrists who heal people by hunting down the Wonderland manifestations of their issues and defeating/making peace with them. Or somebody trying to spread weirdness to the 'real world'. But I'd honestly be happy just chilling out and seeing trippy poo poo.

Speaking of trippy poo poo, I'd love to hear more about the GURPS Prisoner book that FM Guru mentioned. I hope there's a different GM each game.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Feb 5, 2015

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
I wouldn't say I'm a 'simulationist' in the sense that I feel a game NEEDS simulation qualities to be good, I love me some crazy fantasy/sci fi bullshit plenty, but I can ENJOY simulationist games that are done and run well. I think there's a place for the hardcore 'no this what it'd REALLY be like in this world' games just the same as there's a place for 'gently caress YOUR PHYSICS I AM A WIZARD'.

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

Count Chocula posted:

From my memory of Wonderland, i'd want to play supernatural psychiatrists who heal people by hunting down the Wonderland manifestations of their issues and defeating/making peace with them. Or somebody trying to spread weirdness to the 'real world'. But I'd honestly be happy just chilling out and seeing trippy poo poo.

Speaking of trippy poo poo, I'd love to hear more about the GURPS Prisoner book that FM Guru mentioned. I hope there's a different GM each game.

heh. I actually have that book, and there are suggestions on how to run it as a multi-GM campaign (complete with each GM having his/her own Number Two, if desired).

Even though GURPS isn't my favorite system by any stretch, it's an awesome sourcebook for Prisoner stuff and ideas on how to run a Prisoner-inspired game.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
I used to be a simulationist. Railed at the silly abstraction of 2E AD&D's combat systems, spent a summer making a wretched heartbreaker with fractionally acquired proficiencies and stat gains, with a truly lovely random background system cribbed from those equally awful Central Casting books. For years, GURPS was my touchstone. If I could model something in it, I would, and I even took to statting characters for stories before writing the stories themselves because... I don't know. Some proto-TVTropes ward against Mary Sueism, maybe. Eagerly awaited the release of Vehicles, and ended up with two editions that I wrestled valiantly with for years.

Then... I dunno. I mean, once upon a time I'd have happily spent hours determining a character's nonweapon proficiencies, or wasting valuable skill points on useless hobby skills in the name of verisimilitude, but... probably about the time the mutant mass that formed the basis for our GURPS Wing Commander campaigns (early edition Space with Firepower and Defense Factor instead of DR and damage dice, with all the values spun out to absurd lengths) I began to realize that it was meaningless. Things like the 60 CP Eidetic Memory were basically a tax for even the rank and file disposable mooks, and around the same time I realized that most of the skills and poo poo we agonized over in the D&D 3.x games weren't being used any more than proficiency slots spent on cooperage were.

Nowadays I'll put up with Mutants and Masterminds's very short skill list, but I think FATE Core's skill pyramid is too fiddly. I'm not sure I'll ever touch GURPS or D&D again.

Unrelated, I've got at least two copies of the Prisoner sourcebook. I got mine before I discovered the TV show, so I was well primed for my first episode with all of the plot synopses in the book, and on the other hand utterly goddamn baffled by everything else. In a good way.

CISscum
Nov 15, 2014

Doresh posted:

(800 km behind Jupiter, which is slightly more than the average distance between Jupiter and the sun).
I don't get it. Is Solar System in Jovian Chronicles the size of Australia?

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
The home stretch



So what's left? About 50 or so pages of Adventuring, Character Sheets, Advancement, Adversaries and ships, and I'm pretty sure there's going to be more retarded to find in there, or at least more lovely art. So let's chew through the rest of this pile of trash... and of course they gently caress up right from the get go, with something as simple as suggested quest rewards.

> 300-500 for jobs with substantial personal risk.

Basically, a couple of sessions that we drag out with extended shopping trips or some sort of intercharacter drama can, unless we have rock bottom Ledger stats, basically land us as much money as a highly dangerous adventure. In fact, unless a given adventure only lasts one or two sessions, we're in fact almost guaranteed to earn more during it than we will at the end of it. Did anyone playtest ANY of this? Mind, they're allowed to "negotiate" for better payment, but it's not something they can mechanically roll, the book informs us, they have to have a legitimate argument for it. How about the argument that "hey, chief, I can earn more than this sitting at home and scratching my nads for a week, get hosed."?

quote:

Vectors don’t need to worry about muscular atrophy due to low or no gravity; they were specifically designed to adapt to such conditions.

And of course the everlasting parade of SPECIAL FURRY ABILITIES because ~superior genetics~ just loving keeps on going, and going, and loving going.

quote:

Fall damage is standardized across the game system regardless of what planet you’re on. It also applies in zero gravity situations where your character collides with objects.

Fall damage begins at 10 feet (6 feet for micro characters). Calculate how many feet you fell beyond 10, and multiply that number by 2. That is the accumulated damage on impact. So a character falling 30 feet with nothing to stop their descent hits the ground for 40 damage (20x2).

So, apparently velocity doesn't matter for this mechanic, which means that if you gently drift a hundred feet in zero-G at a snail's pace and then "collide" with an object, you'll gorily explode, going by the rules as written.

Remember how Eclipse Phase had transmitting a copy of your brain to another location, as a way of travelling, but with the cost of needing to use a local body and perhaps the complications that entailed? HSD just has magical technology that builds you a perfect body-copy on-site in a span of hours. Despite the fact that a "round trip" costs 1000 credits, which then includes the cost of manufacturing first one new body, and then a second, the game suggests that PC's can sell their organs to cover some of the costs. But why? Growing an entire new body is apparently loving effortless, the work of hours, growing a box of new livers should take five minutes. Also, wait, why does a "Body Replacement" surgery, which just involves one new body, which doesn't need to be a carbon-copy replica of the original, cost 2500 credits, when this costs 1000? Can't a PC just ask for a new body to be transmitted to on arrival, rather than a copy of their old one?



There's a section on loans, which caps you at loaning 500 credits(your max is equal to your Econ:Strength*100, so in practice the cap is more like 300, but let's be generous), which we've already established you can just earn in a couple of game sessions with plain ledger rolls as long as you don't put them all at 1 dot or something.

quote:

A note to Guides: You do not always need to make loans available to players. Using just the rules mechanics it is possible for a team of players to borrow a substantial amount of money right off the bat. This is intentional, as it gives them a means to purchase things like ships without having to play a long campaign first. However, it can also be used to outfit them with high-tier weaponry much sooner than makes narrative sense. Players should keep in mind the sort of character they’re playing. It isn’t always particularly believable for the first action of say, a scientist or sports star, to take out two loans, go to the nearest store, and buy a high powered rifle and fully enclosed suit of active armor just on a whim.

I don't know, if I was a loving PC in a sci-fi game sorta-styled as "horror," with monstrous space-creatures and loving Libertarians all over the place, I know I'd invest in a sniper rifle and decking myself out like a Space Marine as fast as possible. So this seems like an entirely reasonable route of action, especially after the first encounter with something scary.



Why the gently caress does the evil red bloodbad space creature of starterror have tits. loving Christ, HSD.



At any rate, the Adversaries chapter is mostly dull statblocks for a bunch of generic furry enemies, the only ones that get anything resembling fluff are Vitae Demons, Pale Men and Whispers. The red-titted wonder up there is a Whisper, while the Edgy Fursona above is a "Vitae Demon." Apparently if you can't feel pain, for instance if you're using Vitae, which also removes all need for nutrition or other things that generally keep a body and mind alive, it makes you go insane. Like, the whole description reeks of them having invented Vitae as a WONDER DRUG but then needing a reason why everyone wasn't just juicing up on it while letting the farms go fallow instead of having to eat, why they didn't just replace oxygen storage aboard spaceships and in spacesuits with it, etc., and they arbitrarily decided that while it keeps your brain alive without oxygen, and thinking without oxygen, and capable of controlling your body without oxygen, it just so also happens to make you go insane if your brain lacks oxygen.

For some vaguely defined reason.

So Vitae Demons are the completely crazy Vitae junkies that despite each vitae hit lasting only an hour, and despite their clearly not being able to function without it, somehow still exist. How are they paying for it? Is someone still hiring them when they're described as amoral sadists who know only violence? Do their Ledgers just keep piling on money for them anyway and corporate vending machines keep pouring out Vitae to sustain them? A Vitae Charge costs 150 credits, the book lists a Vitae Charge being consumed as lasting for "one hour" or "until the end of battle," whichever comes first. So a Vitae Demon, to survive, must apparently need... 3600 credits per day. This is enough to buy multiple Instant Death Cannons and suits of powered armor. So long story short, someone did not think about how the rules and fluff lined up, here.



Transcendent Manifestations are space ghosts. That's basically it, they're space monsterghosts that show up, do things because the plot requires them to and then... disappear? The game doesn't even really have any rules for why they show up, what they do when they do, or what makes them leave again. They don't even get any stats of their own, they just use some of the REAL TOUGH GENERIC GUY templates with some random superpowers slapped on. Also despite being Transcendent Manifestations, they don't actually get any of the space wizardry from Transcendent implants, despite the two being linked by fluff in very vague ways.



We don't learn anything about Whispers that we don't already know, they're bad and spooky and they kill dudes, and when they kill dudes, sometimes those dudes explode into more Whispers. They're also literally made from blood, when they die, they turn from "crystalline blood" back into plain normal blood. Also if you just hide for ten minutes, they'll turn themselves into crystal art installations. Seriously. If they can't find anyone to kill for ten minutes, they just shrug, merge with the nearest Whispers into a big crystal. If you attack the crystal, they all come back out again, but according to the fluff, blowing the whole thing up in one go will negate that. So just call in the Scrooge McDuck Battallion to nuke the loving thing with their death rays.

Also if they try to infect someone who's got a Transcendent Implant, there's a 12.5% chance that the Whisper trying it, and all Whispers in the area, spontaneously explode. However, if the person with the implant ever tries to use their implant again, they explode, into more Whispers, without a save or any response possible, and if they don't have the requisite combination of stats and/or corporate allegiance to have information about this, the PC will just unknowingly be able to suicide at any moment by deciding to use their superpowers. Fun gameplay!



We also finally get art of the Pale Men... and they look a lot less Slendermanny than I had expected. Despite being TERRIBLE THINGS THAT CAN MURDER EVERYONE, they basically just have high stats and use guns, there's nothing really that unusual about them. The fluff doesn't particularly give them any motives or establish any behavior for them, and since they're all on Earth, which is a shithole no one wants to deal with... I can't really see why they would ever really feature into the game at all.

There's a section on ships which is largely space gun wankery, but does contain a section that's kind of weird. In normal combat, high-charisma characters can issue "commands," that basically buff comrades or allow them to switch places in the turn order, handy things like that, one of the few things I liked about the combat system, but it wasn't unique enough to merit my pointing out. In space combat, stuff like telling the ship to run quiet or telling people to "launch drones," is the counterpart, requires a specific level of charisma and command skill. Even if the "commander" is the one doing the thing themselves, instead of using a Mind stat and some sort of technical skill to know what to do, they still use Body:Presence(physical beauty) and the Command skill. The most complicated SPACE COMMAND is apparently ramming enemy ships, because "ALL POWER TO ENGINES" is clearly a complicated concept that only the most brilliant strategist can understand.

Other things that require a command check: Hitting the brakes and scanning an area.



So, the advancement section! Interestingly enough, the game doesn't run on XP or anything similar, but instead simply suggests giving a certain number of stat-ups/skill-ups/focus options per time played(either in number of hours or number of sessions), of course while this is somewhat novel, there's also no such thing as diminishing returns(more XP needed to be paid for the same amount of boost, for instance) or other things to limit hyper-specialization. It's also worth noting that you can't use these stat-ups to boost Economy and Community stats, and Mind and Body stats can only be raised to 3 this way. How do you get Mind and Body Stats up to 4 and 5? Why that's simple. Surgery! Surgery that you pay for... with ledger stats! It's at least somewhat expensive, being 1500 for a stat-up, either from 3 to 4, or 4 to 5, but it's not that bad if you really focused on your ledger stats. Also for some reason you can boost Body:Acuity by +1 just for 200 credits with an "Augmentation" operation that jams more eyes into your head.

I also somehow missed this, but for just 500 credits, you can get a Celerity implant that "levels up" one of your dice groups(d8's become d10, d10's become d12, etc.). Now, it can only be taken twice, and it has another 600-credit thing as a prereq, but one of our groups is already "maxed" out with d12's, so we only have three that need boosting, and that means we can just stat-dump something like Community and run around with three d12 groups instead pretty fast.

There does in fact not seem to be any surgery for improving your mind, now that I look around for it. There's Muscular Enhancement, and the Advancement section references a "Mind Enhancement" surgery, but it's not in the book as far as I can tell. Not sure if its an editing error or if mental stats really are capped at 3 for PC's.

You also can't increase Community stats at level-up time, only the GM can say when the party as a whole deserves to have them levelled up. But what about Ledger stats? Well. That's kind of funny.

quote:

Economy Traits grow as the player achieves certain conditions. Since your Economy Stat represents your footprint in the cash flow of the universe, it increases on its own as you achieve certain landmarks of wealth and importance.

Consult the following questions, and consider each one to be a separate condition.

Has the player completed three contracts successfully?

Has the player reached allegiance level 4 with a Corp? Temporary allegiance from abilities will not count.

Has the player team purchased a 1000 credit or higher item?

...

If any one of these conditions is true, you may add 1 to any Economy Trait. Once a condition has been met, it must be met again to count again. If you’ve reached allegiance level 4 in a corp or your team has purchased a 1000 credit item, you must reach it with a different corp or purchase a new one to receive the bonus again.

So, let me get this straight. If I start out by buffing my Ledger stats sky high, quickly earn 1000 credits, buy a death ray, then I get a boost to my Ledger stats, which will allow me to buy more death rays, or other stupidly expensive items(I guess it could be taken as meaning a different item each time, but I only need one Annihilate-status weapon, anyway). So it's like some sort of self-sustaining reaction where the richer I am, the faster I'll get richer. Then I'll use my normal level-ups to bump my body stats to 3 as fast as possible, so I can pay money to boost them even quicker... actually, surgery counts as an item, right? So hey, I'll get a ledger bonus for increasing my body stats under the scalpel, too!

This system is loving stupid.

Also if you want the body/mind stat boosts you have to make a case to your GM that your character did something that made you deserve said stat boost. Hope your GM isn't a cockhead.

But what about proficiencies? Simple, you buy a trivial item that teaches you while you sleep. Seriously. As long as you get enough sleep for 14 days while wearing your stupid sleep-learning eye implant, you gain a proficiency point with no costs, penalties or checks, though it caps any given skill at 3(or 2, if you already have too many skills at 3). Considering that the item is of trivial cost, I'm kind of wondering why not everyone in the loving universe has a baseline of 2 in every skill.

There are 30 skills, you can get up to at least 2 in all of them, 16 days per skill point(14 days of learning plus a two-day downtime period afterwards), meaning it'd take... 960 weeks, or 18 years, for it. So by the time everyone is out of their teenage years, they'll pretty much know everything, or early 20's if they don't make "Neuroplex" implants for toddlers.

Going above rank 3 requires "a special quest themed around the skill." I look forward to my exciting and inspiring Finance-themed quest my amazing quest themed around the "Swim" skill. Advancing above rank 3 also frees up another skill to rise to rank 3... players have the same max on rank 4 skills as on rank 3 skills. Rather than, perhaps, some sort of shared cap for "advanced" skills(anything beyond tier 2), indicating the difficulty of mastering everything. It's. Augh. It hurts my brain and it's loving retarded.

And then the book just... ends. No metaplot suggestions, no premade adventures, nothing. Except for the list of fuckwits who supported the thing, accompanied by two last pieces of art crammed in alongside all the names.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Does it explain why Vitae Daemons apparently look like some sort of college art student's splatterpunk mannequin sculpture made from random wooden scraps and power tools? Or is it just "lol they crazy."

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!

Kai Tave posted:

Does it explain why Vitae Daemons apparently look like some sort of college art student's splatterpunk mannequin sculpture made from random wooden scraps and power tools? Or is it just "lol they crazy."

"lol they crazy." Because apparently when you go insaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane what you do is randomly graft new stuff to yourself, because, apparently, being a deranged sociopath also gives you the money to pay expensive surgery bills alongside your staggering Vitae budget.

Communist Zombie
Nov 1, 2011

PurpleXVI posted:

So, let me get this straight. If I start out by buffing my Ledger stats sky high, quickly earn 1000 credits, buy a death ray, then I get a boost to my Ledger stats, which will allow me to buy more death rays, or other stupidly expensive items(I guess it could be taken as meaning a different item each time, but I only need one Annihilate-status weapon, anyway). So it's like some sort of self-sustaining reaction where the richer I am, the faster I'll get richer. Then I'll use my normal level-ups to bump my body stats to 3 as fast as possible, so I can pay money to boost them even quicker... actually, surgery counts as an item, right? So hey, I'll get a ledger bonus for increasing my body stats under the scalpel, too!

This system is loving stupid.

I actually consider this somewhat logical for a fully unregulated capitalist system, the more money you have the easier it is to exploit various loopholes and such in the economy (which includes bribes, lawsuits, just buying out competitionm etc). There is a reason why wealth concentrates into a smaller and smaller fraction of the population.

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!

Communist Zombie posted:

I actually consider this somewhat logical for a fully unregulated capitalist system, the more money you have the easier it is to exploit various loopholes and such in the economy (which includes bribes, lawsuits, just buying out competitionm etc). There is a reason why wealth concentrates into a smaller and smaller fraction of the population.

But it's not the money itself that makes you richer, it's using the money. If you go out and spend 1000 credits on a fancy sports car, you somehow get more money on your next paycheck.

That's not how capitalism works, a sports car or a death ray aren't investments. I mean, unless you're engaging in some particularly brutal protection rackets which... completely unregulated capitalist system... yeah, fair enough, I guess the death ray might make sense for increasing your earning potential.

Hipster Occultist
Aug 16, 2008

He's an ancient, obscure god. You probably haven't heard of him.


Count Chocula posted:

From my memory of Wonderland, i'd want to play supernatural psychiatrists who heal people by hunting down the Wonderland manifestations of their issues and defeating/making peace with them. Or somebody trying to spread weirdness to the 'real world'. But I'd honestly be happy just chilling out and seeing trippy poo poo.

Yeah its too bad (metaplot spoilers) that the endgame literally involves turning reality off and becoming one with the cosmos

ForkBanger
Jul 19, 2007

Right, where was I?


Oh.

Last time we looked at the not-at-all-convoluted time travel mechanics of Transdimensional TMNT. The obvious follow up is...

A (Time) Wizard Did It

Time Lords! They hang out in the 79th level of Null-Time, where they work together to deal with serious threats to the time stream, threats from outside dimensions, or threats to the 79th.

That’s the only information given about Time Lords, which is better than some metaplot related nonsense that your players might stumble into with no idea about backstories or whatever that requires Captain Exposition to show up and drop some knowledge bombs.. They’re the Null-Time-controlling self-appointed guardians of causality, and it’s left up to the GM to determine what, if any, interactions players have with them. Mostly.
Now, some plot hooks or ways to involve the Time Lords in a game would be a useful thing to throw in here, but you can do a lot with the general 'stop screwing with time, jackass' idea.

Three of the Time Lords have stats (Lord Simultaneous, Renet, and Lord Savanti Romero), the ones who appeared in the TMNT comics, and there are brief mentions/summaries of four others.
Between the four of them, they take up less total space than Lord Simultaneous’ wristwatch or his list of Magical Abilities.

The barely-mentioned Time Lords are-
Lord Gnostis: non-Hellenic Greek from 512BC. Super-old, spends most of his time in stasis.
Lord Marcellus Timagetus: now retired to his home in Rome, 137BC.
Lord Augusto Cristie: officially a Time Lord, but ‘too flighty’ for regular missions. Spends time at home in Italy, 1613AD.
Lord Cekini Garvan: works with one of the statted NPCs, Lord, Simultaneous, as a researcher. Comes from a Post-Holocaust Earth, 2113AD.

So two are out of the picture as past it, one is too much of a flake to do anything more than exposition, and one is a background plot-device guy. Okay, then. At least half of them can give out exposition and suggest missions, I guess?

Also, these guys don’t seem like they'd do a good job with the whole ‘protect the time stream’ business.

So, on to the statted Time Lords-


Renet is Lord Simultaneous’ apprentice, the driving force behind the TMNT time travel shenanigans, and is presented as a level 1 Time Lord. She’s a teenage mutant ninja turtle human apprentice Time Lord, spoiled and impulsive, and Lord Simultaneous is watching over her. There's not much to say about Renet- more space is spent on detailing the spells she knows and her skills than is spent setting up plot ideas for her, beyond 'do what happened in the comic', i.e. show up and time travel the not-time-travelling characters off for an adventure.


Lord Savanti Romero is the eeeeevil Time Lord who wants to take over a variety of worlds after he’s taken over the 79th Level to use as temporal base of operations. After the events of the comics, he's stuck out of synch with the rest of time and has put that plan on a backburner while he tries to a) get back in synch with everyone else and b) get even with Lord Simultaneous. Romero is a level 11 Time Lord, with a bunch of magic spells. We’ll get to those shortly. Also, his occupation is ‘a fugitive in prehistoric time’. At what point is a level 11 Time Lord a suitable enemy for a group of characters? Is he a behind-the-scenes kind of guy? Also, what is he? Your guess is as good as mine, because none of these things are mentioned.


Lord Simultaneous has been on the job as chief Time Lord for 16 years, taking on the role at 41. He’s trained a number of apprentices (who are never mentioned, and presumably do not work with the Time Lords?) before taking on Renet. Simultaneous is a level 14 Time Lord, just under the level cap, who has access to almost all the magic spells in the book. He’s also been watching the development of microchips, and working digital components into magical power items.

His wristwatch (the Cosmic Quartz Digital Watch) can cast more spells per day than Simultaneous himself can, although from a more limited selection, but it provides some constant effects- such as Impervious to Magic/Spell Attacks, Impervious to Psionics, Impervious to Fire, and Breathe Without Air. It also Senses Magic, and identifies time travellers and their period of origin automatically.

He also has the Sacred Sands of Time Sceptre, an Enchanted Object (see Revised Heroes Unlimited!). It’s a true Trans-Dimensional Object that retains it’s powers anywhere throughout time and alternate dimensions- wait, do others not do that? Somebody check Heroes Unlimited!
It can be used for time travel and dimension-hopping (as long as you’re a wizard), and you can hit people with it (d6 damage) until it breaks (SDC 105). Also it shoots fireballs (5d6 damage). And it lets you Levitate at will.

So yeah, they’re statted out comic book Mcguffins that stop any uppity players trying anything on Lord Simultaneous, who is himself a statted out McGuffin.

So those are the NPC Time Lords who you might encounter, maybe somehow? Anyway, they can do magic.

Magic
This magic isn't Time Lord magic, that's different magic.

I thought I'd drop that sleeper in the way of your train of thought to give the full Palladium derail experience.

We’ve seen caster-tyes before in Palladium games- you pick your powers, spend your moonjuice Potential Psychic Energy to power them, then they do the usual wizard stuff.
How about having that and a spells known/casts per day mechanic in the same game? Why settle for one magic system, when you can have two?

Some characters from past Twists have access to this casts/day kind of magic- they get their own level progression table too, just like the various martial arts styles. As ever with magic, there’s a load of :words: about how hard it is to do magic. Naturally, this has no effect on how magic works- everyone who can do magic starts off knowing 14 spells, and being able to cast 8 spells per day, gaining 2 more casts per day every 3 levels. You can cast any spell you know- none of this ‘preparing spells’ nonsense. Some spells are harder than others- they’ll have a number in parenthesis after their name, e.g. Shadow Beast (2). That’s how many of your spell-learning slots they use, so Shadow Beast (2) counts as 2 of your 14 picks, but this extra difficulty has no effect on actually casting them.

You’ll notice you don’t gain spells as you level up, only additional castings. This is the downside of being a wizard. If you want to learn a new spell, you need to do one of-
Return to the Master to learn.
Your teacher will usually teach a new spell every once in a while. So, ask your GM. If they say yes, you spend 1 month studying it, and learn it. If you want a (2) spell, it’ll take 1d4 months of study. A (3) spell takes 2d4 months. If your GM decides to not let you have a spell, your teacher will say no. Push it, and he’ll teach you patience by wasting your time for 2d4 months, no adventuring allowed.
Be granted magical knowledge.
A powerful wizard or supernatural being will teach you 1d4 spells. All you have to do is study each spell for 1d4 months, without breaking your studying or else you’ll lose that spell and no more will be taught. This kind of boon is apparently rare and unlikely.
Bootstrap yourself some spells.
Spend 8 months studying old books about a spell you want and interrupt it whenevs, but you can only study one at a time. Once you’ve done your book time, you roll a d100 on this table-

fuckyou.gif

I have no idea what tables you should roll on for 79-88, as they're not in this book. I imagine it's because this is a copy-paste job from Palladium's fantasy RPG.
Also, all wizards should either know mystic portal, or take road trips to try out their new spells.

Anyway, you have a 30% success rate for learning a new spell for 8 months of work.

So.

As a Wizard, you get a couple of other perks you can use whenever.
First is Astral Projection.
Good news, you can launch your astral self off to go peeping around and eavesdropping while your body sits around and drools.
Bad news, you only have a 50% chance to successfully get where you want to be.
Good news, if you get there you can’t be seen or detected, but can watch and listen in.
Bad news, you have 60 seconds of travel per level. If you don’t get back to your body in time, you get stuck forever in the astral plane and your body dies in 1-6 days.
Worse news, you have to roll on the following table (up to 3 times per 15 second melee) to find your meaty parts.

1-30 - Hopelessly lost.
31-50 - Uncertain/confused.
51-80 - Fairly certain of location.
81-100 - Definitely certain.

‘Definitely certain’ is the only outcome that lets you find your body again.

As well as the exciting possibility of suicide by astral travel, you learn Recognize Enchantment and can spot magic items, rituals, spells, other wizards, that kind of thing. You don’t know what it’s for or what it’s doing, only that it’s magic. You get this at 60%, +4% per level. Does your first level count? Truly, a riddle for the ages.

Finally, you learn to Sense Magic. You can sense the presence of magic within 200’, and you can pinpoint it sometimes- specifically 24% of the time, +4% per level.

As well of this nonsense, there is a Wizard Combat Table that probably maybe somehow mashes together with your normal punch-kick Combat Table to punch/kick/zap people you don't like.

There’s a magic glossary that boils down to the following-
The spell saving throw is 12+

Next time- the spells!

hectorgrey
Oct 14, 2011
Also something of a simulationist - though only to a certain extent. I'd probably never use the GURPS 3rd edition vehicle rules, for example, but I like combat in games to make sense and I like character advancement to make sense (the way GURPS 4e handles both of these are things I quite like). Thing is though, you don't really need a large number of weapon stats for a simulationist feel to a game. All you really need is internal consistency and attention to detail - if you're walking through town armed as though you're expecting all out war to break out, people should react to this. If you're going into a dungeon, you should be taking all the supplies you'd take to go caving in real life - food, water, climbing gear, camping gear, lanterns (not torches - in an enclosed space the smoke would make it incredibly hard to breathe) and a cart to carry everything in.

Otherkinsey Scale
Jul 17, 2012

Just a little bit of sunshine!

PurpleXVI posted:

Also if they try to infect someone who's got a Transcendent Implant, there's a 12.5% chance that the Whisper trying it, and all Whispers in the area, spontaneously explode. However, if the person with the implant ever tries to use their implant again, they explode, into more Whispers, without a save or any response possible, and if they don't have the requisite combination of stats and/or corporate allegiance to have information about this, the PC will just unknowingly be able to suicide at any moment by deciding to use their superpowers. Fun gameplay!

That would be fun gameplay...in Paranoia.

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc

PurpleXVI posted:

But it's not the money itself that makes you richer, it's using the money. If you go out and spend 1000 credits on a fancy sports car, you somehow get more money on your next paycheck.

That's not how capitalism works, a sports car or a death ray aren't investments. I mean, unless you're engaging in some particularly brutal protection rackets which... completely unregulated capitalist system... yeah, fair enough, I guess the death ray might make sense for increasing your earning potential.

I'm pretty sure this is how Strangecoin works.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I was going to say this reminds me a hell of a lot of Strangecoin. Where having buying power is important, but actually posessing wealth is bad. Instead you're supposed to maintain a labarythine series of constant transactions between you and others who also don't have any actual wealth and then pull it down when some plebe who actually *needs* money comes along. I can't remember where the money actually comes from, because in this ideal system no one carries wealth anymore but :shrug: that's why it's loving insane.

Kurieg fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Feb 5, 2015

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

CISscum posted:

I don't get it. Is Solar System in Jovian Chronicles the size of Australia?

Whoops. It's of course supposed to be 800 million km. Now that was slightly embarassing o_O

PurpleXVI posted:

Hc Svnt Dracones
The home stretch



At any rate, the Adversaries chapter is mostly dull statblocks for a bunch of generic furry enemies, the only ones that get anything resembling fluff are Vitae Demons, Pale Men and Whispers. The red-titted wonder up there is a Whisper, while the Edgy Fursona above is a "Vitae Demon." Apparently if you can't feel pain, for instance if you're using Vitae, which also removes all need for nutrition or other things that generally keep a body and mind alive, it makes you go insane. Like, the whole description reeks of them having invented Vitae as a WONDER DRUG but then needing a reason why everyone wasn't just juicing up on it while letting the farms go fallow instead of having to eat, why they didn't just replace oxygen storage aboard spaceships and in spacesuits with it, etc., and they arbitrarily decided that while it keeps your brain alive without oxygen, and thinking without oxygen, and capable of controlling your body without oxygen, it just so also happens to make you go insane if your brain lacks oxygen.

Anyone imagining Deathclaw Chainsawleg here to you just walk into a store to order more Vitae?

And again with the weird slime monster fetish. This game makes my brain bleed :psyduck:

Doresh fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 5, 2015

SisterAcacia
Feb 5, 2015
Good evening, viewers, a new poster here with a review of something that wasn't attached to one of the giants. Indeed, this wasn't even a second or third tier game like L5R or "WW shovelware era". I don't have many indie games, because I'm not a total loving hipster, but there is this gem: 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars

First thing first, the rules: my weapon of choice is going to be Somersby cider, but if I continue this after I go shopping, it will be Bundaberg Mutiny. I will drink every time something is so stupid it hurts, and speaking of which, I mentioned the title of this, so TIME TO DRINK!

Also, with 3:16 there, let's just get this out of the way:


If you think I should stomp a mudhole in this game's rear end, gimme a Hell Yeah!

There will be more Stone Cold as we keep going. Now, let's start with the cover and the credits. This is published by Box Ninja, and designed+written by Gregor Hutton. He also did the art, with cover art (or covert art apparently) by Paul Bourne. The game has won an award, and nobody gives a drat because seriously, awards in the gaming industry. Of note, it has three people listed for "Game System Advice", including...

Ron Edwards. Oh look at that, time to drink!



Also, there are 13 playtesters, which is a decent number for a game of this size and scope. I should mention that it does feel playtested, but I'll get to the mechanics later. Just think "Eurogame", where there is a sound little system, also there is a theme, AND THE TWO NEED NOT MIX.

With additional thanks to a whole bunch of people including the loving Forge. Look what time it is: drink time!

Other than that, it's dedicated to his father, and in memory of his grandfathers.

Anyway, the front cover shows small spacecraft or drop pods or space torpedoes heading towards a planet. So it's probably a space thing. "Carnage Amongst The Stars" suggests that anyway. Spoiler: it's a space thing. One thing I'll say, it's not bad art. It isn't action-heavy, going for a more menacing "it's coming" sort of feel, which doesn't quite match the game, but nonetheless, I've seen a lot worse by companies with big budgets.

So after the contents page, we get to the intro. There is a one-page fiction piece, but I need to point out, I have the pdf and these pages aren't big. Actually, it looks like in print it'd be on an annoying square page thing. Anyway, it's not in italics, and you can read it easily. It gives you an idea of what this game is actually about, and actually clues you in on one of the key mechanics/themes: the character in the story is shooting a bunch of aliens, starts to panic as more keep coming, then has a flashback to her childhood, where the moral of the story is "don't panic", so she calms down, then kills the aliens.

Because that's what this game is about : going to new places and killing the aliens. You need to enter, open up a can of whup-rear end, raise hell and leave, and that's the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so. And sometimes you get to activate memories where you tell a little story and get to either automatically win the encounter or lose on your terms.

After that we get a one-page comic of the above, with no dialogue, and honestly it's hard to figure out what it's telling you.

Next there's one column on what RPGs are (and it acknowledges that you probably already know, because he knows your first RPG is going to be Shadowrun, D&D or World of Darkness). The next one explains what THIS RPG is. You're part of the elite 3:16th Expeditionary Force, a military team that left Terra (see: Earth. I'm going to drink at this point) with over 10,000 doods, many years ago. The mission? KILL EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE.

I'm sold.

Essentially, it's because they decided omnicide of everything that isn't of Earth-origins is the safest way to protect humans from the alien monsters out there. Terra became so wonderfully magical that nobody works and there's no hate, crime, disease or trouble. Drink time! People are sterile and have to seek permission to have children (with temporary modifications made to unsterilise them). So life is all perfect and happy and in no way creepy. It's also boring.

Seriously, everyone in the military has joined because they're bored, and with life expectancy being "what you want it to be", when you decide "Yeah I figure I've spent long enough being alive, may as well clear space up so someone else can be born", you could just drop into a suicide booth, or you could join the Force. You're never going to see Terra again, but why would you want to? Your boredom is cured, you get to KILL poo poo until you die! So you're in the 16th Brigade of the 3rd Army.

It only takes until page eight, the start of chapter 2 (Getting Started), to say what dice you need (6 and 10, incidentally). This is certainly reasonable. It then tells you the importance of playing to the Theme. That it's about making choices, and what happens as a result of those choices.



The glossary is all of one small page, and it covers all the generic game terms without getting caught up in spelling out specific rules and abilities yet. This is exactly what it needs to be: no drinking here.

Right, at page 10, it's Chapter 3: Character Creation. I said it's an indie game, that means this is quick.

First you need a name, even a nickname. Apparently there is a list on page 90. We'll get to that.

Then you need a reputation - a short phrase or word that describes you. Basically, something people could use to describe you real quick.

Then you have your two stats. Yes, all of them. Both of them. You have Fighting Ability, which covers fighting (any action where the intended result is to kill poo poo), and Non-Fighting Ability, which covers everything else (including things that impact on fighting, such as disengaging, trying to set up an ambush and so on). You get to split 10 points between them, with each having a minimum of 1 point.

Next, you determine how much crap you've already killed, by rolling (Fighting Ability)d10 and adding it up. Your kills is important, because this is a score-tracking game.

CAN YOU FEEL THE INDIE YET?


I'm a little teapot, short and stout...

So at the start, you have access to Strengths and Weaknesses, called "Flashbacks", but you don't write them down. You generate these when you use them. Your character is actually supposed to be fairly generic and bland to start with, fleshed out as you go along.

Now, the player with the highest Non-Fighting Ability gets to be Sergeant (if there's a tie, they each roll a die, with highest being Sergeant and next being Corporal). If there is no Corporal yet, then that's the one with the highest Fighting Ability (roll off for ties). Everyone else is a Trooper (HAHAHA SUCK poo poo FOR TAKING 5-5).

You then note your gear down, and you're ready to play.

Now, the book goes straight into the ranks, and the stuff they get, including some rules info for them even though you don't know what the ratings mean. On the other hand, it's kind of relevant to note down at character creation.

A Trooper is the lowest rank, and they can use Force Weakness, which is 77 pages away. They only have one responsibility: kill as many lifeforms as you can. These guys enjoy being the dumb grunts who get to wander up and kill poo poo without thinking. They get MandelBrite Armour, a knife, hydration tablets, TRMs, a medipack, a backpack, combat drugs, flares, and an unread field manual. Just so you know the attitude everyone has here. That's kind of funny.

Also, they get grenades and either a slug rifle or energy rifle. Protip: discuss amongst the team which range you're going for, then everyone take the same choice.

The Corporal has the added responsibility of "Maximise the kill ratio (bugs killed per Trooper)". They get to have bigger guns, and they love that. So should you. They get a tatty field manual, a mitt/ball, and instead of the rifle, a heavy machinegun or energy cannon.

Sergeant has added responsibilities: follow directives issued by Officers, and protect the squad of Troopers. They get to use E-Vac (page 89). The Sergeant is automatically a drill-sergeant who swears all the time. He has a well-used field manual, and a radio. Also, for weaponry, he has a slug rifle or heavy machine gun, and sidearm.

Then it stops telling us about ranks, because those are the three starting ones, and moves on to 4: How to Play.

So, each game session covers a mission or two on a planet, with maybe 20 or so sessions in a campaign. Each time you go to a new world, the GM generates a new planet in advance of the session. Each session starts with a Mission Briefing, telling everyone the name of the world, the details of the surface features, and maybe some info about the bugs.

Here is the roleplaying advice:
-Play, don't work. Embrace the kill-happy machismo. Don't stress.
-Live the Moment. Don't plan ahead, your character might die.
-Be a Team Player. Listen to others as much as you speak. Share ideas but enjoy the ideas of others too.
-Don't Try to Be Too Clever. Don't bring in too many twists and turns, go with the intuitive and obvious answers. Simple is best.
-Be Direct. Subtlety can be confusing, so just be direct.
-Be Open. Be open-minded, and honest about how you feel.

Some of these apply more to players or to the GM, but overall they're for everyone. It really wants a relaxed situation where nobody gives too much of a gently caress about anything. Presumably, the ideal scenario is where nobody really gives a poo poo about the game and they just don't bother showing up so it folds.

And yes, you should already be picturing a twin-stick shooter like Shadowgrounds at this point.

So once you land on the planet, the GM "frames" the scene, describing what is there and all that. You know, like normal. They insist on calling this the platform for the scene, and that the GM then introduces a tilt, and goddamnit my drink is empty.

Then the monsters appear and the GM commits some Threat Tokens to it, and things start to turn into a German Board Game. Also, it then says it's perfectly acceptable for players to start taking turns framing the scenes for encounters, letting the GM just throw the aliens into it because whatever. I kind of like the "throw a ball to the PCs, let them make the world a bit" approach, but on the other hand it highlights how little it all matters to the game.

So now they explain how rolling a test works: it's 1d10, roll under to succeed at all, with highest successful roll being the best. DRINK.

So when the aliens appear, players all roll NFA, and the aliens roll a single "Alien Ability" (they have just Alien Ability instead of two separate things). If the PCs all succeed and the aliens fail, the PCs ambush set the initial range (Close, Near, Far, Wherever You Are) and ambush the enemy. If the PCs all fail and the Aliens succeed, the GM sets the range and the aliens Ambush the PCs.

Otherwise, no Ambush, but: highest success is a PC? They set the initial range. Highest success is alien? GM sets the range. Everyone fails? the range is Far.

Roll-off between ties of course. And when the initial range is set, that's the range of ALL PCs from "the group of aliens". The aliens are all in one group always.

It actually has a cool little chart thing you can use, looking like a blip-blip radar thing. So you put the Threat Tokens (use those glass counters that you get in the Pokemon card game) at the centre dot, and the players have their tokens placed in the C/N/F parts. Here's the basic summary:

Close is for hand to hand combat, and often the most dangerous.
Near is "optimum for most kinds of ranged weapon"
Far is generally a spot that's safer for players but where weapons cause fewer kills

If you go beyond Far, you left the encounter: either you deliberately ran away like a little girl, or the GM had the enemies try to run (where everyone moves one step away) and you couldn't keep up. Weapons do different numbers of "kills" at different ranges, and you want the most kills possible, so you should figure out your favourite range.

In an Alien Ambush, every PC gets hit once. You have 3 HP: one hit makes you a Mess, the next Cripples you, and then you're Dead.

If the PCs Ambush, the PCs roll a d10 each to determine their "surprise round initiative" and each removes a Threat Token and deals kills as necessary. If the Threat Tokens reach zero, the enemies are wiped out, anyone yet to act can suck a dick.

Right, so let me explain the Eurogame thing:

Every group of enemies has a number of Threat Tokens assigned. However, when the enemies act, the number of Threat Tokens has no effect on this. Furthermore, when a PC succeeds on a Fighting Ability action, they remove one Threat Token, but they deal a number of "kills" based on the weapon. So there is "a bunch" of enemies, you know, some number, and you just kill some of them every now and then. DRINK

Right, every round, everyone decides what they're doing, and then everyone rolls a test (FA, NFA or AA). Or a "Flashback" can be declared, in which case that happens. Ruling out a Flashback, you work down from the highest success to the lowest - with failures just not having a turn. If you succeed with FA, remove one Threat Token and cause kills. If you succeed with NFA, you do the thing you wanted to do (like changing range by 1 step). If the baddies succeed with AA (remember there's only one AA roll, not one per token, not one per actual critter because that's a quantum number), you cause a hit to every PC who failed, or succeeded with equal to or less than you. Alternatively, any success can be used to cancel out with everyone yet to act - basically, you go "I fail, but so does everyone else with a turn coming up".

Ties can't cancel each other, and damage/hits are simultaneous when tied. Roll off for ties if that is necessary (like 2 "attack enemy" tied successes with only one Threat Token left).

How loving often has "just roll off" come up now?

Also if you succeed on FA/AA before your opponent (so for a PC, "before the baddies", for the baddies, "before everyone else"), you can additionally change range by 1 step at the end of the turn.

NFA is used generally for changing range on your turn, or changing weapons.

Also, "having a turn explaining poo poo" is a big thing in this. So any time an action succeeds, that person gets to describe the ensuing carnage. After all successes, failures take turns from highest to lowest, where they get to describe their failure or the scene or something. Um, okay.

Combat keeps going until either the PCs are all dead, the enemies are all dead (zero Threat Tokens), all survivors are beyond Far Range, a PC uses a Strength, or no hits/kills are caused for 3 complete rounds. Any remaining Threat Tokens are put back in the general pool for the planet generally (although using a Strength removes all of them, for instance). But that does mean killing 2 out of 5 then retreating... does indeed mean you've at least taken 2 out, but the remaining 3 might be a separate encounter, or it might just be added to a future encounter.

And only now does it mention what I said above. The bit where kills and threat tokens and such are vague and not linked and you shouldn't define the number of enemies ahead of time - it's determined after the fact. I think this is stupid. I also think this is a lot later than necessary to mention this.

I'm taking a break after this chapter, but I'll finish it. It next talks about Armour. It can insulate against the heat of a volcano, and protect you from space. Anyway, once per planet, you can negate one hit against you, by damaging your Armour. It absorbed the hit. No, this isn't always the first hit, you get to decide. Also, once per planet, you can use your Combat Drugs for a FA re-roll. However, it's worth remembering that not all drugs are good.



If your re-roll is a 10, it fucks you up and you take a hit. It doesn't say whether your armour can block it.

Next, the Threat Tokens: each planet has a number of these equal to (players x 5). So in combat, they are placed at the start. Using an alien Special Ability spends a token, and when PCs kill them, it removes one. Using a Strength removes all (and you roll for kills using your best weapon*range combo). Using a Weakness removes 1 Token (but also removes that PC from the encounter).

The game has no wound penalties. If you're a Mess or Crippled, that just changes how close you are to death, and helps describe your appearance. At Dead, you are Dead.

So from encounter to encounter, the number of Tokens spent to it will vary. Between any two encounters, everyone restores one hit against their health (from Crippled to a Mess, or a Mess to Healthy). The Final Encounter on the world uses all remaining Threat Tokens, and it's to the death, no retreats. After that, every survivor goes back to the ship, medals are awarded to people, and whoever killed the most things on that world gains a Level. Everyone else then rolls 1d10, with the best roll also gaining a Level (if the best is a tie, all who rolled that gain a Level).

When you gain a Level, you add +1 to either FA or NFA (max 10). You also gain a Flashback Slot, whichever has the most "Not Yet Available" (so you're generally going Strength, Weakness, Strength, Weakness).

Everyone heals fully when they return to base.

It then tells us that between missions (which is a couple per world, with a few encounters per mission), you develop your PC: automatically increase one weapon at one range category by one step (such as 1 to 1d6 or 1d6 to 1d10). Then you can try to roll NFA to upgrade a different weapon, or gain a new piece of wargear. More detail at a later page.

AND THAT'S IT FOR THIS CHAPTER AND THIS POST.

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!
It's sad that a reasonably fun concept that could be entertaining with just enough crunch to give you some tactical options, gets ruined by being literally so vapid and empty of content.

gently caress the Forge and all its spawn.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012
Who is Ron Edwards and why is he relevant?

SisterAcacia
Feb 5, 2015
He's a moron who game up with GNS Theory, which has more words than loving War & Peace yet manages to convey zero actual message. Fans of it instead just have their own idea about what it totally means, you just don't understand it because it's too deep. And then they declare "This game is for Gamists/Narrativists/Simulationists (select one), not for the other two types, so if you don't like it, it clearly just isn't FOR you.

Mostly it encouraged the new age of hipster games where people want to reinvent the entire hobby in stupid directions. A lot of it stems from Edwards convincing people you can totally make a weird little subsystem, market that as the whole game, then do the Eurogame thing where it has nothing to do with the roleplaying, and call it an RPG, and get an award for it.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

SisterAcacia posted:

Mostly it encouraged the new age of hipster games where people want to reinvent the entire hobby in stupid directions. A lot of it stems from Edwards convincing people you can totally make a weird little subsystem, market that as the whole game, then do the Eurogame thing where it has nothing to do with the roleplaying, and call it an RPG, and get an award for it.

Ron Edwards is kind of a tool but I'll be honest, this reads a lot like the glurge the RPGPundit regularly vomits when ranting about those swine and their storygames.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

PurpleXVI posted:

It's sad that a reasonably fun concept that could be entertaining with just enough crunch to give you some tactical options, gets ruined by being literally so vapid and empty of content.

gently caress the Forge and all its spawn.

That´s a bit hateful, I mean, come on, 3:16 is reasonably useful to run even for starters and it has enough of the rules to make it fun and fast at the same time, allowing for several planets to go trough in one sitting.
Heck, you can got for one planet in about one hour. I do detest many things The Forge did or spawned. But 3:16, by the gods, is a fun little game.

And now you´ve made me become a whiteknight when all I ever wanted was to be a quiet little trooper...:(

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Gamers, narrativists, simulationists. Which is the one that likes to hug?

Also which one wants their players to know from just general expertise that this game will be predominately mustard smuggling?

Davin Valkri
Apr 8, 2011

Maybe you're weighing the moral pros and cons but let me assure you that OH MY GOD
SHOOT ME IN THE GODDAMNED FACE
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!
For a game with a name like 3:16, it sounds very thematically...shallow. Like, I'd expect a game that basically uses "For God so loved the world..." as a tagline and war as a theme to be a lot more philosophical about the relationship between a nation-state and/or its governing body, the bloody but important to study mess called war, and the soldiers sent to fight in those conflicts. It feels like it should be a game about officers sending their commands to die and the consequences thereof.

Darth Various
Oct 23, 2010

SisterAcacia posted:

So after the contents page, we get to the intro. There is a one-page fiction piece, but I need to point out, I have the pdf and these pages aren't big. Actually, it looks like in print it'd be on an annoying square page thing.

Some kind of landscape semi-A5, really. Certainly the weirdest book I own.

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora

Davin Valkri posted:

It feels like it should be a game about officers sending their commands to die and the consequences thereof.

The former is actually a thing, sort of, but the latter isn't really explored at all. 3:16 really tries to be more of a quick and easy, play it when someone's absent this week sort of game. Problem is, there's a lot of other games like that with more stuff to do and more varied story potential. 3:16 is more like a series of extremely simple board games where someone can just go "I win!" or "I don't lose!" whenever they want. There's not a lot to think about, and the potential seeds of intra-party conflict that come up later due to conflicting orders are less a source of tension and drama, and more a little gag that makes you go "heh" the first time you see it.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

SisterAcacia posted:

He's a moron who game up with GNS Theory, which has more words than loving War & Peace yet manages to convey zero actual message. Fans of it instead just have their own idea about what it totally means, you just don't understand it because it's too deep. And then they declare "This game is for Gamists/Narrativists/Simulationists (select one), not for the other two types, so if you don't like it, it clearly just isn't FOR you.

Mostly it encouraged the new age of hipster games where people want to reinvent the entire hobby in stupid directions. A lot of it stems from Edwards convincing people you can totally make a weird little subsystem, market that as the whole game, then do the Eurogame thing where it has nothing to do with the roleplaying, and call it an RPG, and get an award for it.
That's the message you took away from Ron "System Matters" Edwards? Really?

Kai Tave posted:

Ron Edwards is kind of a tool but I'll be honest, this reads a lot like the glurge the RPGPundit regularly vomits when ranting about those swine and their storygames.
Tarnowski was right! The Forge really is the Socialism of RPGs. Y'know, because dumb people get really angry about what they imagine it is.

Heliotrope
Aug 17, 2007

You're fucking subhuman

Davin Valkri posted:

For a game with a name like 3:16, it sounds very thematically...shallow. Like, I'd expect a game that basically uses "For God so loved the world..." as a tagline and war as a theme to be a lot more philosophical about the relationship between a nation-state and/or its governing body, the bloody but important to study mess called war, and the soldiers sent to fight in those conflicts. It feels like it should be a game about officers sending their commands to die and the consequences thereof.

There is a bit more to the game and setting, which I assume will get covered.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Halloween Jack posted:

Tarnowski was right! The Forge really is the Socialism of RPGs. Y'know, because dumb people get really angry about what they imagine it is.

The hate some people have for The Forge and the things that came out of it has always baffled me, even back when the Forge was a thing which it isn't anymore despite the way some people still rant about it like it is. It's like, of all the poo poo in this hobby to detest and there's plenty out there to detest, you're (the general you) mad about a bunch of people whose biggest crime was having longwinded discussions about RPGs and maybe publishing some games you don't want to play, both of which you could just as easily use to describe SA Tradgames.

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Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
hpapylef actually did a hell of a rant about it on the old grognards.txt. He talked about how angry it made him that Forge people would do these workshops at conventions, where they would basically hold court over other people's ideas and just drone "No, what is your game about" until the concept was reduced to "a perfect glib statement of Narrativist intent." If that's true, it sounds pretentious and lovely. I'm not really interested in My Life with Master or The Mountain Witch, or in micro-storygames that are so focused they seem meant only for a one-shot. People still make them and I guess they play and enjoy them, but it's not my thing. But without the Forge there would be no Powered by the Apocalypse games, among others. As for the forums where people make a pastime of whining about the Forge, what have they contributed besides uninspired retrotrash?

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