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moebius2778 posted:This is from a bit back, but they probably mean salt depletion. Liquid petroleum. Make sure you're getting enough gasoline in your diet, kids! It's better to have too much than too little. Also, I don't know why I didn't react to it before, but why "Homeopathic Touch"? Homeopathy is a crack pseudoscience about how diluting poisons until there is no poison left in the water turns the water into a cure, has nothing to do with what's being described. I suspect the author may have extrapolated from the word "homeostasis", which is at least related.
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Mar 9, 2015 14:00
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moebius2778 posted:This is from a bit back, but they probably mean salt depletion. Typically stands for "Let's Play," involving videos of someone playing a game with or without commentary.
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Mar 9, 2015 19:02
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DNA Cowboys posted:The companion book goes into this, but it's not really focused into anything beyond "learn the setting's secrets, which are GM-only." I never finished writing about the second book, did I? You didn't, but your review inspired me to track down a copy of it on my own, and I have to say it's definitely worse than if they had just left everything vaguely explained. The main book aludes to all of these weird, mysterious things, which sound cool and menacing in your imagination, and then the Book of Knots just straight up stats out the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts and provides a definite explanation for the Chessboard levels and why they exist and it just kind of deflates everything. I really wish they had pulled a Greg Stolze a la Unknown Armies and had the GM section be like "The Queen of Hearts - We don't know why she's so loving nuts, so use you imagination and whatever explanation seems the coolest to your players". Instead it's just pages and pages of really dense crunch for NPCs and locations that will basically insta-gib any PC who is dumb enough to engage them without massive GM fiat (at which point the concept of this being a game kind of becomes moot). EDIT: There's also this weird tonal shift where chessboard levels 1 and 2 become progressively more Silent Hill-y and creepy but then it flips and level 3 and down become progressively more monkey-cheese-omg-how-random. The authors still seem to think that the randomness of the lower chessboards somehow conveys the same kind of terror, but it's hard for me to imagine that a floating island made out of raw desire, where gnomes mine nuggets of our subconscious feelings of insatiability, and a crazy rabbit is the god king who rolls into town at random times and kills everyone, is the same kind of scary as what's described on levels 1 and 2. Freaking Crumbum fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 20:17
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KROMORE THE RULES 202 pages into Kromore and we actually get to the rules in any sort of concise format. We had a "RULES BASICS" at the start that only told us how many dice to roll, and nothing else. We had some scattered stuff in the Skills section on how skill checks worked and what a given difficulty of a check was. But it's not until 202 pages in that we hit the majority of the ruleset. Just to recap what we've already been told, though, because the game doesn't do that for us even though we were introduced to them a couple hundred pages back... the basic check is a roll of STATd4+SKILLRANKS with no weirdnesses or complications, no critical successes or failures, you either beat a static number(for most checks) or an enemy's roll. The first thing the chapter tells us is that we're gonna need a board or battlemat(informing us in the process that hex grids are vastly superior to square grids), this makes sense when we check the index and find that literally the entire rules chapter is combat, leaving the full extent of non-combat stuff as what we can do with skill checks and the few spells that aren't about throwing some variety of painful elemental energy at enemies(or summoning things to cut their faces wide open). Then we're told how to roll initiative, what a round consists of(five seconds of real time, split into three actions that we can assign as we see fit, unless we do a single thing that consumes more than one action, like some spells... and about half the list of default actions, like attacking with a two-handed weapon or just about any skill check. Some things, like putting on heavy armor, require up to nine actions, meaning that they consume a total of three full rounds). All these actions are just actions I'll note. No major, minor, free, bonus or whatever separation, removing the need to keep track of any such goofery. In the game's defense, it's all pretty neatly organized. There's one table that contains all the default actions, you can quickly check if something provokes free attacks if done at melee range and how many actions it takes... attacking and defending is also relatively simple. Rather than having separate dodge and damage resistance, like most modern games, or having one huge dodge pool like D&D, there's just one big soak/damage resistance pool. First dodge subtracts from incoming damage, then your shield, then your armor and finally it impacts your life points. Shields and armor also have their own pools of hit points, which, when drained, mean they're coming apart and can no longer soak up anything, as well as a damage resistance stat indicating how much they can soak per round. It's a bit abstract, definitely not for anyone obsessed with verisimilitude, but it seems like it'd make combat flow pretty quickly since you're just rolling once to attack(weapon damage + Muscle or Agility + your combat bonuses), versus a static number(Dodge+Shield+Armor). quote:FINISHING A TARGET Despite my moderate praise, though, the writing is still loving awful. What does it even mean to have DIRECT CONTACT TO LIFE POINTS OF THAT TARGET? This is nothing compared to the next section which uses CRITICAL CALLED ATTACK so many times it's lost what little meaning it has, including all its permutations like "critical called area attack" and "critical call called attack." For some reason the mechanic for making target attacks isn't just called attacks, it's critical called attacks. It's making me dizzy just trying to read these pages. quote:Any attack can deal critical damage. The amount of LP dealt in an attack to a region represents a critical hit to that region. A critical hit is a one time attack and the amount of LP taken at one time from an attack represents the devastating blow. Sure, any attack can deal critical damage, but "critical damage" is something that only happens when you hit a specific region of someone, and you can only hit specific regions when making critical called attacks, not when just attacking normally(unless we're supposed to assume that normal attacks are critical called attacks to the torso/"body"? ...which it tells us several pages later, almost at the end of the actual combat rules). These sure are some words but gently caress if they don't lose all meaning in this idiot writer's hands. The rules for critical damage are surprisingly detailed and brutal, and reward having some sort of medic or healer in the party. Basically any attack will cause at least a temporary effect(in the case of limbs and body, most likely just a "scar" for low damage), but if you go more than 24 hours without medical treatment, a lot of them advance into becoming permanent effects(or if someone completely fucks up trying to heal a temporary effect). The name is a bit of a misnomer, though, as "permanent" effects can still be cured by medicine(and for that matter, "temporary" effects aren't temporary either, they don't seem to go away with time? I can't tell). It... doesn't say whether permanent effects replace the temporary effects, or simply stack on top, but I have to assume that they stack on top, otherwise broken bones would magically heal themselves after 24 hours. Though either way it leads to some weirdnesses, like severed heads not causing death until 24 hours later, severed limbs not bleeding until 24 hours later, gushing arteries(which you'd be lucky to survive for a couple of minutes, 1 LP lost per round, 5 seconds, between 10 and 15 LP's in most cases, critical damage causing the bleeding likely already removing the majority of your LP's... a tourniquet can solve the problem temporarily, I suppose) turning into internal bleeding. A severed arm will, 24 hours later, cause the much slower internal bleeding(1LP per hour), while a severed hand instantly causes a gushing instadeath artery(likewise losing any "appendage," defined as an eye, finger, toe, ear or "other." That's right, losing an ear will make you bleed out faster than someone lopping off your loving arm), yet broken arms and legs also cause instant bleeding... okay there's something loving goofy here. Moving on to the section about movement and facing, which is largely just common-sense stuff about when someone is considered to be facing, flanking, etc. I also have to give Kromore props for illustrating everything with diagrams. Most of it is, as said, pretty common sense, but it ensures that there's literally no doubt and everyone can follow along, even if they're relatively unused to RPG's and boardgames. It also starts to become obvious that Kromore is really envisioned as a combat-heavy boardgame, more than an actual RPG, in most cases, especially in light of all the character abilities being, in 95% of all cases, aimed towards combat uses only. Also we don't have falling damage in Kromore. We've got SASFAFF. quote:Surface & Stun From A Fitness Failure(S.A.S.F.A.F.F.) I could literally not make this up. They invented an entire custom acronym for something that fills a grand total of half a page and consists of checking how far they fell(which requires paging back to the skills chapter, and seeing what height a given difficulty of skill check for climbing fits with), then referring to the matching row for what kind of damage they take(stun or lethal), how much damage and how many rounds they'll spend stunned. Considering that life points are largely static after chargen, falling is actually surprisingly lethal in Kromore. Considering that most people will only have 10 to 15 Life Points, and that a fall of 26 to 35 feet will do 3d4 damage(3d4+3 if it's on to a hard surface), that'll make most unarmoured people splatter on impact. Mind, the scale isn't open-ended, damage caps out at 6d4(+5, for a hard or jagged surface), meaning an average of 20 damage from just about any distance(unless there are rules for orbital re-entry). With armor and shields being included in soaking falling damage... just a thick suit of platemail and a tower shield could let us survive a fall from near the edge of the atmosphere. There are also a few weirdnesses here and there in the tables, being medium or large gives you a +1 to dodge, being one step up, huge, is a +2, then down to a +1 again for gigantic, 0 for enormous and -1 for colossal. Why that arbitrary bump for Huge? More nice attention to detail in the combat rules, though, as we're told what side effects elemental damage has(rules for ice spells locking up enemy armor by freezing it, electrical spells breaking sensitive electronics, how long fires will continue to burn, and a handy table for converting ice magic damage to how much you can freeze solid, in case you want to use ice bolts to cross a river or something). Also standard damage values for various environmental objects exploding, like fireworks, gas tanks, etc.(according to the rules, the average person in Kromore is almost guaranteed to survive a "grill propane tank" exploding right next to him unless it rolls absolutely maximum damage. Most of my understanding of exploding propane is from videogames, but shouldn't that be relatively fatal? Of course, Kromore isn't too realistic. Cars in Kromore apparently explode like in Hollywood action movies, according to the table). quote:When something is frozen it requires time to thaw before it is useable again. The table includes damage values for freezing warm-blooded creatures, but doesn't specify whether PC's survive cryogenic suspension or whether it kills them outright. The end of the chapter is half a page of rules for time travel, which summarizes as follows: First we have to leave reality, then we have to use a captured soul of a Lovecrafty "Realm" creature as a guide to drag us back in time. We cannot go forwards in time beyond where we've actually been "naturally." However, any time traveller can bring along hitchhikers, and they CAN be brought further forward than they themselves have been. Unfortunately, all "technological" items crumble in the world outside the physical universe, so we can't smuggle plasma guns into the past and set ourselves up as a techno warlord. I've no idea what they define as "technology," though. quote:A character who alters a previous time will cause a ripple effect that generates a new time line. Coincidentally, the chapter titled "The Kromore Universe" begins on the next page, so I guess we'll shortly find out just what the canonical Kromore is like. Right now, though, I'm kind of disappointed that Kromore wasn't more of an amusing clusterfuck in the rules section, so I'm taking a break.
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Mar 10, 2015 03:26
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 New thing from System Mastery: Afterthought 1 - Licensed Games. It's a discussion show where we hash out leftover stuff in our heads after the previous review. We wanted to move towards weekly content but we just can't read that fast. This week we talk over licensed games and answer a few listener questions, which incidentally we will keep doing the question thing in future episodes. We won't post about Afterthought in here after this episode, since it's not technically a review. Thanks!
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Mar 10, 2015 06:15
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theironjef posted:
You know, when you guys joked about a Riverdale High game I immediately thought "Monsterhearts." Veronica is a Queen, Moose is a Werewolf, Archie is a Mortal who keeps changing his True Love, Jughead is a Ghoul with a Hunger for hamburgers. I don't know what the rest would be though 
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Mar 11, 2015 05:30
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Heliotrope posted:You know, when you guys joked about a Riverdale High game I immediately thought "Monsterhearts." Veronica is a Queen, Moose is a Werewolf, Archie is a Mortal who keeps changing his True Love, Jughead is a Ghoul with a Hunger for hamburgers. I don't know what the rest would be though Having never played or read Monsterhearts, Reggie could be a Serpentine or a Witch
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Mar 11, 2015 06:06
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theironjef posted:We won't post about Afterthought in here after this episode, since it's not technically a review. Thanks! Maybe you're sticking to a standard you'd personally prefer, but I think this thread wouldn't be hurt by it. It's always a little chatty, and Afterthought (all one of them!) is so far barely tangential compared to a lot of the other poo poo that goes on here. It was good, in any case. Thanks for doing it.
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Mar 11, 2015 06:16
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I really enjoyed Afterthought too, and will expect a writeup on Tarp in the Woods (Dare You Enter?) at your earliest convenience. If you won't post them in the thread, well, I'll just have to figure out how to properly use RSS like some sort of animal.
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Mar 11, 2015 12:27
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That tarp. It's just out there in the woods. What's it doing? Is something under it? Oh man. You know what we need now is an artist's rendition of the horrifying tarp in the woods. Also maybe the cast of Adventureland - Jurassic Park. Anyway, if it's not a big deal then we'll just post it in here too. We're still looking for questions for those episodes, so if anyone has those just shoot them to systemmastery@gmail.com. Now the next hurdle is figuring out how to gently get people to stop asking us to read their own personally written unpublished games. I think I have something like 3 offers for that sort of thing in the past week. Doing an interview on that episode of Critical Success seems to have sparked that sort of interest in some people. Sure guys, you really want your games reviewed by some idiot that "wet his teeth" on Rifts (and who got Sunnydale and Riverdale mixed up).
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Mar 11, 2015 17:32
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theironjef posted:
Buck Rogers got licensed because of the owner of the property and the owner of TSR were the same person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Williams
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Mar 11, 2015 20:12
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Didn't she force TSR to keep publishing Buck Rogers splats nobody cared about, just so she could make lots of money? I'm surprised she got away with that. Anyhow, time for something slightly less sad: CORE Command Player's Handbook Deluxe Edition  Chapter 3: Tools Of The Trade Before this monster of a chapter starts with all the fun space toys, we get another attempt to flesh out the hint of a setting that is the CORE universe. The current state of technology brought by Fractal is very advanced and clean, going so deep into the molecular level that the untrained eye can't differentiate a solid block of plastic from a computer. "Quantek" is the fanciest - and least understood - example of this technology, which is also responsible for "agrav" aka anti-gravity devices. And of course, every door is more than happy to open itself for you. There's also a design notes sidebar about how technobabble can be used to add "atmosphere and ambience" to a game session, so you better get ready to interpolate that quantek flux. We get some examples on the next page, which tells about common energy sources like antimat cores, matter conversion furnaces, vacuum energy extractors and singularity engines (because using a black hole in your generator or power plant can never go wrong). Using quantek devices requires an interface implant, which can be quickly put under your head's skin (I supppose you use a drill on Sanroks). Handling more devices requires more interfaces, which is handled by the Complexity rating of ones Quantek skill, giving you up to 16 slots of quantek goodness. I would also like to point out that there's no paragraph or short section dedicated to actually describing the skill in the usual RPG skill way. I'm not even sure if the skill does anything else besides providing you with quantek slots (making the actual skill rank a bit pointless if all you need is the complexity, which you raise separately). There's an entry in the index of the "Quantek Interface Skill" (which I guess is the extended name of the skill), but this leads again only to this mention. A really handy use for quantek is in making weapon implants. Normal weapons (not the so-called buster guns we'll get to later) can be miniaturized into small polymer blocks that are attached to the bones of either your hand, forearms or head and which you can reload with syringes. When needed, they poke out a very thin barrel or blade out of the skin. So not only can you have Wolverine Claws, but also Wolverine Guns. Pretty expensive - the weapon's cost is multiplied by 1,000 - but at least you don't have to worry about encumbrance at all, as these blocks don't really weight anything. Rules of this procedure are a bit wuzzy. The book first tells you that this can only be done with weapons from the "basic small arms section" (which doesn't exist), but then follows with how good your quantek complexity rating needs to be in order to implant rifles and heavy weapons. The latter can only put into your forearms, so while you can put a sniper rifle into your pinky, you can't put a chaingun into your nose. The power source of a quantek devices gets recharged by its user's metabolism, so they can only stay active for a while (depending on your Stamina). Not sure if this is true for the above weapons. Stuff you can quantekify include basic equipment within reasons (you can't fart out tents), agrav capabilities (you get an anti-gravity skeleton to go along with your Wolverine Guns), a force screen and a friggin' tractor beam. Most of these can be improved by having them take up more slots. This stuff actually sounds pretty rad. It's like roleplaying in the far future of the Deus Ex setting. (He said, preparing for disappointment at the execution. For starters, it's not really spelled out whether Recorded Heroes or other robots can benefit from these upgrades. Not that they really need to.) Personal Equipment There are a crapton of different curriencies in the Five Galaxies, but most accept the universal, digital-only Credit. Money is however only used for rare and special goods and services, as all the basic stuff is usually provided for free or just one autofac (which I guess is like a hybrid between a Star Trek replicator and a 3D printer) order away. There another OGL sidebar about how even SilCORE players can benefit from the OGL writeups because they provide a bit more detail (aka "they mention the kind of damage dealt"). OGL is also once written as "PGL". A lot of the stuff in this section is pretty standard sci-fi stuff, but more advanced. So your typical rope is 500 m long as as thin as a hair (so you can roll it all into a handy ball) and is strong enough to lift a couple tons. Memeware This has sadly nothing to do with internet memes, but is probably just short for "memory hardware" or something. It's an implant made out of cloned tissue from the receiver that can store information, giving you instant access to skills you didn't have before (though it's sadly limited to knowledge-based skills. No instant kung-fu for you.). Head trauma and possible other events can lead to "Memory Blur", where the brain thinks the memeware is part of its own memory storage, cluttering it with actual memories. Removing the implant after this happening is obviously not a good idea. And hey, we actually get some information on those data sockets the Proteans use. They work similar to memeware, but it's less advanced and therefore more obvious to spot. Staze Node Stazes are described as space-time continuum bubbles where the laws of time and physics just don't exist. A staze node is an implant with a compressed staze for CORE agents of at least Grade 5. This node takes advantage of the staze's "Gently caress physics"-mentality to use it as an indestructable orb to conserve CORE agents that are about to die. You still need your fellow buddies to pick you up and get you out of the staze, but it's a price worth to pay if you want to survive anything. Though it does rule out the possibility of becoming a Recorded Hero. Orbs The companion of most agents. They are robotic exposition faries who despite their name don't need to be orb-shaped. Depending on whether or not its armor is vehicle-scale, it is much more durable than its 2 HP OGL counterpart. Gun Harness A pretty weird kind of item, a saddle-shaped harness that you put on your shoulder to mount a personal weapon (preferrably a smart gun), in case you want to pretend that you're a mech or something. The OGL version lets you fire a small arm as a free action, which I'm sure can be exploited. Resonance Field Inductor A crown that makes you more intelligent at the risk fo brain damage. So rare it's pretty much a D&D-esque artifact. Power-board It's a hoverboard, reaching up to 165 meters per round. Pretty tubular. Slick-Suit It's a futuristic gimp suit made out of a frictionless material (the palms and soles are roughened so you can actually walk and grab stuff) that supposedly makes the wearer "nearly immune to any sort of entangling or grappling attack", which in game terms translates to a +1 on grapple-related Defense rolls (+2 circumstance bonus to grapple checks in OGL). A bit underwhelming, is all I'm saying. Suspension Rod It's a straight copy of D&D's immovable rod, working exactly like the OGL version except that it runs out of juice after 12 hours and can apparently not be pushed with enough strength. TechGlasses Google glass wished it came with this baby's 50 Exabytes of storage space. Vehicles Here are some non-space vehicles: The agrav sled (a hoverbike with wings), the agrav transport (think The 5th Element hovercars with bigger thrusters), and the battlepod, a hovercar with lots and lots of guns. Weapons and Armor The weapons section starts of with a melee weapons table that is a shortened copy of the one seen in Jovian Chronicles. The vibro-blades are still called "Hummer-" in the table, but the text calls them "cutter blades". The ranged weapons table lumps all the different tables from JC into one big one (except for heavy weapons, they have their own) and removes the setting-specific weapons (aka everything without a generic name). Do people in the whateverth millenium still use 9mm revolvers and a 6mm carbine (both of which you can totally mount on your gun harness) ? Oh well, now onto original stuff: Armor Personal armor continues with the "like Jovian Chronicles, but less"-copypasta approach, though we do get something new in the form of mercury armor. Mercury armor is a nano-metal that can cover your entire body as a quicksilvery-layer of armor. It can regenerate itself (they've forgot to copy JC's armor damage rules, so this doesn't actually do anything) and can generate melee wepaons at the cost of a reduced armor rating. If you ever wanted to have a character pretending to be the T-1000, this is your chance! The standard rules assume the mercury armor covers the whole body at the same strength, but there's an optional rule that allows you to shift points to different hit locations, though this will most likely only ever matter against called shots, as the rules don't have you roll for hit locations (though it might be even more useless depending on when you're actually allowed to shift the points around). Overall, it only has an average armor rating of 50, just like the strongest normal armor (though without the encumbrance). Not really enough to rival Recorded Heroes, unless you're really beefy. The big flaw of mercury armor is that EMPs turn it into a puddle of useless nano-junk. You have to add EMP shield layers for that, though they don't work if you're creating melee weapons. They also add to encumbrance, so you might just be better off with normal armor. The OGL version has the odd option of solidifying completely, granting you Hardness 20 at the cost of not being able to move at all. I think you might suffocate from that stunt. There's an even more advanced version of this called "lightning armor", which uses force fields instead of nano-bots. This one has enough armor rating to give you the lower endurance of a Type I Recorded Hero, except that the Type I still wins out because of how damage thresholds work in this game (armor worn by characters don't scale very well for heavy and overkill damage thresholds). EMP has no effect on this armor, but it can only absorb a certain amount of damage before shutting down. Buster Guns The most advanced weapons available for CORE agents. They're essentially gun-shaped stargates creating a miniature wormhole to the nearest compatible CORE vacuum energy generator (either from a ship or a HQ, with a range long enough to reacht a generator anywhere in a solar system and a bit beyond) inside their barrel to dish out absurd amounts of vehicle-scale damage (aka their damage is 10 times as high as just about every other personal weapon). As they are highly dangerous weapons, only CORE agents have access to them, and they have to reach at least Grade 3 to prove their worth. Higher ranks allow you to pick up even more ridiculously overpowered buster guns.
Man, if the antagonists have weapons with that kind of damage output, we're looking at a new dimension of rocket tag combat. Not even Recorded Heroes can survive this madness. Smart Guns Weapon-shaped drones you slap onto your shoulder harness or a vehicle to target and shoot autonomously. There are 3 models: Snub gun, plasma launcher (or "plasma luncher", as the picture calls it) and firebreather (aka flamethrower). Only the plasma launcher can sorta keep up with buster guns, dealing as much damage as the buster handgun. The snub gun's quite alright though, as its more powerful than any personal weapon. It's a bit odd why these weapons aren't available as non-smart conventional weapons. Thanks to their simple-minded AI, these guns can also talk. The Firebreather loves talking about cooking. Gauntlet Equipment Stuff you can slap onto your gauntlet to keep your hands free.
Guided Thrown Weapons Shuriken and throwing knives can can correct their flight path for added accuracy and the option to reroll their attack. Doesn't seem to be too much of a point in getting these with all those wonderful overkill options available. Maybe if you're really, really have to hit someone without armor. Sliver Blades These are weapons using force screens to beef up their cutting ability, halving any armor rating to determine damage. Apart from the slicer (knuckledusters), you have a sliver knife, a sliver sword and a sliver catcher, a two-pronged weapon that can catch an opponent's blade. Despite their armor-halving, their damage is too pitiful to do anything against heavily-armored foes and Recorded Heroes. In OGL terms, these just beef up your threat range and critical damage multiplier. Firesheet Blade These weapons use a combination of plasma and force screens to either cover their blade in plasma or turn into flamethrowers. The models available are one-handed sword, two-handed sword and lance. Ranged weapons are still better but at least it gives melee users some AoE-capabilities. Wizard Gloves A pair of gloves giving you some freeform access to a force field projector. It comes with a limited pool of power you can use to create shields or slice/punch stuff up to 40 meters away, being able to deal more damage than every other melee weapon so far. Terror Stick A lot like these Klingon pain sticks, except they cause you to become fearful and passive. Smart Sword Imagine if one of those talking magical swords form D&D was able to adapt its blade with each hit to optimize damage against that specific target, increasing damage and pulling weapon Perks out of nowhere. As there is no limit to how much you can boost damage, you can order a simple-minded robot to keep poking the dirt, and he'll cleave the planet in two in a week or so. Handguns It becomes increasingly clear that the weapon tables copied from Jovian Chronicles are just supposed to be primitive weapons. Modern societies prefer blazer guns, pistol that fire Star Wars blaster bolts. One is even called "Blastergun". Overall, they're much saner upgrades from the primitive weapon tables. Nothing a CORE agent would want to have, though - unless you want to earn style points by carrying the triple-barrelled multi-blazer. Support Weapons These are just buster packages with a buster-less combination of weapons, though they do have a slight advantage in that they can fire everything with one action. Projectile Guns Your futuristic shotguns, rifle and assault rifles. The only interesting bit are the pulser guns, whose projectiles are accelerated so fast the ignite (which sounds a bit railgun-y, though those ignite the air). Gatling Weapons Just some big weapons trading a high rate of fire with comparatively weaksauce damage. And you can even get out a higher rate of fire at the risk of overheating. Or you can just grab a buster assault gun. Smart Guns Didn't we already have this section? Oh, it's just a straight copy from that Armory book that even mentions how you can find the full rules in the Player's Handbook. Classy. All of the 4 additional smart guns just take a huge cut in damage for increased range, though I guess this can be useful as it gives you a definite range edge over most buster guns (though having to deal with buster gun wielders is unlikely if you're a CORE agent). Also, 2 of these weapons don't list how much ammo they can carry. A-M Guns These guns shoot out streams of matter and anti-matter combining at the target location. Strangely, they're in every way, shape and form inferior to blazer guns and futuristic projectile guns - and those don't have the risk of your anti-matter backpack exploding after taking damage and gently caressing you over like a BattleTech ammo explosion. In fact, there are primitive revolvers and pistols that are better than these guns  (There is a mention on how the matter/anti-matter reaction creates an explosion, but there's no area of effect whatsoever. Oh well, at least the OGL versions have a 15-20 threat range.) Field Artillery Huge guns (though you can carry them easily thanks to their built-in agrav-platform) that can only just barely rival buster guns, but they have a larger range. Nothing about area of effect or indirect fire capabilities. You know, artillery stuff. Quantum Skip Tunnellers These might just be the most insane weapons in terms of their description. They fire super dense projectiles made out of a neutron star, being destroyed and rebuild several times inside the barrel by millions of little black holes, throwing much of the projectile's matter into several different dimensions and shooting out the rest in such a way that it exists simultaneously at every point of its flight path. This reads like someone trying to describe an especially elaborate Super Robot Wars attack. These weapons ignore all armor (or deal double damage against vehicles), making them essentially long-range buster assault guns (minus the spread attack) that cause lots of collateral damage and will murder you if you ever fumble your attack, as these weapons have a backfire effect. Grob Guns Weapons used by the Grob, a secondary antagonist race. Not really any better from most primite weapons, but with a force screen bajonet. There are no rules for how much damage these do in melee. The only interesting thing is the Grob swordgun, a belt-fed sword so impractical it is really only used for ceremonial purposes. I hope the D'vor pack a bigger punch. These Grobs are pushovers with that kind of weaponry. Grenades Just like the start of this chapter, we just get a copy of a Jovian Chronicles table with less entries. You'd think there would be more overpowered, futuristic grenades. Man, balance and power levels are all over the place. If you're an even slightly experienced CORE agent, there's almost nothing that could outgun you, with almost every other weapon so weaksauce in comparison that the agents can actually take a hit or two. Next Time: Spacecraft - aka what happens if you don't proof read writeups.
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Mar 12, 2015 20:46
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Grnegsnspm posted:Having never played or read Monsterhearts, Reggie could be a Serpentine or a Witch Reggie's the Serpentine, Sabrina's the Witch. My first instinct is to make Betty the Chosen, but that almost seems too on-the-nose in its parallels to Buffy. Is there any sort of mad-scientist/Frankenstien skin that can be used for Dilton?
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Mar 12, 2015 20:52
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Doresh posted:Didn't she force TSR to keep publishing Buck Rogers splats nobody cared about, just so she could make lots of money? I'm surprised she got away with that. She certainly did do that. Her mismanagement is how Wizards ended up buying TSR.
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Mar 12, 2015 20:58
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Simian_Prime posted:Reggie's the Serpentine, Sabrina's the Witch. Betty and Veronica should really both be witches and Archie is your chosen. After all most of their time is spent fighting over him.
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Mar 12, 2015 21:00
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:She certainly did do that. Her mismanagement is how Wizards ended up buying TSR. If you listen to a group of "industry insiders" who are basically walking avatars of grog. TSR was hosed regardless. EDIT: She was the single downfall of TSR, whose previous owners used company funds to provide family members with sports cars.
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Mar 13, 2015 04:48
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Pretty much TSR was in bad shape, Williams just dealt the deathblow, I suspect a more competent or at least, a less greedy CEO might've had a chance to reverse the downward spiral
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Mar 13, 2015 05:00
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She ran the company for a decade, and the major thing that brought them down was a combination of what brings every RPG company down (RPGs are a poo poo business, especially boxed sets, double especially when Magic just blew up), plus their major money-maker (non-game books) falling out. She definitely made some mistakes, but probably just as many or maybe even less than your standard RPG industry dude would've.
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Mar 13, 2015 05:00
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Most people severely undersell how bad pre-Williams TSR was, because she was the one who sold to Wizard and ~ruined everything~ (The fact that she's a woman totally has nothing to do with it either, I'm sure). The fact that TSR could even be sold to Wizard instead of dying like any of the other dozens of game companies that died in the late 80s and early 90s have to do with a lot of her policies like focusing on brand diversification to extend D&D as a product instead of a true untarnished gaming system. That's another reason she gets a lot of pointless heat, working with the product like a business commodity instead of the one true gift Gary gave unto us.
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Mar 13, 2015 05:29
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Oh no I'm not saying it was her alone. The stream of bad decisions was astounding (card game failures,etc.) before she took over.
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Mar 13, 2015 06:00
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I'm just saying that the idea that Lorraine Williams "mismanaged" TSR is mostly the unfortunate skewing of history that this hobby is loving rife with.
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Mar 13, 2015 06:13
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homeless poster posted:I really wish they had pulled a Greg Stolze a la Unknown Armies and had the GM section be like "The Queen of Hearts - We don't know why she's so loving nuts, so use you imagination and whatever explanation seems the coolest to your players" My copy of Stone and a Hard Place, the newest Deadlands: Reloaded .pdf/plot point campaign arrived today. It's the Stone-centered adventure to end all Stone-centered adventures. As written, does everyone's favorite mid-90s Deadlands NPC finally bite the bullet? Twice. And yet... that's a story for another time.
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Mar 13, 2015 06:41
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Mr. Maltose posted:(The fact that she's a woman totally has nothing to do with it either, I'm sure). It honestly isn't and this idea that it does wraps into weird rear end nerd self loathing and self masturbatory "I'm better than the strawman neckbeard Other I fear I am". Name one widely raised nerd conspiracy theory and exaggeration that's said about her but not Bobby Kotick. Both were competent businessman who did anti consumer policies that both greatly helped and hindered their companies, and thereby earned the hatred of fans of their products. Sexism in tabletop gaming is a real deal like every fabric of business and everyday life, but claiming an extremely common phenomena found in every fandom from dorky poo poo to mainstream things like the management of sporting teams is not only pushing it but antithetical to solving stuff. When someone new comes in and changes things without being a fan or "respectful" of the product, and even then bets of are off, people are going to be suspicious of them, their motives, and just plain be biased. It's human loving nature. No one likes change. Mr. Maltose posted:I'm just saying that the idea that Lorraine Williams "mismanaged" TSR is mostly the unfortunate skewing of history that this hobby is loving rife with. Welcome to nostalgia and every hobby ever. Never talk to Cubs fans.
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Mar 13, 2015 07:47
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Finally caught up to the thread, and wanted to point something out. As someone who gamed with John Wick extensively a long time ago, there's a link between him and another review in this thread. Remember the "Villain Point" story, and his creepy phrasing about "Annie?" Yeah, that's the same Annie that wrote the short form game about alien negotiations which I will be buggered if I search the thread for anymore. That out of the way, are we going to be seeing anymore Skins for the Skinless?
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Mar 13, 2015 08:02
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NutritiousSnack posted:It honestly isn't and this idea that it does wraps into weird rear end nerd self loathing and self masturbatory "I'm better than the strawman neckbeard Other I fear I am". At the risk of outing myself as the true hater of women here, deep in my heart of hearts, I'm referring less to conspiracy from external sources as much as how former TSR employees framed Williams in discussion of the company, where poo poo like an actual 'fake nerd girl' test have been discussed in all but name (specifically regarding the license she brought into TSR!) It's not just jumping at shadows to show how big and great an ally I am or however I'm supposedly loathing about dicegames or whatever. I also feel justified when I mention the D&D set's distorted hobby nostalgia having it's own distinct tone if only because the hobby is dominated by it, unlike baseball where for every Cubs fan there is an equal and opposite Cardinals fan with their own line of bullshit, rife with acronyms and World Series stats.
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Mar 13, 2015 08:05
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Mr. Maltose posted:I also feel justified when I mention the D&D set's distorted hobby nostalgia having it's own distinct tone if only because the hobby is dominated by it, unlike baseball where for every Cubs fan there is an equal and opposite Cardinals fan with their own line of bullshit, rife with acronyms and World Series stat
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Mar 13, 2015 08:31
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PJOmega posted:Finally caught up to the thread, and wanted to point something out. Alien Diplomacy, maybe? I think that's the name, and I got it for goonmas, and I did an F&F of it even. (Easy, because it's so short.) It only took one post.
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Mar 13, 2015 08:40
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Plague of Hats posted:Alien Diplomacy, maybe? I think that's the name, and I got it for goonmas, and I did an F&F of it even. (Easy, because it's so short.) It only took one post. Oh, it was Alien Summit.
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Mar 13, 2015 11:11
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I knew of Lorraine Williams only as The Bitch, with that creepily bold-face intonation, for years. The narrative I learned, which was still smoking with indignation when Yahoo was an elaborate links page, included both the perception of a Kotick figure not understanding or not giving a gently caress about development or gaming culture, and all of the vicious tropes about harridan exes and ugly divorces.
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Mar 13, 2015 12:44
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I waffle on whether the RPG industry is especially worse than most other, similar hobby industries, but I think there is a vital thread of sexism that distinguishes Williams' reputation from a hypothetical man in the same position that's not unreasonable to bring up when someone briefly dumps on her.
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Mar 13, 2015 12:55
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:Well, that sounds like rear end. Wait a second. SIZ stat? Percentile dice? Roll-under skill checks? This is a BRP game, isn't it? That reminds me of the first RPG I ever played, which used a variant of that system (d20 instead of d100, experience points, a bunch of other stuff) and I think (thankfully) only ever came out in my native language. It had this as the illustration for the Player Characters section in the rulebook. Isn't Dark Heresy also a BRP/percentile-based game? The dichotomy hit me because System Mastery reviewed that too and they seemed to like it (although spellcasters in either game end up being that much better than everyone else). I mean, not that I'm trying to apologize for Stormbringer or anything, it just made me think that they might have been based off the same engine but one ended being lovely.
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Mar 13, 2015 13:02
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Dark Heresy, etc. are percentile, yes, but they're pretty dissimilar to BRP.
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Mar 13, 2015 13:09
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Plague of Hats posted:I waffle on whether the RPG industry is especially worse than most other, similar hobby industries, but I think there is a vital thread of sexism that distinguishes Williams' reputation from a hypothetical man in the same position that's not unreasonable to bring up when someone briefly dumps on her. It doesn't matter if tabletop gaming is quantifiable more sexist than other media. It's valid to counter critique anti-Williams screeds for sexist undertone. From what I can tell, she's no longer emotionally invested in nerd stuff of any kind (source: cursory googling,) but wether that's because she moved on or was driven out by an environment toxic to anyone not a SWM is irrelevant. She's more complex than the nepotistic capitalist she's demonized to be.
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Mar 13, 2015 13:50
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Doresh posted:It's a futuristic gimp suit made out of a frictionless material (the palms and soles are roughened so you can actually walk and grab stuff) that supposedly makes the wearer "nearly immune to any sort of entangling or grappling attack", which in game terms translates to a +1 on grapple-related Defense rolls (+2 circumstance bonus to grapple checks in OGL). A bit underwhelming, is all I'm saying. (you can't always formalize a happy little penguin into game terms, is all I'm trying to say)
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Mar 13, 2015 15:51
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I think a big problem with the perception of Williams and TSR is that most the other principal actors are these mythologized gaming icons. Gary Gygax is held up on a pedestal even though he made terrible business choices and most likely spent most of his time during the Hollywood period using TSR money on hookers and blow. After reading the history of the gaming industry in the 70's it's pretty obvious that the founding fathers of D&D were incompetent, consistently misjudged the market, failed to innovate, and were unnecessarily vindictive against other hobbyists. TSR was killed mostly by Dragon Dice and unsold backstock, which killed most companies from that era in the 90's. The Buck Rogers stuff didn't sell well but it's not like Indiana Jones or some of the other pre-Williams side stuff sold well either. The infamous no playtesting rule, which apparently might not have been a thing, wasn't that big of an issue as well because no one was playtesting their books or editing them during that era.
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Mar 13, 2015 15:54
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NutritiousSnack posted:It honestly isn't and this idea that it does wraps into weird rear end nerd self loathing and self masturbatory "I'm better than the strawman neckbeard Other I fear I am". Name one widely raised nerd conspiracy theory and exaggeration that's said about her but not Bobby Kotick. Both were competent businessman who did anti consumer policies that both greatly helped and hindered their companies, and thereby earned the hatred of fans of their products. Sexism in tabletop gaming is a real deal like every fabric of business and everyday life, but claiming an extremely common phenomena found in every fandom from dorky poo poo to mainstream things like the management of sporting teams is not only pushing it but antithetical to solving stuff. RocknRollaAyatollah posted:TSR was killed mostly by Dragon Dice and unsold backstock, which killed most companies from that era in the 90's. Humbug Scoolbus posted:She certainly did do that. Her mismanagement is how Wizards ended up buying TSR. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Mar 13, 2015 |
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Mar 13, 2015 15:57
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Seems to be something of a Herbert Hoover effect- she was there when the poo poo hit the fan, so she must be to blame.
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Mar 13, 2015 16:12
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:TSR was killed mostly by Dragon Dice What was that like? I remember they even made a PC game out of it and I saw it once on G4TV or whatever the equivalent of it was in 90s and seeing 3d dice get thrown across the monitor blew my teenage mind.
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Mar 13, 2015 16:15
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Kavak posted:Seems to be something of a Herbert Hoover effect- she was there when the poo poo hit the fan, so she must be to blame. gradenko_2000 posted:What was that like? I remember they even made a PC game out of it and I saw it once on G4TV or whatever the equivalent of it was in 90s and seeing 3d dice get thrown across the monitor blew my teenage mind.
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Mar 13, 2015 16:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:Isn't Dark Heresy also a BRP/percentile-based game? The dichotomy hit me because System Mastery reviewed that too and they seemed to like it (although spellcasters in either game end up being that much better than everyone else). Oddly we did a pilot episode that's never seen the light of day (and won't, it died with an old computer I had) on the Marvel Superheroes Game from the 80s that was percentile. We both like that too, but mostly because it had the wackiest list of powers ever. I think ultimately we ended up liking Dark Heresy with reservations, because it's playable but too complicated. It's weird because the two games look like they're orbiting around a percentile system we wouldn't hate. Stormbringer doesn't have any penalties to your percentile chances at all (at least 4th edition didn't) which meant that you could have a 300% chance to hit with your broadsword and... that was it, and Dark Heresy had pages and pages of penalties. We feel like the way to do it is somewhere between those. Like just "You have an 85% chance to hit, and can suffer a -5 penalty for minor hindrances, a -10 for major, and a -30 for extreme. Your DM will set the scene for you and you can use skills/stunts for bonuses or for ways around the penalty as needed." Further, one game was fun and stupid, and the other was dour and stupid. That difference goes a long way. It's a bummer, because from what people have told us, Moorcock's universe was at least a little fun.
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Mar 13, 2015 16:36
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