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Xelkelvos, did you make those tree-view flowcharts? What software did you use?
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Mar 19, 2015 18:42
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Alien Rope Burn posted:In the animation industry, that falls under "more likely than not". Now that one Batman TAS about Catwoman getting turned into a furry makes a tad bit more sense. Oh well, every generation of sexual deviants has its kids show that opened their eyes or something. Xelkelvos posted:Final I would certainly pick it for video gamey campaigns over say the Returner RPG, which manages to be more restrictive, broken and crunchy. Oh and speaking about Japanese RPGs and seeing how the wiki isn't updated anymore: Does anyone know if that Tenra Bansho Zero review ever got finished? Doresh fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 19:58
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) on so things like combat math may still be looked at. There's definitely the possibility of Rocket Tag shenanigans occurring since PC and enemy damage seems quite high while the difficult to hit each other is relatively low. However, this may or may not actually be the case.
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Doresh posted:Now that one Batman TAS about Catwoman getting turned into a furry makes a tad bit more sense. IMO, I'd probably try and hack Dungeon World to emulate a Log Horizon campaign than use the LHTRPG itself. The LHTRPG is very good at doing one thing: Playing Log Horizon (or Log Horizon with the serial numbers filed off). Anything else requires a bit of tinkering to make it make sense. Evil Mastermind posted:Xelkelvos, did you make those tree-view flowcharts? What software did you use? Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 21:16
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I'm glad games like Log Horizon exist for whenever I'm at my local nerdery and someone hauls out the old "It's tabletop WOW" chestnut.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:47
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theironjef posted:I'm glad games like Log Horizon exist for whenever I'm at my local nerdery and someone hauls out the old "It's tabletop WOW" chestnut. I love how geeks get angry whenever the hobby might attract new blood.
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Mar 19, 2015 23:35
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hyphz posted:I just liked the idea of her being heroic compared to the nastiness of most of the characters. You've basically made a one-person Witch Police. You can never be sure whether Dame Hilda is watching you, hidden. And if you step out of line your last thought will be "WTF!" as your head breaks the ceiling on the way to the stratosphere.
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Mar 20, 2015 08:12
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Given I recently acquired it and loved it, and the other review of the original stopped before it got that far, I'll probably do The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor; which is an expansion, of sorts, to Monsters & Other Childish Things. More of a side-spansion, in a way. You could even use it totally standalone from the original. It has a rather delightful flavour to it. Very rarely have I found myself reading through an RPG book for fun more than once.
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Mar 20, 2015 14:14
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Oh, by the way. The author of Witch Girls Adventures just posted this on his public Facebook:Malcolm Harris posted:ASK THE GEEKSIAH Yes, he does call himself "the Geeksiah". And no, of course you wouldn't know anything about misanthropic teenagers.
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Mar 20, 2015 17:51
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hyphz posted:Oh, by the way. The author of Witch Girls Adventures just posted this on his public Facebook: Dang, I'm gonna have to throw out all these System Mastery: The Geeksiahs shirts I was saving for a summer sale. Ask him anything you guys, like "Hey, don't you actually specialize in misanthropic teenagers?"
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Mar 20, 2015 18:02
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theironjef posted:Dang, I'm gonna have to throw out all these System Mastery: The Geeksiahs shirts I was saving for a summer sale. Ask him anything you guys, like "Hey, don't you actually specialize in misanthropic teenagers?" Maybe he's mad that anime is better than him at misanthropic teenagers.
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Mar 20, 2015 18:04
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hyphz posted:Oh, by the way. The author of Witch Girls Adventures just posted this on his public Facebook: Why does he specifically rule out modern anime (if you ignore that he probably does it to bash modern anime)? Does that mean he's knowledgable about everything else? If so, I would like to know whether or not Ultimate Kuuga could beat Thor. Or his thoughts about that Sailor Moon musical trilogy involving Dracula. That's a thing. CORE Command Player's Handbook Deluxe Edition  Chapter 5+6: Threats & Gamemastering Not everyone's friendly in the five galaxies, so CORE has classified potential threats into one of four categories, from Category One for galaxy-wide threats (so far only used for the D'vor / Not-Tyranids) that will get the attention of every CORE agent available all down to Category Four for planet- or star-system-wide threats that are just barely dangerous enough for CORE to get their hands dirty. CORE has so called watcher arrays (aka large satellites / sensor arrays) operating all over the five galaxies to warn of any threat. The D'vor So who exactly are the D'vor? And what do they want? Well, nobody really knows, as nobody has ever actually seen a D'vor (though rumor has it they're made out of energy or something). Despite the lack of any concrete information, we apparently do know that they're nihilists bend on destroying the universe in order to rebuild it in their own image. When people speak about D'vor attacks or invasions, they're speaking about their artifact fleets (Not-Hive-Fleets), composed of their autonomous, biomechanical creations (the actual Not-Tyranids). As these fleets ignore fellow nihilists/antagonists (not sure how they can determine that), these fleets tend to carry around giant space parasites and brigands. There's a short bit about how the artifact fleets might be ancient doosmday devices following their last order, like what you see in every other episode of Star Trek TOS. FTL-capable D'vor ships are a bit unique compared to the other ships. They can cover 100,000 light years per jump (10 to 100 times as far as pretty much every military ship so far), but they only move at 100 - 1,000 times the speed of light (10 to 100 times slower). They certainly don't lend themselves to sudden strikes. And since they all need 1 minute to charge for a jump (during which they can't do anything), attacking them at just the right time is pretty nasty for them. I'm also not sure how well that meshes with their pretty low deployment range of 500 hrs. Sure, they have no fuel, but they still need some kind of maintenance according to RAW. Star Devourer  This Lovecraftian fleshlight (which is supposedly designed to be "deliberately menacing in appearance") is one of the largest D'vor ship around at 1,000 km. There are even bigger ones, but they only appear in the bestiary. As their name implies, they love nomming stars, with every 2-3 meals allowing them to produce a little baby Star Devourer. A good chunk of the nommed energy is "used to destroy the sub-space bridges and pillars that hold together the physical underpinnings of the universe". Nomming all the stars will apparently cause the entire universe to collapse. A Star Devourer devours stars with its star cutters, disintegrator weapons that are weaker then CORE wave motion guns, have horrible accuracy and a rate of fire of -10 (aka 1 shot every 10 turns). Their only real use this weapon has in combat is to destroy smaller-scale vessels thanks to the free AoE. It's a bit sad if the good guys have the superior doomsday weapons. Their weapons of choice for actual combat are their defensive dischargers, which follow the old tradition of only really doing something against smaller-scale craft. They can't really do anything against fellow Gigantic-scale ships, though their force screens and beefy armor rating of 150 means they'd need disintegrator weapons to do anything (which CORE of course has in spades). Hunter-Killer  These 5-km-long flying phalluses are the trolls of the artifact fleet. They love playing games with their prey and create ambushes for them. And they love hanging out around red dwarf stars for some reason. Weapons-wise, they have a weaker (but otherwise identical) version of the Star Devourer's disintegrator weapon (this one called "plasma launcher"). Other than that, they have electro-dischargers and micro-missiles that are absolutely useless against other Gigantic-class vessels apart from ones that are close to explode on their own. This overlaps with their fluff quite strangely. On one hand, they actually can "deliberately seek out vessels larger than themselves" (as they are much more numerous than Star Devourers, they can cancel out their disintegrator weapon's lousy ROF with sheer numbers), on the other hand they prefer to "disable them while inflicting a minimum of visible damage" so they can use the wreck to send distress signals for more ambush fun. This probably refers to their haywire-causing electro-dischargers, but as stated above, they can't actually disable such a large ship on their own. They'd need to soften it up with their disintegrator weapons, which most likely do ensure a lot of visible damage as they blow huge chunks out of the target's armor rating. Not to mention that using disintegrator weapons on heavily-damaged ships has a good chance of vaporizing them completely. Gatherer-Breeder  Just as big as the hunter-killer, but meant for cargo and support roles. They use nano-processors to built every other D'vor ship aside from Star Devourers (and the bigger ships not found in this book I presume), as well as planetary invasion troops. In a RTS game, the D'vor would be the funky alien race with mobile construction "buildings". As they're not meant for combat, they are obviously weaksauce in the combat department. They do get props for including a laboratory and a workshop (which I guess represent the nano-processors). Skod  Moving to normal-scale vehicles (at 15 m long), this fellow is a combination between a fighter and a tank. They're sorta between a Recorded Hero Type II and III in terms of defense, with much faster flight movement. Their plasma cannons are like automatic buster pistols, making them the perfect opponents for a round of rocket tag. Kra'ab (I see what you did there)  "What's up, guys?!" This has to be the jolliest giant enemy crab I've ever seen. I want him as a plushie! Ahem, with 25 m in length, a more sluggish pace and armor surpassing that of a tank, these guys are your heavy assault units. They have plasma bursters for indirect fire (though their range is too low to really take advantage of that) that are not quite as good as the Skod's cannons, and some vicious mono-claws for close combat. These ones are pretty darn dangerous for CORE agents - at least before they can get their hands on that overpowered bazooka. (The only other personal-scale combat vehicle presented in this book is the battlepod, which is somewhat inbetween these two D'vor "vehicles" in terms of durability, with the same kind of offensive punch.) Hunchback  This 3-m-tall (or rather 4 m according to the writeup) Not-Carnifex really doesn't mesh well with the previously shown D'vor designs. They're the D'vor shook troopers, able to slice people up with their massive claws or shoot them with guns they've picked up (it's never said if the D'vor create their own guns, and the writeup has no example loadout). The fluff claims they have to breathe and are therefore vulnerable to toxins, but they have the same set of Hostile Environment Protection as every spacecraft, so they're just fine in space. Aside from being much smaller, they're only minimally less durable than a Skod, and they're claws are pretty mean. CORE agents truly are glass cannons. Seeker  Now this thing just looks like local wildlife. These are the 3-m-tall scouts of the D'vor. They're also pretty dangerous glass cannons, as they can't take much damage, but their mono-claws somehow deal as much damage as the hunchback's much bigger ones. Yeah, unless you're a Recorded Hero, personal combat with these D'vor guys can get ugly fast. Thankfully, they have no ranged weapons and can't fly, so pimp yourself with some anti-gravity bones. Kabayans  Kabayans are tall space kobolds who cruise along artifact fleets in order to raid destroyed colonies for loot and technology (as they're too impatient to do make much of their own). They can hear D'vor ship comm signals as beautiful music, which causes them to worship the D'vor. All in all pretty jerkish. Statswise, they can be pretty beefy, but their mental attributes suffer for it. Grob  Grob are like goblins or something. Small pests that travel as tribes to pillage planets and generally cause mayhem. They love huge guns. They're pretty agile, but not the strongest guys around. Kom'Sov  Weird insectoid dudes without a real face who are probably the most advanced of the lesser antagonistic races in terms of their own technology. They might come across as having a hive mind of sorts, but they're just very extreme space communists who value the Greater Good over the individual. The are pretty good in terms of agility and willpower, but they blow at being charismatic. And that's pretty much it. There's a 6th chapter about Gamemastering that basically amounts to generic GM advice with a random adventure generator as seen in Jovian Chronicles (except this one goes on for way too long). At the end of that chapter is also the shocking secret of CORE Command's backstory: Fractal - CORE's Zordon planet ship computer thing - is Earth. The original humans reached Singularity status and began calling themselves Tranz for some reason (probably to make it even harder for players to uncover this mystery). It was ironically only at that time they found out that there are other intelligent lifeforms in the universe, with the message being delivered by one of their now ancient probes (V'ger?) that has finally returned. As they sent automated FTL scouts all throughout the universe and pimped out Earth into Fractal, the humans/Tranz slowly faded into a higher plane of existence, with Fractal acting as their only anchor to this world. The original Compilers were servitors created to keep Fractal running. When Fractal encountered the D'vor for the first time, it just wanted to say hello and got promptly attacked. Fractal managed to escape, but all the Compilers were wiped out, and Fractal itself took quite a beating from which it never really recovered. It was then that the humans/Tranz discovered the D'vor were actually higher state beings like themselves, using their artifact fleet to restart the universe. Not wanting this to happen, the humans/Tranz did the obvious thing: Get some Mi-Compilers, populate the Milky Way with a new breed of humans and hope they will found something like CORE in a couple millenia before the artifact fleets become to numerous. I'm pretty sure there were a couple possible solutions that would've been less time-consuming. So there you have it. CORE Command: overpowered guns, balance that's all over the place, ship writeups that don't work as intented, and a setting that's barely even there. I'm sure nobody expected Heavy-Gear-quality of world building on a cosmic scale, but what we get here is barely above an introductionary booklet, and the only other product with further fluff is the bestiary. Now I need something more fun and optimistic as a palette cleanser. Next time: Another fighting roleplaying game. Will this one have a less ridiculous tier list? Doresh fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 18:05
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It's weird because modern anime is being swamped by exactly the weird fetish poo poo you'd think he likes. Wasn't misanthropic teenagers more of a 90s thing?
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Mar 21, 2015 01:32
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:It's weird because modern anime is being swamped by exactly the weird fetish poo poo you'd think he likes. Wasn't misanthropic teenagers more of a 90s thing? From what little I know, much like everything else, anime seems to be actively recovering from edgy teenage misanthropy. There seems to be more "maybe let's just have fun (while jamming in a billion poorly translated biblical references)."
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Mar 21, 2015 01:39
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Plague of Hats posted:From what little I know, much like everything else, anime seems to be actively recovering from edgy teenage misanthropy. There seems to be more "maybe let's just have fun (while jamming in a billion poorly translated biblical references)." Chuunibyou (Eighth Grader Syndrome) is partially characterized by this sort of edgy, misanthropic emulation and the people who were into it grew up and realized how dumb they were a likely never wanted to create anything like that except in jest.
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Mar 21, 2015 02:09
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 Spells and Items I tried to make this interesting but beyond one absolutely batshit broken spell there's not much here you haven't seen in any other OGL d20 game. Spells The Spells chapter opens up with Runes, and runes are divided up into families. The issue is that they're divided up rather stupidly into "families". All the runes that incrase your unarmed strike damage are one family. All the runes that restore hit points are one family. All of the runes that buff stats or grant abilities are one family. All of the runes that grant alternate modes of perception are a family. All of the runes that grant alternate movement modes are a family. But then you have the "Restoration Family" which includes restoration, greater restoration, resurrection, regeneration, freedom of movement, and curing disease and poison. and the "Shielding Family" which has spell turning, spell resistance, spell turning, mind shield, all sorts of stuff. The problem is that Runemasters only gain access to two families at the start, a third at level 10, and a fourth at level 20. So if you want to be able to heal damage and hit things in melee, you aren't going to be able to do any of the other things a cleric could do until level 10 or 20, if you want to be able to buff things, heal, cure diseases, *and* be decent in melee then you need to wait till level 20, and you won't get any of the other utility things. Never play a first edition Runemaster. As far as spells go, all of the Warcraft 3 spells that didn't get a version in the core book get versions here, there are a few noteworthy ones Brilliance Aura(Sor/Wiz 7) for 1 round/level any ally within a 30 foot radius of a caster can cast a spell without expending it if they succeed on a Spellcraft check DC 30+spells level, with a roll of a natural 4 or below always failing. The sky high spellcraft DC means that this is mostly a Wizard only club, but free spells are free spells. Counterspell (Healer 6, Sor/Wiz 6) This is a dedicated spell for countering, it will always count as a copy of the spell being cast so it will always succeed, and it has a Long range(400+40/level). However you must still be able to identify the spell being cast so it's only effective within your ability to hear and see. I guess if you stocked up on vision enhancing spell you could be the troll lord of the casting world for a while. it also comes in greater(level 9) and lesser (level 3) versions. Death and Decay (Necromancer 9) For Concentration up to 1 round/level you deal....an unclear amount of damage (it says "3d3 per caster level, maximum of 20d8" but even accounting for it being 3d8 the earliest level you can cast this will already do the maximum) to all creatures and non-natural structures in a 60 foot radius of your choice within medium range. It will also heal undead for a like amount. This spell is the one reason you'd pick a Necromancer over a Graven One. "For 17 rounds welcome to pain town, also me and my undead are being healed for an average of 80 points a round." Shadow Strike (Sor/Wiz 6) This version of the spell is completely unlike it's WC3 counterpart. You charge a slashing weapon with energy that deals an extra 10d8 damage on your next melee attack, and it lingers for another 6 rounds dealing 5d8 damage each round. Also if you cast another spell it's discharged or if the attack you make that hits deals no damage due to damage reduction or absorption. This is one of those times where "It should have just been a class ability, it didn't need to be a spell" comes to mind. Vengeance (Healer 9, Sor/Wiz 9) You slash your hand with a dagger dealing 1d4 points of damage and you summon a greater spirit of vengeance to murder your foes. It also turns the corpses of your allies into lesser spirits of vengeance to aid it. It's undead and not particularly durable, but it is incorporeal and deals 2 negative levels on a touch. As far as magic items, there are a lot.  There's a table this large for unique weapons, another one almost as large for new types of potions. The Wondrous Item table takes up two pages. I'm not really sure where to begin because there's a lot of them and most of them are either far too powerful for their level or not worth wearing. The Crown of Kings for instance gives +4 to strength, wisdom, and charisma. and +2 to Dex, Con, and Int. Whereas the Druid's Pouch strikes me as something an intern did. The druid's pouch gives anyone who wears it a +1 enhancement bonus... to Intelligence. When carried by a Druid of the Wild it instead gives a +4 bonus... to Intelligence. In WC3 all casters used Intelligence as their power stat, looks like this one didn't get changed to wisdom. Most of the magic items however are almost exactly like a DMG magic item just more powerful in one way or another. The whole thing reeks of inexperienced "Well we'll do it like this but better so people will use our things and then it's good." mistakes. Technological Devices Remember how this book promised to fix the broken Technological Item creation rules?  Yeah I'm sorry but it doesn't. All it does include are rules for maneuvering vehicles in combat, which is exactly as convoluted as it is in most other d20 games, and a random table for malfunction effects! You would never want to use this table as many of the options are "Your device is unusable or generally fouled in some way that makes it so you'd rather re-create it from scratch than use this particular one again" It also introduces some new technological devices, and while some of them are neat (Handcuffs that get tighter and harder to break out of the more failed attempts are made) others are...  quote:All portable heads know at least one language, in order to understand spoken commands. The most common portable heads have a second language installed in order to act as translators. And that's about all for this book. I can forgive it for having lots of spells, that's a good way to let the flavor of your world show through in niche edge cases that the core players handbook spells wouldn't cover. But you don't need five billion magic items when half of them are "Like flaming weapon but slightly better" or "Like the crown of intelligence but charisma instead". Thankfully almost all of my complaints about this book (particularly the runemaster) are fixed in the 2nd edition. Which I will get to eventually. But for now I'm switching gears to something I can properly loathe instead of just kind of being sad about.
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Mar 21, 2015 04:20
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Plague of Hats posted:From what little I know, much like everything else, anime seems to be actively recovering from edgy teenage misanthropy. There seems to be more "maybe let's just have fun (while jamming in a billion poorly translated biblical references)." Why settle for the bible? Let's mix and match from every religion! Kurieg posted:Brilliance Aura(Sor/Wiz 7) "You know that one weakness of the spellcaster master race? We've got a spell that fixes it!" quote:Shadow Strike (Sor/Wiz 6) So it's per round, not per strike? Dodged the bullet there, I think. quote:There's a table this large for unique weapons, another one almost as large for new types of potions. The Wondrous Item table takes up two pages. I'm not really sure where to begin because there's a lot of them and most of them are either far too powerful for their level or not worth wearing. The Crown of Kings for instance gives +4 to strength, wisdom, and charisma. and +2 to Dex, Con, and Int. Whereas the Druid's Pouch strikes me as something an intern did. The druid's pouch gives anyone who wears it a +1 enhancement bonus... to Intelligence. When carried by a Druid of the Wild it instead gives a +4 bonus... to Intelligence. In WC3 all casters used Intelligence as their power stat, looks like this one didn't get changed to wisdom. Sure, why not make a wonderous item that effectively replaces every other attribute buff item for most characters? You sure that thing's not an artifact? Doresh fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Mar 21, 2015 |
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Mar 21, 2015 09:25
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Doresh posted:Sure, why not make a wonderous item that effectively replaces every other attribute buff item for most characters? You sure that thing's not an artifact? No, this is an artifact. 
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Mar 21, 2015 18:55
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Kurieg posted:No, this is an artifact. Shouldn't that be a ridiculous looking glaive, not a shield?
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Mar 21, 2015 19:43
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It's supposed to be a representation of this It also only gives you the super fun abilities if you're lawful evil, and will slowly force you to be lawful evil the more you use it as a +3 light steel shield.
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Mar 21, 2015 20:17
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Kurieg posted:No, this is an artifact. Wowzers o_O ! And I just noticed: Has either version of Warcraft d20 rules for those oversized pauldrons you could probably use to carry stuff around?
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Mar 21, 2015 22:30
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Mmh, how do I delete posts? Stupid dodgy internet connection <_<
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Mar 21, 2015 22:31
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Kurieg posted:It's supposed to be a representation of this I love how they just straight up look at the original item and translate it line-for-line into some rough d20 version of each little part with no concern for how wonky the result is.
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Mar 21, 2015 22:46
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Doresh posted:Mmh, how do I delete posts? Stupid dodgy internet connection <_<
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Mar 22, 2015 02:02
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Doresh posted:Mmh, how do I delete posts? Stupid dodgy internet connection <_< You can't delete posts on SA, but if you just edit your post so people know it's an accidental double post, people don't mind.
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Mar 22, 2015 02:05
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The Vosgian Beast posted:You can't delete posts on SA, but if you just edit your post so people know it's an accidental double post, people don't mind. Oh well, then it will stay as a sign of my own stupidity.
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Mar 22, 2015 09:13
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Doresh posted:Oh well, then it will stay as a sign of my own stupidity. You're hardly the first person on SA to have a double post, don't sweat it.
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Mar 22, 2015 15:36
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Midjack posted:You're hardly the first person on SA to have a double post, don't sweat it. Don't worry, I can live with that shame.
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Mar 22, 2015 20:47
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Wait, did someone double post in here? Let's get the bats out.
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Mar 22, 2015 21:18
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So, there's this con in denmark called Fastaval! And it's a pretty rad thing. For one thing, it's a dedicated role-playing con, which i'm not sure quite exists elsewhere, going by what I've heard from my american friends. More importantly, it's one of the major hubs of nordic role-playing culture, along with for example knudepunkt. That means that it's full of interesting games, or scenarios as they are called. These are one-session games, or rarely, one-session adventures using other systems. We nordics, however, take our Elfgames very seriously indeed, so these games are a very diverse and at times artistic bunch (god knows they try to be), and they are all written for fastaval or replayed from earlier fastavals, and when you sign up for fastaval, you prioritize your games and your time, as well as volunteer for game mastering, if that's your thing. The senarios themselves are very little like anything else i can really compare them to; something like polaris or forge-spawned games might be the closest, but that's not really that close. They range all over the place in terms of content, but they have some comonalities. First and formost, no real rules for many of them, at least in the traditional sense. That said, there are often some sort of mechanic at play, usually a narretive one; one game i played had the GM (me) hand out silver coins (which we had gotten as handouts from the writer, who was at the con, of course), to crusaders as they got increasingly corrupted by the coins of judas; in the end of the game, hostile actions against other players would be decided by who had the most coins. Another game was about a japanese fishing village gathering to tell story where the person telling the story would also act it out with the others present as supporting cast, and my only job as GM was to set scenes and end scenes, as well as introduce the game and the story. A few games use parred down versions of commercially available systems, but that's not all that common, and it's always just the very barest bones. Another thing is the subject material. These games are many things, but light fantasy romps (though they can be fun or entertaining), they usually aren't. That doesn't mean they are all blood and gore, however, but many of them are or try to be artistic. This means the subject material ranges from poetic love stories against a backdrop of 80's east germany, a child's toys struggelig to help him in his fight against cancer, child abuse and isolation from the point of view of a child to whom this is normal, mercenaries trying to make it through a war-torn world, a story about a child giving up his invisible friends with one last adventure, famillies slowly falling apart of being affected by the death of a father, and many many other things. For many of these scenarioes, the whole point is "bleed," specifically "Bleed out," a Nordic Larp term that describes the feelings and emotions of your charecter bleeding directly into you. Last year, there was a winner of a competition to write a senario during the con. In his ending speech, he described his game like this: "We just want you to come and cry with us." That's not to say that it's only doom and gloom, of course, a lot of them are comedies of one stripe or another, from "Nazisatanchurchwar 2: Unholy raptor edition" to "And i lost my fangs," about a support group for vampires, or "Mana Burn" about teenagers playing magic: the gathering and spilling personal secrets to gain mana. It's a mixed and intresting bag. I mostly GM and play the less heartwrenching, bleed games, sticking to things that are intresting, funny, or have cool narretive mechanics. A third thing is the otto. The otto is the annual prize awarded at Fastaval, a gilded pinguin, for certain cattegories; best narretive, best game, best charecters, best handouts, ect. ect. It's a sort of pretentious and snobby thing and there's a bit of neoptism in the whole thing, but there's no denying that some of the more bleed-heavy or high-concept games are fishing for it. So, with all that gone through, there have been a lot of these senarioes over the years, everything from playing out the memoires of a hitman-priest, an abused child, or nazi-zombies of world war one, and many of them are online at http://alexandria.dk/. Would anyone be intrested in me doing a review of some of them? If so, speak up, and it will happen. (http://alexandria.dk/ has an english version too, in a sidebar on the main page, and many of the games are in english, so you can check them out yourself if you want)
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Mar 24, 2015 02:45
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God yes do it. Also Fatal and Friends:We just want you to come and cry with us
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Mar 24, 2015 05:14
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I love hearing about different playstyles from around the world, go for it.
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Mar 24, 2015 05:17
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Yea like the rear end in a top hat in me wants to giggle at a few of those ideas, and the nerd in me wants to legitimately hear about other people's take on gaming and their unique styles on it. Considering I'm like 99% rear end in a top hat and nerd I'm for this.
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Mar 24, 2015 05:27
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I've seen references to nordic art-LARP a few times here over the years, and I'd definitely love to hear more about it.
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Mar 24, 2015 05:28
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When Werewolf: The Forsaken was released, it was to some contention. Some fans of Apocalypse didn't like that they got rid of all references to Gaia and the Triat. Some didn't like that they got rid of metis and lupus. And a rather vocal minority got very mad that White Wolf got rid of the Fera. 2007 saw the release of War Against the Pure, which in addition to the titular War and the Pure that it was against, included rules for 5 breeds of animal shifters. Were-Cats empowered to kill the morally corrupt amongst humanity, were-falcons who view themselves as Olympian Gods, Lovecraftian Deep Ones desperate to prove to the Ocean gods that they are worthy, Were-Cockroaches based on Kafka, and Were-Bulls that rule over humans and steal the wolf-blooded to turn into more like themselves. It also included rules to create more shapeshifting breeds in that vein. The problem was that these were all unique to the New World of Darkness, and very unlike the Fera of the Old. So someone, somewhere, got the bright idea that they should create a book that caters to the fans of the old Fera. The issue is that while some just wanted to play as non-wolf shapeshifting people(for which War Against the Pure was fantastic), the vocal minority wanted to play as sexy cat men, and sexy fox girls, and sexy bear... yeah. Enter Changing Breeds  While War Against the Pure was more intent on staying in step with the Forsaken, the Forsaken line devs wanted nothing to do with this book, hence why it's branded as a generic World of Darkness title. While the Shapeshifters from WATP were more varied in their motivations, Changing Breeds reads like every old W:TA stereotype about furry captain planet made real. Back Copy posted:Nature is FED UP with us. There are two things about this book's development that strike me as weird. First, War Against the Pure came out in April of 2007, Changing Breeds came out that December. Eight months is an insanely short turn around time to get feedback from WATP, spin up a new writing staff, and complete a book, meaning that work began on Changing Breeds likely began before War Against the Pure had even hit store shelves. Second, they hired back Phil Brucato to write the book. And gave him near complete creative control. And let him hire on four of his friends to help him write. For those that don't know who Phil Brucato is, I'll let White Wolf's thinly veiled parody of him speak for me.  From what I understand this isn't an entirely inaccurate summary of him. While he was on White Wolf's payroll he wrote for Changeling, Werewolf, Vampire, and most prolifically Mage. But since this is a werewolf book, sort of, let's look at his Werewolf writing chops. Black Furies 1st Edition posted:In ancient times, Man bent his knee to Woman, believe it if you will, and his heart burned with envy to see Woman befriend the wolves. The Wyrm seized on that envy, and visited Man, teaching him the secrets of seed and womb. As the Wyrm feasted on the jealousy of Man for Woman, Man's strength was turned against his partner and the peace was lost. With his great strength and natural aggression, Man quickly turned his hand from survival to Conquest. Wait what? posted:From the Middle East came the Patriarch, the most insidious plot of the Wyrm, under many names in many forms. The bloody-minded Patriarch ripped the souls and battered the bodies of Woman in the name of his male gods. The Patriarch, the Incarna of jealous man and servant of Abhorra, the Urge Wyrm of hatred, promised Man Limitless power. For the sake of that power Man gladly bent everyone around him to the yoke of the Patriarch. Though the Patriarch's prophets spoke of kindness and good intentions, they crushed Woman beneath laws of ownership and myths of sin.  So yes in his first book for Werewolf he claims that the Judeo Christian god is a lie put forth by the Wyrm to subjugate women and pervert them away from the true worship of the mother goddess. He's also credited as a writer on Freak Legion, the book with vagina dentata, but so are 13 other people so I'm not sure if he's to blame for that. After his separation from White Wolf somewhere around 1999 he went on to publish his own game, Deliria, a game about super powerful faeries who lord their power over mankind. You don't play as the faeries, mind you, you play as the humans that they're lording over. Some of his non roleplaying writing credits include Open Your Heart to the Magic of Love, Love Wisdom – A Soul's Journey to Wellness, and Rites of Pleasure: Sexuality in Wicca and NeoPaganism. He has also, at some point, legally changed his first name to Satyros. The dude is loving insane, and someone at White Wolf or CCP, specifically sought him out to write a supplement on how to play Furries in the new World of Darkness. The book opens up with an introductory fiction, like most WoD books. But like most nWOD books it's presented in the form of a newspaper ransom note pasted over high contrast pictures. The story is about a young Mexican woman attempting to cross over the border to America with a smuggler. For those of you who know that those who smuggle people across the border are known as Coyotes, you're half right.  So why is this young woman attempting to cross the border? "This country across the wide desert was the furthest I could imagine from the humid mountains of my childhood. Across the desert, they wouldn't curse me and spit on my shadow. If i made it, I could DISAPPEAR like SO MANY OTHERS before me. My past worn away by the winds and sand, I would emerge BLANK AND NEW ON THE OTHER SIDE." The entire section is written like that, something that would take half a paragraph is instead spread out over an entire page in 72 point font. Anyways on the fifth night the Coyote comes to rape her at gunpoint, because of course he does, and the woman flashes back to her childhood when her father caught a Gray Fox that was slaughtering their hens. He had wounded the fox with a shot to the leg, and they followed the blood trail back into the forest. Rather than wasting another bullet, her uncle held the fox by the muzzle while her father slit its throat. "When I saw the blood flow over my father's fingers, I SCREAMED AS IF IT WERE MY OWN THROAT UNDER THE KNIFE. I could not stop, even as my father shook me and held me tight." quote:From far away, I saw the gray fox collect its bones and leap to life. It fastened its jaws on the Coyote's throat, his windpipe collapsed in its grip, robbing him of anything but a dry, silent gaping as the fox's nails shredded the soft skin of his stomach. So was she the fox, was the fox her mother? Her Father? Why were the people in her village spitting on her shadow and calling her cursed? I don't know! Next Up: Bird Tits and Dog Dicks
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Mar 24, 2015 06:36
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 Afterthought 2 - Listener Mail. This week, it's mostly joking and sexism.
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Mar 24, 2015 16:34
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Kurieg posted:So was she the fox, was the fox her mother? Her Father? Why were the people in her village spitting on her shadow and calling her cursed? It can only be 
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Mar 24, 2015 16:52
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Kurieg posted:So yes in his first book for Werewolf he claims that the Judeo Christian god is a lie put forth by the Wyrm to subjugate women and pervert them away from the true worship of the mother goddess. Back in the oWoD, wasn't Yahweh like the one thing that absolutely, definitely did exist? Due to Cain and all?
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Mar 24, 2015 17:10
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Night10194 posted:Back in the oWoD, wasn't Yahweh like the one thing that absolutely, definitely did exist? Due to Cain and all? There was constant internal contradiction in oWoD, often within a single book. There were ways of looking at the universe that sort of explained it all, mostly Mage- and Demon-centric, but that really amounted to going "pffft, whatever" and shrugging.
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Mar 24, 2015 17:20
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That was actually one of the key points in the nWoD reboot. oWoD was really more akin to a bunch of separate, self-contained game lines that stumbled rear end backwards into being a unified setting, with all the mess and baggage that implies. In theory, nWoD was supposed to avoid that by all being part of a unified whole from day one. Y'know, in theory.
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Mar 24, 2015 18:13
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nWoD is much better about it because they had relatively consistent mechanics across the lines, which was almost completely absent from oWoD. People still get tripped up because the games are barely written to interact, but only from a narrative stand point. That's why werewolf briefs in non-Forsaken games are written so shallowly. It's like how they used to do it in oWoD, except not monumentally poo poo. Just, in general, nWoD benefits a lot from the authors thinking this poo poo through at least a little before putting finger to keyboard, even if there's stumbles here and there.
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Mar 24, 2015 19:27
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