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Mors Rattus posted:You'd also have to deal with the fact that most people who play Genius just want to play Girl Genius: Modern. And they all want to be Agatha, I imagine. Who is the most boring character I've seen in a long time.
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Apr 7, 2015 20:40
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Mors Rattus posted:Ah, of course. Because we can't just import one boring uncreative idea. Another group of antagonists are Luddites. One of the powers they can have is an anti-technology field. At five dots, you literally can't start fires or plant seeds around them. Another power makes them resistant or immune to technological forms of attack. At five dots, clubs don't work on them.
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Apr 7, 2015 20:42
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Wasn't the early/mid 1990s about the time that the Japanese economy's boom started to turn around and go bust? Or is that something only seen with the benefit of hindsight?
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Apr 7, 2015 20:45
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm very, very, very curious about anything and everything you have to say about actually trying to play Immortal.  ) I do remember my friend and I realizing that the only skills that mattered were combat skills so we tanked those up as high as we could, and also remembering one person failing a WoD style don't-go-crazy roll and almost killing everyone.The campaign didn't last very long because we didn't really have anything to do. We did have to deal with one of the PCs getting poisoned, and with the way damage worked he couldn't work it out of his system but it wouldn't kill him either. That was supposed to be the driving plot of the campaign but we were so baffled and turned off by the mechanics we kinda just...stopped. Davin Valkri posted:Wasn't the early/mid 1990s about the time that the Japanese economy's boom started to turn around and go bust? Or is that something only seen with the benefit of hindsight?
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Apr 7, 2015 20:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:It was, but it was seen with more of a hindsight thing. At the time Japanese corporations were buying up American factories left and right and nobody knew how we were supposed to deal with it. Oh we knew exactly how to deal with it.  Make racist movies about it.
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Apr 7, 2015 21:02
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Evil Mastermind posted:Nippon Tech Aaand this review just went from hilariously racist and stupid to depressing.
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Apr 7, 2015 21:06
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GimpInBlack posted:Oh we knew exactly how to deal with it. I'll see you and raise you 
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Apr 7, 2015 21:07
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Davin Valkri posted:Wasn't the early/mid 1990s about the time that the Japanese economy's boom started to turn around and go bust? Or is that something only seen with the benefit of hindsight? I used to read a blog by a guy who followed his dream to live in Japan and study karate there, and he went because he had been sold on the idea that any half-fluent Westerner could get a job as an English teacher in the booming Japanese economy. He went there in 1993, and had a difficult year.
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Apr 7, 2015 21:11
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Kavak posted:Aaand this review just went from hilariously racist and stupid to depressing. Honestly? That's the reaction I was hoping for. There's stuff in the Nippon Tech and Tokyo Sourcebook (which I won't be reviewing) that's depressingly prescient. At first look the realm gives the impression that it's just going to be "oh technosamuari and ninja and lol Japanese company culture", but at its heart it's incredibly dark because it's the only realm presented where there's nobody capable or willing to fight back. There's also an example in the Tokyo book of a typical middle class workman's life. quote:Every morning he goes to work by train, travelling with several other executives to Tokyo, almost two hours away. He must catch the train at 6:OO a.m. and he works from 8:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. After work, he usually remains in Tokyo, going to client receptions held in Ginza. He usually does not arrive back in Chofu until midnight or 1:00 a.m. Mr. Taira works between 300 and 350 hours a month.
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Apr 7, 2015 21:16
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I've been going through a lot of late 80's education trade journals and similar for a Methods of Teaching class and reading the observations linking Japanese education to a 'more harmonious and productive society' is just cringe inducing to go through. At least Nippontech shows the situation as undesirable at best.
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Apr 7, 2015 22:02
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Halloween Jack posted:The peak came at the very end of 1989 and the Nikkei lost a third of its value in the following year. The bubble burst, and I think the impact was felt quickly in Japan, but I think the idea of the Japanese economic juggernaut continued in the Western imagination for a few years. A good deal of the initial impact of the bubble bursting was in the real estate and lending market so unless you were buying a house in Japan, you didn't see it unless you closely followed Japan and ignored the "experts". This is also the early 1990's so people don't have the Internet and finding out what's going on in another country, especially in Asia, that isn't a big event can be difficult. I also think Japanese corporations and banks were actively hiding things from lenders and investors because it was on the level of the Great Depression in some cases. The bubble bursting was initially more of a lead into economic stagnation which was offset by massive public works projects pumping money into constituencies, most of them rural*. There was a belief well into the late 90's that economic crisis just didn't happen in Asia because the rules were different, everyone helps everyone, or some other Orientalist garbage. People just looked at the numbers too, like they do with China today, and didn't look at the micro issues effecting Japan. Now Japan is feeling the impact of the 90's because building highways to nowhere and paving rivers doesn't build a competitive economy. *Japan is afflicted by the same "rotten boroughs" problem Britain was in the 19th century but they won't fix it. LDP legislators from rural, dying, constituencies wield inordinate power due to the voting districts not being restructured and then win votes through pork barrel spending. The supreme court has told the Diet that the makeup of the Diet is unconstitutional and the Diet just laughs.
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Apr 7, 2015 22:10
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Because I have nothing to do tonight... Genius: The Transgression, Part 4: Grimm, the Catalyst of Fury Genius posted:Grimm Bruce Wayne on a good day, Ivan Vaanko on a bad day. Grimms are your angry mad scientists, typically as brilliant and creative as any Inspired but driven by a deep-seated fury that can mask their intellect. If all this sounds like a serial killer, you're not wrong. Genius posted:Many Grimms are furious and temperamental throughout their youth and adolescence. Moody, dangerous, Most Grimms have suffered heavily themselves, usually but not always the result of personal tragedy or living in an area fraught with physical conflict or violent, forceful cultural change. Others are removed somewhat, driven to fury against some greater injustice or ideal. Either way, Grimms as a rule are not out to change something for the better, mend wounds or stop them from happening to others, be recognized for how right they are, or find a better world. These mad scientists intend to fight, whether that means becoming super-powered vigilantes, becoming revolutionary firebrands, or the like. Grimms are universally aggressive, smart, and determined to do something about or more likely to whatever problems attract their attention. Genius posted:Few Grimms catalyze simply by beating a man to death in a back alley, though that's sometimes how a Grimms are typecast as the most direct and pragmatic of all Inspired, and often the purest in their motivations. They might be patient, they might fashion elaborate plots, but a Grimm is usually either looking for a target or has one and is working towards bringing it down. Shut-ins and ivory tower intellectuals, Grimms are not, though they can be as brilliant at research and planning as any of their fellows. All Catalysts bestow a favored Axiom on the Genius, a principle of Wonder construction that the Genius in question has a natural affinity for, needing less experience to get more dots in it and enjoying bonuses towards building wonders of the type. For Grimms, their catalyst makes them naturals at Katastrofi, the axiom of destruction. Katastrofi as an axiom has one purpose: to break things, violently. Appropriately enough, the Inspired who break through in fury and rage have a natural inclination to build weapons. All Catalysts also have a favored Derangement that is always the first an Inspired develops. For Grimms, it's Irrationality. The rest is fluff and suggestions on building a typical Grimm: Genius posted:Training: Next: Hoffnung, the Catalyst of Vision
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Apr 7, 2015 23:37
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Oh right, and there's another reason why Genius is bad: derangements! Derangements are awful and nWoD has moved away from using them in 2nd edition because they suck.
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Apr 7, 2015 23:42
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Why can't these people just play M:tA and be Sons of Ether? Is there some law passed preventing that?
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Apr 7, 2015 23:45
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Because at least some of these people want white wolf to admit that not including the sons of ether in MtAw was a mistake. That's not true at all, mind, and it will never happen. But that's what they want, so they're trying to back-door it with their own nWoD Compatable not-mage.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:17
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Because Noun: The Verb is an inherently fun and easy to copy format. Pick a silly name, divide your subject up into five categories, add a curse. I mean there's gotta be a Gargoyle: The Flappening out there with categories like Goliaths and Brooklyns.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:23
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I remember reading a fan-splat for Scanners once. It was quite sensible and mercifully brief, and probably at least as well play-tested as Changelings. Hell, it probably worked better than whatever hedge-mage/psychic-numena system they had in oWoD did... but I never quite could tell what was up with that, just that almost everything published after about '95 kept making irritating reference to how you could totally play a hedge-witch or psychic who was affiliated with (whatever was actually on the front of the book).
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Apr 8, 2015 00:26
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theironjef posted:I mean there's gotta be a Gargoyle: The Flappening out there with categories like Goliaths and Brooklyns. Of course there is. Although amazingly it doesn't have splats.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:26
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Kurieg posted:Because at least some of these people want white wolf to admit that not including the sons of ether in MtAw was a mistake. Which is a shame, because I think some of the ideas in Genius are genuinely good. I'm really partial to the setup of "We beat the Illuminati, who had been guiding human civilization since the Stone Age, and destroyed all their plans and influence. So... what now?" I think that on the whole, Genius works better as a pulpy sort of game than a wannabe horror game, though as has been noted there is a kernel of a good idea in there for horror as well. I am not making stuff up when I note that the main antagonists of Genius include Martians (combo platter of John Carter and War of the Worlds flavors), Super Nazis (from the Moon, from the Hollow Earth, or both), and snake people from a lost continent that never existed. In the section on time travel, it's noted that the time police have a cloning facility in 1920s Germany dedicated to churning out Hitlers because time travelers kill him so often. Geniuses with enough dots in the appropriate axioms can travel through time, raise the dead, build interstellar spaceships, level city blocks in one shot, reprogram human brains, and more.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:32
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Evil Mastermind posted:Of course there is. Although amazingly it doesn't have splats. Ah yes, I remember building a sickly, mute (gotta love Flaws!) Gargomancer in high school and trying to convince someone to let me play it in their Werewolf game.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:33
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It's interesting to note that a lot of the Genius stuff hits the same notes as mad scientists in Deadlands; the inspiration coming from outside otherworldly forces, the fact that machines are held together by "magic"...
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Apr 8, 2015 00:35
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When I was 16 and really into WoD, I thought Genius was the coolest poo poo ever. I'm gonna echo what other people have said and say that even though it's full of cool and interesting ideas, pretty much all of them conflict with each other. Especially the mechanics. I mean, we're going to see that pretty much as soon as we get into Axioms and the way building Wonders actually works, but just wait until we get to the really far-out pulp poo poo that comes up later in the book.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:15
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Cythereal posted:Which is a shame, because I think some of the ideas in Genius are genuinely good. I'm really partial to the setup of "We beat the Illuminati, who had been guiding human civilization since the Stone Age, and destroyed all their plans and influence. So... what now?" That former sounds cool, and would be in another setting. It just doesn't fit at all in nWoD because the Illuminati aren't a thing. Even the Seers of the Throne aren't really comparable - they have control now, but over the centuries have not really had the influence they claim to. No one has. Monsters have been around, have done things, have even controlled some small parts of the world - but generally no more than a single city, and often far less. The closest nWoD has to an Illuminati is the God-Machine, which is basically just an infinitely old weird poo poo generator that does strange and terrible things for no reason anyone can fathom. Basically, the summary statement of the nWoD history is 'Weird poo poo happens, no moral.' So, you know, not very pulpy.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:19
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Mors Rattus posted:That former sounds cool, and would be in another setting. It just doesn't fit at all in nWoD because the Illuminati aren't a thing. Even the Seers of the Throne aren't really comparable - they have control now, but over the centuries have not really had the influence they claim to. No one has. Monsters have been around, have done things, have even controlled some small parts of the world - but generally no more than a single city, and often far less. The closest nWoD has to an Illuminati is the God-Machine, which is basically just an infinitely old weird poo poo generator that does strange and terrible things for no reason anyone can fathom. Personally, I'm fine with different gamelines presenting a different take on the world and history of the nWoD to suit different flavors and moods of whatever kind of game you want to play - my gaming group plays nHunter as a light-hearted beer and pizza game where TFV takes most of its cues from X-COM. Genius' internal history is also very muddled because of frequent and widespread time travel, the natural distortion of history, deliberate historical revisionism, and the sheer nature of bardos where they spring into existence the moment they're conclusively proved to be impossible. Again, this is a game line where the time police have a cloning plant for the sole purpose of churning out replacement Hitlers after time travelers kill him. But yeah, the game starts to fall apart pretty quickly once you get into the crunch and the story stuff in the back part of the book, which I'll get into in due time.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:30
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Yeah, I'm not saying it's bad. Just that, like - what you do at your home game is cool, but it would not be published in an nWoD book, and neither would anything about Genius.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:37
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Basically, Genius feels like its own setting. And would probably do better doing so.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:44
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Night10194 posted:Basically, Genius feels like its own setting. And would probably do better doing so. Pretty much. It's either "This is stupid", "This doesn't belong in the World of Darkness", or "This should be a Mage fan supplement, not its own game". But this is the crowd that compared Awakening to the Holocaust, so good luck getting them to play it. Kavak fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 8, 2015 01:48
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, I'm not saying it's bad. Just that, like - what you do at your home game is cool, but it would not be published in an nWoD book, and neither would anything about Genius. Fair enough. Which, I suppose, brings us to... Genius: The Transgression, Part 6: Hoffnung Genius posted:Hoffnung If rage and fury against some problem or injustice are what propel Grims into madness, for Hoffnungs it's a vision of a better world. Of all Geniuses, Hoffnungs are the most prone to interacting with and most able to really change the mundane world. They're insane to be sure, but they have vision and a drive to bring it about - that's how they became Inspired. Of course, a Hoffnung's idea of a better world is just as likely to be horrifying to others as it is to be inspiring. Genius posted:Origins: Personally, I greatly disagree with the claim that Hoffnungs are unlikely to come from desperate circumstance - I think that such environments would be highly conducive to those who dream of change and will bring it about if given the opportunity, if perhaps they're focused on a smaller scale than the entire world to begin with. Vision is the salient characteristic of Hoffnungs, and they have the will and ability to have a good shot at bringing it about. Whatever idea, beautiful or nightmarish, of a better world a Hoffnung has, they're likely to spend the most effort towards making it happen. This also tends to make them experts at Havoc, given that most Hoffnungs want to change the world of mortals, not just the world of Inspired, and seek to understand the limitations of their Wonders towards that end. Or they become Unmada. Both equally likely, really. Genius posted:Collaboration: The favored axiom of Hoffnungs is Metaptropi, the Axiom of Transformation. This axiom is pretty much your Transmutation school of magic from Dungeons and Dragons, and Hoffnungs are naturals for a more direct approach to making the world change. Narcissism is the derangement of choice for Hoffnungs, and it's a song and a dance from there to becoming Unmada. Which, to be fair, is true of many Inspired of all catalysts. Genius posted:Training: All in all, I feel this Catalyst has the potential for more than just wanting to rule and reshape the world. I think there's a lot of room for Hoffnungs who simply have a really neat vision they want to show everyone - the John Hammond approach, and just as likely to end horrifically. Next: Klagen, the Catalyst of Loss.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:55
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Kavak posted:Pretty much. It's either "This is stupid", "This doesn't belong in the World of Darkness", or "This should be a Mage fan supplement, not its own game". But this is the crowd that compared Awakening to the Holocaust, so good luck getting them to play it. I remember that guy! That was Skeloric, right? I think the WW forums finally banned him (before they closed). But yeah, Genius just feels really out of place as a line.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:14
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Luminous Obscurity posted:I remember that guy! That was Skeloric, right? I think the WW forums finally banned him (before they closed). Yup, Skeloric. He got even worse after they banned him from the WW Forums and completely self destructed around the time W20 was announced.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:20
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Kurieg posted:Yup, Skeloric. He got even worse after they banned him from the WW Forums and completely self destructed around the time W20 was announced. How could he have possibly gotten worse and remained on people's radars into the early 2010's?
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Apr 8, 2015 02:23
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He posted on Shadownessence a bunch, and was basically an okay poster until late 2010~ish when he suddenly decided that the death of bookstores was specifically caused by White Wolf moving to a POD model and was motivated out of a desire to spite him specifically. And he posted aggressively in any thread comparing N to O WoDs or any thread about either version of mage. When Black Wednesday 2011 rolled around he was basically singing "Ding dong the witch is dead" and crowing about how it served them right for not capitulating to his demands and hoping that their children starved because their parents didn't know how to run a game company properly. That's around when the Moderators finally figured out that they should ban him, and he started threatening to kill himself if they did so. They banned him anyway. He didn't kill himself as far as I'm aware. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 8, 2015 02:44
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What's Black Friday 2011?
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Apr 8, 2015 02:48
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What happened on that Black Friday specifically? Or do you mean something other than the shopping day?
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Apr 8, 2015 02:49
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theironjef posted:Because Noun: The Verb is an inherently fun and easy to copy format. Pick a silly name, divide your subject up into five categories, add a curse. Well there's Princess: the Hopeful or something that's probably the only other fansplat that I know of that's had more than a week's worth of development. It's also gone through at least one tone shift during its existence and development since an entirely new bucket of source material came out while it was being worked on.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:51
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Err, I meant Black Wednesday. Skeloric was basically a walking grognards.txt, it's a pity most of his posts got lost during the 3 or so server transfers that forum underwent.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:52
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Xelkelvos posted:Well there's Princess: the Hopeful or something that's probably the only other fansplat that I know of that's had more than a week's worth of development. It's also gone through at least one tone shift during its existence and development since an entirely new bucket of source material came out while it was being worked on. Leviathan is another, and honestly better than Genius by a large margin. It's not great, but certainly more solid.
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Apr 8, 2015 03:02
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So if interaction with mortals causes super-science to degrade, how the hell does super-psychology work?
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Apr 8, 2015 03:04
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wdarkk posted:So if interaction with mortals causes super-science to degrade, how the hell does super-psychology work? Beyond fluff and RP with no mechanical impact, it's mostly mind control devices.  I'll do the Foundations after the Catalysts since the game expects the PCs to belong to one, but here's the salient aspects of the Directors:Genius posted:The Directors are masters of mad psychology. They specialize in mind control machines, splinter Crunch-wise, they offer your choice of Automata (axiom of making robots, zombies, life in general) or Epikrato (axiom of mind influence and control, mostly) as a favored discipline, and can spend Mania to simultaneously boost their social attributes and negate the social penalties Geniuses have.
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Apr 8, 2015 03:14
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"Mad science doesn't pay the bills"? Even if it can't be reproduced you could make tons of money selling it as a service. "Your satellite in orbit for $100/kg, no questions answered." Or use your Super-Prospect-O-Mat to find a huge deposit of rare earths, buy up the mining rights, then have the site surveyed conventionally.
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