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Keep in mind that these are all crackpot theories that have been explicitly disproved, like geocentrism.
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May 18, 2015 03:23
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Tasoth posted:Playing the first generation of magical girls having grown into adults and still fighting for hope and love on the streets against people who have bent the big bads to their pursuits would be an interesting concept. Princess Streetfight wouldn't even have to be grimdark, just bare knuckle brawls in back alleys to protect your city and neighborhood. Not that that's like, bad or anything. Nessus fucked around with this message at 03:42 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 03:39
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Tasoth posted:Playing the first generation of magical girls having grown into adults and still fighting for hope and love on the streets against people who have bent the big bads to their pursuits would be an interesting concept. Princess Streetfight wouldn't even have to be grimdark, just bare knuckle brawls in back alleys to protect your city and neighborhood. Princess: Nightwing?
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May 18, 2015 03:44
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 Chapter 5: Magic Items The last and final chapter of the book, the contents are all arranged by type. I should note that this chapter is rather image-heavy; in the book the magic item art is all grouped on one page for an arsenal-style feel, but the images I received came individually. I figured this can be neat way to place the illustrations alongside their descriptions. Armor Special Properties. Blending armor property increases the 20% miss chance of concealment up to 50%. In most campaigns this would be sort of situational, but is quite good in conjunction with the many features Path of Shadows offers. Gloom armor property halves the radius of light sources within 30 feet of the wearer, and this function can be shut off and resumed. Once per day the wearer can emit a cloud of black dust which replicates the dust of twilight spell. Naturally armor with this cannot have the radiant property, that would be silly. Specific Armors and Shields  Entropic Raiment is a very powerful, very expensive +4 deathless undead controlling breastplate which grants the powers of the nightshades to the wearer. Said wearer cannot be magically aged by any means and radiates a constant desecrate spell. In terms of unique abilities the mobile desecrate is sort of nice, and the undead controlling quality's good for potential necromancers, although being medium armor is going to keep it out of the hands of many arcane spellcasters due to spell failure chance.  Infiltrator's Armor is specially made for spies and assassins. It's a +2 blending glamered shadow studded leather, meaning it looks like normal clothing, grants +5 to Stealth, and increases miss chance. It has the unique ability to allow the caster to cast the snuff spell at-will, and once per day use disguise self with a 1 hour duration. The armor is sort of expensive (17,025 gp), but it might be more reasonable to get by crafting it for half price.  Penumbral Ward was created by entities of night who needed to operate under sunlight. This +2 ghost touch gloom light steel shield is considered to be under the constant effects of a protective penumbra spell. This not only eliminates light blindness from creatures such as drow, it can allow for vampires and other creatures immune to the effects of daylight. A very good equipment to give a vampiric villain. Weapon Special Properties We have double the amount of armor ones, six total and two of which are improved versions of a base property. Blindstrike can make an opponent blind on the confirmation of a critical hit in lieu of bonus damage. The target is blinded from 1-3 rounds depending on the critical multiplier damage. For a +2 bonus it's sort of underwhelming in part because of the rarity of critical hits and the existence of spells which only need to roll a failed save once to inflict this condition for a much longer duration. Concealed weapons are hard to detect with both mundane and magical means. Its aura can be altered upon command as per the magic aura spell, and persists even after the weapon leaves the hands of its wielder and until another command is unleashed. It grants a bonus on Sleight of Hand checks made to conceal it equal to its enhancement bonus, and its true properties cannot be found except with a DC 11 Will Save after casting an identify spell on it. This property is really useful verses diviners and magical security types and folks using detect magic, because such a weapon can be made to appear non-magical. Necrotic and Necrotic Burst are like the flaming/shocking/etc energy damage family, except these ones deal negative energy damage on a successful hit. The negative energy cannot heal or harm undead, though, so it can't be used for infinite healing exploits, and it does not harm the wielder in case some effect or spell makes him start attacking himself. Umbral and Greater Umbral weapons are capable of storing shadow surges, typically in hanging charms or engravings upon the weapon's frame. Such a weapon can hold 1 or 3 surges which refresh each day, cannot be placed on ammunition, and non-nightblade users can at least use the surges to do the 'roll twice, take better result on Stealth' technique. Specific Weapons The Arrow of Forgotten Greaves is a +2 phantom ammunition arrow which places a curse on any living creature it slays. Anyone who views the corpse must succeed on a DC 19 Will Save or forget ever seeing it, and does not register it on any senses for the next 3 days after which a new Will Save can be made. People who witness the murder gain a +4 bonus, though. Said curse is permanent but can be dispelled, making it great in case you need to make someone "disappear."  The Edge of Oblivion is hideously expensive (213,015 gp), and is a +3 adamantine necrotic vorpal longsword capable of obliterating anything it critically strikes. Instead of decapitating a victim, it rapidly ages the target so fast that they dissolve into a fine dust. The text points out that this can effect a wider variety of creatures than a base vorpal blade, pretty much working on all but ones immune to magical aging.  The Hidden Blade can be used three times per day as a swift action upon the completion of a successful sneak attack against a foe. A silence spell is centered on the wielder. I'm beginning to see a pattern of weapons intended for non-commotion kills.  The Phantom Pain is a +1 adaptive endless ammunition necrotic composite shortbow, meaning it deals damage equal to the wielder's Strength bonus and spontaneously creates an arrow each time it's nocked. The arrows are equivalent to phantom ammunition, meaning that the arrows dissolve and the wound seals itself up to guard against any perception of foul play. A rather nifty weapon and a good way to get around the ammunition-only requirement for the phantom ammunition ability.  Tormentor's Shackle is a versatile weapon made by sadists who wanted something which can adapt to all manner of torture. Ordinarily it's a +3 cruel ominous spiked chain, meaning that it can potentially sicken targets afflicted with fear-based status conditions, grant temporary hit points to the wielder when fulfilling said criteria, and can inflict the shaken condition on a successful critical hit. Shaken being fear-based, this combos with the sicken quality. Additionally the wielder can trade out two of the properties for either blindstrike or wounding, and wrap it around their arm to gain +10 CMD against disarm attempts. All in all, I really like this weapon.  Our last specific weapon (and last picture in the chapter), the Twilight Reaver is a +2 cold iron greater umbral keen scythe, meaning it has an increased critical threat range (19-20/x4) and can pierce the damage reduction of fairies and demons among other creatures. It glows with shades of black and blue, and whenever a successful critical hit is confirmed the wielder can absorb a bit of the target's soul to turn into a shadow surge as a swift action. In comparison to the previous weapons the twilight reaver's unique quality feels a bit lackluster, but it's by no means bad. Rings The Ring of Shadow Mastery can store up to 2 shadow surges inside of itself, and in addition to normal uses the surges can be spent for bonuses on Bluff/Sleight of Hand/Stealth checks, and to grant the wielder the ability to turn their next attack into a touch attack as the dusk strike nightblade art. Or all 2 surges can be spent to cast shadow conjuration. Unlike the umbral weapons, these surges do not regenerate each day, meaning that the party needs to have a nightblade to maximize its potential. Still, as such surges can be spent by non-nightblades it's a cool way to grant touch AC attacks to other party members. The Shadow Walker's Ring grants teleportation-based spells illusion spells with the shadow descriptor (shadow walk, shadow gate, shadow step, etc) a whopping +4 caster level increase! Not just that, if the wearer has the ability to teleport through the Plane of Shadow with a daily distance measured in feet (such as the shadowdancer, nightblade, or wizard's shadow subschool), the distance is increased by 50 feet per day for that ability and can be divided up for individual "jumps" if the class feature allows such. This ring's usefulness is limited to only a few types of characters, but the benefits it grants can be quite good within this purview. Wondrous Items Bracers of Dusk and Dawn pair a set of matching runes, one white and the other black. The wearer can create a 30 foot radius of illumination or darkness, with a light level ranging from darkness, dim light, or normal light. The lighting condition lasts until another command is given or changed to a different lighting level. Most interesting of all is that the effects generated by this wondrous item are treated as non-magical and interacts with other spells and effects accordingly. It's a very cheap magic item (3,000 gp) which cannot be dispelled or blocked by an anti-magic field, and is pretty much a must-buy if you're utilizing any of the contents of this book which depend on the light level. Hidden Step Shoes can move at full speed without suffering a Stealth penalty. Once per day as an immediate action the wearer can negate any armor check penalties for 1 minute. The latter ability is sort of average (most stealthy types wear light armor), but the full movement without a Stealth penalty is great mobility for rogues and the like. At 1,500 gp, it's cheap and accessible! The Informant's Script is used to covertly pass secret messages. Once text is written on the page, a command word can alter the apparent text to look like another message, its specifics decided upon by the one invoking the command word. It can also replicate the effects of the Secret Page spell but once used this way it always transforms to that specific page on future uses. For 600 gp it's kind of pricey but good for espionage campaigns or trying to trick someone into signing a contract whose text can alter. The Lunar Amulet has a glowing glass orb at its center, surrounded by eight gemstones representing the phases of the moon. Each day the central orb changes to a random phase depicted, granting the wearer the benefits of the lunar prophecy spell mentioned in Chapter 4: Magic. The wielder can try forcing it to a desired phase with a DC 17 Will Save, but a failed save risks losing any benefit for today as the orb clouds over. A Night Candle is made of black wax and its wick produces no flame when lit. For 30 minutes anything within a 30 foot radius of said candle gains the benefits of hidden illumination as described in Chapter 4: Magic. As said spell is 1st-level for most classes and a night candle costs 120 gp, it is far cheaper to have a spellcaster in the party learn the spell and save any money which would otherwise be used to buy it. It's the kind of item better used when found instead of gained with money. Shadowcraft Gloves allow the wielder to make a quasi-real object weighing no more than 10 pounds as a full-round action. Said object is treated as non-magical and cannot have moving parts, and persists for 1 minute before fading away. The text says that it can replicate simple materials such as wood, glass, and metal, but can't make things such as acid. I might be unimaginative, but this magic items seems very restrictive for what it can make at a price of 7,800 gp. Shadowstruct Flask contains a dark cloudy fluid constantly swirling within. It's actually a compound of arcane energy and shadowstuff, and when poured out in an adjacent square as a standard action. The liquid replicates the effects of a shadow structure spell as described in Chapter 4: Magic, with the pourer determining the specifics of the created object. Although it's a wondrous item, I'm unsure if this is meant to be one-use item or not. Most Wondrous Items are reusable and don't have charges. If it's reusable then it's a very good item for its price; one-use, and it's like most potions in that they're not cost-effective for the replicated spell. A Shroud of Shadows is a multi-purpose cloak with a pair of clasps, and by taking off the clasps can use one of its special abilities, all but one of which are based on spells from Chapter 4: Magic. Three times per day the wearer can throw it at an opponent ant replicate the effects of a shadow binding spell. Twice per day the wearer can cover himself with the shroud and become like a shadow, gaining the effects of a shadow form spell. This is a spell I didn't detail last post, but basically it allows one to travel along surfaces as though they were a shadow. Once per day the wearer can cover the shroud on an object, replicating the effects of a shadow courier spell which can only carry one object. Finally, it can replicate the effects of a shadowy haven spell by placing the shroud on a surface to open a gateway to the Plane of Shadows. The shroud's fabric appears to fade away after any of these abilities are used, requiring the wearer to wait 1d4 rounds at which point the shroud flows from the clasps like running ink to reform. Versatile? Check. Cool-sounding? Check. Reasonable for its price? At 34,000 gp, I'd say so. The Vest of Steady Aging grants immunity to the effects of magical aging, such as a ghost's corrupting touch attack or this book's entropic storm. This does not negate the penalties for natural aging, and the wearer still continues to age normally. At 21,000 gp this is a tad expensive for a limited amount of such attacks existing. Voidsight Goggles are our final magic item, and thus our final entry in the book before we hit the OGL, index, and credits! It's 30,000 but the effects it gives are a boon to any dungeon-delver. Those who wear it gain the see in darkness special ability, allowing them to see in full color in magical and non-magical darkness up to their normal vision limits. Meaning that not only can the average human see up to 2 miles in complete darkness, they can also discern color and fine details at close range! Very nice ability which I don't see many spells or class features replicate, first or third party. Final Thoughts: This chapter's specific weapons and armor tend towards a tad on the expensive side, but the entries overall are pretty strong and full of ones which can see use in many types of campaigns. As for the book overall, Path of Shadows is very good, especially for a publisher's first product. The nightblade class is an awesome and versatile mage-thief type, the spells are thematic and useful, and the book has options for most character concepts. The author does well to look out for loopholes and cheesy infinite exploits, and the various magic items, spells, and class features have good synergy with each other and I like how many of them rely upon the environment's lighting conditions. And finally, the artwork is downright lovely. Christopher Moor does something unusual for Pathfinder products, in that in the credits he specifies who did which kinds of artwork and what page they can be found. Most of the ones I used were created by Danielle Sands, and all the magic items were drawn by Bryon Osihiro. quote:ARTWORK CREDITS This is a really nice gesture for Christopher Moore, in that it shows interested folk who might be interested in said artist's style to further research their work. In conclusion, I highly recommend Path of Shadows for Pathfinder fans. It adds some diversity and interesting choices for a cool magic theme, and its core class' path system allows for a versatile assortment of character concepts. The book can be bought at all the usual stores (Drive-Thru RPG, Paizo, D20 Pathfinder SRD, RPGNow). I do not know what I'll review next, but if anything I'll probably go back to finishing Path of War, and after that perhaps continue my abandoned Let's Read of Ptolus. Until then, stay tuned for the revival of old reviews!
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May 18, 2015 05:19
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Tasoth posted:Playing the first generation of magical girls having grown into adults and still fighting for hope and love on the streets against people who have bent the big bads to their pursuits would be an interesting concept. Princess Streetfight wouldn't even have to be grimdark, just bare knuckle brawls in back alleys to protect your city and neighborhood. DO loving WANT One splat I was sad to never have seen realized was a potential nWoD Paladin fanmade supplement, inspired by this wall of text and this /tg/ thread. See, I kind of disagree with the thought that the World of Darkness has to remain that way, simply because it suffers from the Cthulutech problem- you have all these awesome powers where, even if the big players have them too, you can also create your own paradigm within the setting. Vampires can be like Angel instead of Dracula, Changelings less Joker and more Reynald the Fox etc. It's not like, say, 40K, where even the most badass Inquisitor can easily answer to his fellows, and the Chaos Gods watch over their followers jealously.Indeed, I'd say that WoD's baddies are more constrained than the heroes; Seers of the Throne are locked up in the Supernal, and they're constantly backstabbing their own underlings to remain in power, old vampires have torpor- only the True Fae have the potential to become a real threat, insofar as I've seen. So basically, a game like the aforementioned Paladin could be the ultimate answer to that, even more than Princess and Genius. Hell, you can even argue it's a better fit for the 'Darkness' part in 'World of Darkness', since the potential ideas all bandied about in the thread and pic seem to indicate that the moment you hear the Music, you're doomed to martyrdom- and you're perfectly okay with that.
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May 18, 2015 05:39
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The thing is that the nWoD already has a game about people, both plain ol' mortal and various shades of superpowered, going out and kicking evil's teeth in...it's called Hunter: the Vigil. I mean it's not shiny happy sunshine and rainbows through and through, some of the groups are far more on the dark grey spectrum, but it gives you all the tools you need to play a game of dedicated protectors of the innocent and downtrodden without any sneering cynicism in sight and it's not even out of theme to do so.
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May 18, 2015 05:54
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Yeah but I want Exalted + Scion in my WoD  Also in other news, it turns out the Ironclaw review that I for one was waiting for... was written my me, and muggins here just plain forgot about it  I'll try to get the Skills chapter done once I get home from work.
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May 18, 2015 06:02
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah but I want Exalted + Scion in my WoD This must be one of those monkey's paw wishes I've heard so much about.
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May 18, 2015 06:06
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah but I want Exalted + Scion in my WoD Twice the fundamental disappointment in one game!
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May 18, 2015 06:08
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Kai Tave posted:This must be one of those monkey's paw wishes I've heard so much about. And you know, it probably would be better. At first.
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May 18, 2015 06:37
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Nessus posted:I'm old enough to remember people gloating about the prospect of this crossover, which usually went along the lines of "the Solar Exalted return, and like, BAM! So much for the vampires, am I right? And from there--" I was there for those threads too and you're right, they were invariably a dozen people writing "Solar Exalted kick the poo poo out of vampires" fanfiction until they got bored. And then they actually got Solar Exalted in the World of Darkness! In the form of Hunter: the Reckoning. Like I said, monkey's paw. These days I'd be more inclined to wish that Exalted and Scion stayed as far, far away from the World of Darkness as possible, perhaps by way of some metafictional restraining order.
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May 18, 2015 06:45
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Nessus posted:And you know, it probably would be better. I know, right? It's like that section in Mirrors where the supernaturals take over the world- what then? Will the wolves make everyone live in reservations? We'd have parents beating kids for not Awakening, or people having crazy Awakenings and going full Osama bin Laden. And don't get me started on how a world ruled by the Lucifuge or Malleus Maleficarum would look like. One ruled by Geniuses (or worse, Lemurians) would be even more terrifying. The thing is, the Solars would seem like the perfect solution. Even if you didn't think so, they'd make you- and this time, there are no Siderals to say 'hang on a minute...'
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May 18, 2015 07:44
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So basically "Exalted only with cars and poo poo I guess." I mean, there's Shards of the Exalted Dream which is actually not terrible and has a couple "Exalted only in the modern day" setting spinoffs. It still uses the 2E Exalted system as a baseline so, y'know, have fun with that, but the actual settings themselves aren't bad.
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May 18, 2015 07:53
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Kai Tave posted:So basically "Exalted only with cars and poo poo I guess." I mean, there's Shards of the Exalted Dream which is actually not terrible and has a couple "Exalted only in the modern day" setting spinoffs. It still uses the 2E Exalted system as a baseline so, y'know, have fun with that, but the actual settings themselves aren't bad.
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May 18, 2015 08:17
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Okay, so I was supposed to do a write-up of The Secret of Zir'An, but I've decided against it. Because I only own the physical edition of the book and don't have access to a scanner, my review would be very sparse on the art, and there's no way I'm buying the PDF of the game at the price it's going for. Also, there's not much I would've gotten out of the game besides what was already discussed in this thread: it's the perfect example of an early aughts heartbreaker with an insistence on making up its own vocabulary, a system with some interesting quirks but ultimately nothing to write home about, and a setting that is full of great ideas but sadly not fleshed out very much. Thankfully, I just picked up the perfect game for doing a write-up on this weekend: Astraterra.  A bit of history: Astraterra is a Finnish role-playing game specifically aimed at kids who are new to role-playing games. Originally crowdfunded in June 2014 the game was released in Ropecon (the biggest Finnish RPG convention) that very same year in July. The game is currently available only in Finnish, but an English translation is to be released during this very year! Speaking of the English translation, since I'm going from the Finnish edition I'll be pretty much translating all the vocabulary and concepts of the game. Since the translation process of the game is still ongoing, I have absolutely no way of knowing whether the translations I have to offer will in any way match the decisions made by the game's translators. Before I get into the actual review, here's a quick overview: Astraterra is very clearly in the science fantasy genre. There's no actual magic in the game's setting, but the technological wonders of the setting (as well as the technologies left behind by the Ancients) serve the purpose of magic in the game's setting. The setting is essentially a world destroyed in a cataclysm a long time ago, the floating remnants of the world orbiting a whirling vortex in the center of the world.  Oh, hey, they have the English map available on their website already! Travel between the floating islands is conducted either through airships (because of course) or teleportals, which are exactly what it says on the tin: the teleportals are gates made by the highly technologically advanced Ancients that in the old days formed a network for travel. While some of the teleportals are in active use, a number remain inactive, the means to activating them unknown and their destinations a mystery. The heroes (the game's term for PC) of the game are explorers, sent to investigate what mysteries lie behind the inactive teleportals.  By the way, the thing that sold me on this game was definitely the art. Just look at it! So, Astraterra is much more about exploration than beating people up, and while the game does have rules for combat character death doesn't happen at zero HP (called Guts in Astraterra) but instead your character loses their nerve and runs away or goes and hides behind a corner. The same also applies to the heroes fighting monsters: dropping a monster to zero Guts does not mean that you've killed the monster, it might mean that you've forced the monster to retreat or go into hiding, or maybe made them faint. Great care is taken by the game to make sure that combat isn't deadly and graphic. As far as the system goes, Astraterra only makes use of good old six-sided dice in a system that is actually shades of the system used by Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard and Torchbearer: that is, you have a dice pool equal to your skill, any roll of 1, 2 or 3 is a failure (or a "dud" as the game calls them; another way in which the game is similar to the aforementioned games, as it even has its own vocabulary for failures), while a 4, 5 or a 6 is a success. However, a minor difference from the above is that sixes always explode in Astraterra, giving you a success but also allowing you to roll another die to see if you get another success, which in the aforementioned games is only something that happens under some special circumstances. Also, for dice pools of size five or higher the player is allowed to convert dice to automatic successes at a price of 1 success per two dice. So, you roll, compare your number of successes to the obstacle of the roll, if you exceed the obstacle you succeed! This is pretty much the basic mechanic of the game, but it is expanded upon in some of the other rules of the game. Next time I'll begin my look at Astraterra in earnest with a look at character creation. It's very simple, quick and stream-lined, as befits an RPG meant mostly at kids. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 08:24 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 08:20
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Nessus posted:People have seemed perpetually fascinated with "modern Exalted," which I never really got. Well it's not like "the modern day, but there are superpowered demigods about" is untrodden ground. Generally, to western audiences anyway, it's less incredible kung fu and the divine mandate of heaven and more x-genes and alien physiology. I can see the appeal of a game like that, but speaking personally I don't get the appeal of trying to shoehorn Exalted into any version of the World of Darkness given that the pitches typically presented for that mashup begin and end with "the Solar Exalted totally lord it up over everyone with their incredible anime superpowers haha yeah that would be rad, take that Caine." The kicker is that White Wolf actually did set out to make a modern day game of high-powered mythic figures in Scion and they hosed it up six ways from Sunday. edit; really, I can't entirely dislike the idea of an "Exalted Modern" because done right it would essentially be "Platinum Games: the RPG."
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May 18, 2015 08:26
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Kai Tave posted:Well it's not like "the modern day, but there are superpowered demigods about" is untrodden ground. Generally, to western audiences anyway, it's less incredible kung fu and the divine mandate of heaven and more x-genes and alien physiology. I can see the appeal of a game like that, but speaking personally I don't get the appeal of trying to shoehorn Exalted into any version of the World of Darkness given that the pitches typically presented for that mashup begin and end with "the Solar Exalted totally lord it up over everyone with their incredible anime superpowers haha yeah that would be rad, take that Caine."
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May 18, 2015 08:37
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Nessus posted:Yeah, I just never got excited by any of their modern things. I was in a Scion game and it was OK but we sort of had to edge around the busted-up rules. Aberrant and Trinity or whatever, it was just never much of a thing. However, if someone could split the atom and go for a Platinum Games-style RPG that would be, mathematically speaking, the sweetest thing ever. That's really all that anyone sane wants out of Exalted, frankly. Just a system with some crunch that makes you feel like you're roleplaying a Dynamic Action game.
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May 18, 2015 08:52
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Kai Tave posted:So basically "Exalted only with cars and poo poo I guess." I mean, there's Shards of the Exalted Dream which is actually not terrible and has a couple "Exalted only in the modern day" setting spinoffs. It still uses the 2E Exalted system as a baseline so, y'know, have fun with that, but the actual settings themselves aren't bad. I'd go beyond 'actually not terrible' and go as far as to say the fighting-game subsystem that it has is pretty good insofar as such things go.
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May 18, 2015 09:13
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CommissarMega posted:One splat I was sad to never have seen realized was a potential nWoD Paladin fanmade supplement, inspired by this wall of text and this /tg/ thread. Nessus posted:I'm old enough to remember people gloating about the prospect of this crossover, which usually went along the lines of "the Solar Exalted return, and like, BAM! So much for the vampires, am I right? And from there--"
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May 18, 2015 14:53
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Crasical posted:I'd go beyond 'actually not terrible' and go as far as to say the fighting-game subsystem that it has is pretty good insofar as such things go. Sadly it's actually pretty poo poo, just not compared to the rest of Exalted - fights take loving forever still to win in any form of conclusiveness because it takes so loving long to run someone out of stock. It's apparently designed for one-on-one fighting but the only way to deal with anyone with any speed at all is to gang up on them because they can only effectively deal with one person at a time. E: Anyway, the main reason I hate this idea of magical girls in the nWoD isn't that the nWoD is a place for darkness and terrible poo poo and no hope. That's not true to begin with. It's that the tone of nWoD is focused on different things. Mystery and melancholy, an uncaring world - not a hateful one, an uncaring one. You can defend the innocent and protect the weak, you can fight for love and hope, but the universe itself doesn't care. It very aggressively doesn't care. And that's wrong for a magical girl thing. (It's also, I feel, generally too low-key for anything like Exalted, but really I just want to keep Exalted as far away as possible from the games I actually enjoy these days, and back when I still liked Exalted I wanted to keep it as far as possible from 'modern'.) Basically - magical girl stuff is something I like and care about and: A. I hate grimdark nerds making GBS threads it up, and B. it just needs a totally different tone and universe. In nWoD, love and hope are human things, and the best you're gonna find as universal forces are some spirits that blindly encourage them without caring about the consequences. In a magical girl universe? Love and hope are literally fundamental forces of the universe. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 15:10 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 15:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Picking on Kindred is lame in the first place; they're innately weak, and since Vampire stuff is always the first stuff published, they suffer the most from power creep. It's probably the most egregious thing about McWod. Werewolves, Demons, and mages get all sorts of neat powers. Awakened are okay but not great, but otherwise they can all interact together and you can make a superfriends party to go off and have adventures. The minute you introduce a Vampire the group can only operate between the hours of 9PM and 6AM and have to find a bunch of people the vampire can drain of blood to fulfill the increasingly ludicrous requirements of healing a d20srd health pool 1d6 at a time. And no you can't have him drain the werewolf for convenience's sake (Even though werewolves can just regen the con damage) because werewolf blood makes vampires go insane.
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May 18, 2015 15:10
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Ratpick posted:
Really digging the art posted so far on this. It sounds sort of like a kid-friendly Numenera/The Strange that may actually be more interesting to explore.
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May 18, 2015 15:24
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Kurieg posted:It's probably the most egregious thing about McWod. Werewolves, Demons, and mages get all sorts of neat powers. Awakened are okay but not great, but otherwise they can all interact together and you can make a superfriends party to go off and have adventures. The minute you introduce a Vampire the group can only operate between the hours of 9PM and 6AM and have to find a bunch of people the vampire can drain of blood to fulfill the increasingly ludicrous requirements of healing a d20srd health pool 1d6 at a time.
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May 18, 2015 15:49
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I don't think we're actually in disagreement about that. Sorry, yeah. It's just that "what if that childhood/popular thing was so dark maaaaaaaaan is a huge bugbear of mine. Like the people who say "what if Adventure Time was really the coma-dream of a dying boy maaaaaan" and think they're being deep and shocking, when in reality people just want him to shut up and gently caress off.
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May 18, 2015 15:52
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Playing catch-up with the thread and argh, if they wanted a semi-obscure lion god with a bad rap and a history of making war why didn't they use Nergal?  He'd be perfect for the role. Sun God, Plague God (summer was the dead season in Babylon, you don't grow food when it's hot), godly powers that include such feats as "turning into a lion" and "having a mace with two lion heads on it," he'd've been great because Nergal would've added another layer (bringing the total up to maybe one entire layer) of doubt to the cat trio's motives.
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May 18, 2015 17:01
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PoptartsNinja posted:Playing catch-up with the thread and argh, if they wanted a semi-obscure lion god with a bad rap and a history of making war why didn't they use Nergal? Eh, you really don't want a Palladium version of an interesting god. Here's how that would look: Ny'rglll Cosmic Entity Aliases: Nergal, Nrgol MDC: An irrelevantly crazy huge number Attacks: An unusually pathetic collection of dumb tentacle slaps and grabs, one ludicrous eyebeam attack Teleport without error out of combat to another dimension at the first sign of any threat: Yep! Carries around stuff that another book described as ludicrously rare/singular: Yep! Levels in an OCC that doesn't exist: Oh you bet! Actually a huge ball of tentacles and eyes, Ny'rglll has convinced the local population of some small part of South America that he is actually the lion god Nergal. He is deeply evil, incapable of committing good acts, and obsessed with the collection and harnessing of mega-damage(TM) weaponry! Written by theironjef fucked around with this message at 17:18 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 17:16
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Can someone give a breakdown of Zir'an? It sounded interesting but there's not much out there on it.
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May 18, 2015 18:03
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I do agree the that WoD is not a good place to put any kind of magical girl game, even if they have grown up. But I think exploring the choice to keep fighting the war you did as a child or give it up for the handful of things that make the world really matter to you could lead to some interesting stories. Especially if you leverage the Things That Matter into sources of drama and extra reserves. Do you choose to die for something you believed in as a child or do you give up and live out your life with the things you've come to truly care about?
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May 18, 2015 18:45
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What's the difference between a Magical Girl game and a superhero game? Like Magical Girls as a genre is just women with secret identities and superpowers, right?
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May 18, 2015 18:46
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theironjef posted:What's the difference between a Magical Girl game and a superhero game? Like Magical Girls as a genre is just women with secret identities and superpowers, right? There's a good argument to be made it's a subgenre of superhero fiction, yeah. There are a few more features that are particular to the subgenre - the superpowers are always magical in nature (hence the name) rather than, say, caused by radioactive spiders or having an awesome utility belt, for instance. But a lot of the usual superhero tropes are there. Fighting other superpowered villains, struggling to maintain a normal civilian life in the meantime, etc.
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May 18, 2015 18:56
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Magical girl merchandise is in the form of dolls. Superhero merchandise is action figures.
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May 18, 2015 18:56
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The theme of magical girl stuff and the stuff that empowers them is almost always love, hope, friendship, joy or something related to them. (Not always directly a power source, but 90% of the time a theme.) Adorable and often toyetic mascots are usually involved, as are kitschy transformation devices. Transformation is a big thing - most magical girls have no powers at all in their civilian forms. Often they work in teams, occasionally unable to do anything separately. Magical girls are almost always children or young teens - unsurprising, as most magical shows are aimed either at 8-year-old girls or 20-year-old men. Monsters are often drawn from within people somehow - usually formed from negative emotions. Not always, but it's really common. Villains are often focused on destroying or taking over the entire planet via nebulous magical means. Villains are typically themed together somehow and rarely fight on their own - they use monsters, and fight solo only for major confrontations. This is not exclusively the case, just very often. Typically, hatred, fear, doubt or other negative emotions are the ultimate evil to be fought. Despite the prevalence of love as a theme, romance isn't always present at all. It's not uncommon, of course, and if it's present the male lead will almost certainly become involved in the supers stuff as normal for supers romantic leads, but when it's not present it basically never comes up even slightly. Friendship is usually more important than romance. Again, not always, but often. Villains often end up redeemed by love or friendship and converted into being good guys. When this doesn't happen, it's usually because redemption is not possible - the villain may in fact be literally composed of hatred and evil or be literally the devil.
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May 18, 2015 19:09
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Halloween Jack posted:The more I think about it, the more I find that sunlight-death is the least plausible part of Vampire. You pretty much can't do anything if you can't do business during the day. A network of ghoul servants and fake documents is a lot harder to establish and a lot more fragile than it sounds. Vampire: the Requiem and its supplements dig deep into the subject of how vampires get a steady supply of blood and make their haven. But in the end I find that Kindred would have to either live like homeless people or have a miniature empire built around themselves, with no in-between. What I'd do is have reinforcing subtle impacts from daytime poo poo. Maybe you are at a dice penalty (if not a huge one) to do things during the day - you can, but it's an effort. Maybe most of your disciplines are weaker during the day or in sunlight, even cloudy-day sunlight. But you CAN show up in traffic court if you HAVE to.
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May 18, 2015 19:10
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Also I'm gonna post about NIGHTBANE, the Palladium RPG, later. Believe that.
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May 18, 2015 19:13
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:There's a good argument to be made it's a subgenre of superhero fiction, yeah. There are a few more features that are particular to the subgenre - the superpowers are always magical in nature (hence the name) rather than, say, caused by radioactive spiders or having an awesome utility belt, for instance. But a lot of the usual superhero tropes are there. Fighting other superpowered villains, struggling to maintain a normal civilian life in the meantime, etc. Magical Girl stuff also tends to focus more heavily on ~feelings~ like struggling with a sense of inadequacy and guilt over inflicting violence/pain/damage, and above all else learning to love oneself and others--it is very often critical that a Magical Girl maintain her true friendships in order to fight evil. Relationships matter a great deal in MG stuff, and not just romantic--friendship is very definitely magic. Combat situations can occasionally be defused by crying (Sailor Moon does this at least three times in the first season) and hugging it out is a go-to combat strategy. All of which means that Magical Girls might be special and gifted but they are far less entitled than shonen counterparts. They spend a lot less time whining IMO, and a lot more eating cake with allies and trying to use the faculties of a thirteen year old to figure out a plan to stop a galactic invasion or something. That's my biggest problem with the genre as a whole: Its characters skew extremely young, younger even than shonen, and often subtly seems to agree with the belief that women over that age are incapable of wonder or magic or any possibility but being wives and mothers. PMMM was an outlier in this just by having the father be stay-at-home and the mom be the drunken salary worker. Also re: the cake thing, it's extremely common for at least one character in a series to basically constantly pig out, and that is also a female fantasy I think: To eat whatever you want without consequence to your body, or being thought unfeminine for actually being hungry.
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May 18, 2015 19:14
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Red Tide We don't need no stinkin' gods Let's take a look at the races of the setting! The Sunset Isles are a hodgepodge of different peoples from all over the old world, and the average citizen of say, Xian is a cosmopolitan sort used to see all kinds of different customs. Of course, some people are more clannish - it doesn't help that many, many cultures have been reduced to just a handful of descendants that might just vanish in the next generation, so you get remote settlements overly concerned with purity of blood and culture, and thus reluctant to getting involved with the world at large. Such isolation might prove to be fatal in the harsh isles. We're going to start with the non-human races. Red Tide takes the "demihumans" trope of old D&D and runs with it: demihuman races were, in fact, human at some point of their existence. But they were all changed by dramatic events that are all related to the divine: demihumans are collectively referred to by humans as the Godless for this reason. Dwarves are a fatalist, stoic sort, tempered by pride and the will to defy the gods rather than bowing to a tyrant. In ancient times, they were humans enslaved by a wicked goddess called the Mother Below, who forced them to mine deep beneath the earth to bring her back the gold that she desired so much. They were bent and shaped by ages of endless toil, until a council of elders gathered and said, "you know what? We're sick of this poo poo." So they rose and murdered the poo poo out of their goddess, shattering her into ten thousand pieces.   Dwarves don't gently caress around. Ever since then, the dwarves have taken no other god, and only worship their ancestor spirits. When they die, their shades are hunted in the afterlife by furious fragments of the Mother Below, so they gather into large afterlife delves to fight them off forever. The struggle is eternal but they hold on through their courage, their love for each other... and their gold. Dwarves want to die with as much gold as they can gather, because they believe that the gold that is buried with them into death can be brought in spiritual form with them so that their shades can contribute to the defense of their forebearer's afterlife homes. Interestingly, the gold doesn't have to remain with the dead dwarf forever - after a few years, its essence is considered to have "passed on" and it can be safely removed by the dwarf's clan mates. Sometimes the dwarf is so afraid of death that their shade sticks into this world and refuses to let go. In these cases, ancestor priests are called in to quiet the scared spirit, and the tomb-gold is considered to be their rightful payment. Dwarf society is centered around clans, that claim entire delves and parts of the larger underground cities, and as we'll touch on later it is heavily gender segregated. Dwarf adventurers are more often than not driven by the desire for gold, particularly among young men lacking labor prospects. Resolute dwarf women also take axe and warhammer, knowing that they are throwing their chances at good marriage into a pit. And dwarves are always seeking new allies and friends, to better rebuild their ancient delves. Also, they loving hate slavery. Elves were a human people whose philosopher-kings taught that gods were simply a greater order of creature, one that mortals could join through the proper rituals and ambitions. They thought that by binding their immortal souls to the substance of their flesh, they could become divine, and in a great ritual that involved all of their people they did in fact do so - but the result wasn't quite what they expected. There are exactly one hundred thousand elf souls in the world; elves don't go into the afterlife, their souls cannot be affected by magic, they're now bound to the earth and thus reincarnate endlessly. Elves are effectively immortal save for violence or disease, and they are invariable beautiful and well formed - any random elf just seems to be a little bit better than a human, and they are found in every human shape and hue possible. Some elves envy the transcendence of afterlife, but their endless reincarnation means that they have an unique perspective on life - all elves know each other, they will know each other again in the future, their grudges can be played out over millenia and no enemy is truly defeated, only delayed. Every death is just a temporary setback. Elves gather into Creeds, like-minded gatherings dedicated to great works of self-improvement and accomplishment. Some are heroic, some are villainous, and some are completely bizarre, hard to understand by other mortals. Those elves who still wish to break the shackles of their recursion are known as Apotheons, and some of them commit ritual suicide to await their people's call in a time of great need. Elves can no longer interbreed with humans, but sometimes a wayward elf soul claims the body of a newborn human: the result is known as a Scion, and the interplay of elf and human soul-stuff gives them very strange powers indeed. Elf adventurers are always part of a high-minded Creed, and they are known through the Isles as notorious crusaders for causes only they truly understand.  loving transhuman pointy-eared jerks. Halflings are said to have been humans that turned away from the gods. Not fighting them as the dwarves or seeking to surpass them as elves, they simply stopped getting involved into divine quarrels and sought peace within themselves. The gods cursed them to be half their size; if they would not fear the gods, they would learn to fear other creatures of this plane. The halflings simply shrugged and moved on. See, halflings are constitutionally incapable of feeling fear or being intimidated: they live quiet, simple lives until tyrants and bullies attempt to push them around, and then said tyrants and bullies are suddenly beset by hordes of tiny ninja, relentless and methodical, willing to die if they can get at their foe. Even the rawest halfling militia fighter can be given a spear, told to hold a position and do it until the bitter end, which is why they're sought after as mercenaries - though they're not simply suicidal and can recognize a danger they have to walk away from, in the Isles "a cowardly halfling" is a beast that doesn't exist. Halflings have a philosophy called the Quiet Way, which informs all aspects of their life, and teaches them to live out peaceful, bucolic existences. Of course, some of them break from the mold and become "wild", reckless and thieving. Halfling adventurers are usually forced out of their homes through disaster or hardship, and they seek a life of adventure or even wealth to found a village of their own.As for humans! Eirengarders are tall, blonde, pale folk. They're renowned by a piety that is frankly rare in the Isles, and most of them worship a god called the Maker and follow the teachings of his Iron Prophets. In the old world, the Eirengarder homeland was poor, and as such they became famous mercenaries, hiring themselves to the highest bidder. Even now, an Eirengarder is first a soldier rather than a peasant or fisherman, and most of the surviving mercenary bands are on a permanent contract with Xian. Others hire themselves out to Westmark border lords to fight off goblin or orc raids. Eirengarders are notorious for the different sects in which they worship the Maker - they all have their own little customs and taboos, aside from the greater ones of not eating pork, daily prayer and ritual purification after bloodshed. The martial bent of their culture informs their family life, with men taking in widowed sisters of his wife until they can remarry because turns out mercenary work is really harsh on a husband's survival rates. Eirengarder adventurers can be women shunning marriage for a life of adventure, or men attempting to gather enough gold to start a family of their own. Grim Makerite priests and holy warriors also take to the road on quests of their own, and survivors of shattered mercenary bands can be found with scores of their own to settle. Ekshanti hail from the old city of Ekshant, trade hub of the old world. Their land was also poor, beset by desert raiders, so they turned outward. Hard-bitten raiders gave way to fat merchants, and soon there was no town without at least one Ekshanti trading family. They're generally dark-skinned, with dark hair and eyes to match, and their life revolves around wealth and prestige - a spouse that brings no dowry or fame to a marriage can be loved, but their opinion in matters usually goes unheeded. Ekshanti adventurers are often young folk from poor families, out to strike it big in the world at large or die trying. Others are the offspring of merchant houses in trouble, trying to find the riches they'll need to save their own, and yet others simply want the freedom of the road rather than a safe, quiet trader's shop.  Don't worry, the lady's got this. Gadaal are a mountain folk, ebon-hued and black-haired. Archmage Lammach himself was a Gadaal, and many of his people listening to his warnings while the Imperials still thought they were little more than ravings. Gadaal worship the night sky and the stars above, and though they were poor in wealth they were rich in knowledge: their astromancers were the finest diviners of the world, superior to Imperial mages, and their accuracy in predicting the future was astounding. So much knowledge was lost in the chaos of their escape, though, and Lammach was not able to train new apprentices properly, but enough remained to keep their astromancy alive in the isles. They keep to traditional ways, living in mountains and hills in large, extended clans, and sometimes feuding with their neighbors. Gadaal adventurers are often bordermen, born in the harsh frontier between civilization and the Shou, and their rangers, mountaineers and seers can be seen all over the isles, looking for fortunes in lost places. Imperials is the name given to the main ethnicity of the Ninefold Celestial Empire. They tend to be slender, with dark golden skin, almond eyes and straight black hair. The Empire was a magocracy, and the love of learning and knowledge was a highly praised virtue. Even now, parents see the teaching of letters and numbers to their children as great a need as feeding and clothing them, and insulting an Imperial's education is akin to questioning the virtue of their mother. Imperials live in tightly knit families that prize filial obedience above all, and disobeying a parent's order directly is a grave offense against decency. They worship the Nine Immortals, but their reverence is desultory. Imperial adventurers are often poor people that want the wealth to move upwards in society, or mages in training that could not continue paying the fees of Imperial magic schools and had to take to the road to finish their education with hands-on experience. Kueh were a race of famed warriors and nature-mages, conquered by the Empire after a long struggle. They mostly resemble the Imperials, though their men are slightly taller and both genders cultivate an aristocratic pallor when their station permits. Such was their resistance than the then-Emperor commanded that Kueh be treated gently and that his mandarins married into the greatest Kueh families, and over long centuries of unity cultural barriers vanished and the Kueh joined the Imperial culture. Their samurai served in the Imperial forces, their generals led their legions, their yamabushi cultivated their magics in Imperial academies. Their peasants mostly lived life as they always did in the coasts. However, this saved the peasants - flotillas of little fishing boats fled their lands while their nobles died behind them. One of these survivors was Rai, a yamabushi that rejected natural magic for darker powers, and he quickly came to influence over his surviving compatriots. Lammach never trusted him, and soon he left Xian to build Kitaminato, a center for ambitious young men and women that wished to restore ancient Kueh independence. Then, the ravaging came, Rai sacrificed the souls of his people and became the hellish Shogun. Kueh outside Kitaminato are refugees, sometimes mistrusted by Imperials as Shogunate agents. Such mistrust is quickly forgotten because right-minded Kueh hate the Shogunate with a passion. Kueh adventurers are hard-bitten, with samurai seeking a worthy lord to serve, yamabushi roaming in search of lost lore, and fired up by a bitter loathing of their devil-worshiping brethren. Skandr are black haired and pale of skin and eye, and the only humans with a city in the Isles before the exile, in the northern island of Aktau. They were famed stoneworkers and masons, which was good because they were also infamous raiders and reavers: punitive attacks against their homelands were rebuffed by impenetrable defenses and walls. It's said that they were slaves to dwarves in old times, though Skandr say there simply was great friendship between them, and though dwarf-mothers say their craft is good "for humans" there is no question that Skandr are the best among men for building. Imperial say that if you leave a Skandr alone in a shore for a night, he'll have a wall of stones built, and if you leave him for a month he'll build a tower. And if you leave him for a year, his cousin will come to knock it down - their matrilineal clans are prone to feuding and vendettas. Their sailors are sought after even now, though ship owners sometimes have causes to concern when Skandr captains forget that they are not pirates. Skandr adventurers might be following their old traditions, young people in search of loot and plunder. There's never any shortage of bandits, Shou raiders or renegade lords to use their blades on, even if the more civilized peoples frown on Skandr going a-viking. Others are drawn by an unquenchable lust for journeying, and though few of these find peace many do deeds worth remembering before they die. Shou! Wait, the Shou aren't human! But still. As far as anyone knows, the Shou are the native inhabitants of the archipelago, with records of their presence left by the earliest explorers to the Isles. The Shou are divided into four big tribes, that the exiles name using the Eirengarder names for them - orcs, goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears. There were Shou in other lands, too, but it was in the Isles where most of them gathered - and most of the powerful ones. Their witches were a match for any arcanist of the exile fleet and their war chiefs cut swathes through men. It was only their hatred for each other and the cunning of Lammach and the exiles playing the tribes against each other that kept them from simply wiping out the refugees. The Skandr were safe in Aktau, as Shou have always had a great fear of the ocean. The Shou look almost identical to humans, with skin tones going from dark to greenish, and they could even be considered handsome or beautiful by human canons - under all the ritual scarification, branding, filed teeth and general lousy attitude. Humans and Shou are interfertile, though hatred between them leaves little opportunity for peaceful engagement. Shou adventurers (yes!) are almost unknown, but those without the more out there skin colors and that refuse to scar themselves can pass off as human in some places. A known Shou is shunned by humans, though half-breeds are not unknown and in fact are more accepted in human than Shou territories. These unfortunate folk are often forced into a life of wandering to keep the mob from using them as scapegoats for the latest crime. Many seek homes far from their birth place. SPOILERS! You can play a Shou from day one.  Deep down he's a big softy. Very deep down. Next: let's see what an OSR guy has to say about gender roles, hm?
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May 18, 2015 19:18
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:There's a good argument to be made it's a subgenre of superhero fiction, yeah. There are a few more features that are particular to the subgenre - the superpowers are always magical in nature (hence the name) rather than, say, caused by radioactive spiders or having an awesome utility belt, for instance. But a lot of the usual superhero tropes are there. Fighting other superpowered villains, struggling to maintain a normal civilian life in the meantime, etc. Arguably, it's a subgenre spun out of another subgenre. Tokatsu specifically. Whereas toku is male oriented and features mostly science based or extraterrestrial based powers (at least initially), magical girls are the opposite with magical sources and female oriented. Both run off of some sort of emotion with friendship/camaraderie as part of it. Hot-bloodedness, courage and bravery in toku and love, kindness and hope in magical girls. They're both two sides of the same four colored and sometimes campy coin.
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May 18, 2015 19:20
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The "adults are poopyheads who consider magic to be nonsense" thing is a pretty universal trope, though, especially in media aimed at young people - which magical girl shows generally are. Once you hit 18, you ain't Peter Pan no more, and there's no going back. As for the glutton thing, that's a pretty common trope too, and honestly shows up just as often with dudes, so I think that's reading a little much into it. Someone who eats a lot is just a funny character archetype (unless you make it into something more sinister... which some shows have done). e: Xelkelvos posted:Arguably, it's a subgenre spun out of another subgenre. Tokatsu specifically. Whereas toku is male oriented and features mostly science based or extraterrestrial based powers (at least initially), magical girls are the opposite with magical sources and female oriented. Both run off of some sort of emotion with friendship/camaraderie as part of it. Hot-bloodedness, courage and bravery in toku and love, kindness and hope in magical girls. They're both two sides of the same four colored and sometimes campy coin. Definitely. The genre is pretty much a fusion of tokusatsu and highschool romance comedy in a lot of ways. Except I guess the romance kind of had to take a backseat? Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 19:27 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 19:24
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Magical girls actually primarily developed out of other magical girl stuff. The fighting magical girls drew some from toku stuff, but that's not the earliest magical girls. In the 80s and prior, magical girls were basically just goofy witches and fairy girls and so on who granted wishes and went on goofy adventures, starting with Sally the Witch and Majokko Megu-Chan. This stuff has more to do with Western cartoon shorts originally and the closest I can think of to it in Western cartoons would be Josie and the Pussycats, maybe, or that one witch from the Casper comics. Or Bewitched, which was a major influence. Stuff like Creamy Mami, Fairy Persia, Magical Emi, Ojomajo Doremi or Sugar Sugar Rune. Fighting girls first show up in the 90s and really got big and took over thanks to stuff like Sailor Moon and especially Pretty Cure. E: And fanservice, male-aimed magical girl stuff shows up in the late 90s/early 00s. I hate these shows, and they are almost universally terrible. There are exceptions, and I know some folks who like some of the exceptions, but I cannot bring myself to. These exceptions, off the top of my head, are Lyrical Nanoha (which starts out aping Cardcaptor Sakura rather badly and then moves on to mimicking mecha shows without the robots), Madoka Magica and My-HiME, which I know relatively little about because I tapped out after one episode. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 19:30 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 19:25
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