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Rifts Dimension Book 3: Phase World Sourcebook Part 5: Imperial Theme Song Redux The Transgalactic Empire is our evil authoritarian space-nation. They continue to expand through military conquest and are right jerks most of the time. They have only one legal system, brutally enforced from the top down. Wealth and status matter to sentencing, and death or lengthy imprisonment on a hellworld are common. Of course, all this cruelty has about as much deterrent effect as one expects, which is to say none. Crime still exists. Since people are scared of the cops they won’t talk to them. As long as criminals avoid preying on persons of importance, they often go unmolested. Smuggling is extremely common as one might expect. High tariffs are meant to preserve local monopolies and so the enterprising try to get around these. Given the description of how stardrives work, blockading smugglers seems very difficult--much easier to just control who is able to land on populated worlds. The Imperial Army is also the regular police so they are militarized obviously. Military personnel answer only to military courts. Propaganda portrays them as heroes, but even enlisted soldiers can get away with murder at the lowest classes. Even more pampered and special are the Invincible Guard, who were mentioned in the last book but are probably detailed more here. There isn’t much else to be said--Imperial culture isn’t really explained outside of officially being very militaristic and crushing its people under its boot. Planets of Note in the Empire: Axis-5: Not a complicated calculus problem, but the oldest ongoing battle in the known history of the 3G. For the last 75 years this world has been at war between the Empire and the Free World Council. The Empire can send larger forces but cannot overcommit, as running a military government means that when the military is elsewhere, the government is gone, so a lot more forces are stuck where they are. The FWC has closer bases to the planet and can keep their forces better supplied. The planet itself has changed sides nine times already but it never stays took. The world is pretty much a devastated wasteland with nobody actually living there anymore. Scavengers make a decent living hauling away ‘gently used’ military equipment.  there’s a repeat image in this section so have a stock image instead Monro-tet: Home of the monro race, which are ugly amphibians who serve an important role in the Empire. This role appears to be passively sitting on their jungle world while Imperial archaeologists crawl over the million year old ruins hidden throughout the steaming forests. The unknown builder race vanished hundreds of thousands of years ago but sometimes working artifacts are still found. Occasionally wealthy individuals charter private scoundrels to go a-tomb robbin’, that could be you! Ghostworld: Every ten years, this planet vanishes for three days though its gravity is still detectable. When it goes, all sentient creatures on its surface vanish when it returns. Nobody knows why or where they go. The Kreeghor sometimes leave condemned prisoners on the planet to let the phenomenon take care of them, and refugees sometimes also hide there since anywhere might be better than what they came from. Lots of people try to investigate the world, and it is called Ghostworld in part because it attracts various ghost entities (from Conversion One) but mostly it’s just inexplicable. There’s a note that specifically says the answer is not currently defined as of Sourcebook, so make up what you want.  That’s it for planets, now we get to the secret alien intelligence running the Empire. What, you thought they just had an evil emperor and were running a mundane military dictatorship? Oh you sweet summer child. No no no, they have a secret endboss. The Kreeghor attained independence from the splugorth through its manipulations, it secretly guided the formation of the Empire, it chooses and empowers the Emprah. It doesn’t possess the Emperor outright because it ‘enjoys the unpredictability of an agent with some limited free will’.  The Dweller Beneath (that’s its name) also suspects the Free World Council of being pawns of a rival intelligence, no way could mortals outmaneuver it.  criminal mastermind thumb Basically it looks like a pillar of flesh with weird hair along the top and an eye at the end. How such a thing could evolve and have any useful function ever is unclear, it feeds on souls and--well basically everything. Its master plan is to devour the whole megaverse and it’s worked on this plan for a million years and won’t be finished for a million more. Equivalent to a 12th level line walker, stone master and necromancer; fragments are 4th level equivalents in those areas. 120,000 MDC, putting it on the level of the highest gods. It’s immune to all heat and fire, ignores diseases, half damage from poison, regen 3d6x10 per minute, 1000 ft of nightvision straight upwards and can telepathically communicate with its essences and the Emperor at up to 100,000 light years’ distance. It has to feed on suffering and pain and if it lost the conduits of sacrifice in the name of the Empire, it would be reduced to 20,000 MDC and would lose 1d4x10 per day before being destroyed--so it takes a while for it to starve to death. It has all the psi powers and all the spells up to 12th level with 7 attacks per round. It has pretty beefy combat bonuses like +9 to strike and parry (with its head?) and can apparently snake itself around to ‘body butt’ people for 1d4x10 MDC, though it prefers more dignified magic and psi. It also takes double damage from Millennium Tree and rune weapons. I hate this thing. The picture is stupid and I dislike that the evil Empire has a supernatural origin. It was perfectly fine as a generic evil faction completely on its own, this is unnecessary. The only good mark I will give it is that this guy doesn’t have the old dimensional-teleport bullshit for escaping when cornered. Fortunately, it would be extremely easy just to draw a red X over it and change nothing about the rest of the Empire’s concept.  The Kreeghor Witch is one of those NPC villain classes they like to throw in now and then. These characters exist to serve the Dweller directly in return for great power. It usually picks those who feel their great talents have been neglected by society. They have special secret authority and even the Emperor doesn’t entirely know what they do. What they do is kill people to feed the Dweller of course. They do this both within and without the Empire’s territory, and are very often responsible for senseless-seeming acts of terrorism or mass murder. There’s a special extra note that these shouldn’t be player characters. So, for our villain-class we get tougher than average Kreeghor with 200 extra MDC on top of their already-beefy personal plating. They get some psi powers and spells, which if the witch is a Royal Kreeghor, is a lot of spells. They also get all the supplies they can eat from the Empire, so they’re pretty tuff villains who somehow engineer terrible acts despite the tendency of people outside the Empire to point at the nearest Kreeghor whenever that kind of thing happens.  they keep repeating this picture in whole or in part and I don’t know why, it is boring as poo poo Next we get the Invincible Guardsman OCC, which we may remember as the special elite soldiers of the Empire. The Kreeghor admired the splugorth arts of bio-wizardry and wanted to imitate it. They didn’t quite get there but the can mutate people of various species into powerful killing machines. Most volunteers die; those that don’t get superpowers and a bunch of imperial privilege. Most of the Guard is super loyal, 50% Kreeghor, 20% human, 20% wolfen and 10% the ever-popular ‘other’. Guardsmen are deployed against strong enemies like Cosmo-Knights. They wear bright-colored costumes and are basically one of the super-teams Norman Osborne made in the Marvel Universe during Dark Reign, all bad guys exploiting official sanction. A few of these super-soldiers break away either to become freebooters, or to turn good after one too many war crimes.  doesn’t look like a very interesting comic Invincible Guardsmen gain natural MDC. SDC creatures get their PE in MDC plus 1d6 which is pathetic. Natural MDC races gain 40 on top of whatever they had, which completely leaves the former-SDC teammates in the dust. They get supernatural PS and regen slowly. They also get superpowers from a special table not reprinted from Heroes Unlimited! Basically they call get some kind of alternate form, be it Metal, Stone, Electricity, Fire, Crystal or whatever. The forms are all pretty buff--the stone form gets 350 MDC, +8 PS and fast regen, but half speed for instance. The Flame Form adds 120 MDC and does 2d6 + 1d6 per level with blasts. They also get a minor power such as an enhanced attribute, psionics, or invulnerability to psionics which is quite useful. They get a goodly selection of skills, but not acrobatics for some reason, plus 120 MDC armor, energy rifle, mess kit (a lot of equipment sections leave stuff like this out, including other entries in this book--Palladium!  ), some grenades, a knife, a utility belt for maximum batman, a uniform, 2d6x1000 credits and a possible salary depending on what they do. There is no warning label on these guys as being ‘too powerful’ for regular PCs. There isn’t even a snide paragraph about how they would be hunted down relentlessly if they defect. It’s just a way to play space Avengers for evil, or not, as one prefers. Lastly for this section, we get another of those random pointless inclusions, the Monro RCC. I feel like they were bored with this thing before they even finished giving it a name. These guys are native to their jungle planet studded with various ruins. They’re pretty ugly even for space amphibians, here.  looks trustworthy, we should pet it They have some minor supernatural abilities, which could either be the result of Monro-Tet’s high magic environment or them being remnant minion populations from some previous intelligence-dweller. Despite the magic of their planet, they never developed a magic-using culture because :reasons: The Monro are respected members of the empire and serve mostly as scientists, technicians and administrators. They remain afraid of magic because everything in this book is averse to magic. It’s the only interesting thing about Phase World, godduh, magic in space! Stop running from it! “It might be possible (Game Master’s choice) that they were once beholden to the Dweller Beneath and that one day the intelligence may reclaim the whole species!” Even if that’s true, frantic fear of magic is dumb. Statwise they have better-than-human stats, higher IQ, PS, and PE but lower MA. 2d6x10 MDC, naturally see invisible, see infrared, sense heat, regen 1d4x10 per minute, and half damage from heat and fire. +3 to save vs psionics, +4 vs. horror factor. These little space-otyughs are pretty buff man. Slap an overpowered OCC on there and you’re rollin’. That’s it for the Empire section, next we will move on to the United Worlds of Warlock.
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Aug 24, 2015 20:26
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The Adventures of Devil Dinosaur and Artist's Signature Woman! And battle-armour Swamp Thing, or something.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:00
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Obviously someone needs to play a Monro Invincible Guardsman, the NEO-OTYUGH.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:36
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I love how Palladium takes Lovecraftian influences and renders them down to the most banal elements imaginable. I mean, just two books ago we had a soul-sucking cosmic worm whose greatest ambition was to just live the soul worm equivalent of the gangster lifestyle.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:40
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I love how Palladium takes Lovecraftian influences and renders them down to the most banal elements imaginable. I mean, just two books ago we had a soul-sucking cosmic worm whose greatest ambition was to just live the soul worm equivalent of the gangster lifestyle. There really is something to be said for using such an absurd take on it. Finding out that Cthulhu's great and unknowable plan was just to convert this corner of the universe into a personal cosmic golf course? Priceless in the right context.
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Aug 25, 2015 00:12
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LornMarkus posted:There really is something to be said for using such an absurd take on it. Finding out that Cthulhu's great and unknowable plan was just to convert this corner of the universe into a personal cosmic golf course? Priceless in the right context. If you like that idea, you should read The Domino Men by Jonathon Barnes. His first book is really good as well.
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Aug 25, 2015 02:44
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PSIONICS: THE NEXT STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION "The Armory: Weapons, Drugs and Equipment" or "On the memo line, it says 'For Drugs, Yo' and it's signed 'John Travolta'." The equipment section is divvied up into melee weapons, ranged weapons by type, throwing weapons, explosives, gun accessories, body armor and of course drugs. There's a brief history of the different types of weapons, and interestingly it uses real world guns like Glocks and UMPs and proper ammo types. It also plays a little on the realistic side; guns have different rates of fire, you need clips to hold bullets for guns, so you have to buy them and that's basically how many reloads you have at the ready etc. Aside from that, it's really not that remarkable. A lot of stuff isn't included simply because players are allowed to pick things that a character would realistically have. So clothes, cell phones, laptops don't have any prices and don't require a purchase, you just write it down on your equipment. Keep in mind that Espers are often on the run and stuff like that is fleeting and may not be kept for long past character creation. Armor is simple: leather jackets, flak jackets, 4 types of body armor, helmets, riot armor. Armor does not add to defense and has speed restrictions when worn. All armor does is flatly reduce damage for melee or ranged down to 1 point of minimum damage and may only cover certain areas. Espers don't necessarily need to have armor at all from the get-go because they're ostensibly relatively normal people. Finally, getting stuff. Weapons have two prices: Picks or Price. Price is just a flat money cost, but Picks are only available from having ranks in certain skills. Having those ranks gives you the opportunity to have certain weapons or amounts of weapons that reflect your level of ability. Apprentices get 1 pick, Experts get 2, Masters get 4. So an Apprentice of Blades can start with 1 Small Knife. An Expert can start with a Fire Axe, a Combat Knife or two Small Knives. A Master can begin with a Katana, two Fire Axes, two Combat Knives, Four Small Knives, etc. But the drugs and medicines are the most important part of this whole chapter because Espers are extra sensitive to drugs. The effects a drug has on an Esper's brain also affects their abilities and powers, and a lot of Espers self-medicate or partake to keep themselves going or mellow themselves out. Drugs are divided into Real World Drugs and Medical/Psionically Active Drugs. Let it not be said that they didn't do their research because each category of real world drug carries the physical effects and long term effects of drug use. This is mostly for roleplayers so they can know how these drugs affect people, but they're also there to remind you that long term drug use may not be good, may not be bad, may or may not be necessary but what's definite is that drugs can have long-term consequences. They're enhancements but you're playing a bunch of desperate teens and this may seem like a good idea at the time, but if your Esper survives to middle age there could be consequences.  However, let's put aside the whole drug talk aspect and focus on the mechanics. I'm not totally sold on the system they have in place. Drugs can give PP or remove Overflow, or add Overflow, or they can have other effects. Maybe they work best for popping them in the middle of battle, or after the Espers have had a long day but need to keep going, but remember: Overflow empties completely if you have a few minutes to cool off. Some of them work as they are (Narcotics do, definitely, to me) but Marijuana doesn't really do much besides be Better Caffeine that is illegal and harder to get. My advice? Modify and change the effects of some of these, homebrew it a little. I personally think Marijuana would be better if instead of removing 3d6 Overflow, it just insulates against the accumulation of the next 3d6 points of Overflow. That offers a much better temptation to the players for me: be able to use your powers more and get some points back to do that at the cost of being high and all that entails.  I'm not about to sit here and explain what every drat drug is, but here is some clarification. Non Narcotic Stimulants are drugs like khat, cold medication, nicotine, edible bath salts, edible meth. Opiates are drugs like heroin, opium, oxycodone and other painkillers. Entactogens are basically ecstasy.  Now we're getting into the fake drugs! I wasn't able to be an insurance salesman in real life (long story, but never be an insurance salesman) but I sure as hell can be a pharma rep for a tabletop RPG. Also, all of these drugs are not available for public sale or might even be tricky to find through a dealer. Some of these you'll only find in buildings or labs associated with the conspiracies.
 Now, PPECs and PPID. PPECs are the drugs that are used to give normal people psionic powers. Both come in injection form (PPIDs can be distributed by aerosol): PPECs are translucent and colored by name, PPIDs are dark liquids with faint sheens of color. They are guarded by the conspiracies that need them or want to reverse engineer them. An Esper can use any PPEC to get a level in a power they didn't have any access to or to get more CAPs to grow in power, but the Overflow is a definite danger. For normal people, they have to make a Hard Wits or Hard Will depending on what's lower. If they fail, they can never be an Esper and these drugs have dangerous side effects for normal people.  BLUE causes muscle spasms, nausea and aching along with involuntary Telekinesis for 1d6+1 hours. RED causes fever, sexual arousal, perspiration, salivation and involuntary Pyrokinesis for 1d6+1 hours. GREEN causes nosebleeds, headaches, synesthesia, hallucinations and involuntary mind reading for 1d6+1 hours. Put the strain of these side effects on a normal person, and death may not be likely but suffering and long term side effects may be.  "Speak No Evil" SPNE901 causes muscle weakness, fatigue, drowsiness, numbness and dizziness along with inhibition of Telekinesis. "See No Evil" SEENE902 causes a fugue state with numbed emotion up to feeling no emotion in addition to inhibiting Pyrokinesis. "Hear No Evil" HNE903 drugs the subject into incoherency and impaired mental capabilities while suppressing Psychokinesis. Finally, "Abyss" I10013 causes excruciating headaches, partial/complete blindness or deafness, dysphoria, nausea and intense vertigo. Worth noting is that for SPNE, SEENE and HNE is that the player gets to decide what gets inhibited if they have multiple talents under one tree and that inhibiting the parent talent doesn't affect the secondary if the Esper has them. PPIDs are almost exclusively used by the conspiracies to incapacitate psionic talents and keep Espers in control while they have them in containment, but here is something very important to remember: PPIDs cannot inhibit or prevent Overflows from happening should they happen. An Esper in captivity may lose hope, may be worn down and rebuilt as a tool for a conspiracy, but all it takes is one really bad, traumatic, lovely day to give the Esper the chance to break out, fight back and escape their captors. Which. Uh. Happens a lot. It should happen to your players too if they get caught. Unfortunately sometimes the conspiracies are too cruel for their own good and they forget just what they're dealing with. NEXT TIME: uggggggggh combat rules my faaaaaaavorite. Alright, at least this chapter has art. Here, have some art to make up for the equipment chapter not having any. 
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Aug 25, 2015 02:55
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LornMarkus posted:There really is something to be said for using such an absurd take on it. Finding out that Cthulhu's great and unknowable plan was just to convert this corner of the universe into a personal cosmic golf course? Priceless in the right context. Yeah there's not much way to sum it out without actually making it sound cooler than it is, but book after book of "What if we rolled Hitler, Nero, and John Dillinger into an evil cannibal eyeball, man, what if?" starts to lose its charm after awhile.
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Aug 25, 2015 03:18
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I just...that one looks like a giant eyeball thumb with hair. It's like the kind of puppet Jim Henson's intern's kid turned in for the Dark Crystal. Admittedly the 'masses of tentacles and eyes' thing was also pretty played out but this isn't a great alternative. Also after so many books of 'no it's evil this is the TRUE evil no seriously REALLY REALLY evil this time' it is wearying, which is one reason I preferred the Transgalactic Empire without its evil thumb god: It was 'just' an evil dictatorship. In some ways it was less bad than the Coalition, being less dogmatically driven to genocide and none of this illiteracy nonsense. The motivation of temporal power is quite enough to create evil, nothing more was needed. In the Phase World main book it seemed like that was all there was but when this part cropped up, I wasn't even particularly surprised.
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Aug 25, 2015 03:41
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I'd like it more if that were, like, the guy who had summoned the ancient eldritch evil. As in, evil technocultist thaumo-physicist summons an eldritch entity to try and get it to help him rule the universe. It changes him into an eye-thumb with psychic powers because it isn't really capable of understanding concepts like "rule" or "universe" and it figured that was close enough. Dude could still be a secret evil, but it would keep the eldritch alien entities alien, while giving this guy a plausible reason to have petty, understandable desires.
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Aug 25, 2015 05:40
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We continue to talk AD&D a little before answering a bunch of weird listener questions in today's Afterthought.
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Aug 25, 2015 18:13
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theironjef posted:We continue to talk AD&D a little before answering a bunch of weird listener questions in today's Afterthought. I can't believe you forgot the General Mills monsters, who would be a force to be reckoned with, given that they're monsters, and most of their foes are toucans and elves. Though I wouldn't underestimate the street smarts of a cookie burglar, on the other hand. Actually, speaking of verisimilitude, kinda surprised the Weapon Type vs. Armor Class table didn't get mentioned, given it A) adds a obnoxious layer of complexity to combat and B) doesn't even function as intended. (And yes, it's in the PHB.) It is interesting in that it shows that Armor Class was originally just that - it literally represented the corresponding type of armor, not just an abstract to-hit percentage. The problem is that since AC can be adjusted the association falls apart, and then you have a negative AC which doesn't represent a goddamn thing other than "gently caress you, Mr. Fighter!"
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Aug 25, 2015 19:13
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AC is a perfectly workable concept when you're playing with Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships and a unit is only ever going to have a single AC number and to-hit number. Not so great when you pile on a bunch of potential permanent AND temporary bonuses.
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Aug 25, 2015 19:22
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I can't believe you forgot the General Mills monsters, who would be a force to be reckoned with, given that they're monsters, and most of their foes are toucans and elves. Though I wouldn't underestimate the street smarts of a cookie burglar, on the other hand. You're absolutely right, Chocula and his ilk were pretty clear contenders and they just didn't enter our brains. Then again you can tell our commitment level there since we kept calling Sonny "Coo Coo."
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Aug 25, 2015 19:54
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theironjef posted:We continue to talk AD&D a little before answering a bunch of weird listener questions in today's Afterthought. If I can make a suggestion about the fakey expletives in Blimpleggers. I think it'd be funny if words like 'jorq' were really, really, vulgar in-universe. To the point that "Motherjorqer!" isn't just something you shout because you're a salty sky-pirate, but something that even other blimpleggers treat as being equivalent to rattling off a string of explicit, unabashed accounts of gorily and vilely violating someone.
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Aug 25, 2015 20:32
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ZorajitZorajit posted:If I can make a suggestion about the fakey expletives in Blimpleggers. I think it'd be funny if words like 'jorq' were really, really, vulgar in-universe. To the point that "Motherjorqer!" isn't just something you shout because you're a salty sky-pirate, but something that even other blimpleggers treat as being equivalent to rattling off a string of explicit, unabashed accounts of gorily and vilely violating someone. Oh yeah, and like literally only one grogrunner is even salty enough to say it, the kind with a fungus-crusted parrot on his shoulder that's seem some serious business over the past twenty years.
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Aug 25, 2015 20:42
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I am totally on board with Blimpleggers as long as it doesn't have to actually be attached to AD&D rules.
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Aug 25, 2015 20:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I love how Palladium takes Lovecraftian influences and renders them down to the most banal elements imaginable. I mean, just two books ago we had a soul-sucking cosmic worm whose greatest ambition was to just live the soul worm equivalent of the gangster lifestyle. LornMarkus posted:There really is something to be said for using such an absurd take on it. Finding out that Cthulhu's great and unknowable plan was just to convert this corner of the universe into a personal cosmic golf course? Priceless in the right context. This is what happens if you take the "Hyper-advanced eldritch abomination whose goals and motivations cannot possibly be grasped by feeble human minds" concept and actually try to come up with a goal or motivation (which will naturally be something the writer can actually grasp). I think Final Fantasy 13 did the same mistake (among many, many others). Alien Rope Burn posted:Actually, speaking of verisimilitude, kinda surprised the Weapon Type vs. Armor Class table didn't get mentioned, given it A) adds a obnoxious layer of complexity to combat and B) doesn't even function as intended. (And yes, it's in the PHB.) It is interesting in that it shows that Armor Class was originally just that - it literally represented the corresponding type of armor, not just an abstract to-hit percentage. The problem is that since AC can be adjusted the association falls apart, and then you have a negative AC which doesn't represent a goddamn thing other than "gently caress you, Mr. Fighter!" I wonder if there's a retroclone that's crazy enough to include this nonsense o_O Doresh fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 20:44
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The Vosgian Beast posted:I am totally on board with Blimpleggers as long as it doesn't have to actually be attached to AD&D rules. Oh no never. We were just excited about it at the same time as we were reading AD&D. I think I may take a crack at fleshing it out as a jokey campaign setting but I'll probably go system agnostic with it. Not like I could fit it that well into the only RPG we actually wrote.
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Aug 25, 2015 20:52
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theironjef posted:Oh no never. We were just excited about it at the same time as we were reading AD&D. I think I may take a crack at fleshing it out as a jokey campaign setting but I'll probably go system agnostic with it. Not like I could fit it that well into the only RPG we actually wrote. Blimpman would be a very different show/game.
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Aug 25, 2015 21:09
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I would legit 100% sincerely love something along the lines of a Fate Worlds of Adventure book for blimpleggers.
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Aug 25, 2015 21:41
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You're all getting it wrong. It should be 4th edition D&D but with a whole lot of the super fiddly rules from late 3.5 like affiliation scores, style feats, incarnum, and true naming.
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Aug 25, 2015 22:51
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Doresh posted:I wonder if there's a retroclone that's crazy enough to include this nonsense o_O Modifiers to your attack roll based on your weapon versus the target's armor type was originally from the Greyhawk supplement for OD&D:   And so the Iron Falcon game, which is a retroclone of OD&D + Greyhawk, does include it as an optional rule:  OSRIC, which is a direct retroclone of AD&D 1e, does NOT have these tables, and neither does Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion. HackMaster "4th Edition" does:  although in this case it's partly because HackMaster's gimmick was a satirical take on AD&D's sheer weight of rules.
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Aug 26, 2015 08:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:HackMaster "4th Edition" does: Wow, forgot that. The "New Edition" HackMaster I've been going through doesn't have that anymore, although it does have alternate damage for weapons hitting shields; but armor is more or less straight up DR.
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Aug 26, 2015 15:43
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Rifts Dimension Book 3: Phase World Sourcebook Part 6: The flag of this space nation is best represented by airbrushing on the side of a van The United Worlds of Warlock is where the space-elves and space-dwarves live in untrademarked bliss. The UWW is an even looser coalition than the CCW, ranging from “enlightened democracies to savage dictatorships.” Sure, so the United Nations of Warlock. Alien Rope Burn has mentioned before about the missing Dimensional Book 9 which was supposed to focus on this part of Phase World space and it’s a shame, it’s the most interesting I think. From the perspective of uniqueness, rifts and magic are the only things that set Phase World stuff apart from a hundred other space opera settings, and it’s disappointing how hard it tries to run away from that. This Rifts Wiki entry talks about some of what was being planned at one point for the UWW book, but obviously that never got off the ground. It sounds kind of interesting at least, and ties into the overall themes of how rifts work and the downsides to magic (other than sucking half the time) while giving it some pretty great advantages. But we don’t have that book, we have this one, and in this book we learn that the Parliament of Worlds only has jurisdiction in interplanetary affairs, and then only when a planet requests aid. Supposedly this magical UN has a Navy that will just stand by if nobody requests its aid during a conflict. I wonder how it is funded. There are two main rules that bind the UWW together: No declaring war on outsiders, lest the whole UWW be drawn in. If a planet does this, the rest of the UWW will disavow its actions. And 2: No worship of ‘supernatural intelligences’, which includes basically any entity that feeds on the life of other sentient beings. ‘Gods’ who don’t require human sacrifice are okay so long as they don’t directly bite the heads off chickens. There are a lot of chaos cults in the UWW nonetheless. The two biggest entities are the Elven Star Kingdom and the Dwarven Guildmasters who have bodies of law that are fairly similar to the CCW’s though they’re more prison-happy than rehab-inclined. The Warlock Navy (man what a thing to serve) is an all-volunteer force funded by dues paid by member planets. Their elite marines are equipped with a new type of techno-wizard armor. Still, the Navy is pretty much a defensive entity and spends as much of its time rooting out cultists as it does fighting external threats. Incidentally, they refer to these various intelligence-worshipping groups as the Dark Covens though they are for once not a unified front of evil. They are just a bunch of squabbling entities and servants of entities and they’re more common in the UWW because of rift activity but they can be found anywhere, really. Fear the mutant, the heretic, and the traitor. Worlds of note include Alexandria, a True Atlantean colony. 50,000 TAs live here, run by a Clan Acherean that has given up being megaversal hobos in favor of trying to build a new safe place to live. Good...good idea guys. The resulting riftport is a major dimensional nexus (nowhere near as big as Center but still substantial) thanks to Atlantean Stone Mastery taming the wild ley lines of the world into something stable. The beneficial effects of the pyramids meant that other people came to live around them and everyone was completely surprised somehow. Anyway it’s a nice place to live, very cosmopolitan, you can probably get like, any kind of food there. The Asteroid Eaters are not real planets but huge not-moons that hang around asteroid fields. They’re big dwarvish mining phages that basically strip rocks of any useful bits and then make stuff. Not that big a deal except that now we have to hear about how one of them is ruled by an evil NPC. Inglix the Mad  prepping hadouken So way back at the beginning of Phase World, we heard about Thraxus, an ancient and powerful human who seemed like somebody’s retired D&D (Palladium) character. This seems to be one of his ex-marching buddies. Inglix is an ancient and powerful dwarf, far older than dwarfs should live to be, and a founding member of the Guildmaster. Of course, his bouts of crazy made him unfit to rule, so he stuck to making ship-based magic weapons instead. A lot of people think he’s guilty of war crimes and should face trial, but he’s too powerful and sly to have been caught out yet. He’s Aberrant, has dumb attributes, 400 MDC and 1500 PPE. 15th level earth warlock, 14th level techno-wizard, 12th level shifter, 10th level necromancer and alchemist (is that even a class? I cannot remember) and 6th level rune smith. That’s more levels than they usually even pile on gods. Anyway duder is loaded down with magic plus mind block power. He’s totes crazy, listing ‘obsession with magic power’, plus paranoid, sadistic, and manic-depressive. He’s also very famous and influential and has 200,000 bodyguards to protect his vast hoard of credits, magical items, technology and ships. Retired adventurers know how dangerous murderhobos are. That’s all they have for ‘interesting planets’ in an alliance of space-magic races. The best they could do was a crazy dwarf. I mean I guess he’s worth listing but he got a full block, which took up as much space as the planets. The Warlock Marine OCC is next. They get to use Warlock Combat Armor which is apparently a new set, described in this book. I hope it’s better than the original TW power armor. The Warlock Marines are elite, heroic, honorable and proud. They have a strong esprit de corps and face danger constantly. They admit any species from a member world of warlock and only volunteers with high physical qualifications are accepted. So no exo-suited bitter aliens.  needs more cape and/or rank runes After a year of training each recruit steps into their special magic armor, and a team of magic-technicians does a ritual that links the soldier mind and soul with their armor. The marines develop a strong bond with the armor, even giving it pet names and talking to it. Weirdos. There are a lot of stories about the suits acting to defend their wearers in ways that shouldn’t be possible. Then there’s a bunch of  about their missions (all. all of the missions.), their standard vehicle (the Greataxe IFV, to be described), and says they’re divided into a military structure with squads, platoons, etc, etc. The term of service is ten years, after which they get a choice: keep the armor or get 150,000 credits. Given what power armor of any kind costs, the 150K is kind of piddling. If they keep the armor (and most do) they have to swear a magical oath never to act against the UWW. If they do, the armor explodes, killing them instantly, even if they aren’t wearing it presumably. Warlock Marines need PS, PE, and PP of 13 or higher and ME and IQ 10 or higher. That’s going to restrict a lot of regular rolled characters from play in a class that may not be equal to the Invincible Guard, who had no attribute requirements. If they pass that first bar, they get a bunch of additions to attributes from training: 2d4 PS, 1d6 PP, 1d4 PE, 2d6 Spd, and some extra SDC or MDC. Some combat bonuses, and thanks to the regimens of drugs, potions and training they get they have +3 versus mind control, +3 versus magic, +2 versus poisons/disease. They are also famous for being able to drink almost anything under the table. They get a pretty big list of skills, and then the Warlock Combat Armor. The class at its base is pretty good with the attribute bonuses, the armor is what would make or break it overall. Unfortunately it’s not explained in this section. They also get a non-powered suit of armor with 85 MDC, and an EB-85 rifle. 1d6x1000 in savings and their salary in the military is 4000 a month in a rare moment of telling us how much people make. It looks like marines don’t save much though. Also no cybernetics. It makes some sense for the UWW to view them with some distaste given their disruption of magics. Overall I am surprised by how much ‘these guys are awesome, you should like them’ the book has for this class. Anyway that was the regular version of the Warlock Marine. There’s also the Warlock Marine Magic Specialist for the spellcasters in the army. These guys are hybrids with a foot in both the warrior and magical worlds and therefore aren’t as good as dedicated specialists in either. In particular, their armor reduces the range of spells by half. I know mage classes don’t usually get easy access to power armor piloting in regular Rifts but I do not recall them being penalized if they did so. PS, PP, ME and IQ 13 or higher. PE 14 or higher. Ain’t nobody making this job. They get vastly reduced bonuses to their attributes and rolls, but a better +4 save vs. magic, plus a very small selection of pretty mundane (ha ha it’s MAGIC) spells like ‘globe of daylight’. Some of them are definitely useful but it’d be nice to have some discretionary selections.  i find this picture interesting because it's kind of a girl pose on man-armor They have an even bigger list of skills since they get demon lore and stuff. Same equipment and pay scale, which seems odd, they’re pretty rare. The magic they get is weak, they get several spells but they don’t get to choose and they only gain one per level. The power armor definitely will help but mostly it feels like you lose a lot more than you gain for being in this super-elite unit. Turbo-Jockeys are naturals at piloting who are in the United Worlds of Warlock section since we were doing random OCCs anyway. They really are not in any way linked with UWW material though, they’re just natural hotshot pilots of any vehicle. They’re born rather than made, though obviously they need training in anything they need to steer. All races have them. The CAF likes them, the Empire only tolerates Kreeghor Turbo-Jockeys and there aren’t a lot of those. They get +1d4 PP and +2d6 Spd. +2 Init, +3 while operating a vehicle, +2 to strike and dodge with a vehicle. They have a base percentile of 40% to fly anything, even something they’ve never touched before. I don’t know if that 40% is ‘to start it up’ or ‘every round you roll’ or what, Palladium, we need to have a discussion about when to do Tests.  i am going to punch the heck out of this air show They have a bunch of pilot and pilot-related skills. They get a flight suit plus body armor, a pistol and personal stuff. Their affiliation may get them more gear + an actual vehicle. They might have cybernetics but you know, people frown on those. Because. It’s a really boring class that got shoehorned in a weird spot. The Fighter Combat rules from the last book were terrible and I definitely would not want to frame a character concept around them. Next: Organizations within the 3G.
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Aug 26, 2015 20:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:Modifiers to your attack roll based on your weapon versus the target's armor type was originally from the Greyhawk supplement for OD&D: May Vecna have mercy on us all o_O I assume "Separate damage by weapon type and monster type" is a much more unwieldy version of the Rules Cyclopedia damage rules (where weapons could deal slightly different damage vs beasts or other weapon-wielders and grant access to different abilities as you master your weapon)? I was wondering why I couldn't find this stuff in OSRIC. The Advanced Edition Companion is no surprise, as that book just houserules the actual sane stuff from Advanced into Basic. Terrible Opinions posted:You're all getting it wrong. It should be 4th edition D&D but with a whole lot of the super fiddly rules from late 3.5 like affiliation scores, style feats, incarnum, and true naming. And casters get more fun stuff than anyone else. That's about the most important thing. occamsnailfile posted:
Is that you, Samus? Doresh fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Aug 26, 2015 |
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Aug 26, 2015 20:46
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Doresh posted:And casters get more fun stuff than anyone else. That's about the most important thing.
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Aug 26, 2015 21:19
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 Hey, paisanos! I admit I’ve been slacking on my Legacy review. I assure you I’ve been reading all the stuff I’m working on concurrently, but getting married and moving house this year has really thrown a wrench in my plans to obsess over old games. I admit I’ve been lazy. It’s okay. Legacy is an incredibly lazy game. Legacy Part 5: Unnecessary Evil After Vampire: the Masquerade broke big, most roleplaying games from the 90s had a chapter devoted to “storytelling,” even ones that were really just about killing people and stealing their poo poo. Such chapters were about not only structuring and running adventures, but evoking the setting and introducing concepts like “theme.” Legacy is definitely a game about killing people and stealing their poo poo. Like, literally soaking up their life force as it drains out of their headless corpse. But on top of that, its setting and theme is just Highlander with a thin coat of gothic-cyberpunk paint, so why bother? Instead there is just a very brief chapter on using experience points and a longer one for enemies. Karma Legacy calls its experience points “Karma,” and PCs must keep track of both unspent Karma and the total Karma earned. This also matters for NPCs--when one Immortal beheads another, they get 1/10th of that Immortal’s total earned Karma. If the GM is playing by the book, Legacy is otherwise pretty stingy with Karma, and increasing Stats and Abilities is pretty expensive. Dueling fellow Immortals is an important source of experience. Let me remind you that the PCs’ fellow “Post-Modern” Immortals will have zero earned Karma, Moderns 100, Medieval 200, Imperials 300, and Ancients 400. So even killing an ancient Immortal bogeyman whispered of in legends doesn’t net you that much Karma in and of itself--it’s not comparable to, say, diablerizing an elder Kindred in Vampire.  I’ve never seen a game come right out and say that 0% of success is showing up.  ”I just have to chop off another dude’s head, then I can be superhumanly good at driving boats!” Legacy highly discourages players from just putting points in stuff because they want it. No, you have to justify how your training yourself to be better at fighting or tracking or speaking French. This is pretty weird in a game that explicitly tells you that you’re gaining knowledge and power by stealing somebody’s life-force. Anyway, Legacy kinda screws itself out of its “earned Karma” rules making sense, because you can spend 1 point of Karma to improve your roll by 1 point (or penalize your enemy’s roll). Unlike Shadowrun, for example, which also calls experience Karma and uses your total Karma as a “luck stat” that you can invoke, Karma spent this way is just lost. You should never spend Karma this way unless it’s life-or-death, as it means you are proportionally weaker than another Immortal with the same total Karma, and other Immortals can sense your Karma level and will come gunning for you based on that. This design decision, to let PCs spend experience points for a temporary bonus, was once rampant but is mostly abandoned today.  This book has a lot less ponytail than Highlander, and a lot more neckbeard. Necessary Evil Legacy provides you with descriptions and statblocks for NPCs who will team up with you, fight you, laugh at your trenchcoat-and-sneakers outfit, and so on. Mortals, Immortals, Warlocks, Nosferatu, Dwimmerlaik... Wait. Vampires and wizards and what? Yes, they’re a part of the Legacy settting, and no, I haven’t mentioned them before. I believe the book did mention some of them in that initial setting chapter, but it does so totally out of context, without explaining itself, and with no detail whatsoever on how these various things-what-go-bump-in-the-night affect the world. The simple answer is that they don’t. Just as there’s little or no detail on how AIs and holo-phones are supposed to affect your PCs’ daily lives, these monsters are just things for you to fight in-between duels with other Immortals. Mortals: Although Duncan MacLeod tangled with drug dealers, terrorists, assassins, vigilantes, and vengeful businessmen over the course of the series, Legacy doesn’t bother to give you any ideas as to why mortal organizations would make trouble for a superhuman serial killer like yourself. Instead, it suggests that “powerful enemies” might use mortals as pawns to wear you down. We’re given statblocks for a Police Officer, Kung Fu Master, Psychic, Shock Trooper, and strangely, average mortals in “Sedentary” and “Active” varieties. Y’know, just in case the party wants to stop an evil fantasy football league, then work their way up to fighting church softball teams.  ”So you’re Immortal, huh? Well la-dee-freakin’-dah! You’ll have plenty of time to be prince of the universe when you’re livin’ in a van down by the river! Immortals: We’ve covered this already. That said, this section provides statblocks for a Modern, Medieval, etc. Immortal for you to use. (I’m not sure why it matters that the Modern Immortal has the Animal Training skill.) Ancient Immortals are supposed to be legendary to the point that no one knows if any still exist--a neat trick, considering that Immortals can sense others nearby, and sense their approximate power level. Nosferatu: Vampires are the best-known monsters out there, since they hang around with mortals. They’re created by a mystical disease that kills a person’s body but strengthens their life-force, allowing it to animate their corpse. Nosferatu are strong and tough (their Body stat soaks Severe damage as well as Casual damage), and they have formidable psychic powers. Stories of vampires turning into mist and animals can be chalked up to clever uses of the Illusion power, but rare vampires do have powers that transcend the Psychic abilities available to Immortals. Vampires wouldn’t be much of a threat--they only need about a liter of human blood per week to survive--but to them, Immortal blood is really good stuff. It makes them stronger and nourishes them for a long time. Brief exposure to sunlight weakens them; prolonged exposure kills them within hours. Chimerae: I have to give Legacy credit: Chimerae are genuinely weird and different. They’re carnivorous shapeshifters who have to eat their prey alive, and they can mimic the handful of creatures--generally people--they’ve most recently eaten. They absorb enough of their victim’s memories to mimic their behaviour fairly well; in effect, it acts as the Mask Psychic Ability at 5, although their physical form does actually change. Their method of feeding is to isolate a victim, knock them unconscious, and swarm over them as a consuming blob. They have to consume their own weight in live prey every moon-cycle, or they begin to painfully starve as their mass melts away over the course of weeks and months. Chimerae are really hard to kill, since anything you cut off acquires a life of its own and starts crawling around. In practice, they simply don’t take damage from things besides fire and acid, which I think is a bad way of handling it. A hacked-up heap of body parts doesn’t sound that dangerous. They probably just wanted an antagonist that Immortals can’t kill with swords and guns. Dwimmerlaik: Dwimmerlaik are the weirdest. No one knows where they come from; they seem to come from outside our reality. They can look like anything, from people to Lovecraftian tentacled horrors, but what they all have in common is a hatred of all life and the ability to warp reality around them. (Similar to the Chimerae, all Dwimmerlaik have the Illusion power, except that the changes they make are real and permanent. Fortunately, directly warping someone’s body carries a huge penalty.) They’re incredibly tough--all damage is halved even before their Defense is applied--and their only weakness is sunlight, which hurts them but doesn’t do any actual damage. Warlocks: Warlocks are humans with reality-warping powers like the Dwimmerlaik; most are Psychic as well. Almost all of them have been driven at least a little crazy by their powers and the things they’ve learned. Warlocks aren’t technically Immortal, but many of them have used magic to prolong their lives for centuries, and they often scheme against each other as well as observing Immortals from afar. Real talk: Legacy: War of Ages was meant to be accompanied by a game called Warlock: Black Spiral, with Warlocks playing Merlin to Immortals’ King Arthur. I don’t believe Warlock was ever physically published, although for a time it was available for free on the authors’ website. There’s a brief review of it here.  These guys beat Instagram to the punch on “buying crap online and putting filters over it.” The System Mastery fellows have inspired me to do a bit of postmortem on the games I review. So what do I think of Legacy: War of Ages? The best thing? Probably the best thing I can say about this game is that it keeps things simple when it comes to handling supernatural powers. Immortals, mortal psychics, and monsters and wizards all use the same set of powers which are, in turn, assimilated into the skill system instead of marked out as a complex “magic system.” The worst thing? I have to admit, I kind of admire their gall for just blatantly ripping off an established property. But Legacy’s biggest sin is that it doesn’t do anything to make the premise of Highlander more playable. Let’s face it, there are a lot of campaigns, and even a lot of published games, that are basically “like X” or “like X but with Y.” Highlander is a prime example of a sci-fi/fantasy movie that just does not translate well to a roleplaying game, no matter how hard people have tried. Both the movies and the series are about a lone hero fighting one-on-one duels to the death, in a round-robin tournament that only one guy can ultimately win. His supporting cast is not as effective or meaningful as, say, Buffy’s crew of “Scoobies.” They could have changed the mythology of Highlander to allow groups of Immortals fighting common enemies, and introduced a better endgame than “there can be only one.” Instead, Legacy is literally just Highlander with the names of things changed to be more grandiose, set in a laughably bare-bones cybergoth future. Would I play it? Maybe a one-shot, for a laugh. But at the table, there isn’t even much to laugh at. Would I run it? Absolutely not. Legacy’s worst sin is giving you no reason to play the setting, but its second-worst sin is giving you no reason to play with these rules. As a published Highlander game, it’s mediocre because there are already free homebrews for playing Highlander in Storyteller, GURPS, Unisystem, D20, and other systems, which have been floating around the Internet since Geocities was a thing. gently caress, I even remember reading some guy’s Chill page where they’d houseruled Highlander style immortals as PCs. As a game in its own right, Legacy does nothing to distinguish itself among the legion of bland Stat+Skill+(generic resolution method) games that have come and gone over the years. So, even if you specifically want to play "Highlander, but cyberpunk and with vampires" it's about as easy to use a preexisting game as to use this one. Like the Backstreet Boys and novelty top hats, Legacy is a totally unnecessary and totally unoriginal product of the 90s.
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Aug 26, 2015 21:31
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Hey guys who are listeners, when we first started talking about the Blimpleggers setting, did you picture it as being a standard fantasy setting with a prohibition twist, or a 1920s prohibition-era setting with a fantasy twist?
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Aug 26, 2015 21:55
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The latter, but I would absolutely play the former.
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Aug 26, 2015 21:58
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theironjef posted:Hey guys who are listeners, when we first started talking about the Blimpleggers setting, did you picture it as being a standard fantasy setting with a prohibition twist, or a 1920s prohibition-era setting with a fantasy twist? Latter. But the former might be cool.
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Aug 26, 2015 23:52
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Perfect. We had a bit of a mental disconnect between the two of us on our end, but I think we're through the weeds and are going to set it in a fake America in the 20s, where blimpships are king.
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Aug 26, 2015 23:57
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theironjef posted:Perfect. We had a bit of a mental disconnect between the two of us on our end, but I think we're through the weeds and are going to set it in a fake America in the 20s, where blimpships are king. I have a very important question for you. Have you ever read Aaron Allston's Doc Sidhe? If the answer is no, you should read Doc Sidhe.
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Aug 27, 2015 00:20
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And Sidhe Devil with the not-1936 Olympics in not-Berlin.
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Aug 27, 2015 00:27
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theironjef posted:Hey guys who are listeners, when we first started talking about the Blimpleggers setting, did you picture it as being a standard fantasy setting with a prohibition twist, or a 1920s prohibition-era setting with a fantasy twist? Definitely the later. And maybe with a some of China Mieville's Bas-Lag thrown in for puissant effluvia, but you don't have to? If I can ask, what kind of physics were you thinking for the air vehicles? Like, strictly, real-world rules for flight, or some particular caveat why they work, or purely fantastic and we shouldn't care about why? Are they all blimp and airplane shaped, or more like submarines and naval ships? I ask because you've mentioned being a plane-nerd before so I wouldn't hold it against you if you needed to grog out about accurate flight physics.
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Aug 27, 2015 00:31
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The most important thing is that it must have: 1. A huge skill list 2. A Merits&Flaws system
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Aug 27, 2015 01:01
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theironjef posted:Hey guys who are listeners, when we first started talking about the Blimpleggers setting, did you picture it as being a standard fantasy setting with a prohibition twist, or a 1920s prohibition-era setting with a fantasy twist? Totally the latter.
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Aug 27, 2015 01:02
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ZorajitZorajit posted:Definitely the later. And maybe with a some of China Mieville's Bas-Lag thrown in for puissant effluvia, but you don't have to? This isn't in the game but just so you know, there's no crude oil on this world because there were no dinosaurs. 65 million years ago there were just elves and dwarves all over the place, and naturally when they die they aren't converted to crude oil over time, but natural gas, leading to a rise in helium availability and pressurized gas as a fuel source. There are many elfropologists who believe that the races of the world were all descended from a common elf ancestor, as the ancient elves were known to easily split into a variety of subraces, but this is highly disputed by religious factions the world over. Some scientists to this day are searching for the link between humans and elfropithecus dwarfarensis. Also we're still working with an artist on what the blimps look like, but I'm guessing somewhere between Fantasy Airships and Zeppelins. I'll post one when we have one to show, for sure.
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Aug 27, 2015 01:03
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theironjef posted:This isn't in the game but just so you know, there's no crude oil on this world because there were no dinosaurs. 65 million years ago there were just elves and dwarves all over the place, and naturally when they die they aren't converted to crude oil over time, but natural gas, leading to a rise in helium availability and pressurized gas as a fuel source. There are many elfropologists who believe that the races of the world were all descended from a common elf ancestor, as the ancient elves were known to easily split into a variety of subraces, but this is highly disputed by religious factions the world over. I'm just jumping into this now, but, if this is a "what would happen if a fantasy world reached our modern times" concept, how would clerics be? Would it be like Eberron?
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Aug 27, 2015 01:04
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Covok posted:I'm just jumping into this now, but, if this is a "what would happen if a fantasy world reached our modern times" concept, how would clerics be? Would it be like Eberron? We're workshopping right now, but at the moment it's that religion is popular and important but not inherently magical. Magic exists but it's extremely unionized (they control the telephone industry and a lot of the stuff that the 1920s electrical industry was responsible for), and Scab Wizardry is a big source of player characters. Healing and so on is just handled by either doctors, apothecaries, or Local Healers 144. This totally isn't because we don't want to have to make up a lot of gods and so on, not at all.
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Aug 27, 2015 01:08
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