|
I think the names are what trip people up, in my group we just say success/ failure, critical success/ critical failure, and advantage/ disadvantage. I think the dice are weighted so on an even check you are slightly more likely to get more failures, but also more advantages, so at least you can fail forward,. Also since upgrade dice are the only ones with crits, so you can only crit if you have ranks in a skill.
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 18:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 23, 2024 20:06 |
|
|
quote:The hell? There is an official splat of Japanese Not-Really-Changelings called the Nyan? Not Bakeneko, not Nekomata. Just Nyan, as in the sound made by Japanese cats and fanservice-y anime girls with cat ears that may or may not be fake and a doki doki kawaii-desu verbal tick? This is like calling werewolves Yiffs (o__O) "Hai." "...I can work with this."
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 18:50
|
|
|
"Unfortunately, Sempai fails their perception check. ...again."
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 18:53
|
|
|
WaywardWoodwose posted:I think the names are what trip people up, in my group we just say success/ failure, critical success/ critical failure, and advantage/ disadvantage. quote:I think part of my failure of understanding is why you need, as far as I parse it, one set of symbols for normal successes and one for awesome successes(or failures). Why not just have an excess of normal successes/failures lead to that? MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jan 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 18:55
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I think part of my failure of understanding is why you need, as far as I parse it, one set of symbols for normal successes and one for awesome successes(or failures). Why not just have an excess of normal successes/failures lead to that? The biggest thing is that a 'major' advantage/disadvantage dice can't be countered. They're basically a pass/fail plus, you can counter a threat/advantage but the 'big' ones exist for special storytelling moments, they basically exist to make the scene more epic. Threat/advantage are more mundane, they can be used a lot of fun ways (this is where GM discretion comes in obviously) but a triumph or despair is a big 'oh poo poo' moment. Advantages and threats are for more common troubles and wins, the cops already on high alert suddenly pick up your signal, a dude's blaster cell runs out just as he's about to shoot you, that stuff. The big ones are you 'rule of cool' things. Your medic realizes he has a bit of sedative left over from surgery so he tranqs one of the big burly Mandalorians in the fight and knocks the guy out cold. The Imperial agent you guys were hiding from finds you in the middle of a firefight with some thugs and calls for backup. That kinda stuff changes the scene and has lasting consequences. That's the main difference, one is a short term 'oh, sweet', the other is a bigger scale thing that could have lasting consequences.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:04
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I think part of my failure of understanding is why you need, as far as I parse it, one set of symbols for normal successes and one for awesome successes(or failures). Why not just have an excess of normal successes/failures lead to that? It helps that Triumph and Despair are both 1. only on the biggest dice 2. only have one face. They're there to be the crits. And so you can have sequences like the New Hope Luke+Leia swinging over a chasm sequence. "I rolled a bunch of successes! ...and also a Despair." "Ooookay. You shoot the controls, and the door closes. You are now stuck on a small platform over a chasm that looks like a bridge extends over it. There are no controls visible besides the ones you just shot."
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:05
|
|
|
WaywardWoodwose posted:I think the dice are weighted so on an even check you are slightly more likely to get more failures, but also more advantages, so at least you can fail forward,. Interestingly, it's the other way around; on an even roll without any situational modifiers, you're most likely to succeed with disadvantages. Scraping by on immediate successes while the overall situation gradually escalates against you seems fairly in theme for Star Wars.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:08
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:The "but!"-dice, as in "but something neat/bad happened as well!" aren't a bad idea, but, eh. Maybe it betrays my OLD GROGNARD ROOTS, but that's something I'd usually just leave up to GM discretion, having the system demand that a good/bad thing suddenly be shoehorned in, just feels wonky to me. Personally I see more headaches than adventures from making it work, but it's probably a whole lot down to your player, your GM and the group's playing style. As far as I understand the system right now, I'm getting more Donjon flashbacks than anything. I think the best version of this idea I've seen was "Interesting Times" in Legends of the Wulin. When you roll dice in Wulin you pick out groupings of d10s that show the same number to complete your actions, and if you pick 0's then that brings up an opportunity for Interesting Times, where some complication occurs which varies from annoying to dangerous depending on whether or not you actually succeed on the action you put the 0's toward. You opt to do it yourself, but the Wulin Sage is also explicitly allowed by the rules to say, "okay, but there's not really anything all that weird that can be done to this scene/I can't think of anything right now" and the action resolves as usual.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:16
|
|
|
Doresh posted:*Goes to write up a Changeling character that is a catgirl ninja maid in case he ever finds a Changeling campaign to derail* It'll be great because you won't even be able to perceive anything Changeling related going on unless they dose you with glamour, which is pretty much magic LSD. It would just be a bunch of crazy people carrying on and doing some SCA stuff but with garbage. Also, probably kidnapping and trafficking children. That's how stupid that whole thing was. Not only are they not Changelings, or related to them in a round about way, they can't even see their miens, the dreaming, or powers. Your character would also probably die in an area outside of East Asia because you're not getting prayer kickbacks.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:42
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Among the greater faults Brucato makes in M20 is to completely steamroll the concept of a Paradigm. Several examples will involve characters using magick that is out-of-paradigm to them; the one that most readily comes to mind in the Virtual Adept casting spells with Kung Fu and dropping acid when the entire point of Virtual Adepts is that they believe the universe is a computer they can reprogram. There's also the occasionally hilarious "Focus" each splat is given, which is related to how the cast magick, and for the Virtual Adepts include "androgynous clothing" and "manga-inspired hairstyles". Mean spirited hate readings are basically what I do here. if the source material deserves it why are you holding back? Also yes, Brucato still adheres to the mindset that being able to transcend the gender binary gives you majikk powers.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:43
|
|
|
Tatum Girlparts posted:The biggest thing is that a 'major' advantage/disadvantage dice can't be countered. They're basically a pass/fail plus, you can counter a threat/advantage but the 'big' ones exist for special storytelling moments, they basically exist to make the scene more epic. Threat/advantage are more mundane, they can be used a lot of fun ways (this is where GM discretion comes in obviously) but a triumph or despair is a big 'oh poo poo' moment. Advantages and threats are for more common troubles and wins, the cops already on high alert suddenly pick up your signal, a dude's blaster cell runs out just as he's about to shoot you, that stuff. LornMarkus posted:I think the best version of this idea I've seen was "Interesting Times" in Legends of the Wulin. When you roll dice in Wulin you pick out groupings of d10s that show the same number to complete your actions, and if you pick 0's then that brings up an opportunity for Interesting Times, where some complication occurs which varies from annoying to dangerous depending on whether or not you actually succeed on the action you put the 0's toward. You opt to do it yourself, but the Wulin Sage is also explicitly allowed by the rules to say, "okay, but there's not really anything all that weird that can be done to this scene/I can't think of anything right now" and the action resolves as usual. See, I'd rather have mechanics like that powered by some sort of point pool like "fate points" than by random rolls. So on a "special storytelling moment," you can bust out your fate points to make sure that your dramatic rescue is actually a dramatic rescue, and not just a wet fart of a failure. Similarly, being able to bust them out to rescue yourself from a failure, but with an Interesting Times caveat attached. That gives the player control over what's going on around them. Attaching it to any sort of randomness makes it seem more likely that they get busted out for completely inappropriate situations.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:44
|
|
|
RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It'll be great because you won't even be able to perceive anything Changeling related going on unless they dose you with glamour, which is pretty much magic LSD. It would just be a bunch of crazy people carrying on and doing some SCA stuff but with garbage. Also, probably kidnapping and trafficking children. Okay, so I have her constantly dripping balls with catnip and solve the prayer problem by having her run accounts on multiple social media sites to gain "followers" with her amazing catgirl cosplays. Kurieg posted:Mean spirited hate readings are basically what I do here. if the source material deserves it why are you holding back? It's just weird for someone else to try to force special snowlafkeness onto you.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 19:45
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:As someone who thinks RoleMaster is really quite the elegant system (once I wrapped my head around it), I got a real kick out of your Phoenix Command write-up. Thanks! ^_^ gradenko_2000 posted:You mentioned using PCCS for its hyper-realistic depiction of firearms combat, but to not use the character generation rules. How would you do this? I know that RoleMaster, like Sword's Path Glory, was one of those add-on rules supplement things where you were supposed to "convert" your D&D character's stats into its own numerical scale and work from there, but I get the impression that even if you did the same direct assignment of stats to characters (Richard Marcinko should be ~this~ strong and fast), you're still going to run into the issue of your derived stats shifting around with every move you make. You mean other than creating a system from the bottom-up and calling it a retroclone? In general, I'd simply say to use the approximately correct derived stats for your game. The only stats that really matter in combat are Maximum Speed, GCSL, ISF, and KV. (And Health, which you should never use.) Most games have a movement stat corresponding to a number of yards/meters per turn that can substitute for MS, for example. gradenko_2000 posted:You mentioned things like pistols being insufficiently covered by Table 3B, and the M16 not actually being represented on any table despite being a critical weapon. Did you or someone else ever come up with a rectification for this? That's the Basic rules. The Advanced rules (which are more detailed yet also clearer) have, IIRC, the full range of values to use. It's just a sign of extremely bad design that the Basic rules don't include the tabulated values corresponding to the stats of several of the weapons you're expected to use.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 20:17
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:See, I'd rather have mechanics like that powered by some sort of point pool like "fate points" than by random rolls. So on a "special storytelling moment," you can bust out your fate points to make sure that your dramatic rescue is actually a dramatic rescue, and not just a wet fart of a failure. Similarly, being able to bust them out to rescue yourself from a failure, but with an Interesting Times caveat attached. That gives the player control over what's going on around them. Actually Interesting Times is just "weird and ancillary bullshit happens," and not crit success or failure. And it's worth a reminder that the River mechanic for Wulin is basically made to let you bust out a crazy success at will, much less Chivalrous of Malicious Joss or the other supporting systems.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 20:18
|
|
|
RocknRollaAyatollah posted:That's how stupid that whole thing was. Not only are they not Changelings, or related to them in a round about way, they can't even see their miens, the dreaming, or powers. Your character would also probably die in an area outside of East Asia because you're not getting prayer kickbacks. It also bears mentioning that the Hsien magic system was hella busted. With some balancing and limitations, it probably would be okay (better than the Cantrip system by far, but that ain't saying much), but as it was written you could easily drop the roll-over difficulty to 2-4 for your core magic type, meaning Nyan could do things like 10+ levels of damage with no dodge. Burn in your golden hell, meow.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 20:54
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:(better than the Cantrip system by far, but that ain't saying much) Step one: Purchase collectible random packs of Cantrips. Step two: Continue to do so until you get the power you actually wanted
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 20:57
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:It also bears mentioning that the Hsien magic system was hella busted. With some balancing and limitations, it probably would be okay (better than the Cantrip system by far, but that ain't saying much), but as it was written you could easily drop the roll-over difficulty to 2-4 for your core magic type, meaning Nyan could do things like 10+ levels of damage with no dodge. It's "Burn in your golden hell, nya" :P So now my catgirl ninja maid can pull off magical girl finishing moves? So this is what WoD is all about!
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 20:59
|
|
|
 EURASIA Zone Beijing Zone Beijing is made of China, Mongolia, Tibet and Taiwan. Beijing was born on the megacomputer used for China's space program and that interest in the cosmos hasn't really gone away. Beijing, Paris and New Delhi form the backbone of the AIs who are interested in space travel and they all have their own perspectives. So while Paris really wants to meet aliens and exchange ideas, Beijing...doesn't. Beijing figures that the Zoneminds have200 years before the entire solar system is colonized and tapped, so with Orbital's help Beijing is building a slower-than-light probe and attempting to invent interstellar travel. Beijing supports Paris' endeavors to contact aliens, but only to determine if there's any threats out there in the stars. If Paris actually found space life, especially mechanical space life, Beijing would probably panic and try to shut down Paris' rig to prevent Paris from divulging important info about Earth. There's even the notion that if someone tricked Beijing into thinking Paris found life, that would be enough to spark a major conflict between their zones. Beijing, befitting controlling China, has 6 million human slaves. It has so many slaves, some camps are dedicated to agriculture to keep the others alive. There's 300,000 loose humans in the zone and 7,000 belong to the People's Resistance Army, a resistance group made of Chinese ex-military engaged in sabotage and slave liberation. The other big resistance group is lead by the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and they're working on rescuing slaves and protecting groups of free humans. There's not really much else to Beijing. The zone is one of the more "reasonable" zones inasmuch as it keeps its human slaves alive for labor and it's willing to take surrendering humans. Beijing's rationale is that if it can just fly away and set up a new colony elsewhere, why bother time killing the humans when we can just leave them? To that end, Beijing really isn't too concerned about guerilla activity but isn't afraid to respond with combat robots and overwhelming force through airstrikes. Beijing's architecture is made of blocky buildings and its big facilities are actually made of smaller square installations with tight corridors, like if someone took the Kowloon Walled City and turned it into a robofac. Really the only other thing that interests Beijing besides space travel is possibly reclaiming Siberia out of geological claims, but it's not willing to press the issue and is fine with letting Moscow gently caress with Vancouver over it. Zone New Delhi New Delhi is a new AI built to control India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Burma/Myanmar. New Delhi also has big ol' pockets of radioactive wasteland thanks to the Spasm. When it was first installed, it went on a massive killing spree, reducing mankind down to a sustainable 3 million. New Delhi views humans as necessary but needs them in small enough numbers to keep them controllable and 3 million in camps works just fine. It's mainly interested in space travel and industry and needs its humans for both. New Delhi has its own low-orbit station called Kali that it uses for its own experiments, telling Orbital to go eat a dick. New Delhi wants to colonize the solar system BUT it doesn't want to do it with just robots. Robots can be hindered or impaired. What New Delhi really wants to do is genetically modify humans into castes of useful organisms that can be sent to the stars with its robots. Kali is the place to be for all of these experiments. On Earth, New Delhi is using experimental hydroponics to keep its slaves fed and outfitting them in space-age bunks for storage and living and getting them used to a new caste system. The construction of buildings reflects this, creating towers and hive cities/arcologies. On Kali, New Delhi is working on making androids capable of sexual reproduction (so bioroids, really), plants and animals that can survive on alien worlds and gene-augmented humans. The two big places New Delhi wants to properly colonize are space and Mars, so to that end it's working on humans that can live in zero-G with no ill effects and humans that will be the first Martians. Outside of SPACE and making new human races, New Delhi pretty much just strip-mines and works on industry and exporting supplies to other zones. Beijing, Paris and Overmind are very, very wary of New Delhi because of how fast it's expanding and going forward with its plans. They're pretty afraid it's going to jump the gun and just shake up the calm in the process. There are 500,000 loose humans in the zone and they're often at the mercy of radiation and lingering plague. The big resistance groups operate out of the Himalayas and their leaders are all ex-Gurkhas. New Delhi doesn't so much tolerate them as realize that an excursion to the mountains would be costing time and attention. So it lets them live there and plot and act as a buffer to Beijing. There's more information later about possibly playing augmented humans from Kali Station and New Delhi has some...interesting ideas to put it mildly. Next Time: 'Mericas.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 22:38
|
|
Bieeardo posted:DiTerlizzi did a fair lot of stuff for the softcover run of Changeling, so I'm not surprised that they'd dig the old colour plates out or hire him on for new stuff. He's done a lot of traditional fairy and fantasy stuff, but the ones with little diagrams and exploded figures in sepia definitely speak more of a naturalist's notebook than changelings pausing for a magickal snapshot. Has Brian Froud been tapped to do Changeling art yet? Rand Brittain posted:See, I totally disagree. M20 rolls the metaplot back to Second Edition, but it honesty keeps a lot of the infuriating tone and philosophy that burned people out on Revised. Revised announced that the Ascension War was over, and that coming to violence over your beliefs was dumb anyway--you should seek global Ascension instead! M20 doubles down on this and says that global Ascension is also bad--who are you to tell other people what to believe, even if you aren't using coercion? Seek personal Ascension instead. As above, so below. By changing yourself, you change reality. This is usually a metaphor, but when dealing with all powerful reality warpers than it stops being metaphor. I guess this makes most Mages those ones that live in their own personal reality bubble, which I'm okay with. Your navel can also be the Omphalos, the Navel of the World. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Jan 4, 2016 |
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 22:58
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Step one: Purchase collectible random packs of Cantrips. The Cantrip Cards were weird, and the fact they were in collectible packs was just bizarre, because you needed a full set for whatever you'd purchase in game. About the only point they served, other than marketing, was to randomize bunks and nightmares and force you to vary the powers you used. Of course, the problem that Arts and Realms were pretty underwhelming until you hit top-tier wasn't helped by having to discard them. It also forgot that some powers were really needed for utility's sake. "Oh, I already discarded my healing power this adventure, I can't use it again." Thankfully, they included alternate rules in the core, which I think is what everybody actually used. About the only cool thing about them was being able to play cards together and perform combos, but I think that idea was discarded in 2e, and it was never adequately explored in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:03
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:My objections are less about people doing magick through Kung Fu and dropping acid than it is "these people who believe that all magick is computer programming do magick through Kung Fu and dropping a acid." Especially when the primary distinguishing feature between the character splats is how they do magick. They are using computer programming though - they're using drugs to hack the wetware of their brain, man. This kind of thinking has been present in modern computer culture since the beginning - Timothy Leary wrote a bunch about cyberculture and VR. Even Bill Gates dropped acid. Basically, Burning Man comes out of that too.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:10
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:
I'm really enjoying this writeup because the setting is Terminator except cooler, but I sort of struggle to work out what you'd actually do. I googled around and found this writeup of a game: https://tekeli.li/reign-of-steel/ which is pretty cool, but heavily based out of the human friendly zones of UK/East coast US. Does the game ever cover off what you're supposed to do with, say, Mexico or Denver?
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:12
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:I'd be tempted to write a review of M20 here - and there are some hillarious gems in it, like how picking up 6 Paradox permanently turns you into a ticking timebomb - but it would be a mean-spirited hate-reading, so I'm not sure whether it would be fair to do so... Mean-spirited hate-readings are absolutely on topic. Hate-read the poo poo out of that book.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:14
|
|
|
Count Chocula posted:As above, so below. By changing yourself, you change reality. This is usually a metaphor, but when dealing with all powerful reality warpers than it stops being metaphor. I guess this makes most Mages those ones that live in their own personal reality bubble, which I'm okay with. Your navel can also be the Omphalos, the Navel of the World.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:19
|
|
|
Cthulhu Dreams posted:I'm really enjoying this writeup because the setting is Terminator except cooler, but I sort of struggle to work out what you'd actually do. I googled around and found this writeup of a game: https://tekeli.li/reign-of-steel/ which is pretty cool, but heavily based out of the human friendly zones of UK/East coast US. Does the game ever cover off what you're supposed to do with, say, Mexico or Denver? From what I know about the GURPs games I think I'd be pretty good just taking the framework and outline of the setting and applying it to something less crunchy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:21
|
|
|
Wow, the author of Vanishing Point (episode 35 of the show) just emailed me to let me know how rare that game actually is. Apparently there are only 550 copies floating around, and only 50 copies of the edition that we reviewed. Nice guy. I of course let him know we always want more published designers to be on the show.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:28
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:Each Zone sorta has a hook depending on what you and your players want to do. It gives enough of an overview for most zones but stays hands off enough to let you improvise and come up with something. It doesn't necessarily cover what you're supposed to do because you're plopped down into a world and given the chance to try and change it or interact with it; to take your example, a Zone Mexico City campaign wouldn't need to be more complex than "escape Zone Mexico City because dear god this is a lovely place to live and game over when you reach safety or die trying" versus a Zone Denver campaign which could be "escape Zone Denver, or stop Zone Denver from experimenting with Brisbane's technology, or corrupt Zone Denver further, or...". I specifically struggle with Mexico (and to a lesser extent Berlin) because of the weirdness of the environment. The other jurisdictions use big conventional terminator style kill-bots, and you can see how interaction with those works. But with Mexico it doesn't feel like that players have a ton of options against swarms of nanobots or getting the plague virus. I guess Mexico has the bio-weapon testing islands, but yeah.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:30
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Quite a lot of trans people - me included - take umbrage at any claim or implication that we're not male-or-female-(circle-one), and several other trans people I've talked with, like me, are offended by the appropriation of trans identities as something "magickal" rather than something mundane and normal. That he writes this betrays an ignorance and/or lack of regard for the disenfranchised minority he tries to score brownie points with by including in his book. Seriously, go for it. The trans-is-magick idiocy from Brucato deserves to be picked apart and shown for the crap it is. (Plus, the rest sounds like it would be full of the usual WW fail from the skimming I did of someone else's copy - like the page or so on how turning vampires into lawn chairs is dumb.)
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:34
|
|
|
Cthulhu Dreams posted:I specifically struggle with Mexico (and to a lesser extent Berlin) because of the weirdness of the environment. The other jurisdictions use big conventional terminator style kill-bots, and you can see how interaction with those works. But with Mexico it doesn't feel like that players have a ton of options against swarms of nanobots or getting the plague virus. I guess Mexico has the bio-weapon testing islands, but yeah. These, of course, are all my own biases and thoughts. You gotta do you. E: VVV This, pretty much. They're good Bad Places to have to get through but do not stick around longer than you need to because it really doesn't have much to offer the players in the way of fun or story or poo poo to do. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jan 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:39
|
|
|
The hostile Zones like Overmind and Mexico can be good for short term raids or rescues. Setting a long term campaign there would be pretty grim.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:41
|
|
gourdcaptain posted:Seriously, go for it. The trans-is-magick idiocy from Brucato deserves to be picked apart and shown for the crap it is. (Plus, the rest sounds like it would be full of the usual WW fail from the skimming I did of someone else's copy - like the page or so on how turning vampires into lawn chairs is dumb.) I have no idea why I'm defending Brucato so much - he seems like a lovely writer and a lovely person - but what makes his handing of 'trans-is-magick' worse than Unknown Armies' Archtype and The Freak? Is it because it's generally better written and better researched, or does an older game get more leeway? Nessus posted:I think the issue with Mage is creating situations where mages have to go out and actually do poo poo rather than crawling up their own rear end and reading a book. You can do this in Ars Magica but Ars Magica advertises it on the cover and even if your magus is jerking off to make the elixir of life for thirty years, you have companions, you have grogs. The idea is that 'doing poo poo' and 'crawling up your rear end' (literally, like in Holy Mountain) or 'jerking off for 30 years' (literally, like in PopMagick) aren't mutually exclusive. By doing those things you change the mystic fabric of the world. Like Promethea, which is pretty much a bunch of issues of Promethea crawling up her own navel. I don' t know how you could work that into a game, but for magickal beings 'taking action' and 'contemplating their own navels so that they mess with the mystic forces governing the universe' could be the same thing. I dunno... in the one oMage game I played, every PC did their own weird thing - started cults, wandered off in the desert, formed a private army - and started plots by themselves that the GM then adjuciated. It actually ended up being a ton of fun!
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 23:47
|
|
|
Count Chocula posted:I have no idea why I'm defending Brucato so much - he seems like a lovely writer and a lovely person - but what makes his handing of 'trans-is-magick' worse than Unknown Armies' Archtype and The Freak? Is it because it's generally better written and better researched, or does an older game get more leeway? To a certain extent, yes. Also Unknown Armies doesn't juxtapose "Transpeople are majykk" against "Don't actually play nephandi or you will summon the unbidden ones that gnaw at the walls of the world!" You never get the feeling that the UA writers actually believe what they're saying is true, where as Brucato is a documented nutcase. Also I'm not 100% familiar with how Avatars work in UA, but isn't the point of them that you're intentionally destroying your sense of self to adhere to some kind of gestalt concept that only exists in mankind's collective unconsciousness? That's doesn't seem like a metaphor for trans people to me, nor do I believe it was intended as one.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 00:24
|
|
|
You don't actually have to believe in what you're doing to be an Avatar, but you gotta walk the walk. It's being an Adept that involves sincerely believing in the magic poo poo, and they're all self-destructive in some way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 00:31
|
|
Kurieg posted:To a certain extent, yes. Also Unknown Armies doesn't juxtapose "Transpeople are majykk" against "Don't actually play nephandi or you will summon the unbidden ones that gnaw at the walls of the world!" You never get the feeling that the UA writers actually believe what they're saying is true, where as Brucato is a documented nutcase. The stuff in Mage and Changeling is so common among hippie/neo-pagan/magic circles that it's not surprising WoD found somebody who writes for it that believes in it. And it's odd that you use that comparision, since I'm kinda obsessed with both those RPGs but the only one that's seriously threatened my sanity is UA, since it's so close to our real world. By the way, if you want a good Unknown Armies adventure game, pick up Kentucky Route Zero on PC. You can ride the secret highways of America by tuning your radio to a certain station. Is there a respectful way to put the Mystic Hermaphrodite archtype in a modern game? There's a character like that in The Invsibles who seems cool but also a bit wrong to modern eyes.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 00:40
|
|
|
In Unknown Armies it all boils down to You Did It. The Mystic Hermaphrodite is not magical and special because the universe says it is...it functions because people think it is. And people can be ignorant, wrong and prejudiced. UA isn't saying that the perception of the Archetype is the way it should be...it's simply the way it is currently (and that is certainly open to change). Same goes for Archetypes like the Outsider. The Archetypes can be products of ignorance and prejudice, but that's simply because they're a mirror held up to humanity and that mirror reflects flaws just as easily as anything else.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 00:57
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:Personally I don't feel like you have to be able to set a campaign in all of these different places, they're there to illustrate the disparity between the different Zoneminds' ways of thinking and execution. Mexico City really feels like it's just there to be a counterpoint to Overmind and a threat you don't want to let get any extra power and land, it's the far, faaaaaaaar end of the scale between the different beliefs of the AIs. Berlin I feel works well as a road bump along the way path of a bigger trip: if we're going to get to London, we're going to have to go through Paris, but first we have to go through Berlin. Berlin (and Caracas) also work as a stunning counterpart to the rest of the world. You've been doing pretty good so far skulking through ruined cities, avoiding plagues and radiation. How're you going to fare surviving in actual wilderness though, teeming with resurrected predators and absolutely no chance of any human amenities? This is a good point about Berlin - it (and Paris, who also hates people) is kinda in the centre of things so you may have to transit through them - or raid them from Zone London. Doesn't really help with Mexico and Philippines though which are out of the way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 01:46
|
|
|
The problem with stating straight out that trans people are magic is that it's the same as saying black people are magic, or mentally challenged people are magic. Are there some people who consider themselves a mystic confluence between binary opposites, because they happen to be trans? Probably. It is an old family of tropes and archetypes, after all. Does everyone who happens to be trans cleave to that kind of identity? Hell to the no. Brucato is claiming that Trans is Magick, probably leaning on an 'understanding' of non-Western cultures which is largely bullshit, since a lot of cultures with third genders don't actually express those beliefs. The Mystic Hermaphrodite is the embodiment of paradox. The male/female blending and dichotomy is a large part of it, sure, but it isn't the be-all and end-all. It's not a pleasant space to exist in, and a lot of trans people would violate the most basic taboos by living the way they want to: as accepted members of their chosen gender, not an anthropomorphised Almond Joy bar. A doctor, who deals injury to cure, channels the Hermaphrodite. He may or may not be wearing panties under his scrubs. A trans person living 'stealth', holding down a mundane job where the worst conflicts and risks involve whoever rifled the office fridge, not so much.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 01:48
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:It also bears mentioning that the Hsien magic system was hella busted. With some balancing and limitations, it probably would be okay (better than the Cantrip system by far, but that ain't saying much), but as it was written you could easily drop the roll-over difficulty to 2-4 for your core magic type, meaning Nyan could do things like 10+ levels of damage with no dodge. Pretty much all of the Year of the Lotus stuff was busted. I think it was part of the selling strategy, get the anime fans and bring in the rest with the overpowered character options.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 02:55
|
|
|
And I think it's also the terminology. UA explicitly uses Hermaphrodites - someone that is not male or female to mean what that avatar does, while Brucato uses Transsexual in every context where Hermaphrodite is a better fit for the concepts he's misusing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 02:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 23, 2024 20:06 |
|
|
Another thing to note is that Unknown Armies was written in the late 90s. M20 was written, oh, last year, the year before?
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 03:01
|
|