FATAL & Friends 2016-19: Bad Rules and Hidden Jewels

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gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

While I'm sure there are people that have fun with this old-school D&D, part of why I felt like I had to review it was that I couldn't ever find any critical reviews of it online, which made me feel a bit crazy for how much it didn't sit well with me.

If I'm being overly mean, unfairly vindictive, or just dumb-and-bad during the course of the review, I'd be fine with it being pointed out.

Count Chocula posted:

The review mentioned something about dwarves being able to get more info on stone-based traps automatically, which brings to mind a Fantasy GUMSHOE where you automatically make Investigation rolls based on your character's knowledge.

The way the method is described, you have to open/unlock secret doors or disarm/disable traps by describing to the GM how you do it, but the amount of information you have to work with depends on either how well you rolled to detect it, or if you're a dwarf or elf who's supposed to have special knowledge/detecting abilities for these things, or both.

Like, if you're a regular human, the GM might just say that there are three depressions in the next floor tile over. If you're a dwarf, the GM might say that you're sure they're buttons, and maybe even give you an idea of what the buttons control before you poke and prod them.

Count Chocula posted:

I'd never play this guy's tabletop game, but if he designed Dark Souls/Fantasy Oregon Trail as a brutal roguelike he'd rake in the dough on Steam. I think Darkest Dungeon is the latest darling, but everyone seems to buy those type of games.

The big difference between doing a "brutal roguelike"-type game on the computer and on the tabletop is, I think, the premium that's placed on spending other peoples' time and effort.

If Darkest Dungeon is a balls-hard hack-and-slash resource depleting slog that dicks with me every chance it gets, that's more acceptable because I can play it on its own, and in quick bursts that can be as short as whenever I'm free to fire it up on Steam.

But there's more pressure, at least IMO, to not do that at the table (unless you're all on board) because multiple people are involved, and they're specifically taking time out of their day to game with you.

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Aug 24, 2016

# ? Feb 16, 2016 10:26

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# ? Apr 20, 2024 01:05

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks

Part 2: The Players Got Too Much Treasure

As I mentioned in the introduction, this one is about ways and means to reduce the amount of riches that the players have, in the event that they end up with an amount that you, the GM, feel is too much for them (or for you to handle). Again, I'm not quite sure how this happens, but lets set that aside for now and get right into it.

Tax Collector

quote:

The initial contact occurs when the players are back in town, right after they have spent a large sum on whatever it was that they wanted to buy (armor, horses, magic, etc.). Whatever the cause, the �rich� adventurers� rampant spending catches the eye of an agent of the local tax collector.

The players are approached by the tax collector named, sure why not, Paul the tax collector, accompanied by six men-at-arms, all wearing the regalia of the local lord. Paul informs the players that he has learned that they recently came into a large amount of wealth, and that he has been instructed to inventory and valuate this wealth for purposes of the local income tax. Paul evaluates wealth based on retail (e.g. book) value of all mundane items. He is not a wizard, nor can he properly assess magic item values. Hence, a staff of power looks (to him) just like a fancy carved wooden staff, maybe with a few gems encrusted on it.

The tax rate, he explains, is 25% of the total value of wealth gained per year, and since the players are new to the area, the baseline amount (25% of their total wealth) is due now. Not to worry, he goes on, subsequent years will be taxed based on the amount of �new wealth� gained, and not residuals on the existing wealth assessed this year.

Now, part of what he says is true, and part is a lie. The local lord did indeed send him to collect a tax � but that tax is supposed to be 10%, not 25%. Paul and his men at arms are adding a �surcharge� to the lord�s taxes.

The book does at least present the situation as a possible source of plot hooks:

The players could in fact just pay up the 25% tax, and that's supposed to be completely acceptable, no dirty tricks. I mean, mission accomplished if they're out so many thousand gold in arrears, right?

They could kill the tax collector, but that would make outlaws. This sounds like a great way to derail the campaign, but as long as you tell the players that it's going to bring down the law on them, so be it.

They could play along with paying the tax, but exploit things like stuffing the real goods in a bag of holding or Paul the Collector's inability to identify magical items to get away with paying less than their true net worth.

Finally, the players could try negotiating with Paul to lower the tax rate. Paul would play along as low as 15%, but not much lower or else he doesn't get his kickback. Players who are exceedingly investigative might even figure out Paul's scam and plan a course of action from there, or players might want to deal with the King directly.

These are all fine ideas, though I'd be wary of it being too distracting from the whole dungeon crawling aspect if you get caught up in financial and court intrigue.

Framed!

This one is about things like having a player's weapon placed next to a dead body, or an NPC Assassin impersonating a PC and making it look like the player killed an NPC that then brings down the law on the party.

The first scenario that could come out of this is the "prove your innocence by finding the real killer" episode. There's also a bit in there about PC Paladins being conflicted over the law demanding their surrender and knowing that they're not responsible.

quote:

The second, and in my opinion more fun option, is the �imprison the characters, take their stuff, and see how they react/escape� version. After all, one of their �mother�s sister�s cousins� may have told them of a secret way out of the dungeon (Conan the Barbarian). Perhaps the princess has fallen in love with them (e.g. Jason and the Argonauts, Braveheart), or perhaps instead they just have to arrange an escape or rescue (Robin Hood).

One very challenging way to do this is to have them captured and imprisoned in the deep dungeons below the city. Have the guard be a man that they once fought beside, perhaps even saved the life of, in a battle. After a few days, the slop tray conveniently contains a method of escape: a key, a set of lock picks, etc.

The characters cannot go up and out of the dungeon, so they have to exit the city though the underworld � without gear and spells. Creating a hostile circumstance like this forces the characters to rely on their wits and not their +5 holy avenger. The GM simply creates a method (hopefully a chase scene) where the players have to run through a gauntlet of the populated dungeon (without killing any guards, since this would actually be a crime they were guilty of!), perhaps landing in a sewer system for cavern system below it. The challenge then becomes a survival race. They have to figure a way out of this underworld (without gear), figure out a method of exiting the underworld without being recaptured, and escape the area. Only then can they sort out a way to prove their innocence (perhaps re-entering the city in disguise?) and become outlaws in the process (very tough on the egos of Lawful characters). As the GM, you should provide them ample opportunity to prove themselves true, and thus regain their stuff.

Credit to the author for suggesting that the stuff gets regained at the very end.

I guess what sticks out to me at this point is that I'm beginning to see why Webb's games might take so many years if they're having to deal with a season of Prison Break in between dragon hoards.

That, and the fact that he's suggesting mystery and investigative scenes in a game that's decidedly not Fantasy Night's Black Agents.

Wilderness Bandits: The Gatekeeper

Place a dragon or some other large, imposing creature at the entrance to a dungeon (with the entrance being too small for the Gatekeeper to enter themselves), and have it demand anywhere between 30% to 50% of all treasure brought out.

The Gatekeeper has to be strong enough that the party just doesn't decide to kill it instead, but the tax rate shouldn't be so high that the players decide to head for a different dungeon, either.

Wilderness Bandits: The Opportunist

The author suggests cranking up the random encounter rolls in the overworld if the players are traveling with large sums of gold at their disposal.

Further, he suggests creating a party of NPC characters roughly equivalent to the players in relative power and stats, and have them form the core of a bandit mob that'll dog the players.

The schtick is that the bandits are supposed to act like, well, bandits. That is, even if they're roughly as powerful as the players, their main goal is to grab some of the players' gold, then run away. The theme seems to be the tabletop version of the Diablo 3 gold goblin where the players will throw all caution to the wind once they realize that the bandits have grabbed a sack of gems from their draft horse and are making off with it.

A Friend in Need

quote:

How many times have you seen this happen: An old friend, down on his luck, needs your help. Sometimes its circumstance, sometimes just bad luck, and sometimes, well, you know. One great way to take some of that treasure away from your players is to tug on the old heart strings. Remember that bartender in that inn from your first adventure? You know, the one who gave you the rumor that led to the ogre�s lair when you made 2nd level? Well, here he is, and he needs your help. What about that henchman who was killed last year? Well, his wife and three orphan kids are about to lose the farm. They need you to bail them out.

The author starts off this section small: an old, one-legged soldier, a homeless waif on the street, various other beggars asking the players for alms.

Then he escalates it: NPCs pitching the players with a business investment to open an inn or research a new spell, with the promise of a return on investment.

And then, he goes on to explain that well, in medieval times, most business never actually made enough money for their proprietors make a living off of, which strikes me as a rationalization for continually hitting up the players to inject the business with cash, without outright suggesting that you just scam the players.

One bright point though is the story-related idea that the people that the players help along the way serves as justification for why they attract followers upon reaching name level.

Holy War

This just means that the temples and clerics that the players have come to rely on suddenly charge exorbitant prices, but of course you need to have some kind of background justification for it ...

quote:

My player group had a particularly successful series of adventures (some luck, some skill) where they had simply gained far too much loot far too quickly. It was one of those �oops, I messed up� GM moments. I mean the kind where you look at their sheets and consider resetting the campaign because they are so rich that there is no way they would ever adventure again. How I handled it was as follows:

The church of Muir demanded a 90% tithe of all goods and holdings from all players (and non-players). Bannor the Paladin and Flail the Great had to give the money. Speigel the Mage, Frac Cher and Helman did not have to (all real players in my campaign).

The problem was that the forces of evil (led by priests of Orcus, of course) had burned two cities to the east of Bard�s Gate. The marauding army was ravaging the countryside, and a call up of an army, aided by mercenaries from the south, was needed to stop it. The players were used to getting healed and cured by the temple, and so all but Helman decided to pay the fee (he fooled them into thinking his 40% or so was really 90%). The high priests (Flail was still an adventurer at the time, and had not yet become the high priest of Muir), after graciously taking away 90% of the players� monetary wealth, asked them to help with the war as well.

The players were sent on a mission to recover three holy artifacts for use in the war. This adventure formed the basis of 14 months of play. The players never once questioned the fact that the �evil GM� had stolen all their money, because it was meaningful. The money taken by the priests had purpose, and in the players� minds was worth spending. Until I wrote this (at least three of them will likely get copies of the book), I doubt any of them knew that I invented the storyline to get rid of all their loot. (John Murdoch is wringing his hands as he reads this.)

The point is, I was able to fix the mistake I made (well, Frac had this crazy knack of rolling 20s) that had the potential to kill the game, and I am fairly sure the players never were wise to what I had done.

Alternate uses of this that are not game changing could include an increase in fees to build a new temple, a requirement that raise dead spells include a quest to recover something, or to pay some huge amount of cash over time (my raise dead�s usually require a quest to tithe as a paladin). Just be careful how you use this one in particular, as it can be an obvious �screw the players� technique if used often or without proper planning.

... so that it's not obvious that you're just doing it to dick over the players.

Disaster in Home Town

This is A Friend in Need writ large. If the player's background involves a certain place that they came from or are especially fond of, you can have an earthquake level its temples, or have a great fire raze its castle, or have an 80s villain threaten to buy out the orphanage unless the players move to put a stop to it, and of course putting a stop to it is going to involve handing over cash to pay for the rebuilding.

Here is your new Castle (aka The Money Pit)

Personally, I'm not averse to let players have property. It's within the spirit of old-school D&D to be the masters of a domain, no matter how small. So I thought this was nice and a reflection of what I'd done a campaign before: the players wanted to build a castle, so I let them build it - I just didn't let them have the name level benefits until actual name level.

Well no, it's not like that at all:

quote:

OK, so this one is an oldie but a goody. One of the common tactics of the Tudor kings was to bequeath estates that had historically lost money to noblemen they wanted to destroy. Either the nobleman turned around the fortunes of the estate (and the king�s taxes became more profitable) or they went bankrupt trying. It was a sort of �F-you, pay me� situation for the nobleman. He owed the king a fixed fee for taxes on the estate, he received income from it, and he hoped that the latter exceeded the former. It often did not.

What he's suggesting is a Medieval Fantasy version of MouseHunt where the players are given ownership and control of a lot and its accompanying buildings, except they're super fixer-uppers and now it's a constant drain on their cash to get it all repaired, and then once its repaired, its going to need upkeep.

To be fair, he does emphasize that it should be possible to clean out the mines, drive the kobolds out of the fields and de-zombify the cemetery so that the domain will eventually become profitable, and that this process of turning a dump into a successful venture is going to make the players feel real good about themselves at the end of it all, but boy did that intro make it sound like you're just handing them the deed to a lemon and calling it good.

As a final word, he does suggest that there's a 10% chance every in-game month that some other random bad event happen to the domain, just to keep the players invested by forcing them to go back every once in a while.

quote:

Additional kingdom-building information can be found in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Campaign sourcebook.

Up Next: Part 3: You're Going to Need a Zamboni

# ? Feb 16, 2016 11:29

Quinn2win: Nov 9, 2011; Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

THE 1894 NETWORK, PART 1

The 1894 Network is the people surrounding the original Operation Edom - in other words, the characters from Stoker's novel. Each has a general bio, plus four extra sections:

Edom: What the truth behind the character is if they're an agent of Edom.
Minion: What the truth behind the character is if they're a minion of Dracula.
Other: Possible allegiances to third parties, neither Edom nor Dracula.
Clear Name: What their 'real' name might be, if you're assuming Dracula used pseudonyms.

Johnathan Harker
Partner in law of Peter Hawkins. Left to Castle Dracula in his mid-twenties, barely escaped the castle alive. A devoute member of the Church of England, his parents are never mentioned - he may be an orphan. Married Mina and had a son, Quincey.

Edom
Hawkins and Harker arranged Dracula's move to England. Harker's unexplained business trips to places like Launceston were cover for British intelligence reports on the Dracula progress. He demonstrated incredible strength during the final battle, suggesting the possible existence of a 'vampire serum' being used by Edom.

Minion
Dracula made Harker write several dated letters, to be sent to Hawkins - maybe this was to make sure his Edom handler didn't become suspicious when the agent missed a check-in. Harker was seduced by the women at Castle Dracula, and offered Mina to Dracula as tribute. He was suspiciously ineffective at stopping Dracula from feeding on her...

Other
Maybe Harker was just a friendly solicitor recruited by Edom to arrange the necessities of Dracula's transfer. His exposure to Dracula turned him into an informal Edom ally.

Clear Name
James Harper, Jackson Hutter, Jeffrey Hosmer. Joseph Harker was the name of a set designer at Lyceum Theatre.

Wilhemina Murray Harker
Assistant schoolteacher who made the acquaintance of Lucy while they were students. Crossed Europe after learning of Johnathan's sickness to marry him in Budapest. Dracula fed from Mina, and she developed a psychic connection to him that proved instrumental in his downfall. After his 'death', all signs of her curse vanished.

Edom
Mina is efficient, diligent and organized - the archetypal analyst. She was the one who suggested that Helsing hypnotize her to spy on Dracula. If Edom didn't recruit her, they were missing out on a huge opportunity. The final days of the operation must have been dreadful, as she was forced to choose between rushing to the dying Johnathan's side or observing Dracula in Whitby.

Minion
Dracula drained and maybe seduced Mina at the asylum. Helsing's group kept Mina out of planning sessions to keep her from reporting intel back to Dracula. When Van Helsing concluded that Dracula's defeat freed Mina from their link, he was wrong - she was just very good at hiding her newfound abilities.

Other
After the operation ended, Mina went on to research vampiric lore with Van Helsing. As long as Dracula lives, Mina would become a vampire after her death. She probably survived in 1940, but what if she was preparing her own cremation to avoid a fate worse than death - or what if she returned in 1977?

Clear Name
Ellen Mowbray, Genevieve "Gina" Malcolm, Elizabeth Farris.

Abraham Van Helsing
Chair of medivine at the Municipal University of Amsterdam, specializing in obscure diseases. He was summoned to diagnose Lucy Westenra's mysterious ailment, and immediately identified it as vampirism. Van Helsing led thecrusade against the Count and guided the younger men on the hunt. His wife was committed to an asylum, his son died in unexplained circumstances. His name is Dutch, but he slips into German when surprised or alarmed.

Edom
Edom was in this to recruit Dracula, but Van Helsing was eager to kill him. Why? Option 1: Once Lucy was vampirized, Edom decided she would be good enough, and Dracula was just a loose end. Option 2: Helsing was a cleaner, brought in after Operation Edom was declared a failure.

Minion
Van Helsing probably wasn't a double agent during the operation, since he was instrumental in so many steps of his defeat. However, Van Helsing's resisting of the charms of the vampires in Castle Dracula has no witnesses, and his description of the vaults contradict's Harkers - a cover story he fashioned, or one implanted by Dracula or his Brides?

Other
What killed Van Helsing's son? What drove his wife insane? What experience started his study of the un-dead? Maybe he was a spy - but not a British spy. He lapses into German under stress, maybe he was connected to the Kaiser's naval intelligence section, Nachrichtenabteilung.

Clear Name
Max Windshoeffel, Martin von Hessel, Jakob van Helmont (ha!). There are a few real people who could also be Van Helsing: German philologist Friedrich Max M�ller, biologist Baron Ernst von Blomberg, Hungarian-Austrian neurologist Moritz Benedikt, Dutch psychiatrist and hypnotist Albert Willem, Irish surgeon Willam Thornley Stoker - Bram Stoker's eldest brother.

Lucy Westenra
Friend of Mina, sleepwalker, plagued by a long line of suitors. Dracula targeted her within three days of arriving in England, and fed from her for two months before she died.

Edom
Lucy's sleepwalking could be a sign of psychic sensitivity that caused Edom to scout her. Alternately, she's described as spending her days watching shipping from her perch in Whitby graveyard, which could have been useful to them. Besides, if she was just some teenager, why did Dracula go through such lengths to get at her blood?

Minion
Lucy was obviously turned by Dracula, but was this really against her will? In her final note, she says the servants were all drugged, leaving her alone, but when Dracula goes after Harker, he uses mesmeric powers. Why would he drug the servants? What if she drugged the servants?

Other
Arther Holmwood allegedly staked her to death after she rose as a vampire. After that, Van Helsing send him and Quincey out of the tomb while he sawed off her head - but what if that's not the real reason? Maybe Van Helsing and Seward were both Edom, and used this opportunity to steal her body for Edom experiments. Maybe Seward took Lucy back to the asylum as his vampire bride, hoping to free her from the curse with Dracula's death. Lucy could still be imprisoned in some secret dungeon beneath the asylum.

Clear Name
Charlotte Westerman, Laura Wexford.

Dr. John "Jack" Seward
Operated a lunatic asylum near Carfax. Trained under Van Helsing, unsuccessfully courted Lucy. Obsessive diarist, married after the events of the novel, but his wife's name is never given.

Edom
Recruited after Dracula arranged to purchase Carfax. You'd want an asylum if you were recruiting a vampire - plenty of victims who wouldn't be missed, perfect cover for unusual occurrances. Maybe Seward panicked when Lucy fell to Dracula, and called in Van Helsing against orders to plot Dracula's demise. Some wax cylinders may still exist somewhere with his unrecorded thoughts.

Minion
Remfield is an Edom deep-cover agent, and he tries to warn the world about Dracula but is stopped by Dr. Seward. His proximity to Carvax gives Dracula access, and his love for Lucy gives Dracula leverage.

Other
He's a sexually frustrated medical man with obsessive tendencies. His name is Jack. Where was he during the Whitechapel murders?

Clear Name
James Sanders, Johnathan Sieverse, John Sadler, Joshua Stanley. Medical men suspected of being Jack the Ripper include Morgan Davies and Sir John Williams.

Arthur Holmwood
Known later as Lord Godalming, heir to the estate of Ring. Engaged to Lucy, and the one who drove the stake into her heart. Followed Van Helsing dutifully at every turn.

Edom
Step 1 of Operation Edom was to get a vampire, and step 2 was to get a British vampire. Holmwood, loyal and of noble blood, was Edom's vampire-designate until the Count targeted Lucy. He jumps at the opportunity to be drained by the dying Lucy - could this be a last-ditch attempt to become a vampire himself?

Minion
Holmwood telegrams Seward and Morris, alluding to shocking news that we never hear (it sounds like it's his engagement, but both men already know about it). The timing coincides with Dracula finalizing his plans to move to England - was he in communication with Holmwood?

The deaths of Lucy's mother and Holmwood's father aren't explained, but leave Arthur in possession of a title and fortune - Dracula's payment for his work. He only switched sides when Dracula attacked Lucy, and then he hid all evidence of his involvement with the vampire in the Ring archives.

Clear Name
Three viscounts died in 1894, and any of their two heries might be the real Holmwood. Albert Henry George Grey, Henry Charles Hardinge, George Godolphin Osborne, Francis Douglas. The latter died in an unexplained shooting incident in Somerset.

Well, okay, he never had an heir, but adding a fictional son is a small price to pay to get a mysterious shooting accident into the backstory.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 15:25

Bieeanshee: Aug 21, 2000; Not keen on keening.; Grimey Drawer

I'm not sure what's worse: the feeling I've got that Ms. Purple is a fictionalized author insert, or that I may have met them... no. The crazy, Circe-worshiping transformation fetishist I met had a vastly better grasp of English.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 15:32

LatwPIAT: Jun 6, 2011

Kurieg posted:

I�m going to need more alcohol for this.

If you don't mind, I'll be adding some commentary based on a review of this I'm doing at another website.

Kurieg posted:

_{Typos lovingly preserved for your enjoyment _Gomexies?}

"Gomez" and "Mexies". As a friend of mine pointed out, "well, rural places CAN be pretty loving terrible, but i mean yeah seriously open racism like that is not publically in vogue even in the backassest of the US". It's also so... shallow in its portrayal. Like trying to talk about the pervasiveness of racism in modern society and constantly mentioning the KKK, rather than white flight, income inequality, insidious everyday racism, microaggressions, counting coins on the counter, and a police forces that arrests people for being black in the wrong neighbourhoods. Instead, it's open use of racial slurs all day every day.

Kurieg posted:

quote:
Like many a small town Saturday night is either football in the fall or party night for the teens at the lake. The lake is where a sad chubby little girl named Tammy Winters was raped twice, once at age fifteen and one again at age sixteen.

But don�t worry about Tammy, because according to the people of Digahol, Tammy got what she had coming.

Her family the Winters were farmers, they were struggling but not poor. Her father was a former local football star, her mother a respected lady who was always willing to help her neighbors and her five brothers, great athletes, popular and handsome. Tammy, the only daughter and the fifth to be born was different. She was short, dumpy, wore glasses, listened to friend of the family and devil music and was cursed with the one thing population of Diaghol could not tolerate, intelligence.

Being smart wasn�t easy for a girl in a town where the internet could be found in only two places, the school library, the local library, where cell phone service was so spotty most people just had land lines and where any technology created after the microwave oven was seen as �New Fangled�. Yes, so amidst, a town full of racist, god-fearing luddites was born a girl who would have graduated from high school at the age of thirteen if the Digahol Iowa school system had bothered creating a gifted student program. Instead she was forced to sit in class bored and berated from the ages of five to sixteen.

Now, while tammy was pretty much persona-non grata among her peers, she was loved by her family, protected by her brothers and cherished by her spinster aunt who encouraged Tammy to be Tammy.. However, being a girl, who outsiders treated like trash can warp a person and as smart as she was, the fifth child of the Winters didn�t exactly treat her family well, especially as a teenager. Hate and hormones turned her into a self destructive rebel. She slept with boys who despised, drunk to much, did drugs, screamed a lot and thought cutting herself was a worthy pastime.

Still despite being a what she was and acting out how she saw fit she knew Digahol was not for her and the day after graduating first in her class and being denied a valedictorian speech she left Diaghol swearing to never return.

OK, so first of all, this is a feminist RPG. How out of touch are the authors with feminism? Well, they're using rape for shock value, and there's no trigger warning. And woe betide Tammy, the white girl! She's smart and not conventionally pretty - truly, she is an excellent vehicle for viewing what sexism in modern-day America looks like. She faces so much oppression, like not being allowed into a gifted student's program! Won't you weep for Tammy and how she didn't get to hold the valedictorian speech? And, Lethe, this line:

quote:

She [...] was cursed with the one thing population of Diaghol could not tolerate, intelligence.

Quoth a friend of mine: Sure, Tammy. You live in a town that apparently refers to its lone black family as "the friend of the family-Johnsons", and you're going to whine about how the one thing they can't tolerate is intelligence.

Kurieg posted:

quote:
She.. It� was Circe, tall perfect, voice like honey and eyes as green as the sea. She told me I was special and that she had heard my prayers. That I was being tested before being tapped for the most important mission of all. I was to be her priestess and that the world that I knew, it�s history and it�s present were a lie created by a creature she called �The Old Garden Snake�.

<snip>

I thought when I woke up I would be a supermodel, but you see the idea of the supermodel is a lie of the snake, physical beauty and perfection comes in all shapes and sizes.

Pictured: Circe (NSFW!)

"Physical beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, but all good people happen to look like supermodels."

Kurieg posted:

quote:
So it came to the surprise of no one when Selene found herself on the run after spray painting �Pigs� on multiple police cruisers. That after being arrested, she was handcuffed and beaten, but instead of taking the beating Selene grabbed the gun of a careless Policeman and shot her attackers and killed four policemen before being tasered, beaten and shot herself.

Less than a year later she was on death row. The laws of humans and the will of the Goddesshead are not the same. Poverty, hopelessness and brutality had turned Selene into what she was, she was the victim of the society of and when she saw no other way out like me she had made up her mind to die. This time however she took four men with her who upon research turned out to be known for their brutal tactics and case after case of suspects dying during arrest. Thus any sympathy I had for them vanished. Further investigation revealed the men were members of the ultra right wing snake backed �truthkeeper� organization and that �Black Viper� was in charge of training the police to deal with �borderer incursions�.

�You know what we need, an acceptable target. No we need a more acceptable target. No it isn�t obvious enough who we�re referencing!�

The four people Selene killed just happen to also be members of a secret organization of ultra-right-wing Patriarchy-followers, because real-world police brutality against people of colour is actually caused by an evil god, and feminism and civil rights has nothing to do with addressing systematic discrimination caused by human failures - just punch The Man in the face. These police were already described as beating up a handcuffed girl, then tasering her, beating her up, and shooting her. This is extreme police brutality, and exactly the kind of thing a game about radical politics and fighting against the establishment should address... but the author still feels the need to make the police members of an ultra-right-wing conspiracy. It's so... dishonest.

And, you know, thank god they just happened to be bad people. We couldn't have our heroines killing someone good by accident or in anger!

Also, this picture of Minerva Sue?

Here's two photos of Abby Soto herself, to fill up the Mary Sue Bingo card. Note that, as drawn, Minerva is more "supermodel" and less "Velma cosplayer". Note the smoking with a cigarette holder; Soto draws this on everyone, including 12-year-old-girls, because lady has a serious smoking fetish.

And, hey, I'll comment some on that dedication too, if you don't mind me usurping your entire review:

It's so oddly dedicated to feminist activists and women persecuted for being smart or breaking sexual norms, but not victims of women-targeting racial prejudice or victims of sexism in general. You'd think that a feminist role-playing game would celebrate the victims of sexism, but nope, the only people deserving recognition are the activists, the lesbians, and the smart girls.

Kurieg posted:

Right so.. a summary. In the beginning women ruled the world (as was right) because mankind still revered the earth and the Goddesshead. This universal time known as the �Pax Majestrix�(Peace of the Great Woman) came to an end 5000 years ago when Cain(yes, that cain, apparently) made a deal with a being of discord and destruction known as Rex Anguis (The Snake King). Cain freed the Snake and it engaged the Goddesshead in a stalemate battle and the power of the Maga weakened as the Goddesshead used it to try and cage the serpent which was feeding off of mankind;s �war, greed, intolerance and ignorance�.

The Maga thought they were abandoned and either killed themselves so their power could return to the Goddesshead, or went into hiding. �Man� in this time villified the Maga, turning them into the �dark sorceress, the evil queen and the deomoness.� until Maga faded into myth. But then a girl was burned at the stake in Nebraska(I�m still confused as to why) and there was a nationwide outrage of women which weakened the Serpent and empowered the Goddesshead to create more Maga.

OK, the most hillarious part of this backstory? Caine was jealous of the women having more power than men; Caine was jealous of all the magical power the Circe gave to women but not men and rebelled, which tells us that the real issue at hand here are the thousands of years of discrimination that men faced at the hands of Circe. In fact, the last five thousand years of Patriarchy cannot be seen as traditional oppression by the powerful. Rather, Patriarchy is the lashing out of an abused and impoverished group, and the witches who worship Circe are reactionaries trying to regain their own position of superiority.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 15:38

wiegieman: Apr 22, 2010; Royalty is a continuous cutting motion

Bieeardo posted:

I'm not sure what's worse: the feeling I've got that Ms. Purple is a fictionalized author insert, or that I may have met them... no. The crazy, Circe-worshiping transformation fetishist I met had a vastly better grasp of English.

You would be astounded by what comes off of the fingers of people who are perceived as eloquent speakers.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 15:41

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

theironjef posted:

Alright people. Someone sent us 3rd edition Synnibarr, the continued brainchild of the oracular madman Raven "Carbonadium Smasher" McCracken, and so after avoiding it and trying not to look at it for months, we finally reviewed the drat thing.

Now wait just one goddamn minute did you just call Traveller a garbage system?! :toughguy:

# ? Feb 16, 2016 15:52

Fossilized Rappy: Dec 26, 2012

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program of Draculas, gargoyle statue-fondling, and transformation revenge porn pretending to be feminism for Monster Time!

Did you know that the behir of the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual and Pathfinder Bestiary 1 is actually based on a lightning serpent from Scottish mythology? Or that the first edition of D&D had a monster named after figures from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book?

I do, and it's that sort of dedication to inane poo poo that makes me feel I am up to the task of continuing where Alien Rope Burn left off on the Pathfinder Bestiary trail, meaning that my other review running alongside GURPS Banestorm is going to be the Pathfinder Bestiary 2.

It's 2010, the year after the release of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and Pathfinder Bestiary. A majority of the stuff being ported from the Monster Manual to Pathfinder has already been covered, which leaves Bestiary 2 open to things that aren't the standard Outsider "families" (for lack of a better term coming to mind at the moment) like demons and devils, true dragons, and other such D&D standbys.

Instead, we get...uhh...more demons, devils, and true dragons, actually. Also even more Outsider families, like the evil Outsiders known as daemons, or the evil Outsiders known as qlippoths, which is totally not setting the precedent for more and more evil Outsider families appearing with each further Bestiary. There are also wereboars, aranea, giant scorpions, and other things from the 3.5 Monster Manual that didn't get covered by the Pathfinder Bestiary! Oh, and the mobat! Remember the mobat? Yeah, good to see the mobat back.

Okay, getting past the sarcasm for a moment, the Pathfinder Bestiary has the awkward situation of being trapped in a point where some of the Monster Manual is still being milked and the Tome of Horrors gets a heavy combing, but it's also trying to spread its wings a little and take more things from mythology, folklore, and public domain fantasy instead of just Dungeons and Dragons legacy material. On a strictly personal standpoint, I'd love to skip to Bestiary 3 since it has a lot of stuff taken from cryptozoology and non-European mythology, but we here at Some Poster in the FATAL and Friends Thread have a dedication to earnestly looking at a series.

Fossilized Rappy fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Feb 17, 2016

# ? Feb 16, 2016 15:54

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Count Chocula posted:

Huh? Heaps of people do drugs, 'whore themselves out' (to use your charming phrase), still get good grades, go to New York, and leave mental insitutions. Some of them even have colorful hair! It's almost like there's some kind of all-pervasive social system that causes these problems and then shames the victims of them! Some kind of... Patriarchy.
Did you really imply it only exists in the game?

Heaps of girls do those things, yes. Very few of them do all of them. And it's not just "good grades" it's "The best grades at her school when she's developmentally two years behind everybody else." in a world where the Patriarchy not only exists, but is supernaturally empowered to do harm. She's already the POV Character, by definition we're already rooting for her, slathering on multiple instances of rape that don't seem to actually impede her in any way make her more mary-sue-ish and also sort of indicts real world victims of rape and drug abuse who aren't as perfect and amazing and successful. "Girl who was smart but got beaten and raped and fell into drugs and her grades started falling" is already a compelling character because of the tragedy of lost potential, but for some reason she had to be successful enough to run away to New York as opposed to.. Des Moines, or Chicago, or Minneapolis, all of which are "big cities" to small town folk and far easier for a sixteen year old in Iowa to get to.

Her individual life events are plausable, all of them happening at once to one person creates a Mary Sue.

Also remember that the other female character is a hispanic teen with a gun whom the police shot to wound instead of kill, which is a thing real life police are trained to do, particularly police trained by blackwater in how to handle insurgents.

Count Chocula posted:

It's badly written and cheesy, but there's so many male power fantasies that are just as bad. Maybe some kind of resistance can help - creating stories, no matter how dumb, that women can use as sources of power, or stepping stones to read deeper. I dunno, maybe the whole 'power of stories' thing is privileged bullshit. But everyone deserves imaginative armor to step into.

And hey, pretending to beat up rednecks and right-wing assholes can be fun.

A game where girls beat up rednecks and right-wing assholes would be fun, but this game undermines it's own premise at every single turn. It's also very much a "White Girls Only" club, there's a single black girl and that's because she's a member of the "Diva" class. There's someone who's ostensibly Hispanic but she's also got red hair so I can't really determine ethnicity, and there are zero visibly asian, arabic, or indian people.

LatwPIAT posted:

If you don't mind, I'll be adding some commentary based on a review of this I'm doing at another website.

Nah that's fine, I'm not really marketing this thing anyway.

quote:

"Gomez" and "Mexies". As a friend of mine pointed out, "well, rural places CAN be pretty loving terrible, but i mean yeah seriously open racism like that is not publically in vogue even in the backassest of the US". It's also so... shallow in its portrayal. Like trying to talk about the pervasiveness of racism in modern society and constantly mentioning the KKK, rather than white flight, income inequality, insidious everyday racism, microaggressions, counting coins on the counter, and a police forces that arrests people for being black in the wrong neighbourhoods. Instead, it's open use of racial slurs all day every day.

I understood the providence of the nickname I was more dubious of the fact that anyone would come up with it because it's not very organic and several much more vile epithets for Hispanics exist.

quote:

OK, the most hillarious part of this backstory? Caine was jealous of the women having more power than men; Caine was jealous of all the magical power the Circe gave to women but not men and rebelled, which tells us that the real issue at hand here are the thousands of years of discrimination that men faced at the hands of Circe. In fact, the last five thousand years of Patriarchy cannot be seen as traditional oppression by the powerful. Rather, Patriarchy is the lashing out of an abused and impoverished group, and the witches who worship Circe are reactionaries trying to regain their own position of superiority.

I didn't even think of that, that's amazing.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 16:26

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

In Nomine Game Master's Guide: The Dar al-Islam

While Muhammad says in the Quran that he is just a man, Muslims believe he submitted himself totally to God's will, and thus that his behavior and person were so exemplary as to be beyond question, to the point that some become violent at any aspersion on the Prophet or his family. Devout Muslims follow any mention of the Prophet, spoken or written, wht an honorific like 'peace be upon him', and Christians once believes Muslims worshipped Muhammad, despite the blasphemy of this suggestion. Muslims also revere Judeo-Christian prophets and consider themselves to follow Abraham. They regard Christ as a prophet but not the Son of God, and Sunni believe that Muhammad was the final prophet, bringing the last and most perfect revelation. Other sects sometimes believe there have been other prophets.

All Muslims revere the Quran, dictated to Muhammad by the Archangel Jibril (ie, Gabriel). It is a flawless and complete work containing all wisdom needed by humanity. It is original Arabic, it is both beautiful poetry and a collection of Truths. Some Muslims consider even translating it sacrilegious. The Quran contains a mix of history (similar to that of the Bible but differing in detail) and moral guidance given by God to Muhammad. Jewish and Christian scripture is also seen as holy, but superseded by the Quran. As with any scirpture, there are various interpretations, so use of hadiths as additional doctrine has developed. Hadiths are quotes of the Prophet or stories of his life, recorded separately from the Quran. Because Muhammad obeyed perfectly, his words and deeds must therefore be examples of how to behave and can be used for guidance, but there is much debate over which hadiths are authentic.

All Muslims observe the 'five pillars' Muhammad prescribed. The first is shahada, the profession of faith, which must be uttered at least once with true understanding and sincerity. This is the sole requirement for becoming a Muslim. Second, prayer. Muslims must pray regularly in the direction of Mecca, and Sunni Islam mandates five daily prayers. Muslims also traditionally gather on Fridays at a mosque for public prayer and sermon. Other sects have different rituals and numbers of prayers. The third pillar is zakat, an obligatry tax of 'purification' which is to be spent on care for the poor. In medieval times, the Muslim governments collected zakat as a tax, while in modern tmes it is treated like tithing - a voluntary gift to charity. The fourth pillar is fasting during the ninth lunar month, or Ramadan. No eating, drinking or smoking from sunrise to sunset. People who are ill or traveling my postpone the fast and make up an equal number of days later, and the elderly or chronically ill may feed the poor instead of fasting. The final pillar is the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. All Muslims are expected to make the hajj at least once, where they will perform a number of rituals, including circling the Kaaba, a giant cube-shaped shrine housing a black stone, once a pagan shrine and now a Tether to Faith.

The concept of 'jihad', sometimes known as the sixth pillar, was introduced by the Khawarij sect in the 800s. While many Muslims do practice jihad, or holy war, it isn ot a part of orthodox Muslim doctrine. Muhammad preached against mandatory conversion, and while the Muslim empire did expand by conquest after his death, conquered people were never required to convert - and, in fact, were forbidden to at first. Only in later centuries did Muslims begin forced conversion. More recent theologians have often interpreted jihad as spiritual warefare, by pen and not sword, or against one's own desires.

Eastern religions is a convenient if not wholly accurate or inclusive label. They are often monist, and from Heaven's view, they are (barely) divine religions. The many gods of the Taoist and Buddhist pantheons do not appear in the Marches, but the Hindu gods do, and are quite powerful. Dominic has not labeled these religions heretical, but is known to dislike them. So, Buddhism! Buddha means 'Enlightened One' and the original Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was born between the 6th and 4th centuries BC in India. His birth and upbringing have many contradictory stories, clouded by ineffability. Buddhists believe that his incarnation was just the last in a long line before he finally achieved Nirvana. In Heaven, the term Bodhisattva has been adopted to refer to the Blessed souls who choose to remain in the Lower Heaven to help humanity rather than ascend to the Higher Heavens. This fits fairly will with most Buddhist doctrine, as most sects believe there are many bodhisattvas active on Earth at any given time. Buddhism is immensely important to, quote, "the Orient." There's around a billion Buddhists worldwide, and it's been a major force for social reform and intellectual development, and has spawned many rival sects.

Buddhists believe in the Dharma, a set of fundamental truths: First, life is suffering. Second, the cause of suffering is desire. Third, suffering can end only by removal of desire. Finally, the removal of desire requires a carefully regulated existence. Some sects stress meditation and asceticism, others moral behacior, othersm ysticism. Most follow the Eightfold Path of Right Knowledge, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. To a Buddhist, the world is an illusion and all thoughts and desires are artificial burdens placed on people by themselves. Good actions gain good karma for the next life and bad actions gain bad karma. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and the ultimate goal is to end the cycle and achieve Nirvana, or oblivion.

There are many Buddhist sects, but three main forms. Theravada Buddhism, also known as Hinayana or Small Behicle (meaning salvation for only a few) is dominant in southeast Asia and is the oldest and most orthodox school. It emphasizing the Four Noble Truths and meditation. The Buddha is a sage but not divine, and scriptures are written in the ancient Indian language of Pali. Mahayana Buddhism is mainstream in China Japan and Koreana, and it literally means 'great vehicle' or salvation access to the masses. The Buddha is an incarnation of godhead, and the idea of bodhisattvas exists. Scripture is in Sanskrit. Subsects include the Pure Land of Japan, who call on the Amitabha Buddha to go to the western paradise when they die, the Tendai sect that attempts to synthesize many schools of thought into one, and Zen or Chan Buddhism, which has become rather fasionable with angels of War. The final and most esoteric major type is Vajrayana Buddhism, strongest in Tibet and parts of India, which has a large pantheon of gods and focuses on meditation, chanting, yoga and ceremonies. Eli is rumored to have studied Tantric ritual with Vajrayana bodhisattvas.

Buddhists that show up in Heaven tend to be surprised and rather disappointed until someone points out Jacob's Ladder. Some believe that the Higher Heavens are actually Nirvana - the end of the illusion of self. EVen Dominic cannot say that he knows this to be wrong. Still, a high percentage of Buddhists in Heaven choose not to ascend for some time, remaining behind as bodhisattvas to help others on the path.

Taoism! Founded by the philosopher Lao-Tze, who livedi n the same time as Confucius. Unlike Confucius, his philoisophy takes a metaphysical view. By 440 AD it was one of China's state religions and has been highly influential in Asia. The main source text is the Tao-te-Ching. The Tao, or 'the Way' is said to be the eternal first cause of the universe, an omnipresent force that permeats all things. To be in harmony with the Tao is to be one with all. Taoism does not believe that the universe is an illusion or that individuality doesn't exist. Rather, by accepting unity with the Tao, one may act upon the universe. Passivity is action, and time is cyclical. Taoists hold that virtuousness is a worthy goal, and that the Three Jewels of Taoism are compassion, moderation and humility. Humans are viewed as essentially good.

Taoism is rather esoteric and can be interprted in many ways, generally including the concepts of chi and the balance of the dark and earthly female yin principle and the light and heavenly male yang principle, which must be balanced. A mystical Taoist tradition has become popular with the masses and is rather unlike most of the things Lao-Tze taught. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, blended Taoist with fortune telling, and Taoism also led to Chinese alchemy and other mystical practices. An immense hierarchy of gods and priests developed, but perhaps due to the underlying monism, Taoist spirits have never appeared in the Marches. Angels that study Asian philosophy tend to appreciate taoism. Angels of Creation particularly are known for syncretic beliefs combining monotheism and Taoism. It is also popular among angels of Flowers and the Wind. Dominic does not approve but has found no actual heresy.

Hinduism is Indian, and has both influenced and been influenced by Buddhism in many ways. Ginduism has nearly 700 million followers, mostly in India, and their gods continue to confuse Heaven. Hindu scripture is based on the Vedas, which contain instructions for social and religious ritual, including the basis of the Indian caste system, as well as prayers to the gods, and also on the Upanishads, which comment on the Vedas and elaborate on the Vedanta, or Hinud philosophy. Other scripture exists as well, such as the epic and moral stories of the Puras, most famously the Bhagavad-Gita. All of this is in Sanskrit and is considered divinely inspired.

There is no orthodox Hinduism. The religion has no founder, no organization, no religious authority and no universally accepted tenets. It is an amalgam of many beliefs, serving as both a religion and culture. Some beliefs are common to most Hindus, however. Like Buddhists, they believe the world is an illusion, called maya, and they seek to escape the illusion and reunite their consciousness with the Brahman, much as Buddhists seek Nirvana. Hindus believe in karma, which can move you up and down the cycle of reincarnation, but they feel it is most desirable to have no karma and thus escape the cycle entirely. From a Heavenly perspective, Hindu cosmology is shockingly accurate - it divides the world into the physical universe of the First World, the astral plane of the Second World where angels and spirits live, and the Third World of spirit, where the gods live. There are no official sects of Hinduism, but many different school of thought. Most modern Hindus divide between Vaishnavism and Shaivism, representing paths to enlightenment via Vishnu and Shiva respectively. The god Brahma, while recognized, is not worshipped. There is some rivalry between the groups, because Malphas.

Hinduism has been called both polytheist and monotheist, and the truth is it's closer to monolatry, pantheism and panentheism. There are said to be 333 million gods, but above all is the One God, Brahman. The Vedanta says Brahman is an impersonal Creator and Absolute Truth, with roles as Creator, Maintainer and Destroyer. All souls come from Brahman and must eventually merge back with Brahman. Hindus worship God by worshipping His manifestation in all living things and the hierarchy of gods below Him. In practice, most worship one god primarily, usually Shiva or an avatar of Vishnu. Hinduism is a divine religion and recognizes the Supreme Creator. A lot of Hindu worship seems to strengthen angelic Words. However, the Hindu gods manifest as ethereals. It is unclear why, but angels believe it is because Hinduism was not originally monotheistic. Indian religion has always been syncrete, and Hinduism is the sum of beliefs collecting for millenia. The Hindu gods were originally worshipped as any pantheon, and their current incarnations that share Essence with Heaven are a relatively new development. Sharing doesn't seem to have hurt them, possibly due to India's immense population. The most powerful Hindu gods are Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Protector and Shiva the Destroyer and Renewer. All three are said to be omniscient and omnipotent, representing different parts of reality. They certainly are the most potent ethereal gods in existence, and rumored to be nearly equal to a lesser Archangel. However, they avoid any confrontation with Heaven quite carefully and almost never manifest on Earth directly. Vishnu also has many avatars, which are worshipped separately - most famously Rama and Krishna. There are also many lesser deities, like the storm god Indra, the elephant-headed Ganesh, the monkey god Hanuman (misspelled as Haruman) and the goddess Kali. Their histories and relationships are quite complex, and while not all have appeared as distinct entities, it isn't clear which ones exist as ethereals and which are just guises of more potent gods. Some celestials believe only the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu trinity actually exists, and all other Hindu ethereals are manifestations of one of the three. Some even believe the three are a single entity. If either is true, the Hindu gods would be even more potent than Heaven believes.

The Purity Crusade never made it to India, and some say the Hindu gods were the last on Uriel's list due to their relatively benign nature, while others say India was just too inconvenient to get to and Uriel was called back before he could begin to fight them. However, it is known that Purity did puruse the Australian and South American gods. Two heretical rumors are whispered even in Heaven. One holds that Uriel was unsure he could actually defeat Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and was trying to get more support first. The other says that other Archangels made pacts with the Hindu gods and diverted Uriel away from them. Certainly, in the old days there was some friendly dealing. Eli socialized with Hindu gods enough to bother Dominic, and Michael regarded Vishnu as an ally against Hell. Gabriel, Jean, Janus and several others were known to have chats with Shiva. Since the Crusade, relations have become more distant. Dominic has forbidden any traffic with ethereals, and made no exception for the Hindus. Some Archangels have even gone so far as to have angels masquerade as the gods, to try and cut off their Essence supply. It doesn't seem to have worked, and the Hindu gods remain aloof from Heaven but great foes of Hell.

Next time: Pagans

# ? Feb 16, 2016 16:33

Comrade Koba: Jul 2, 2007

LatwPIAT posted:

OK, the most hillarious part of this backstory? Caine was jealous of the women having more power than men; Caine was jealous of all the magical power the Circe gave to women but not men and rebelled, which tells us that the real issue at hand here are the thousands of years of discrimination that men faced at the hands of Circe. In fact, the last five thousand years of Patriarchy cannot be seen as traditional oppression by the powerful. Rather, Patriarchy is the lashing out of an abused and impoverished group, and the witches who worship Circe are reactionaries trying to regain their own position of superiority.

Calling it now: Abby Soto isn't a real person, and Bellum Maga is in fact an MRA false-flag attempt to discredit Feminism.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 17:36

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCEDfZgDPS8

Religion (and the rest of Chapter 2)

Religion in Ravenloft doesn't work quite like it does in other Campaign Settings (only Eberron has a similar setup). Instead of one pantheon that objectively exists that directly talks to it's priests and all gods belong to it, you've got a whole bunch of religions that don't really work together or even like each other. In fact, Clerics from other worlds instantly feel a void where the voice of her God used to be, the connection severed instantly. And yet, the powers remain. Ravenloft natives are used to the Gods being remote and inscrutable, and regard it as a matter of common sense. In fact, many religions in Ravenloft have drifted considerably from their original tenets, but still retain their powers. Some theologians aware of these facts have come up with a theory of an "unspoken pacy", with the Gods of the multiverse agreeing not to directly interfere in the affairs of Ravenloft with the Dark Powers agreeing to do the same in return (that is, not interfere with the Gods). Another, more extreme theory holds that the Dark Powers have cut off Ravenloft from the Gods completely, and when someone prays in Ravenloft it is the Dark Powers that hears them. Some madmen and heretics even go so far as to say that many Gods have long since died, or never existed in the first place.

(Please forgive the crappy jpegs)
The Akiri Pantheon
Basically, the Hollywood Egyptian Gods. This religion is mostly popular in the Amber Wastes cluster: in Har'akir the Old Gods are still worshiped openly while in Pharizia (the other Domain of the cluster) the "angelic despot" Diamabel persecutes worshipers, attempting to replace it with worship of himself. The three major gods are the Ra, the sun disc, father and king of the Gods, Osiris, who was killed by his brother and now rules the underworld and Set, god of deceit and the destructive power of nature, who killed his brother Osiris out of jealousy. Clerics of Ra often serve as Viziers and community leaders, clerics of Osiris prepare corpses and "guard the sanctity of death" (hunt undead, I guess?) and clerics of Set often pose a clerics of other deities to subvert the faithful.
Ra is Lawful Good; has the domains of Air, Good, Law and Sun; and his favored weapon is the Falchion.
Osiris is Neutral Good; has the domains of Good, Protection, Repose (explained below) and Water; and his favored weapon is the light flail.
Set is Lawful Evil; has the domains of Death, Evil and trickery; and his favored weapon is the short sword.

The Repose Domain
is a new Cleric Domain in Ravenloft. It's all about helping the dead rest. It's granted by Osiris and the Eternal Order (to follow). The Domain's granted power permits the cleric to grant a resistance against turning into an undead to the dead (a will save using the cleric's will save bonus). The Domain spell list is:
1 Detect Undead. Reveals undead within 60 feet.
2 Gentle Repose. Preserves one corpse.
3 Speak with Dead. Corpse answers one question/two levels.
4 Halt Undead. Immobilizes undead for one round/level.
5 Raise Dead. Restores life to subject who died up to one day/level ago.
6 Antilife Shell. 10-foot field hedges out living creatures.
7 Resurrection. Fully restore dead subject.
8 Control Undead. Undead don't attack you while under your command.
9 Soul Bind. Traps newly dead soul to prevent resurrection.
It feels a lot more like it's meant for NPCs than PCs, especially the granted power.

Belenus
In other worlds, Belenus is just another member of a pantheon of Celtic gods. But he's big in ~~Japan~~Ravenloft. He a central god in two different regions: Tepest and the Shadowlands cluster. Despite being pretty different, both branches have developed the same troubling trait: intolerance. Belenus is another Sun God. In Tepest, he's part of a rustic religion and his clerics also worship the rest of his pantheon. After the Grand Conjunction, a man named Wyan organized an Inquisition against the Fey, believing themr esponsible for the disappearance of the neighboring Domains of Markovia and G'Henna. The Inquisition has gotten over-zealous, leading to many half-elves, elves and sorcerers being labeled "fey" and killed. In Nidala, however, Belenus is the "One True God" of a matriarchal priesthood who ruthlessly persecut all other religions and obey their "holy protector" Elena Faith-Hold.
Belenus is Neutral Good; has the domains of Fire, Good and Sun; and his favored weapon is the sickle.

The Eternal Order
A fake religion created by Azalin Rex as a tool of societal control, The Eternal Order believes that their land originally belonged to the Dead and was stolen by the living, banishing the Dead to the Gray Realm. The clerics worship a pantheon of death gods borrowed from other religions. Worship focuses on rituals intended to appease the Dead and delay the Hour of Ascension, when the Dead shall reclaim the land. When the Requiem occurred, the clerics of the Order blamed the population for being too weak in their faith, which had the unintended effect of Darkonians abandoning the Church in drove. The Religion is now dying fast.
The Eternal Order are Neutral Evil; have the domains of Death, Evil, Knowledge and Repose; and their favored weapon is the Scythe.

Ezra
The church of Ezra was founded 90 years ago when a descendant of the Dilisnya family claimed that a divine entity, Ezra, our Guardian in the Mists, had given him a revelation. Ezra supposedly was a virtuous mortal woman who, despairing of the evils of the world, forever surrendered her mortality to the Mists to become an eternal guardian of mankind. The original Lawful Neutral sect, centered on Borca, is called the Home Faith and appoints Ezra's clerics, called anchorites, to the task of protecting and healing her faithful. The Lawful Good sect in Mordent also teaches that they must convert as many people as possible for their own good. The Neutral sect in Dementlieu is more mystical, claiming that Ezra abandoned her callous fellow gods to help humanity. The Lawful Evil sect in Nevuchar Springs believes that a Time of Unparalleled Darkness is coming where all the unfaithful will be destroyed. All four sects agree that Ezra cannot protect those who do not believe in her.
Ezra is Lawful Neutral (usually); her domains are Mists, Destruction, Healing, Law and Protection; and her favored weapon is the longsword.

The Mists Domain
is exclusive to Clerics of Ezra, reflecting their patron deity's close relationship with the Mists. The granted power, the SHield of Ezra, has different effects depending on which sect the cleric is from: Lawful good: 25/+5 damage reduction vs. metal weapons, Lawful neutral: 15/+1 damage reduction vs. all physical attacks, Neutral: +10 to all Fortitude and Reflex saves vs. damaging spells and Lawful evil: +10 to all Will saves vs. mind-affecting spells and effects.
1 Obscuring Mist. Fog surrounds you.
2 Fog Cloud. Fog obscures vision.
3 Gaseous Form. Subject becomes insubstantial and can fly slowly.
4 Solid Fog. Blocks vision and slows movement.
5 Mind Fog. Subjects in fog suffer -10 Wis, Will checks.
6 Wind Walk. You and your allies turn vaporous and travel quickly.
7 Teleport without Error. Mists instantly transport you anywhere, with no off-target arrival.
8 Vanish. Mists instantly transport a touched object.
9 Imprisonment. Traps subject within the Mists.
I feel that it's a pretty strong domain overall.

Hala
According to her holy book Tales of the Ages, nine gods created the world and then left intending to leave mortals to do what they will, and only Hala returned, taking pity on them. She gathered together thirteen women and taught them the magic of the Weave, a form of magic that is also called witchcraft. The Church of Hala is secretive and highly mystical. Her clerics, who call themselves Witches, operate a number of hospices throughout Ravenloft, many of them in secret due to how often people fear them.
Hala is Neutral; has the domains Healing, Magic and Plant; and her favored weapon is the Dagger.

The Lawgiver
Also known as the Iron Tyrant and the Black Lord, his clerics claim the revelation of his true name would strike a mortal dead. This religion is all about blind obedience to authority: the rich and powerful deserve it due to their birth, and the low must obey. It is the state religion of Hazlan and Nova Vaasa. The Lawgiver fell silent during the Grand
Conjunction. His clerics either believe this was a test of their faith or that he was wounded and has now recovered. A few heretics believe the God might be dead, and the church now worships only empty titles.
The Lawgiver is Lawful Evil; has the domains of Death, Evil, Law and War; and his favored weapon is the Whip.

The Morninglord
Founded in the late fifth century by an orphan who claimed he had been saved by the Morninglord, the church portrays it's god as a luminous sylvan humanoid, his face smeared with blood. This strange detail is most often interpreted as saying even the best people have some darkness int hem, and even the most vile have some good that can be reached. Carrying a message of hope, the religion has started to spread among the oppressed Gundarakites of Barovia. No matter how bleak the future may seem, no matter how dark the night, the dawn will come. One of the cult's founders was also a vampire hunter, and it is possible the cult has continued this tradition in secret.
The Morninglord is Chaotic Good; has the domains of Good, Luck, Protection and Sun; and his favored weapon is the Halfspear.

Sidenote: The Morninglord's my favorite. Who doesn't want to smite vampires while screaming "I AM THE MORNING SUN, COME TO VANQUISH THIS HORRIBLE NIGHT!"

The Rajian Pantheon
The people of Sri Raji worship an extremely huge and complex pantheon of gods that outsiders have difficulty understanding. Their belief centers on an endless cycle of reincarnation that can be escaped only through perfect spiritual understanding and enlightenment. Two gods are of note: Kali, the Dark Mother who destroys and recreates the world and Tvashtri, an enlightened god of industry and invention. The University of Tvashtri is one of the greatest (if remote) in Ravenloft.
Kali is Chaotic Evil; has the domains of Destruction, Evil, Healing and Trickery; her favored weapon is the Sap.
Tvashtri is Chaotic Good; has the domains of Chaos, Knowledge, Magic and Plant; his favored weapon is the Punching Dagger.

The Wolf God
The Wolf God is worshipped by evil Werewolves, who see all other creatures (including humans) as abominations to be slain or herds to be thinned. Their rites are quite bloody.
The Wolf God is Chaotic Evil; his domains are Animal, Strength and Trickery; and he has no favored weapons (gotta use our claws).

Zhakata
Zhakata is not worshiped: he is appeased. Zhakata exists in two aspects: the Devourer and the Provider. G'Hena has known only the Devourer. The Devourer is a god of cruel austerity, all crops are donated to the priests who will take the god's share and then dole out the remaining in meagre portions to the starving peasants. Buying or selling food is a crime, obesity is sacrilege. Supposedly, one day Zhakata will be appeased and become the Provider, bringing an era of plenty. Generations have starved to death waiting for that day.
Zhakata is Lawful Evil; has the domains of Destruction, Earth, Fire and Protection; and his favored weapon is the Flail.

And that's it for religions!

Next we have a short Equipment section. When trying to buy outside of an objects CL (exemple: buying a musket in a CL6 Domain when the object is CL8+), you multiply the object's price by the difference and then add it (in the example, a difference of 2 means the musket costs +200% more GP). We don't get a lot of new stuff, firearms are alright (1d10 for pistols, 1d12 for muskets), the only interesting thing is that you can apparently buy simple automatons, crafted by the gnomes of Mayvin. There is a small sidebar comparing various peasant tools to weapons, to get that pitchfork mob feel going on.

We end the chapter with a small Finishing touches section, which states that to get a more fully-rounded characters you might want to answer a few questions, such as what scares him the most, what he loves the most, etc.

And that's it for Chapter 2. Next, in Chapter 3, we get yet more rules and a poo poo-ton of modified spells! :suicide:

# ? Feb 16, 2016 17:47

Doresh: Jan 7, 2015

Kurieg posted:

They address this next chapter.

They do not address it well.

Is it better or worse than "No right-thinking women would ever disgrace herself by identifying as male. She must've been brainwashed or something!"? That's my worst-case scenario at the moment. Okay, that and calling them "gender traitors". I'm expecting the worst so I can have something to be pleasantly surprised about.

LatwPIAT posted:

OK, the most hillarious part of this backstory? Caine was jealous of the women having more power than men; Caine was jealous of all the magical power the Circe gave to women but not men and rebelled, which tells us that the real issue at hand here are the thousands of years of discrimination that men faced at the hands of Circe. In fact, the last five thousand years of Patriarchy cannot be seen as traditional oppression by the powerful. Rather, Patriarchy is the lashing out of an abused and impoverished group, and the witches who worship Circe are reactionaries trying to regain their own position of superiority.

"'Equality' means 'No I'm the opressor!'"

Joking aside, it is sad if you could make a patriarchy RPG with the same backstory, and have it be more justified.

Fossilized Rappy posted:

Instead, we get...uhh...more demons, devils, and true dragons, actually. Also even more Outsider families, like the evil Outsiders known as daemons, or the evil Outsiders known as qlippoths, which is totally not setting the precedent for more and more evil Outsider families appearing with each further Bestiary. There are also wereboars, aranea, giant scorpions, and other things from the 3.5 Monster Manual that didn't get covered by the Pathfinder Bestiary! Oh, and the mobat! Remember the mobat? Yeah, good to see the mobat back.

I would say the daemons are a bit justified in that they fill the void for Neutral Evil Outsider dudes. Qlippoths? There just there for when you need more cthulhuoid Demons.

Doresh fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Feb 16, 2016

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:04

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
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Daemons are just 2e yugoloths, right?

You know what I miss from 2e? The weird race-specific lycanthropes, like dwarves got were badgers.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:06

Traveller: Jan 6, 2012; WHIM AND FOPPERY

There is at least one were-badger darklord.

And isn't the Lawgiver a god from another D&D setting that got its name changed?

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:13

Robindaybird: Aug 21, 2007; Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Count Chocula posted:

It's badly written and cheesy, but there's so many male power fantasies that are just as bad. Maybe some kind of resistance can help - creating stories, no matter how dumb, that women can use as sources of power, or stepping stones to read deeper. I dunno, maybe the whole 'power of stories' thing is privileged bullshit. But everyone deserves imaginative armor to step into.

And hey, pretending to beat up rednecks and right-wing assholes can be fun.

I'll say it - if it's meant to be a power fantasy, why was Tammy raped five loving times and never once got a chance to punish the ones who did this? I can't speak for everyone, but I don't want rape anywhere near a game that I want to feel powerful and in control. It's done as a cheap way to make the reader sympathize, but it's laid on so thickly if someone said it you, you'd be right in suspecting the person was making it up for attention.

And others expressed it so eloquently - the way it's used as shock value, the stupid strawmen that populates Digahol, they're all caricatures of the evil redneck trope - and white girls only vibe.

Oh yeah, her other project is WGA which comes off 'Yeah, women would be completely evil monsters if they had magic to turn anyone who slightly annoys them into cigarettes and smoke them'.

And let's put it this way, if I discover my 'goddess' allowed me to be raped five times, become a junkie, I'm not putting that anathame to me, I'd loving shank her because who needs a god like that?

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:17

Robindaybird: Aug 21, 2007; Neat. Sweet. Petite.

EDIT: whoops double post

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:18

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Doresh posted:

Is it better or worse than "No right-thinking women would ever disgrace herself by identifying as male. She must've been brainwashed or something!"? That's my worst-case scenario at the moment. Okay, that and calling them "gender traitors". I'm expecting the worst so I can have something to be pleasantly surprised about.

So so so so so much worse
Transmen aren't even talked about.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:23

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Traveller posted:

There is at least one were-badger darklord.

And isn't the Lawgiver a god from another D&D setting that got its name changed?

Yep, he's Bane from Forgotten Realms, much like the Morninglord is Lathander from the same setting.

Also, the were-badger isn't actually a Darklord, he just really wants to be one.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:25

oriongates: Mar 14, 2013; Validate Me!

I always like Qlippoth, but that's mostly because I was introduced to the concept from GURPS Cabal and in a setting where you were expected to barter with demons and sneak through Hade's backyard on your way to rob a bank the Qlippoth were the stuff that freaked everyone out. They weren't necessarily the most powerful and they certainly weren't cunning, but they were wrong on a cosmic level that no other entity could be.

Just throwing the name out there as another of 12 species of demons is doing a disservice to a great concept.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:26

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Kurieg posted:

Everything about Abby Soto's art makes me really, really uncomfortable.

I mean, the snuff porn yeah of course is really loving :gonk:

, but even in a general sense it's all very unsettling for some reason I can't put my finger on.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:43

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Kurieg posted:

So so so so so much worse
Transmen aren't even talked about.

Other way around, IIRC the quoted bit elsewhere correctly- Transmen are forcibly detransitioned, transwomen aren't mentioned because presumably, the writer's enough of a TERF that they're counted as men, who you can't play.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:48

Robindaybird: Aug 21, 2007; Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Everything about Abby Soto's art makes me really, really uncomfortable.

I mean, the snuff porn yeah of course is really loving , but even in a general sense it's all very unsettling for some reason I can't put my finger on.

It's bad tracing with lovely inking and coloring.

I'm gonna say it, Soto is tracing - that kind of rigid stiffness that pervades her art is often a tell-tale sign of sometime that is using a light box and copying a model. Or how some art look, I wouldn't be surprised if she was taking poser models and and just slapping a paint tool over it if she can't find a reference pose.

unseenlibrarian posted:

Other way around, IIRC the quoted bit elsewhere correctly- Transmen are forcibly detransitioned, transwomen aren't mentioned because presumably, the writer's enough of a TERF that they're counted as men, who you can't play.

GROSS

Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Feb 16, 2016

# ? Feb 16, 2016 18:59

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

unseenlibrarian posted:

Other way around, IIRC the quoted bit elsewhere correctly- Transmen are forcibly detransitioned, transwomen aren't mentioned because presumably, the writer's enough of a TERF that they're counted as men, who you can't play.

I hate being right. :eng99:

# ? Feb 16, 2016 19:07

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

unseenlibrarian posted:

Other way around, IIRC the quoted bit elsewhere correctly- Transmen are forcibly detransitioned, transwomen aren't mentioned because presumably, the writer's enough of a TERF that they're counted as men, who you can't play.

poo poo, she used "Transgendered Man" so I wasn't sure which she was referring to. That's so much worse.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 19:08

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

I had a hard time trying to codify what I thought of Bella Maga, because it's easy to get caught up in what it does wrong (and boy, does it get so very much wrong), but that doesn't really get into its main issue, I think, which is:

It's written with a complete lack of empathy.

Just a complete, appalling lack of understanding of how other people think, feel, and live. People in her material, protagonists or otherwise, are just action figures to danced over the coals of her fetishes, with all the personality of a flowchart and even less humanity. The window dressing aside, I really think that's the core issue with all of her games.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 19:12

Doresh: Jan 7, 2015

Silent Legions

The Rules of the Game (Soldiers in a lost Cause)

Silent Legions uses the same 2d6-based skill system (with skills ranging in level form 0 to 4) as many of his previous works, with a little addition: To make Skill Checks less binary, the GM can rule that missing the Target Number by 3 or less constitutes a Partial Success. This means the character either only managed to achieve part of what he wanted (but that's still better than nothing), or he gets exactly what he wanted, but with some added complications.

We also get some additional uses for Expertise: Aside form activating Class Abilities, they can also be spend to reroll a Skill Check if the Skill in question is a Class Skill. Casting a spell and pulling off other occult stuff also costs an Expertise point, though you can alternatively raise your Madness instead (Expertise is essentiall a buffer against going bonkers).
One night's rest only recovers a single point of Expertise, and this isn't really the kind of game where 15 minute adventuring days are a thing, so spend those points wisely.

Combat

_{"Was that really necessary?"}

Here we have the same streamlined OSR combat system from SWN, using descending AC while avoiding THAC0 or Attack Matrices. Seriously, why did TSR never think about "Just add the enemy's AC to your roll, and if the total is 20+, you hit"?

Of course, Lovecraftian horror doesn't lend itself to murder-hoboing your way through multi-dimensional cosmic critters from non-Euclidian space. So in order to make the PCs think twice about fighting, the Slaughter Die was born.

While SWN didn't have critical hit rules at all, Silent Legions brings them back with a vengeance: Instead of critting on a natural 20, you instead roll your weapon's Slaughter Die along with your damage roll. If the Slaughter Die is a 6 or higher, the damage dealt is tripled. loving ouch.
The default Slaughter Die for most weapons is a d6, with nastier weapons having a higher die. Rifles get a d8, shotguns and two-handed weapons get a d10, sniper rifles and machine guns have a 1d12, and the rocket launcher has a 1d20 (aka its already impressive 3d10 damage is actually 9d10 most of the time).

Yeah, considering that even the crappiest weapons deal triple damage every 6th hit, and most "proper" combat weapons a lot more often, one can see how even starting a shoot-out with cultists isn't really in anyone's best interest. You'll never know whether the next bullet will just explodify you or not. This also gives the Though class the only kind of sure staying power in a fight, as they can ignore crits by spending Expertise. High-level Toughs are also the only ones who can actually crit a supernatural creature. But even they have a long way to go before they can even think about insta-gibbing Not-Shoggoths with a rocket launcher.

On the upside, being a martial artist can be pretty badass, as unarmed attacks are the only ones were you add your Skill Level to attack and damage, and it's also the only attack were your Slaughter Die increases as you gain Skill Levels. Someone with maxed Combat/Unarmed Skill has a slaughter Die of 1d12 (aka he crits slightly more than half the time), with a base damage of 1d2+4 + either STR or DEX bonus. This makes your fists better than swords.

Madness

Madness comes in damage-like rolls which accumulate in your Madness score, ranging from just a 1 for intentionally causing severe (non-fatal) harm to someone, 1d6 for seeing a cultist ritual, up to 1d20 for intentionally killing someone for the first time. Reach 100, and you'll probably end up in Arkham.

Madness-causing events are categorized as Bloodshed (killing stuff and see stuff getting killed) Horror (pretty much anything involving cultists and monsters) or Occult (casting spells witout spending Expertise).
As there's only so much crazy you can take in at any given time, so if multiple sources of Madness trigger at the same time, your Madness never raises higher than the maximum possible result of the worst event. Similarily, seeing the same kind of tentacled nightmare just isn't scary after a while. Once encounters with the same kind of monster has caused Madness equal to the maximum possible for a single monster (so say 10 points of Madness for a critter that causes 1d10), the character will never suffer any more Madness from dealing with this breed of Eldritch horror.

So how do you get rid of Madness? Well, each level up reduces it by 10, and you can also take a Delirium once per level. A Delirium can be a habit you've taken on to try to block out the weird poo poo you've seen (like lots of alcohol or praying), something you do to try to make sense of everything (occultism), or just a plain psychological scars (phobias, paranoia, tics, deluding yourself that your green Sonic with pants is really a totally original character...).

There's an example list of 12 Deliria you can probably roll on if you want, but the game recommends that the players figure out their character's Deliria themselves. If anyone's gonna ruin your character, it's yourself.

If you get yourself a new Delirium, you roll a d20. As long as you don't roll below the number of Deliria you have, you get to lose 10 points of Madness. If you do roll below, you add 10 points as your little house of cards is starting to shake.
As if that wasn't enough, you have to make save versus Mental Effect in order to resist all those lovely phobias and compulsions you've been collecting. If you fail, you can still ignore them, but it'll give you another d6 Madness as you're intentionally disruption you're strangely structured life.

As Deliria are the result of the human mind trying to fend off weird alien knowledge that's infecting your brain like a virus, no psychotherapy in the world can make you normal again. Fun times.

Character Advancement

Whereas SWN and other oldschool games have you gain up to 9 Hit Dice and just give you a flat bonus after that, Silent Legions goes up to 10 HD, but gives nothing afterwards - though you do still get to re-roll those dice each level to try and get a higher sum.

Level 10 is also the last time your Attack Bonus and Saves improve. Everything else (Expertise, skill points, Madness decrease) works as normal. And did I mention that everyone gains the same Skill Points each level? And that the penalty for buying a non-Class Skill isn't too bad? Your max level isn't limited, but you have to pay as much points as the next level would cost.

Multiclassing is fairly painless. You just have to know the first two skills of the new class' bonus skils (aka starting skills for a level 1 character). Other than that, you're good to go.

The game doesn't actually expect most PCs to reach double-digit levels, but if they do, they should be rewarded: At level 11 and every odd level thereafter, the character should gain a unique ability tailored to his previous experiences. The two examples include a sniper Tough who can insta-kill humans form a sniping position, and an Investigator who can use his contacts to get at governmental files.

Injury and Healing

Characters are generally considered dead at 0 HP, but PCs and other important characters can stay somewhat alive for around 6 rounds before they finally kick the bucket.
Being stabilizied through non-magic means you're in pretty bad condition and can't recover naturally until you're back in shape. Depending on how badly you roll on your Physical Effect Save, your character might be ready to go within minutes, days or weeks. If you really mess up, you just die from your wounds after those weeks.

Next Time: Sorcery - let's see if I can spot a couple traditional D&D spells.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 19:20

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

Robindaybird posted:

It's bad tracing with lovely inking and coloring.

I'm gonna say it, Soto is tracing - that kind of rigid stiffness that pervades her art is often a tell-tale sign of sometime that is using a light box and copying a model. Or how some art look, I wouldn't be surprised if she was taking poser models and and just slapping a paint tool over it if she can't find a reference pose.

Another possibility is that she's rendering them directly in Poser or DAZ with a comic art filter. I remember the "goat transformation" breakdown in WGA looking like she applied a line art and cel shader to some Poser models.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 20:01

Robindaybird: Aug 21, 2007; Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Young Freud posted:

Another possibility is that she's rendering them directly in Poser or DAZ with a comic art filter. I remember the "goat transformation" breakdown in WGA looking like she applied a line art and cel shader to some Poser models.

Okay, that's a possibility, since I hadn't mess with Poser to realize that's an option. But yeah, Poser is pretty much uncanny valley central.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 20:04

oriongates: Mar 14, 2013; Validate Me!

I'd say its a solid mixture of both. I'm almost certain I've seen that "tentacle coming out of a backpack" picture somewhere else.

Also, clearly a lot of the background and "special effects" are just photo-images or screenshots awkwardly copy-pasted and covered in several layers of filters.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 20:14

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
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In Nomine Game Master's Guide: Ultima 8

Pagan religions, we recall, are those whose worship channels Essence to ethereals, either through pagan Rites or belief. Paganism is much weaker than once it was, thanks to Heaven's warring on it for thousands of years, both via missionary theology and the Purity Crusade. Dominic has banned all associations with ethereals and discourages and sympathy for pagans. Angels of the Sword guard the Marches and hunt down ethereals that manifest on Earth, but some angels want to reach out to the more benevolent gods. And, of ocurse, belief in God and gods are not mutually exclusive. All eatern religions are polytheistic to some extent, but because of their divine associations, they are not labeled pagan by Heaven. Heaven claims that all ethereals are made of human belief, mere Essence-constructs of imaginination, but some claim to predate humanity and Heaven. Certianly, some ethereals have gotten quite old and have received Essence under different guises for a long time.

Polytheists believe in and worship anywbere from two to infinite numbers of gods, though few pantheons have ever had more than a hundred or so and few religions could sustain so many. Once, there were many pantheons - Greek, Roman, Egpytian, Scandinavian, Chinese, Japanese, Azxtec, Inca and more. Most suffered greatly in the Purity Crusade, though in some cases this had little corporeal effect - the Greek and Egyptian gods hadn't been worshipped in centuries when Uriel stormed Olympus and Heliopolis. The Aztecs, on the other hand, had their gods wiped out centuries before the Conquistadors came. True polytheism is rare these days, but not extinct.

Some pantheons hang on thanks to isolated devotees. Odin, Apollo, Isis, Tezcatlipoca, whatever. Their tiny following is rarely enough to empower them, but it can keep them alive. More importantly, even one believer can recruit others, and from enough, a pagan god can gain priests and pagan Soldiers. For this reason, Laurence and Dominic continue to agitate against paganism. The Seraphim Council has forbidden killing pagans after Uriel's excesses, but Heaven is to discourage them, either by conversion or harassment. This has done little to endear the angels to ethereals, or to endear monotheists to pagans. Hell persecutes pagans also, because they don't want ethereals to gain any Essence except from Beleth or Nybbas.

Neopaganism is a relatively modern thing, often associated with the New Age movements begun in the 60s. Neopagans have a vast array of beliefs, from those that worship the old gods to witches or druids to UFO cults or worshiping of Lord of the Rings characters. Most neopagans claim to be trying to reconstruct ancient religions, of which Wicca is the most famous. Most, however, havel ittle knowledge of any true ancient beliefs, and instead have constructed entirely new systems using old names. Sometimes this is deliberate, sometimes not. And even so, this can be enough. The old gods aren't picky. Most neopagan activity doesn't exactly do much, but some of it does feed ethereals, and the more popular deities have gotten much stronger recently. Blandine and Laurence believe that some of the gods neopagans pray to aren't actually the old ones repackaged, but newly made gods. While all of these deities remain weak compared to their past selves, it's cause for concern., Demons also sometimes harass neopagans on principle, especially when they worship gods that aren't allied to Beleth, but they also sometimes find neopagans usefully credulous.

Satanic cults are largely fictional. They don't really exist. The Church of Satan and other official denominations don't really believe in demons, let alone Satan - he's just a symbol of their rejection of social mores. Angels dislike them, sure, and demons can sometimes recruit from them, but for the most part both sides see them as a joke. Mainstream Satanism might very rarely send Essence to Lilith or some other Prince, but it's not enough to notice. Real satanic cults do occasionally form, worshipping demons and evil. These cults do provide Essence to Princes! However, they are inherently unstable, being mostly made of disaffected losers and sociopaths. Few last long - they fall apart or the police track them down if they start actually doing human sacrifice. Demons enjoy them while they last, while angels tend to treat them as Hellsworn even when they're not.

Animism is similar to polytheism in that it tries to communicate with supernatural beings, but they are not worshipped. They aren't godss that provide guidance - they're spirits who give material assistance, or are evil and must be kept away. Most of these beliefs derive from tribal societies across the world. Belief in totems, spirit guides or anthropomorphic traits in nature all fall under animist belief. Ancestor worship is also animist, but a single family could never provide enough Essence to make an ethereal replicant of their ancestor. Still, some thereals are known to masquerade as ancestral spirits to get at Essence, and some dream-shades can be attracted by worship. In In Nomine terms, nearly any belief that creates or nourishes ethereals is animist. Faeries are part of an animist tradition and benefit from those that believe in them. The Marches are full of all kinds of creatures - mythic archetypes, fictional characters and more - who tend to be short-lived, animated by trickles of dream Essence and then getting devoured by older and more potent spirits. Nobody worships Captain Hook or the Tooth Fairy, and few believe in them as real entities, but if enough dream about them, they can live.

Shamanic beliefs are common in primitive societies and also persist in some modern nations, such as Korea. Shamans are holy men and women who enter transcendental states to communicate with spirits. Some are true Dream Soldiers, but others have no real insight or aiblity compared to normal people.

Shintoism is the native religion of Japan, and it's a mix of polytheism and animism. Kami is a word referring both to spirits and gods, who differ large in power and popularity. The Shinto gods suffered terrible in the Purity Crusade, and to stay alive today, they have made a pact with Nybbas. Not all Shinto kami serve Hell, but enough do that angels tend to assume they do until proven otherwise.

Superiors and religion! Blandine has no particular religious beliefs but appreciates religion in general as a source of mortal strength and hope. She dislikes those sects that use religion to terrify believers with hellfire and damnation. David has ancient ties to Israel and has been renewing his support of the Jews. However, he approves of any religion that is divinely inspired. Dominic supports the Catholics pragmatically, as the most effective group at fighting heresy and demons on Earth. Theologically, however, he is an absolute monotheist and comfortable with any Abrahamic faith, but remains bothered by the fact that he doesn't know who or what Jesus was, and continues to investigate when he can. Eli has always annoyed Dominic for his preference for religions and beliefs solely invented by humans, rather than influenced by angels. He used to promote mystical sect over more rationalized views. These days, no one has any idea what he believes, but he's been spotted at Reform synagogues with some frequency. Gabriel was a key figure in the birth of Christianity and Islam, but she has had no direct dealings with either in centuries and was never known to follow any one faith. She receives truths directly from God and lets others figure out doctrine.

Janus prefers religions that are radical or sects that are shaking things up. He loved the early Christians against the Jewish Sanhedrin, for example. He also appreciates religions like Vodoun, Hasidic Judaism and Pentecostal Christianity, which involve dance, song and movement in their rites, to those in which people sit around praying silently. Jean doesn't do religion. He doesn't think it's bad, but it's for humans. Jean has faith in God and does not care about the details. Jordi is surprisingly well-ifnromed on human religion. He doesn't like any of them, except for the bits about not being cruel to animals. He feels most religions are aggressively humanocentric and put man on top of the natural order, and points out that they rarely seem to stop for doctrine when killing things. LAurence is a Catholic in every possibel sense. He believes that the Church is the best hope of mankind. He doesn't discriminate against other Christians, though he wishes they'd be Catholic, and he respects non-Christians who stand against Hell, but he makes no secret of his beliefs. Angels of the Sword need not be either Catholic or Christian, but he encourages it, and he certainly won't like if they speak out or act against the Church. Few non-Christians are comfortable serving Laurence at high levels.

Marc promoted the Protest work ethic, but also approves of Muslim socialism. He prefers religions that deal with pragmatic things, like tithing for the poor or banning usury or hoarding. He doesn't care for metaphysics or esotericism. Michael is one of two Archangels named in both the Bible and Quran, and was an ancient patron of the Jews, and a later patron of hte Christians. He enjoys the Abrahamic faiths most, but finds all religions that recognize God's authority to be worthy. The Christ question does bother him a bit, mainly because Yves is so mysterious about it, but he is content to wait for God to make things clear. Novalis is a universalist - she wants people to behave and not hurt people. She has struggled to avoid being disillusioned with religion and its tendency to cause violence, and tends to focus more on individual actions. Yves was the one who came up with organized monotheism, and was instrumental in promoting Judaism, Christiantiy and Islam. It hasn't worked so well, and he claims he's sworn off trying to make new religions and that humans have enough tools now to chart their own spiritual paths.

Andrealphus loves both religions that make sex dirty and sinful and libertine cults that dance naked or have orgies. Either encourages lust, he believes. He is also working with Nybbas on a religion of entertainment. Asmodeus adores religions that have rules and dogma - especially when there's a lot of them. Legalistic requirements and narrow definitions are all fun, especially when they're written vaguely enough to drat nearly anyone for anything. Habbalah of the Game tend to be excellent theologians. Baal had ancient ties to the Levant and was worshiped as a Canaanite god. He has not forgiven the Jews for destroying his cults, nor the Christians and Muslims for rooting out the North African remnants. Under different names, he was worshipped in many places. Now, he no longer seeks this - he's happy to just see the religious kill each other. Beleth sees religion as a pitiful human delusion to cling to in the face of a hostile universe. She wants humans to use it as a crtuch rather than an aid to stand on their own. She also finds religio can spread fear as easily as hope, and encourages people to see Satan behind every problem - or whatever their particular religious bogeyman is. Belial was once worshipped, like Baal, but he didn't really notice or care when it stopped. He doesn't care about religion at all. Haagenti's primarily contribution to religion was the fact that Catholic priests were once required to drink any leftover sacramental wine, causing them to often overmeasure deliberately. He also appreciated the Conquistadors bringing chocolate back, so he has a soft spot for Catholics...though he also likes Protestant potlucks and Jewish mothers. Kobal finds religion an endless sadistic joke, and has had fun with them all - the Children's Crsuade, Pope Joan, Shabbetai Tzevi, New Age fads - the works. Kronos is satisfied with how religion has played out - it seems to be that humans can drat themselves as easily with it as without it. However, some believe he has studies showing religion leads more to destiny than fate by a stastically significant margin, and if so, he's buried the studies and refuses to discuss them.

Lilith has...issues...with God and would be happy to see the patriarchal Abrahamic religions all die. She resents the whitewashing of Adam and Eve, though she likes having Eve blamed for Original Sin, and she's very unhappy with her portrayal in Jewish midrashes as a baby-strangling monster. (Some whisper that is because it's a true characterization, at least before the modern age.) Most of all, however, Lilith hates rules and morals imposed by religion. Malphas, on the other hand, adores religion as the most useful tool ever made. There is no faith he cannot fracture, and he loves seeing how many sects a belief system can divide into before it starts a holy war. He encourages all of his demons to find religion, and always assures each privately that theirs is closest to true. Nybbas gives people sanitized reliigon devoid of any deep meaning or examination. Just believe, and all will be yours. It's a product to be marketed, and it's best sold without any complex theology or morals. Meanwhile, he is planning to make a religion with Andrealphus based on entertainment and gratification. Saminga thinks it's cool to get worshipped, and his demons have tried to promote death cults, but they never last long. Valefor enjoys that Christianity has stolen from basically every other religion, including the Essence of pagan deities, but otherwise tends to just find moral strictures annoying. Vapula is beyond the need for religion, which he sees as ignorant and outmoded. God is best sought by seeking clues hidden in the universe.

So, fate and destiny. Everyone has one of each, and they can be terrible, grand or banal. Angels try to lead folks to destiny, demons to fate. In canon, a human's destiny and fate dictate whether they go to Heaven or Hell, but some GMs may consider this too simplistic - a single act, after all, damning an otherwise good person or vice versa. Seems a bit dire, really. Angels of destiny hold that the pattern of selfishness and selflessness in someone's life predicts the results of the moment of decision. It's not just one random choice, but an outcome fashioned by the way you live your life. Demons claim it's all abritrary, but are perfectly willing to manipulate for their own benefit.

As a GM, you have to make up destinies and fates for NPCs or even some PCs. Minor NPCs can have them assigned almost randomly, but for important characters, these are potential plot hooks. Be careful about even random NPCS, however - by making a given action worthy of Heaven or Hell, you say something about their goals. The game does have some guidelines, however. Most fates and destinies are modest and unlikely to change the world. If osmeone has a great destiny or fate, they should be important, and celestials will take interest in them. Note that desinties and fates do not need to be a single moment, though. Some are lifelong trends. You might earn Heaven or Hell by one single critical act, but it's more likely to be by following your normal inclinations. Destinies and fates are also general rather than specific - 'save a life' rather than 'save Seth Carter's life.' Maybe it's 'save the life of a drowning man' or 'save the life of someone who will go on to save millions' but it's never so particular that you will only ever have one chance to do it. Your fate, likewise, might be 'kill a friend in an argument' but not 'kill a friend with a baseball bat in an argument about the 2002 World Cup.'

All mortals have fate and destiny. Blessed souls and damned souls, however, have closed the loop. They don't have a fate or destiny that can be perceived by any means save looking into the past. This can be a way to spot Saints or certain undead. Celestials also have a destiny or fate, but not a detailed one that can be discovered. An angel's fate is to Fall, a demons destiny is to Redeem. Most believe that angels, as natives to Heaven, have by definition fulfilled their destiny. Some, particularly those that believe in free will, believe that even angels may have individual destinies. Likewise, demons may have already met their fates by virtue of being in Hell, but might also have even darker fates. As for ethereals...no one knows. Any attempt to read them either fails or produces a result that will change next time you see them. Some say that as Essence-constructs of imagination, spirits can't choose selfishness or selflessnes and so the concepts are meaningless for them - and besides, they can never go to the celestial plane. Others believe thereals do have souls and thus may have destinies and fates.

Next time: The Grand History

# ? Feb 16, 2016 20:30

Doresh: Jan 7, 2015

unseenlibrarian posted:

Other way around, IIRC the quoted bit elsewhere correctly- Transmen are forcibly detransitioned, transwomen aren't mentioned because presumably, the writer's enough of a TERF that they're counted as men, who you can't play.

Lovely.

oriongates posted:

I'd say its a solid mixture of both. I'm almost certain I've seen that "tentacle coming out of a backpack" picture somewhere else.

So do I. I just can't put my finger on where I've seen that before...

# ? Feb 16, 2016 20:48

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Kurieg posted:

poo poo, she used "Transgendered Man" so I wasn't sure which she was referring to. That's so much worse.

Generally, Trans Man refers to a Designated Female At Birth who transitioned and vice versa.

Also,

unseenlibrarian posted:

Other way around, IIRC the quoted bit elsewhere correctly- Transmen are forcibly detransitioned, transwomen aren't mentioned because presumably, the writer's enough of a TERF that they're counted as men, who you can't play.

Holy gently caress. That's...no comment.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 20:51

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Covok posted:

Generally, Trans Man refers to a Designated Female At Birth who transitioned and vice versa.

Right, my initial reading of it was the one that gave her statement a "drastic misunderstanding of trans terminlogy and reasons for transitioning" vibe rather than "hateful TERFy bullshit" vibe. So sort of my fault but also gently caress Soto sideways.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 21:18

Lupercalcalcal: Jan 28, 2016; Suck a dick, dumb shits

unseenlibrarian posted:

Other way around, IIRC the quoted bit elsewhere correctly- Transmen are forcibly detransitioned, transwomen aren't mentioned because presumably, the writer's enough of a TERF that they're counted as men, who you can't play.

This makes me so unspeakably angry I'm literally vibrating with rage.

Like, poo poo people, trans folks get enough bullshit discrimination from, you know, the real world... let's not pile it on in poo poo like this.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 21:21

LatwPIAT: Jun 6, 2011

Kurieg posted:

Right, my initial reading of it was the one that gave her statement a "drastic misunderstanding of trans terminlogy and reasons for transitioning" vibe rather than "hateful TERFy bullshit" vibe. So sort of my fault but also gently caress Soto sideways.

Covok posted:

Generally, Trans Man refers to a Designated Female At Birth who transitioned and vice versa.

One particular thing to keep in mind when talking about what people expressing various amounts of ignorance and transphobia mean is that they're often completely ignorant of the terminology in the first place. Soto writes "transgendered man", which either means a trans woman (because Soto views transwomen as men, so transwomen are transgendered "men"), or means trans man (because Soto actually means what she's written). In any case, it's not exactly in vogue among trans people to call them "transgendered" anyway, but it's not like Soto has done any research for the other parts of this pile of poo poo anyway.

The fact that the text talks about the transgender character being able to change back to their "fully functioning male form" (and the fact that trans women are more prominent in the public consciousness) makes me suspect that Soto in fact means playing a trans woman. But then trying to make sense of this text is an exercise in futility in the first place...

# ? Feb 16, 2016 21:37

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

It also mentions their "True Female form" in the same paragraph, which is why I leaned towards "Talking about trans men", since it's consistent with whole "No, no, their -biological- sex" poo poo that colors all the TERF nonsense.

Either way, this is not a game that delivers on any sort of intersectionality!

unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Feb 16, 2016

# ? Feb 16, 2016 21:52

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

I keep hearing people mention that term, "intersectionality." What does it mean?

# ? Feb 16, 2016 22:04

NutritiousSnack: Jul 12, 2011

LatwPIAT posted:

It's so oddly dedicated to feminist activists and women persecuted for being smart or breaking sexual norms, but not victims of women-targeting racial prejudice or victims of sexism in general. You'd think that a feminist role-playing game would celebrate the victims of sexism, but nope, the only people deserving recognition are the activists, the lesbians, and the smart girls.

OK, the most hillarious part of this backstory? Caine was jealous of the women having more power than men; Caine was jealous of all the magical power the Circe gave to women but not men and rebelled, which tells us that the real issue at hand here are the thousands of years of discrimination that men faced at the hands of Circe. In fact, the last five thousand years of Patriarchy cannot be seen as traditional oppression by the powerful. Rather, Patriarchy is the lashing out of an abused and impoverished group, and the witches who worship Circe are reactionaries trying to regain their own position of superiority.

Didn't the same thing happen in Witch Girls Adventure? Like Witches where such assholes that muggle men blowing them up was in fact 100 rationale and just a means of self defense

Covok posted:

I keep hearing people mention that term, "intersectionality." What does it mean?

White women recognizing black and PoC men/women face discrimination too, often contradictory or supplementary to their own and feminist advance of equal rights. And Vice Versa. It can mean everything from realizing people of color are indeed more likely to be falsely accused of crimes against white women (because of white paternalism) to whitespaling. It can mean issues both face like unequal pay or unequal access to education. The biggest and simplest example is when a feminist writer actually said "Women face more discrimination in America then black men" because Obama started beating Hilary in the polls back in 2007 and how other feminists/civil rights leaders got pissed

NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Feb 16, 2016

# ? Feb 16, 2016 22:10

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# ? Apr 20, 2024 01:05

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Covok posted:

I keep hearing people mention that term, "intersectionality." What does it mean?

Stealing from Wikipedia here because they explain it better than I can.

quote:

This framework can be used to understand how systemic injustice and social inequality occur on a multidimensional basis. Intersectionality holds that the classical conceptualizations of oppression within society�such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, and belief-based bigotry�do not act independently of each other. Instead, these forms of oppression interrelate, creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.

# ? Feb 16, 2016 22:14

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