Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
Doresh
Jan 7, 2015
Sparks of Light


How to Make Characters

So this one doesn't really take to long to explain. Characters are created just like in Fate Accelerated Edition - or more specifically a kind of FAE Lite: There are no Approaches, there's no dedicated High Concept, and the only kind of Stunt you get is if you make your Signature Move (because of course those exist) or Soul Token an Aspect, which lets you invoke it for free once per session.

(Of course you also get to pick a Court, though that isn't actually mentioned in the Chargen steps.)

So basic character creation for our example cast is essentially already done:

Punch-Witch-chan
Court: Champion
Aspects: Doki Doki Happy Witch Puncher, Muscle Witch, Witch Punch
Trouble: Conflicted personality ("A witch which punches witches?")
Soul Token: Armwarmers of Witch-Punching
Signature Move: "Witch Puuuuunch!"

Megumin
Court: Champion
Aspects: Mysterious Masked Rider, Magitek Cyborg, Rider Kick
Trouble: Arch-nemesis of Dark Shocker (the guys who tried to brainwash her when she was just starting out)
Soul Token: Rider Belt
Signature Move: "Rider Kick!"

Rainbow Spark
Court: Mender
Aspects: "There is no kill like overkill!", Love and Peace!", Love Staff
Trouble: "Defeat means friendship!"
Soul Token: Love Staff
Soul Token: "Rainbow Heart Busterrrrrr~!"

Sanlossa
Court: Seeker
Aspects: Emissary of Cuddlethulu, Non-Euclidian Strategist, Love Cards
Trouble: Obsessed with Cosplay
Soul Token: Love Cards
Signature Move: "I summon Cuddlethulu in Attack Mode!"

The Aspects themselves work just like in Fate, except you can't invoke them to make a reroll. In fact almost everything related to Aspects is copied directly from FAE, with maybe a few alterations to have more magical-girly examples.

Of course there's a somewhat bigger addition to the rules: the Bond Map. This is a web showing all the bonds and relationships the PCs have with each other, NPCs or locations. These Bonds all have a little description about the kind of Bond, and there might also be a few secrets and other twists attached to the connection.
The Bond Map is initially created by having placing the PCs in the middle and have the players go through several turns, during which they can place other elements onto the map or create a connection between existing connections.

Bonds are pretty important in the game, as the number of Bonds your PC has determines her Hope Points, which are Fate Points, refresh and Hit Points all rolled into one.
Of course this means this web will most likely end up looking like a wheel, as there's really no reason to connect NPCs or locations to anything but a PC.

If you're really feeling lazy, you can just skip the map building and have everyone start with 10 Hope Points. Though this doesn't actually get into details how this applies to other rules that require the Bond Map. Character Advancement (using the Milestone structure of FAE) is handled almost exclusively by playing through additional turns of the Bond Map mini-game (aside from the aspect renaming you occasionally get, which does mention the High Concept thanks to cut-and-paste).
There's also the little rule that lets you instantly recover to full Hope Points by fraying one of your Bonds. Doing so has some weird reality-alterating effect on the Bond: Friends don't want to see you as often, your parents suddenly have more work, your favorite karaoke bar is closed due to renovations, and the park you like to hang out with suddenly has a lot more guys selling drugs.
A PC has to somehow renew a frayed Bond to recover it. Fraying an already frayed Bond will remove it completely.

There are also some special rules for playing as a Knight, aka a magical boy, aka a Tuxedo Kamen dude, or "boy magical girl", as the book puts it. They get the additional Aspect "Natural Loner" and +5 Hope Points, and you really shouldn't have more than one of them in the team. They will also most likely be making out with at least half of the other PCs. At the same time.

Conflicts

I might as well also talk about the mechanics, as those are explained pretty quickly. It's basically like Fate in general structure, except it's all about Aspects as there are no Skills or Approaches or anything. Luckily, everyone's decked out with a lot of Hope Points.

The major depature from Fate is that the action resolution is handled with a d8: Everything above a 4 is a success (though 5 and 6 also come with a Disadvantage aka negative Aspect), and an 8 also nets you a Bonus (aka a critical success). Instead of a failure, anything that isn't a success is a twist. You are either failing forward or at least shaking things up. A natural 1 also gets you a Disadvantage.

On a neat note (though that might be from another Fate book I haven't read) are the Fan Mail rules: Hope Points spend to invoke Aspects or compel other PCs go into a pool out of which the players can reward each other for good roleplaying, which reminds me a bit of Tenra Bansho Zero.

Combat is a uses the same general resolution, though twists are just misses this time around. Monsters and other opponents are very passive in nature in this game: They fight until the PCs have scored enough hits to knock them out, and they automatically inflict a set number of Hope Point damage each round they are still standing. This does however mean that they can't actually invoke their own Aspects.

Next time: Rituals and GM stuff - aka original character, do not steal.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Wait, this is Fate-derived? I thought it was based off Strike!?

Also, the game just having aspects and nothing else seems really...pointless? I guess?

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
It does seem pretty bland? Depending on how NPCs work, it seems like the main way to fight is just to try never use aspects against small fry, and alpha strike against big fry by jamming together as many aspects to hammer your foe before they have a chance to attack more than once. Since defense doesn't matter at all, it just boils down combat into an easily solvable math problem once you have an idea of what your enemy's stats are like

Also that version of magical knights seems really, really lazy. "Oh, they're massively better and kind of loners, but you can't play more than one!"

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


oriongates posted:

Like any sane person I love the Dark Sun setting, it's awesome, creative and weird. Past Fatal and Friends have largely covered the really cool parts of the setting, so I figured I'd shoulder the burden of point out some of the wackier and weirder bits of the setting. Starting with...



Dark Sun: Wind Riders of the Jagged Cliffs
Part 1: Ancient Hobbit Overlords
Oh lord.

Pretty much all the "revised dark sun" supplements were horrible. I'm not sure if it was due to editorial direction, change in writing staff, or both, but it was probably the most visible sign of late-era TSR's decline. I mean it was obvious from just looking at the books themselves! Most people call out the horrible art instead of the original Dark Sun's Brom and Baxa stuff, but the bigger thing was the enormous goddamn margins in the books, at least like an inch and a half of empty space, clearly put there to make them look bigger than they were. You literally got like two thirds the text of an equivalent early Dark Sun book in the same page count.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Yeah, it feels like whoever designed this game almost understood how Fate works, but didn't follow through. It's like it was written by someone who was still in the "EVERYTHING IS ASPECTS" phase of Fate grokking.

Quinn2win
Nov 9, 2011

Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?
"FAE lite" is a ridiculous idea, considering that FAE is already a lightweight version of an already-lightweight core system.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


Asimo posted:

Oh lord.

Pretty much all the "revised dark sun" supplements were horrible. I'm not sure if it was due to editorial direction, change in writing staff, or both, but it was probably the most visible sign of late-era TSR's decline. I mean it was obvious from just looking at the books themselves! Most people call out the horrible art instead of the original Dark Sun's Brom and Baxa stuff, but the bigger thing was the enormous goddamn margins in the books, at least like an inch and a half of empty space, clearly put there to make them look bigger than they were. You literally got like two thirds the text of an equivalent early Dark Sun book in the same page count.

Yeah and they didn't even use those margins in a functional way like FATE Core does. They were mostly used for stuff that could have been easily just put in the main text and sometimes didn't even relate to the current material.

I first got into Dark Sun in this era sadly, but fortunately the sheer coolness of the setting was still strong enough for me to fall in love despite the wackiness. It helps that I was already a fan of the setting through the Shattered Lands and Wake of the Ravager video games.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

ProfessorProf posted:

"FAE lite" is a ridiculous idea, considering that FAE is already a lightweight version of an already-lightweight core system.
And yet people keep trying to do "Fate without Aspects/Stunts/Fate Points/some other thing that Fate needs to actually work and be Fate".

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

There's just as much cargo-culting of Rules Lite as Rules Heavy, it's just way more apparent with the latter.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It does seem pretty bland? Depending on how NPCs work, it seems like the main way to fight is just to try never use aspects against small fry, and alpha strike against big fry by jamming together as many aspects to hammer your foe before they have a chance to attack more than once. Since defense doesn't matter at all, it just boils down combat into an easily solvable math problem once you have an idea of what your enemy's stats are like

Looking a bit ahead, even the weakest enemy takes 2-3 attacks to take out. And seeing how fraying restores all your Hope Points, you better alpha strike all of them before doing so.

quote:

Also that version of magical knights seems really, really lazy. "Oh, they're massively better and kind of loners, but you can't play more than one!"

"I'm a total loner, but I will totally hang out with a bunch of magical girls, half of which I'll be dating!"

Evil Mastermind posted:

And yet people keep trying to do "Fate without Aspects/Stunts/Fate Points/some other thing that Fate needs to actually work and be Fate".

But what if you, like, only roll the die, with no extras, and then something something versimilitude?

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Doresh posted:

But what if you, like, only roll the die, with no extras, and then something something versimilitude?

I think you accidentally end up playing Risus.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

It's not even accurate to half the genre. Sure, Sailor Moon does it, a few others do, too - but then you have stuff like Nurse Angel Ririka where the first dude to get involved is weaker than her and gets his rear end shanked, and then the second dude to help out is...also weaker than her, having inherited the first guy's powers.

Or Pretear, where there are literally seven dudes hanging out with the one girl, and they magically turn into dresses for her and metaphorically (and metaphysically) make out with her in order to allow her to get her elementally-aligned powers from each of them.

Which gets kind of weird when three of them are kids, but Pretear's real good anyway.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Mors Rattus posted:

It's not even accurate to half the genre. Sure, Sailor Moon does it, a few others do, too - but then you have stuff like Nurse Angel Ririka where the first dude to get involved is weaker than her and gets his rear end shanked, and then the second dude to help out is...also weaker than her, having inherited the first guy's powers.

Actually, it doesn't quite work for Sailor Moon as well. Dude didn't actually have any powers for most of the first arc, and even after learning an amazingly named special move and kinda sorta turning out to be Sailor Earth, he couldn't really do much without help.

And then you have Cute High Earth Defense Club Love, which might just be the first pure magical boy team.

You could also probably do a harem-ish campaign of "Awkward nerd suddenly teams up with a bunch of magical girls, while looking like a complete idiot".

quote:

Or Pretear, where there are literally seven dudes hanging out with the one girl, and they magically turn into dresses for her and metaphorically (and metaphysically) make out with her in order to allow her to get her elementally-aligned powers from each of them.

I believe the show's good, but this gotta be someone's kink. I don't think I want to look up fanart.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I think you accidentally end up playing Risus.

Isn't every roleplaying game Risus with clutter?

Doresh fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Mar 12, 2016

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

Evil Mastermind posted:

Wait, this is Fate-derived? I thought it was based off Strike!?

Also, the game just having aspects and nothing else seems really...pointless? I guess?

It's Strike with Aspects in place of Strike's skills and an attempt at adding enough detail to fudge in a combat system because apparently the author didn't actually read Strike!.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
I don't really get what part of it resembles Strike! at all, other than a single-die gradated resolution system. :ssh:

Doresh posted:

Isn't every roleplaying game Risus with clutter?

Well, the three types of RPGs are:
  • Risus plus clutter.
  • AD&D minus clutter.
  • Once Upon a Time with Magnethands.

Hostile V
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Paranoia but all metagaming must be done with semaphore.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Papyrus, on the cover, as the title is a huge red flag.

EDIT for somewhat unrelated question: do we know if there was a particular reason why Dark Sun never showed up in 3rd Edition, but came back in 4th? Did particular 3rd Ed writers dislike it or was there a deliberate decision to do other things (like Eberron I suppose) or did they just not have the time/inclination to revisit it?

And as a follow-up, did 3rd Edition ever have a "low-magic" setting? Acknowledging of course that it's somewhat ludicrous to have such a thing in WOTC-era D&D such that 4th required Inherent Bonuses hackery, but regardless.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, the three types of RPGs are:
  • Risus plus clutter.
  • AD&D minus clutter.
  • Once Upon a Time with Magnethands.

:vince:

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Mar 13, 2016

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



gradenko_2000 posted:

Papyrus, on the cover, as the title is a huge red flag.

EDIT for somewhat unrelated question: do we know if there was a particular reason why Dark Sun never showed up in 3rd Edition, but came back in 4th? Did particular 3rd Ed writers dislike it or was there a deliberate decision to do other things (like Eberron I suppose) or did they just not have the time/inclination to revisit it?

And as a follow-up, did 3rd Edition ever have a "low-magic" setting? Acknowledging of course that it's somewhat ludicrous to have such a thing in WOTC-era D&D such that 4th required Inherent Bonuses hackery, but regardless.


:vince:

The reason I heard was that they were avoiding doing any extra campaign settings due to the possibly correct belief that too many campaign settings is what sunk 2nd edition. So it was just Forgotten Realms for the longest time.

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


gradenko_2000 posted:

Papyrus, on the cover, as the title is a huge red flag.
Seriously, it's hard to understate how shittily the revised dark sun books were done unless you see them in person. Even a PDF doesn't get across how I'm pretty sure that even the paper was cheaper. It was enough that even my dumb teenage self could recognize I was getting ripped off, and I had horrible goddamn tastes then. :psyduck:

Someone take a screenshot from a PDF to show off the horrible margins and typesetting though, I don't have any myself.

quote:

And as a follow-up, did 3rd Edition ever have a "low-magic" setting?
Considering 3e was "Caster Supremacy: the RPG" I have a suspicion that nobody at WoTC even considered it as an option. There were a few d20 third party stuff that tried it though, but I think most were mediocre at best.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


Here, the very first actual page:



And if it's too small to read it starts with an italicized "in character" segment, followed by a second italicized IC segment, referring to the first. Neither of which have enough information to make any sense whatsoever at this point in the book. Then, awkwardly filling the left hand margin is a third italicized IC entry.

This one is even better at showing off the utterly terrible layout on some pages. I'm fairly sure the pdf is missing some transparency with those sun decals, but other than that it's all bad decisions.




As far as why Dark Sun never got a 3e entry, it's probably mainly because they were avoiding too many campaign settings, but I'd also guess that part of it was 3e's attempts at balance (yes, yes caster supremacy all that, yadda yadda. I said attempts). 3e tried to generally give off the look of being more stably put together than 2e was and Dark Sun was not about being stable. Dark Sun was balls to the wall insane. Halflings with the strength of hill giants, starting characters throwing around Disentigration or teleportation as a wild talent. The thri-kreen. It was awesome but utterly nuts at the same time.

oriongates fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Mar 13, 2016

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Did they just...forget to put in some art on those pages or something?

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


Nah, the transparency's off, there's supposed to be that border-like design all down the left side.

They're still atrociously laid out though, and no there isn't any art in the top right corner. :psyduck:

Kumaton
Mar 6, 2013

OWLBEARS, SON

I really want to know who approved this, just so I can ask them why they thought it was okay.

Pieces of Peace
Jul 8, 2006
Hazardous in small doses.

oriongates posted:

Here, the very first actual page:



And if it's too small to read it starts with an italicized "in character" segment, followed by a second italicized IC segment, referring to the first. Neither of which have enough information to make any sense whatsoever at this point in the book. Then, awkwardly filling the left hand margin is a third italicized IC entry.

This one is even better at showing off the utterly terrible layout on some pages. I'm fairly sure the pdf is missing some transparency with those sun decals, but other than that it's all bad decisions.




As far as why Dark Sun never got a 3e entry, it's probably mainly because they were avoiding too many campaign settings, but I'd also guess that part of it was 3e's attempts at balance (yes, yes caster supremacy all that, yadda yadda. I said attempts). 3e tried to generally give off the look of being more stably put together than 2e was and Dark Sun was not about being stable. Dark Sun was balls to the wall insane. Halflings with the strength of hill giants, starting characters throwing around Disentigration or teleportation as a wild talent. The thri-kreen. It was awesome but utterly nuts at the same time.

Dark Sun did technically get a WotC (or officially licensed at least, I forget if Paizo was running things by then) release in a three-issue Dragon/Dungeon setting+rules/monster/adventure combo. It wasn't very big or particularly good, but it was presented as "here, here is All of Dark Sun, you can definitely play The Entire Dark Sun with this". I'm pretty sure the rules were entirely about defiling (which was done with feats, of course), and the only martial rules were "all your weapons are bone and wood and take damage penalties and break." I'd F&F it but I have no idea where I put those issues, and I'd probably just end up being sad.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


Kumaton posted:

I really want to know who approved this, just so I can ask them why they thought it was okay.

On the margin of the second page it's so narrow in places they can't even fit in two whole words at a time.

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


I dug the core revised box set out of the box I shoved it in to forget about it and took a lovely phone photo of a random page. Quality isn't intended to be good, but it'll give you the idea of the layout...



You should be able to instantly notice two things. The first, two inch margins with nothing in them. The second, the paper quality's so bad that you can see the other page through it. It's barely a step above newsprint. And yes, more papyrus. :psyduck:

Kumaton
Mar 6, 2013

OWLBEARS, SON

Asimo posted:


The second, the paper quality's so bad that you can see the other page through it. It's barely a step above newsprint. And yes, more papyrus. :psyduck:

Wow, that paper. I'd imagine anyone with stronger hands than a sickly child would tear through that poo poo whenever they turn the page.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

and if you accidentally spill something, you might as well throw it away as the act of dabbing would tear it apart, and the ink will probably run even if you just let it air-dry.

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


Sorry for harping on it but it was really bad, and held up even worse compared to the original Dark Sun stuff. I'm still pissed about being ripped off by TSR despite it being over twenty years ago. :colbert:

I recall a lot of the revised supplements missing the core themes by a mile and being badly written in general, but it's been so long that I can't give good examples.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


Preservers and Defilers was probably one of the worst offenders because unlike Windriders it wasn't as easy to ignore, since it was all about wizardry in general. Some of the wizard kits were pretty bad/crazy. I think the Cerulean wizard may have been one of the worst...but that was also because the Cerulean storm in general was dumb.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
I do remember a specific wave in RPG publishing where a lot of books were like that- lots of white empty space for no adequately explained reason.

(Ironically, right in the middle of that trend we got D&D 3rd edition which went the exact opposite direction.)

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Maxwell Lord posted:

I do remember a specific wave in RPG publishing where a lot of books were like that- lots of white empty space for no adequately explained reason.

I'm pretty sure it was the same reason high school student essays have as much white space as they can get away with.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Planescape always had those weird metal strips that broke pages up. As much as I loved the line, it always seemed like a self-indulgent waste of space.

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


Kai Tave posted:

I'm pretty sure it was the same reason high school student essays have as much white space as they can get away with.
Pretty much, it's to pad the books out so they have a larger page count with less actual text. It's a pretty blatant and transparent sort of padding trick, which is why all those high school english classes yell at you for doing it. :v:

Mind you, margins in general are sometimes useful. It helps with the layout, gives you some space so text isn't too close to the binding, and stuff like that, and decent RPGs and textbooks use them for sidebars and annotations and such. That... isn't really the case with revised dark sun here.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!




Wind Riders Of The Jagged Cliffs
Part 2: A Brief History of Athas

This was touched on in the last Fatal and Friends entry for Dark Sun but for those who don't know (and just to torment those who do know all over again), the Revised edition of Dark Sun came with a whole new and much longer history of the planet.

Originally Athas was basically just the post-apocalyptic version of a more normal fantasy world. One with less magic and metal, but still pretty normal. Then wizards in general, and the Sorcerer Kings in particular, got so pissy with each other that the drained the life from the entire planet in wars of domination, leaving it the empty burning husk it is now.

Well, in Revised it turns out that Athas is actually post-post-apocalyptic. This "true" history of Athas is deeply tied in with the halflings, because they are actually the precursor to most other intelligent species.


First there was the Blue Age, when Athas was covered by water. The name isn't just about the water either, because back then the sun of Athas was an adorable little blue dwarf star. Except for a few islands (now mountain ranges) the entire planet was one big ocean. There were two dominant species at the time: the primitive ancestors of the Thri-Kreen and the halflings. The thri-kreen of the time were barely sentient and were mostly just seen as dangerous predators. The halflings on the other hand were in the midst of a golden age.

Back then there was no magic, no psionics. Elemental clerics may have existed but it seems unlikely (or if they did they were few and far between). Instead, halfling civilization was based on life-shaping. This vaguely defined technology began with the discovery of a type of coral that could be manipulated to grow into desired shapes. From there they advanced more and more in the art of manipulating and breeding living things into full-blown genetic manipulation.

The ancient halflings learned that they could transform living things into tools, servants, and even buildings and vehicles. Of course it notes that they respected life (they totally didn't) and refused to think of the organisms they created as mere tools (they totally did) and would never take their power for granted or abuse it (they totally would).

For centuries the ancient halflings lived the high life in their bio-tech waterworld. Two of their greatest centers of civilization were the city of Tyr'agi (which would be based around the Tyr region near the Ringing Mountains, islands at the time) and the island chain that stands where the Jagged Cliffs are now located.

Of course then things went to poo poo. The halflings were trying to work on a way to make the sea a better source of food to expand their civilization further, but accidentally created a brown algae which killed natural and life-shaped organisms in the water (i.e. pretty much everything). The ancient life shapers were apparently completely unable to stop this and the only solution they could come up with was the Pristine Tower (heloooo metaplot). The Pristine Tower is a huge...thing. It's presumably life-shaped but its abilities and function doesn't really jive with lifeshaping in any sensible way.

The Pristine Tower could take power from the sun. Not in the sense of a giant solar power plant (or a literal plant), but in the sense of actually draining energy directly from the sun itself. Don't ask how bio-engineering made this possible. Anyway, the halfling elite lifeshapers triggered and harnessed a small nova event in their sun, transforming it from a blue dwarf to a yellow sun. They successfully destroyed the Brown Tide but the increased temperature (and presumably the energy unleashed by the Tower itself) caused most of the seas to evaporate, effectively destroying halfling civilization as none of their cities depended on the sea (not just for food, but literally since their buildings were actual living creatures).

Thus began the Green Age. The two major halfling states were now separated by miles and miles of dry land and whole new geography. The halflings to the East (in the Tyr region) basically decided that halflings screwed up the world so badly that they shouldn't exist anymore so they initiated what they called the "Rebirth", triggering a massive evolutionary surge and effectively transforming all but a handful of halflings into whole new races: the demihuman and humaniod species.

Meanwhile, the Halflings of the jagged cliffs were pretty confused by what was going on (the whole business with the Pristine Tower was far away from them) and they struggled to preserve their technology and history. They were largely entirely ignorant of the Rebirth movement from the other halflings and have no idea that humans and other species are actually descendants of the original ancient halflings. They stuck so fiercely to their homes that they still had no idea why any of these dramatic changes occurred.

Isolated on the cliffs they eventually learned to adapt to the world (which during the Green Age was still quite nice. Prime real estate). In the early days of their rebuilding process they were led by High Lord Rhan Thes-onel. He is the only high lord anyone still remembers and is (by default) considered the greatest. After keeping his people safe and secure during the chaos following the end of the Blue Age the High Lord left the Jagged Cliffs with an expeditionary force to figure out what the hell was going on. He told his people to wait for his return.

They may have taken that order a bit too seriously. They've been waiting 14,000 years

The power of the Pristine Tower had one other really big effect that it took a little while for everyone to notice, it's vast warping of global life was responsible for the creation of psionics. In the rest of the world this led to the creation of advanced psionic mastery and entire civilizations (like Saragar) flurished by harnessing psionic powers. Even animals and plants started to develop them, and so did the halflings of the jagged cliffs...

..but since it wasn't life-shaping they decided to say "screw this" and ignored them. Other than wild talents, psionics was never really recognized in the Jagged Cliffs.

Unknown to the Halflings the end of the Green Age would start right under their feet. You see, one of the new races were beings called Pyreen, a kind of perfect fusion of all the other races who possessed both exceptional psionic power and natural attunement with nature (in the form of clerical or druidic powers). They're awesome like that. Well one Pyreen, named Rajaat was born deformed. And the Pyreen being the nature-loving, enlightened psi-hippies that they were shunned the hell out of him. So he became bitter and generally pissed off. However, he was exceptionally intelligent and psionically gifted. He fled to the forests that ran along the base of the Jagged Cliffs and performed experiments there, eventually uncovering the secrets of arcane magic. His education in defiling magic is what destroyed the ecosystem of the forest and created the huge swamp that runs all along the base of the cliffs.

Even worse, Rajaat found out about the history of the halflings and the blue age. Convinced that the Green Age and everything it spawned were aberrations he decided to dedicate himself to returning the world to the halflings. Teaming up with a small number of halflings from outside the Jagged Cliffs who still knew the ancient secrets he developed a plan. First, he spread knowledge of magic, specifically so he could recruit his Champions, powerful psionicists who also showed exceptional talent for magic and a tendency towards racism. Since humans were the most adept magic-users he recruited only Human champions and told them he wanted to lead them on a xenocidal war to wipe out the other races. He then found and used the Pristine Tower again to empower his champions further, turning them into "elemental conduits" which allows them to grant spells to their followers (i.e. the Templars).

Of course, the use of the Pristine tower damaged the sun further (turning it dark) and the ensuing war of extermination used so much defiling magic that it killed most of Atha's remaining ecosystem. How any of this was supposed to help return the world to the blue age is unknown because eventually the Champions turned on Rajaat and stuck him in a pocket dimension.

This all still pretty much went over the halflings heads as they weren't even aware the other races existed let alone that they were killing one another. Rajaat intended to return the world to the halflings after the wars ended so he forbade his champions from traveling to the jagged cliffs and none of them bothered to do so after they turned on him. So once again huge global changes occured and still the halflings just stuck to their cliffs...but now its much hotter and drier.

Oh, and worse life-shaping is dying out. You see, few of the Life Shaping masters survived the Blue Age and they were too careful with their knowledge to teach it effectively so bit by bit it began to die out. The modern halflings have life-shaped constructs and can still perform life-shaping...but they don't know how it actually works. They can only perform it through rote ritual without any knowledge of the underlying science and they're too scared of screwing up to experiment with it. So bit by bit the art is dying and the ancient and powerful life-shaped wonders are slowly dying off in a more literal sense.

Even worse, to the West of the cliffs is the empire of the Thri-Kreen, a militaristic army of bug-men who are (ironically) kind of better at life-shaping than the halflings by now and are eager to sweep East to conquer new lands. The Jagged Cliffs are all that stands in their way.

Oh, and there's lots of earthquakes now, which isn't great news when you life on a cliff.

Next, halfling society!

Grnegsnspm
Oct 20, 2003

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarian 2: Electric Boogaloo

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Planescape always had those weird metal strips that broke pages up. As much as I loved the line, it always seemed like a self-indulgent waste of space.

New thread title. FATAL & Friends 2016: a self-indulgent waste of space

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I don't really get what part of it resembles Strike! at all, other than a single-die gradated resolution system. :ssh:

And I thought Strike! had actual tactical combat, like a rules-light 4e.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, the three types of RPGs are:
  • Risus plus clutter.
  • AD&D minus clutter.
  • Once Upon a Time with Magnethands.

I think you're forgetting AD&D plus clutter, for Synnibarr and stuff.

Terrible Opinions posted:

The reason I heard was that they were avoiding doing any extra campaign settings due to the possibly correct belief that too many campaign settings is what sunk 2nd edition. So it was just Forgotten Realms for the longest time.

Who really needs such silly settings as Planescape?

Robindaybird posted:

and if you accidentally spill something, you might as well throw it away as the act of dabbing would tear it apart, and the ink will probably run even if you just let it air-dry.

I think you can tear it apart by coughing too close to it.

Grnegsnspm posted:

New thread title. FATAL & Friends 2016: a self-indulgent waste of space

If only I could write my posts here in Papyrus and with margins.

Doresh fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Mar 13, 2016

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.
Speaking of paper you can tear by looking at it, has anyone ever done the DCU RPG from WEG? Or have all surviving copies been destroyed because they were literally printed on newsprint grade paper to be 'just like comics'

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Doresh posted:

I think you're forgetting AD&D plus clutter, for Synnibarr and stuff.

I'm not convinced Synnibarr is more complicated than AD&D. I mean, seriously.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


Rolemaster then? :v:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5