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Kavak posted:Nothing But Flowers? I wish I had a lawnmower... At least when it isn't foggy, or doing that lovely radiation rain. Then everything is eye searing and even more drab.
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Apr 5, 2016 07:46
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Count Chocula posted:Isn't Canada already a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Queen the technical head of state? Yes, unless that book was written before the constitution was passed in 1982. Before then Canada was technically a constitutional monarchy as well but wasn't fully independent from the UK. EDIT: It was pre-Internet and Wikipedia so I imagine the author just shrugged and wrote what they thought was right. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 12:21
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Count Chocula posted:Isn't Canada already a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Queen the technical head of state? I presumed you don't call yourself a monarchy unless you genuinely let a monarch call the shots. Oops. I'm a dumb American who doesn't know anything about the country less than a hundred miles from where I'm sitting. 
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Apr 5, 2016 13:24
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I presumed you don't call yourself a monarchy unless you genuinely let a monarch call the shots. Oops. "The queen reigns but does not rule. "
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Apr 5, 2016 13:35
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Davin Valkri posted:That sounds like absolutely gorgeous post-apocalypse imagery, to be honest. I think more and more people are getting clued in that a post-apocalypse environment might look more like the involuntary nature reserve of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone than endless desert. Even Wasteland 2 featured an overgrown L.A. in it's later half.
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Apr 5, 2016 13:51
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It doesn't fit with the mad max aesthetic/themes of environmental degradation and systematic control of resources. It'd be neat somewhere else.
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Apr 5, 2016 13:59
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chaos rhames posted:It doesn't fit with the mad max aesthetic/themes of environmental degradation and systematic control of resources. It'd be neat somewhere else. I get that. I'm reminded of a quote in an article from the Japan Times about the Warring States era in Japanese history and Oda Nobunga's influence, when "a physical wasteland bred a moral wasteland - a morality of the sword". That line particular stuck with me in regards to reading or watching the post-apocalypse genre.
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Apr 5, 2016 14:14
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I presumed you don't call yourself a monarchy unless you genuinely let a monarch call the shots. Oops. Don't worry about it too much. I'd wager a lot of us up here aren't aware of it either. 
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Apr 5, 2016 14:26
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 Summer: Henge Powers (cont'd) Dog Powers  Dogs get along with humans better than any other henge. Their powers focus on doing things to help their friends - protection, mental recovery, driving off scary things. They are a bridge between humans and animals. Doggie (0) Same as cats - nobody will be surprised to find a dog anywhere. Dogs are commonplace. Sticking Close (4) If you like someone, and you both appear in the same scene, they gain Feelings equal to the strength of your Connection with them. Petting (6)  When someone pets you in a scene, you gain Feelings equal to the strength of your Connection with them. It's All Right (6) By licking someone's face or whatever, you can make them feel better - they recover from being Surprised or from something getting them down. Substitution (8) If someone might be in danger, you can take their place, putting yourself in danger but getting them out. You might get hurt as a result, but you'll also get their gratitude. Howl (10) Scare off other henge by barking and howling at them. If your Animal is higher than their Adult, they'll be Surprised, and automatically revert to animal form. Dog Weaknesses Collar You have a human master, who gave you a collar. You can never disobey that person. quote:Home (0) Clumsy Your Adult attribute can't be higher than zero, and you can't spend more than 1 point of Feelings at a time to boost it. quote:Perserverance (4) Honest You can't lie for any reason, no matter how big or how small. quote:Sorry (8) Shy You're not good at meeting new peole. When making a new Connection, reduce its strength by 1. After that, you can increase it as normal. quote:I Believe in You (6) Naïve You can't show earnest dislike or distrust towards others. Beautiful cinnamon roll, too pure, et cetera. quote:I Love Everyone (0) Scary You have a big body and a scary bark. When making a new Connection, the other person's Connection to you is reduced by 1 strength. After that, you can increase it as normal. quote:Go Away! (8) Rabbit Powers  Rabbits are exceptionally good at making friends, but also exceptionally vulnerable to loneliness. Their powers are at their best when they're surrounded by other people. Cute (0) Bunny! The cost for someone to strengthen a Connection to you is reduced by 1 Dream. Mochi-Pounding (1+) According to folklore, the rabbit in the moon spends his time pounding rice to make [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mochi]mochi[/i]. You can make mochi as well - if someone eats it, they gain Feelings equal to the Wonder you spent making it. Lop-Eared (3) You can make others worry about you with your super-expressive droopy ears. When you fail a check, you can use this power to gain Feelings equal to the strength of your Connection to one other person in the scene. Help Me (6) You can cause someone you have a Connection with to show up in any scene you're in, by coincidence. I Dunno (8) If people suspect you of doing something, you can use this power to make one person stop suspecting. Lasts until end of scene, persists even if there's evidence (but not if you admit your guilt). Moonlight (20) Draw on the power of the moon to turn an animal into a human or a human into an animal. Henge lose their base powers (but not weaknesses or additional powers), humans gain some weaknesses and additional powers from whatever you turned them into. Only works on a willing target, and only works on a moonlit night. Lasts until story end or until you end it. Rabbit Weaknesses Loneliness You can't act separately in your own scene - you always have to be with at least one other character. quote:Friendship (0) Crybaby For Surprise checks, your attributes are considered to all be 2 points lower. If you are Surprised and don't faint, you cry loudly. quote:Please (6) Lovesick You are prone to falling in love. When you make an Impression Check with someone, regardless of strength, the connection type is "Love". I feel like I'm missing something with this one because it seems kind of absurdly extreme. quote:I Love You! (12) Impatient You always rush and do extra unnecessary things. When you want to use a power, spend 1 extra Wonder. quote:Dash (8) Meddling If you're in a scene with someone who has a Connection to the person with whom you have your strongest Connection, your Connection's type changes to match theirs. quote:Remember (6) Spoiled Except for Impression Checks, you can't try to make a check unless your friends have all already tried and failed. quote:Let's Play (8) Bird Powers  Birds are distant from humans and have their own strange ways of thinking. They are masters of the sky, but have many weaknesses. People take notice of them easily, even if they don't want it. Little Bird (0) As per dogs and cats. Smaller birds can show up anywhere without Surprising anyone. Wings (2) You can fly, and can carry things smaller than you with you. When running away or looking for something, add 2 to your attributes. Lasts until scene end, can't be used if you're in full human form. Wind Song (4) You can change the direction and force of the wind, with enough delicacy to for example move around a piece of paper freely. No typhoons allowed. Gift of Wings (8) You can grant a human or henge the ability to fly, if you have a Connection with them. They gain the "Wings" power until the end of the scene. Rumors (10) You can spread a rumor through town across the wind. Can't be used if it's too far from the truth, or if it's directly hurtful to somebody. Down Pillow (12) If you embrace someone with your feathers, their Connection to you increases by one. Can only be used on a given person once per story, can only be used when your wings are out. Bird Weaknesses Night Blindness You can't make any Animal checks at all during the night. quote:Found It (10) Eyeball In Japan, eyeball patterns are used like scarecrows. If you see any pattern that resembles an eyeball, you're affected by a level 7 Surprise. quote:Flock (14) Bird Brain Due to your bad memory, you can't make knowledge-related Adult or Henge checks at all. quote:Trust the Wind (4) Delicate You can't do any checks relating to physical activity, especially Animal checks, unless you're using your wings to fly. quote:Tranquility (6) Chatter At the end of each story, you must (ICly) tell everyone you have a Connection with anything you found out during the story. quote:Listen Up (4) Distant The required reult for Impression Checks when forming Connections is 2 higher both for you and for people making Connections with you. quote:Twilight (20) Next: Actual rules!
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Apr 5, 2016 14:27
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Dogs look like they'd be entirely my jam.
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Apr 5, 2016 14:30
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Davin Valkri posted:That sounds like absolutely gorgeous post-apocalypse imagery, to be honest. Nature's taking back its turf - and this time, the bears can fly and have eye lasers.
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Apr 5, 2016 16:59
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The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG Part 14d: The Architecture of Fear Time to start sinking out teeth into the mechanics of the realm, which means we need to more closely examine the axioms and world laws. Magic Axiom: 15 Orrorsh is the second-most magically infused realm out of all the invaders. The high magic axiom is needed to fuel horrors, but in practice "normal" Torgian magic is pretty rare. It's certainly possible to learn and prepare a normal spell under Orrorshian axioms, but finding an actual spell in the first place is very rare. Instead, magic in the realm takes the form of occultism, a freeform ritual magic system. Occult rituals can actually be performed by pretty much anyone, even without access to magic skills, and will be covered in more detail in a few chapters. Social Axiom: 20 This is only a single point behind Core Earth (axiom 21), but despite the narrow difference Victoria is remarkable backwards by Core Earth standards. Victorian society is highly bureaucratic and heavily structured. "A place for everyone and everyone in their place". Unfortunately, unless you're a straight white Victorian male said place is at the bottom of the social ladder. Women and members of other races do not have the right to vote, cannot own property, and for the most part cannot hold jobs of any import. Even in a reality constantly onset by monsters of every conceivable stripe, non-white-males are pretty much treated like poo poo. An African man could kill a vampyre in front of Parliament and would be lucky to be given a pat on the head. There is the beginnings of social equality movements in Victoria and Majestic (mainly due to the culture being forcibly exposed to new ideas), but the Sacellum ain't having none of that, and is working hard to prevent the movement from gaining even an inch of ground. Likewise, the poor are treated horribly. Child labor has not been outlawed, and while there is industrialization the concept of "workplace safety" hasn't caught on yet. Children of the lower classes tend to start having to work around the age of eight, leaving no time for education. Not that the upper classes want the lower classes to become educated; it'd just give them ideas above their station. Spiritual Axion: 17 Interestingly, Orrorsh is tied with the Nile Empire for the second-highest Spiritual Axiom (first is Living Land at 24). This is because this is the level needed to support the whole soul-recycling thing the Gaunt Man has going on; you need to have everyone accept the concepts of the soul, redemption, and damnation for it to all work. Priests of the Sacellum and swamis are capable of performing miracles. Technology Axiom: 19 The Gaunt Man has capped Victorian technology at its current level, but really that was more of a formality than anything else; the Victorian mindset did most of the work for him. Because anything made by not-Victorians would be inherently inferior to Victorian knowledge, it was fairly common for the Empire to invade cultures that were more advanced in a particular field and then throw out any new ideas because they were made by backwards barbarians. The main thrust of Victorian technological advancement has (unsurprisingly) been in the field of weaponry and military technologies. Bolt action rifling techniques are fairly new, as are hand-cranked machine guns. Very little development has been made in the field of heavy weaponry or artillery, but this is mainly because most major horrors are singluar monsters, and a slow tank isn't that useful against a vampyre or werewolf that can run rings around it. The automobile has not been invented yet in Orrorsh; instead people still rely on horse-drawn carriages for short-distance travel and steam engine locomotives for long-distance. The Victorians have been building a railway line along the western edge of the Majestic colony with the "assistance" of the native Indonesians. Electric power exists, but doesn't see heavy use. Houses use gas lights instead of electric, and all home appliances are hand-powered (preferably by a servant).  Sometimes Orrorsh isn't very subtle. And now the World Laws. We've covered these a few times already, because all the backstory information kind of keys off them. Still, in this chapter we dig a little deeper into how they work and intermingle into the Ecology of Fear. One thing that's important to note is that anyone in Orrorsh is subject to these laws, even if otherwise protected by a reality bubble. The Power of Corruption is the means by which the Gaunt Man tempts people into the downward spiral of evil behavior. quote:An act of true evil in the environment of a role-playing adventure is often difficult to adjudicate. This is because adventurers and heroes are often in dangerous situations where lying, killing, and stealing is either necessary or an accepted pa.rt of life. Whereas most of us live in a society that considers murder reprehensible, the state of war that exists on Earth sets up a separate set of ethics for people directly involved in the conflict. These ethics state that killing the enemy is at worst a necessary evil, and at best a just and heroic action. The human soul, even in war, often views killing as evil, no matter what the conditions. The book tries to define what would be a "necessary evil" (while escaping, only killing guards when you have no choice; setting one of the group as bait to draw out a flesh-eating monster) versus "unnecessary evil" (killing everyone you come across during your escape; using some innocent person as bait), but it seems like a strange time to start bringing in a morality system of this nature. At least it's one that probably wouldn't require a lot of arguing about the nature of evil or whatever. Anyway, when a person commits a Wicked act they get an automatic up boost (an additional free roll-and-add on top of whatever they would get otherwise). In addition, they get a brand-new "skill": corruption. Corruption isn't really a skill per se, but more of an overall counter of how evil you've been. The first time you commit a Wicked act, you get the skill at a rank of 8, and every Wicked act after that will get you from one to five Corruption points. Stealing food from a starving family is worth one, torture is worth two, and "the destruction of an entire city" is five, so it's a bit of a sliding scale. After committing the act, the character has to make a Corruption roll against a difficulty of 12. If the player "succeeds" at the roll, then the character gains a physical sign of his evil nature. The higher the success level, the worse the change. There are four "tiers" of changes, and you can only have one per tier. quote:Minimal/average: red or yellow eyes; eyes glow in dark like a cat's; sharply pointed eyebrows and ears; forked tongue; open sores on arms. Heketon also protects those who are along the path of Corruption. Any attempt to detect Corrupt individuals or to investigate their actions can be resisted by the creature's Corruption skill. If the creature makes the roll, then the character is unable to find out anything regardless of how they were actually investigating. The second world law is the Power of Fear, and starts with a few paragraphs with a very oddly placed defense of the fact that the Power of Fear exists. quote:There are two reasons that the Power of Fear exists in the reality of Orrorsh. The first reason is part of the logic of the world within the game world, the second is a logic of game mechanics, exterior to the "fictional reality" of Torg. Well, on reflection, that second point shouldn't be that surprising. Torg isn't just trying to be multi-genre, it's trying to be multi-tone. And that's not an easy trick to pull off. Orrorshian adventures are supposed to be really deadly and difficult, as befits a heavy horror game...but then next session you can be in the Nile Empire and mowing down mooks with narry a care in the world or consequence in sight, then you can roll over to Nippon Tech and get involved in some insane shades-of-grey espionage. On top of that, Torg claims to be "cinematic" in the sense that characters can take a lot of punishment before keeling over, even though the mechanics don't really support that idea very well. Oh, right, mechanics. Every Orrorshian monster has a stat called their Fear Rating, which goes from 1/2 to 5, but tend to average around 3. When dealing with a creature that has a Fear Rating, two mechanics come into play:
quote:If the Storm Knights unwittingly try to play for the critical moment when the Power of Fear has not been overcome, the gamemaster should let all the players put all their cards out on the table, then smile cruelly as he sweeps the cards up off the table and tells them it doesn't work. The players lose the cards. That's it. It just doesn't work. Anyway, we now get into another long chunk of text about The Nature of Horror Stories. And I'm sorry, but get ready for another terrible text dump because I'm going to give you the full text of the section. quote:Take a moment to think about horror stories you have read or horror movies you have seen. In every horror story the heroes usually destroy the monster - but only after lots and lots of people have been killed in the process. It isn't just innocent victims who get taken out by the monster. In both Stephen King's Salem's Lot and the movie Alien (which is really a haunted house in space) there is a group of characters that band together to take out the unnatural menace. In Salem's Lot, only two people out of an entire town leave alive. In Alien only Ripley and Jones the cat get off the ship and back to Earth. This is what Orrorsh is like. The heroes go forth to battle the terrors of the night...but not all of them come back. I fully admit that I'm not a fan of the horror genre. Part of it is because I'm a big ol' coward, but it's also because horror has become a lazy genre over the years. Most of what I know about horror comes from my Halloween tradition of watching Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments". I admit that I only know it as an outsider, but it seems like most horror movies nowadays tend to be about jump scares and gore than building up a mood of any sort. The horror is more viceral than emotional. (Side note: I love how in Bravo's 100 Scariest moments, most of it is about the amazing mood and the tension built in "classic" horror movies from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Then they did "30 Even Scarier Movie Moments" and it was almost all gore and stuff from modern movies like Saw or Cabin Fever.) Now, I understand that horror needs a heavy sense of threat hanging over the characters in order to work; if you know that nobody's going to die then the horror loses a lot of its impact. But at the same time, the horror of Orrorsh is either supposed to be things lurking in the shadows waiting to pick off straglers, or straight-up monster stomping. And which one it is seems to depend on which chapter you're in, or which adventure you're reading at the time. But boiling it down to a mechanical value that doesn't have that big an impact on play doesn't really reinforce any sort of genre. So they can't use reality storms or play extra cards? That doesn't mean they can't just find out the monster's True Death and kill it by other means. ...sorry. Back to the book.  Bluh! So every monster has this Fear value. It's (technically) a drawback because it robs the PCs of two of the tools in their arsenal. That said, I'm sure you're wondering what the meaning of the value actually is. In order to overcome the Power of Fear, Storm Knights have to be dedicated to taking down the horror itself. This is done by generating Perseverance. Perseverance is sort of "party stat" that represents how much work the PCs have done to take the horror down. Perseverance is used in every Orrorshian adventure, and always starts at 8. As things progress, the value will increase. At various point in the quote:The Gaunt Man and Perseverance Anyway. At various points in the adventure, the party has to make a Perseverance check against a Perseverance difficulty number. Said difficulty number is usually the Fear Rating of the "endboss", but really it's the Fear Rating of the biggest threat. The Perseverance difficulty is always a secret, so that way the PCs don't know how big a threat they're actually up against. Sample difficulties range from around 10 for a single werewolf hunt to the low 20's for a cult to 27 for members of the Hellion Court. Perseverance checks are made "when the gamemaster decides it is appropriate", but really it's meant to deprive the characters of assets and such. It's a sort of version of a SAN check; you're supposed to make people roll when the encounter monsters, witness an occult event, or come across something truly horrible. The check is made by a flat roll, with nothing added to it. Players can't use cards or skill adds or anything, because it's a "group check". If the group passes, they're fine. If they fail, then the monster gets fear points equal to the amount the roll missed by, multiplied by the number of PCs. So if a roll fails by 3 and there's five people in the group, then the monster gets 15 fear points. That's a lot, as we'll see in a moment.  Pictured: what GMing Orrorsh should look like. Fear points must be spent immediately, and spend to do the following: For one fear point, a creature can take a card from any player's pool, stymie a PC, or spend an extra Possibility for a roll-again. For two fear points, a creature can give its side an up result, cause someone to suffer a setback from fear, or mark a character for death (they can't spend Possibilities to remove damage). So let's go back to that failed roll. 15 points to spend means that a horror can prevent all five characters from negating damage for the remainder of the scene and take one card from everybody. Because they missed a roll by 3 points. I'm sorry, that's loving ridiculous. There's making things hard on the group because of genre, but this is pretty stupid. Especially since the GM is supposed to be making checks all the time. The way to raise the group's Perseverance is basically by doing monster hunter-y things. Researching the monster in quesiton, winning fights against minions, helping people, things like that. They also gain Perseverance when the monster kills NPCs that the heroes couldn't defend. The group can also lose Perseverance by losing fights, PCs getting killed or seeing horrific things they couldn't prevent. Of course, there's no guidelines for how much Perseverance to reward or take away apart from "between one and five points", and the GM is expected to put together setpieces to make sure the players can gain enough Perseverance to overcome the monster's Fear Rating. Once the group's Perseverance score hits the adventure's Perseverance Difficulty + 12, they have overcome the Power of Fear and are no longer subject to fear points or the Power of Fear. (the +12 is because the lowest possible rolled modifier is -12; when they reach the Difficulty+12, they can't mechanically fail). Note that you're not supposed to tell the group they've overcome the Fear, I guess they're just supposed to guess when they can invoke storms and such. The rest of this chapter is more GMing advice on this whole convoluted system. One is that you shouldn't let players game the Perseverance system by doing things like setting NPCs up to die so they can feel bad about it and become more determined. The other piece of advice is about splitting up the group, and is about how to encourage this. See, in a good horror story, everyone always splits up, right? Yeah, I know it never works out well for them but just go along with this. To encourage people to split the party, each sub-group everyone splits up into gains Perseverance on its own, and when everyone regroups, the whole party gets the accumulated Perseverance. The idea being that one group can, say, go research while the rest of the group investigates a murder scene. Which is fine, I suppose. The other given reason is so that, if a PC goes off on his own and is killed, the group doesn't suffer the Perseverance loss. In fact, they'll actually gain Perseverance due to one of the PCs getting killed. Uh huh. -- You know...out of all the ways they could have come up with to represent adventures of slow, psychological horror, this may be the most ridiculously convoluted way of doing it. The parts that really get me are how the monsters get all kinds of gently caress-with-the-PCs abilities when the party fails a roll they can't modify (oops, rolled a 2 first check? Guess you're just screwed!  ) and how the GM is supposed to be so coy about when the PCs will finally be able to face the Big Bad without having to worry about getting smacked because they tried something that will auto-fail.Then again, given what other stuff we've seen so far, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. NEXT TIME: Research modes Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 17:58
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This is TVtropes levels of cack-handedness.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:25
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Valor - The Heroic Roleplay System The Rules And now for an overview of the general mechanics. Combat The combat rules are relatively easy and straightforward, only covering around 6 pages, though that's just the basics. You can pull off al sorts of stuff with Skills and Techniques, but that's for later. As mentioned previously, Valor works with both square and hex grids. The little downside of this is that there's no cone-shaped area effect, so you have to settle on a wide line effect. How long a round of combat lasts or how big a grid actually is is up to the GM, if he even bothers with these details at all. Initiative and surprise aka ambush rounds are pretty standard D&D affair, and the action economy is kinda similar: Everyone has an Attack, Move and Support Action, the latter of which is used for buffs, debuffs and Skills. You can exchange your Attack Action for either of the other two, and the Support Action can be turned into a weaker Move Action that only covers half the distance. So even if you are the party's main healer, you've always the option to smash skulls in. Powerful or slow attacks might require a Slow Action, which eats up all your other Actions. Special Actions exist in the form of Reactions (aka any action you do when it's no actually your turn), Defend (sacrifice your Actions for a bonus to your defense rolls) and Charging (a Slow Action that lets you recover either Valor or Stamina, and may or may not have you stand around yelling DBZ-style). High-level characters can eventually get a second Support Action, but additional Attack Actions are strictly for boss characters only. If you want to hit multiple characters in one turn, you have to get a Technique that lets you do just that. A neat little thing is the Zone of Control or ZoC, the grids around your character (though there are ways to beef that up). This is not only a fancy term for your default melee attack range, but it also acts as difficult terrain for enemies, reducing their movement range if they want to get past you. There are ways around the ZoC effect (like how you would avoid Attacks of Opportunity in D&D) and gain some additonal options to use against people inside of your ZoC, but its nice to have a permanent effect going on that makes it harder for enemies to bum rush the squishy wizard in the back row. Like mentioned last time, attacks are opposed rolls using the Technique's Attribute, unless the defender substitutes for a different one (which is basically the default assumption in this game). Character death happens when you reach -100% of your maximum Health, though that probably doesn't come up all that often in casual combat. Starting characters are rather beefy, with 100-200 points of Health and attacks that deal around 20-30ish points of damage after Defense or Resistance. Oh, and talking is always a free action. Status Conditions The negative status effects of the game. A rather short list, but you can get more through debuffs. Most of these. Conditions with no definite end can usually be removed by spending either a Support or Move Action. The two that stand out the most are Flying (the only Status Condition that's actually a good thing to have, as it makes you immune against melee attacks and lets you ignore ZoC) and Launched, which has you being air juggled for extra damage and really rewards parties who know how to delay their turn, since Launched ends automatically when the launched gets to act again. Criticals This isn't one of those games where criticals hits are scored on a natural X. Instead, they happen if you beat the opponent's roll by at least 10, which is not very likely to happen if the two are evenly matched and at full strength.  [Insert Gurren Lagann refrence here.] Interestingly, the game also has Critical Defenses, which adds a temporary penalty to the opponents rolls. You gotta be careful to attack someone that is clearly more powerful than you. Overdrives These are essentially general Limit Breaks available to everyone. They all cost 3 points of Valor to use and are therefore available roughly every 3 rounds, unless you want to save up some points for later.
Environments Having an interesting environment for the battlefield is always a plus, and there are a number of Skills to take advantage of it. For general stuff, being behind cover gives you either a defense bonus or makes it impossible to target you directly. Other obstacles include darkness, difficult terrain, damaging terrain and water. Structures and Objects Who doesn't want to blow up stuff and punch people through walls? Valor lets you do just that. The game doesn't go the obtuse route and give every piece of destructible environment actual Health values on par with characters. Instead, they have Durability that is generally between 2 or 5 and never really leaves the single digits. Characters can deal 2 points of Durability damage at the most (or more if the Technique is specifically designed to wreck stuff), and you can also add a few tiny points of Defense or Resistance to the structure to make it immune against casual punches. Challenge Scenes The main sort of structured play outside (or sometimes during) combat. They're pretty much Skill Challenges, with a few similarities to Double Cross, and that Lord of the Rings board game by Reiner Knizia: Each Challenge Scene consists of one or more Meters. They can start anywhere between 1 or 10, and succeeding at a check linked to it can make it go up or down by 1 or more steps depending on what's beneficial and by how much the check succeeded or failed. Some Meters can bring the scene to an end when they reach a certain threshold, while others just make those scene-ending Meters easier or harder to pull off. As an example, an investigation scene might have a main Meter that tracks the overall progress, starting at 1 and rising to 10. Other Meters might track the group's favor with different organizations, making it harder or easier to get information from them. While that is going on, another Meter might track how much suspicion the group raises. Each turn, a character can try to influence one of the Meters, using various kinds of Challenge Actions. These include stuff like Engineering, Knowledge or Negotiation, and each can be pulled off with one of two Active Attributes (or others, if if makes sense in context). The check itself is either done against a fixed difficulty, or as an opposed check if there are other groups involved in the Challenge Scene. The former can also quickly become the latter, for you can try to hinder an opponent at his Challenge Action. The Season Seasons are the tiers of the game, with each covering 5 character levels, leading to your typical campaign that goes all the way to level 20 having four seasons. Each season makes it easier for characters to destroy stuctures (with endgame characters being able to punch through thin steel walls and limit break through thicker ones), and they "unlock" access to new Skills and Modifiers for Techniques, including stuff like permanent flight or Anime-style flash steps. In a way, these Seasons model how Dragon Ball started as a silly martial arts romp that introduced more and more crazy powers and concepts until everyone was staying in the air 24/7 and stacking on transformations. The GM is free to allow earlier access to Season-restricted stuff, if say he wants everyone to be able to fly from the get-go. This doesn't really throw anything out of whack as long as everyone has equal access to it. Next Time: Skills & Flaws - those are some fancy tricks. Doresh fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 18:28
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Since I'm super excited to see someone doing a Valor writeup in here, I'll try to pop in occasionally with some insights as one of its writers! Regarding critical hits, it's true that they're rare under normal circumstances (it's opposed d10 rolls, so a gap of 10 points is impossible with equal stats), they come up more often than you think. The first instance when they come up a lot is boss fights - powerful enemies will usually be a level above the party, and boss type enemies also get a flat +1 bonus to all attack rolls, so crits are possible just on normal attacks, without any further bonuses. Second, Overdrives; when battles are reaching their climax, it's not uncommon to see a party finish off an enemy by dumping a Desperation and multiple Teamworks onto a single attack to guarantee a crit - especially since you can Overdrive after seeing the roll, so if you hit by 4, you can use Determination once and Teamwork once to turn that into a hit by 10. I recently ran a boss fight where the villain had the horrendous good luck to score crits on two of the heroes right out the gate, dropping them to critical health on the first turn. They were still able to turn it around for an eventual victory.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:35
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If I had any ounce of Photoshop ability, I would have made an Undertale gif saying something like "You look at the spot where the poor villager was killed by a werewolf. You are filled with PERSEVERANCE!" or something. I'm not saying this to slam Undertale, it's just the way the book keeps using the word "Perseverance" as a quantifiable thing is really distracting. At least Undertale has a reason for using the term over and over and is backed up with great writing and a point it's working towards. It's just a weird contrast that occurred to me as I was finishing the post up.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:35
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 Chapter 3: “Game-Mistress”  This is what the chapter opens up with. Yes, that is a riding crop in the lead witch’s hand, and her broom has a bulge on it for some reason making it look even more phallic. And there’s a Steampunk Rapunzel. What. Anyways, the first bit that is gone over are Dice and the rolling mechanics that Bellum Maga uses. As a reminder, we're using an unholy abomination of new and old world of darkness mechanics with d6s instead of 10s. 1-3 are failures, 4-6 are successes, but 1s also subtract a success and 6s add successes. In the long run it's still a pretty standard bell curve with the number of successes averaging out to about half your dice pool, but if you're insanely lucky you could almost double it.  I can already see many many problems. Battle seems like an inordinately powerful skill and replaces instinct in almost every case. The only unique property that Instinct has to it is discerning if someone’s lying, and I’m pretty sure there’s a spell for that. Whether you use Agility or Muscle for your combat rolls is simple, if you’re throwing or firing something at someone, it’s agility. If you are hitting them with something in your hand(or your hand) it’s muscle. No finesse weapons here. Also: The Magic Skill is used to resist spells. Meaning that any enemy that isn’t also spellcaster is working at half capacity to resist your gifts. Every Old World of Darkness player just cringed. And they’re going to keep cringing because another terrible mechanic they carried over is the ability to split dice pools. And I’m quoting this next bit for posterity.  If you are using a gift you can split your casting dice pool to cast multiple gifts… if you can also split your initiative pool into an equal number of pools. Also you can’t split any pool down to less than two dice, so if you have a Casting pool of 20 but an initiative pool of 4 you can’t do any more than 2 actions. This is meant to be a limiting factor but the game then immediately states that you only roll initiative at the start of combat, followed in the next sentence by stating again you can split your actions but that means you go slower. The game suffers from Final Fantasy time in a really bad way. In most games, initiative is an abstraction, actions occur in order but they also occur simultaneously in the same time unit. In Bellum Maga, each action takes 3 seconds, after which point you sit around and wait patiently for everyone else to do their actions, meaning a round can take anywhere from 30 seconds to a full minute. Everyone apparently gets one free dodge a round, all other dodges cost dice from your Battle+Whatever pool (Which, yes. Means that you can now apparently dodge with strength), and.. Uhh..  So apparently you can split your dice pool into multiple pools if you’re doing that to dodge, and these splits don’t cost initiative, and you can then go on to also do other actions that don’t use your battle dice and we’ve officially crossed over the line from “This game is wildly unbalanced” to “The game is broken and does not function”. I’m going to need more screenshots just to get across how completely nonsensical the game gets, I’m pretty sure whatever editor Miss Soto had fell asleep or ran away in fear somewhere around the 8th ‘Torture/Maim/Kill someone by turning them into a Cigar’. Who likes weapon tables?  The “downside” of Automatic weapons is that Armor and Fitness are allowed to reduce the damage of each individual shot, but they’re still doing more damage than anything short of a superhuman with a greatsword. Someone who knows more about guns than me will have to look through this, but Assault Rifles seem absolutely busted. Also Bows apparently have Magazines now? I would hope Soto had enough faith in her audience to understand how quivers work. Armor is weird, armor subtracts dice from the damage pool of the attack before damage is actually rolled.  And modern military armor means that you’d need to have at least 10 dice in your damage pool before you’d have even a 50/50 chance of hurting someone. Then you roll Fitness and any successes on your Fitness roll are subtracted from the Successses on the damage roll. And the health track in this game looks like this.  You get your entire health stat in HP at every one of those levels. It just isn’t worth it. If you actually get someone down to Dying, they fall unconcious and lose 1 HP a round until they stabilize. Stabilizing requires you to get 4 successes on a Fitness Roll. A roll you’re making at -5 because you’re Dying. Or someone can use Medicine out of combat to stabilize you. Or, you know, someone could just use magic in this game about magic, 5+ hp of magical healing automatically stabilizes you.  I’ve been hit by a car going 10 MPH, I then proceeded to sit on the roof the remaining foot it took them to stop because 10MPH is not super fast in the grand scheme of things. But that’s apparently the same amount of damage you take from being cold or on fire for an entire minute.  Do you like tables? Because we’re heading deep into table country. Tables accompianied by text that just explains poo poo that was either explained earlier in the book or is explained better by the table. So enjoy the tables and pictures while I skip a few pages of transcription  . Apparently the threat of taking 1 dice of damage was enough to make them spend their time limited resource?  Leaping over a moving car? Also child labor, sure, why not.    Pfft, the FBI must be terrible at using computers, hacking a smart phone only takes 3 successes    With that we delve back into the "How to DM a game" advice chapter. It's pretty standard stuff. Have a plan but be flexible, know the rules of the game(ha!), know your players and who/what they're comfortable with. Be cast, co-writer, director, and producer of the story. etc. etc. It spends some time talking about the various types of game you can run but it's basically "Fight the man" "Fight the man" Fight the man(but sneakily)" or "Fight magic creatures that may or may not work for the man". And tones ranging from Adventure, to Comedic, to "Dark: Playing on your players fears" and I'm not sure I could actually bring myself to be afraid of anything in a game this ridiculous. And then the DM takes this time to get political. Antagonists  ....Regan? I mean, I could understand maybe George W, but Regan? quote:Antagonists are the foes of the players characters. Or as the most antagonist think, the characters are their foes. The greatest of villains never see themselves as the bad guys and regardless who they are they should be portrayed more as people and less as mustache twirling clichés.  Yes. I give you, Abby Soto two supreme court justices into women and forcibly impregnating them in front of a burning Hobby Lobby. What the gently caress? Also note that despite this bulleted list of antagonists, the next chapter will actually contain the antagonists, followed by the chapter which is actually the stats for the antagonists.  Black Viper: A defense contractor that "commit atrocities for profit." They're a Serpent controlled organization that works for the Government both abroad and as private security. Corrupt Corporation: "Corruptco! For all your evil needs." quote:Corporation corrupted by the Serpent act without morality, experimenting on people, polluting and worse all in the name of profit. Such corporations are not aware of their corruption despite their dark agendas. Corrupt Government: The game is quick to point out that the Government and Police are almost universally corrupt and the only people who are duped are the populace. Monsters: There are dragons and poo poo. Rogue Maga: Because picking people solely for their ability to rebel and strength of will can't possibly go wrong oh wait. The New Saints Church: A far right Christian evangelical church that is "anti-Science, anti-minority, anti-intellectual, and anti-environment" who see Maga as ambassadors of an evil feminist agenda. The Serpent: You will never actually fight the serpent, just it's minions... which I thought is what we were going over here. Favor Favor is XP, more or less, but it's also literally the Gamemistress' favor. You're supposed to give out XP for good roleplaying, doing something spectacular, being in line with your Patroness' pledge, etc. But you're also supposed to reward, Assisting the Gamemistress, bringing food or drink for the game, creating art of your character, or posting about Bellum Maga online. But there's another wrinkle:  Favor isn't just your XP, it's also your bennies. Why do game designers still do this!?  Up Next: Our Planet is a Lesbian, Big Whoop. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 18:41
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Doresh posted:[*]Desparate Action: Screw Initiative, now's my turn. I recently was faced with a boss (well, more of a sub-boss) that tried to Desperate Action herself out of a hole. It didn't really work, since she was outnumbered six-to-one at the time, but she dodged enough that it was still annoying. Still, this Overdrive and a few other similarities between Valor and the Trails games' combat system has gotten it into my head to maybe eventually run a game in some vague alternate Zemuria.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:47
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Kurieg posted:The “downside” of Automatic weapons is that Armor and Fitness are allowed to reduce the damage of each individual shot, but they’re still doing more damage than anything short of a superhuman with a greatsword. Someone who knows more about guns than me will have to look through this, but Assault Rifles seem absolutely busted. Also Bows apparently have Magazines now? I would hope Soto had enough faith in her audience to understand how quivers work. Looking into it with AnyDice, a starting Furie that hasn't popped her Arcane Athletics or Avatar of Kali or anything will be killed in a single shot of a Hand Gun about 15%, Semi-Automatic Pistol more than 50% of the time, a Submachine Gun about 75% of the time, and an Assault Rifle about 95%. Seems okay to me. An experienced Furie that dumped her 4 attribute boosts into Fitness to a Superhuman Fitness of 7, with a Metal Armor chestplate, will keep her from getting killed but not uninjured: Semi-Auto Pistols while get her knocked down to 2nd level Fine at less than 20%, about 30% for Submachine Gun's single hits, and about over 60% for Assault Rifles. However, the multiple hits from "automatic" weapons will increase the chance of injury or knock off more HP until something bad happens (for instance, the experienced Furie that activates both Arcane Athletics and Avatar of Kali has a 5% of being knocked to 2nd level Fine or 10% of her health, but the average burst increases that chance to injury to 15%). That means guys with firearms are loving deadly, especially to beginning characters and in groups. All it takes is a failed initiative roll and your witches are going to be splattered across the asphalt. Even superspiffy, top-tier witchdom has to fear from guys with guns because an ambushing fireteam can whittle them down to nothing in a single turn. It doesn't matter if you can turn single individuals into cigars or jackasses or pigs, the other 9 guys are going to pump you full of lead. Which makes images like this hilarious... ...because a beginning witch can't handle a soldier carrying an assault rifle and wearing a plate carrier.
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Apr 5, 2016 21:36
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To be fair, the witches probably aren't doing anything to those F-35s; exploding/malfunctioning is their natural state.
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Apr 5, 2016 21:45
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Young Freud posted:Looking into it with AnyDice, a starting Furie that hasn't popped her Arcane Athletics or Avatar of Kali or anything will be killed in a single shot of a Hand Gun about 15%, Semi-Automatic Pistol more than 50% of the time, a Submachine Gun about 75% of the time, and an Assault Rifle about 95%. Seems okay to me. An experienced Furie that dumped her 4 attribute boosts into Fitness to a Superhuman Fitness of 7, with a Metal Armor chestplate, will keep her from getting killed but not uninjured: Semi-Auto Pistols while get her knocked down to 2nd level Fine at less than 20%, about 30% for Submachine Gun's single hits, and about over 60% for Assault Rifles. However, the multiple hits from "automatic" weapons will increase the chance of injury or knock off more HP until something bad happens (for instance, the experienced Furie that activates both Arcane Athletics and Avatar of Kali has a 5% of being knocked to 2nd level Fine or 10% of her health, but the average burst increases that chance to injury to 15%). I think your math is a little wrong somewhere. A starting Furie would have 30 hit points, and a hand gun could, in theoretical math fantasy land, deal 66% of that, but that's highly unlikely. Bellum Maga's d6s are "-1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2" in anydice. 2/3 is a failure, 4/5 is a success, 6 is two successes, 1's subtract a success. The weapon damage is still absolutely busted because a Witch can only surpass an assault rifle in damage with a spell at level 8 spirit, and a handgun is better than level 10 spirit. But everyone still dies to a single failed spirit roll if the other witch wants to turn you into a frog.
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Apr 5, 2016 21:56
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Kurieg posted:But everyone still dies to a single failed spirit roll if the other witch wants to turn you into a frog.
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Apr 5, 2016 22:04
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Kurieg posted:I think your math is a little wrong somewhere. A starting Furie would have 30 hit points, and a hand gun could, in theoretical math fantasy land, deal 66% of that, but that's highly unlikely. Bellum Maga's d6s are "-1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2" in anydice. 2/3 is a failure, 4/5 is a success, 6 is two successes, 1's subtract a success. I used standard d6 so that's likely why. I wasn't sure how Bellum Maga actually used dice, despite looking over your previous posts.
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Apr 5, 2016 22:06
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Because the game is extremely poorly laid out. They talk about the success system at the beginning and the 1s subtract successes 6 double success is mentioned once in the game-mistress section, and other example dice rolls don't use that rule depending on where they are in the book and when they were written in the design process. I edited my post to clarify. It does lead to this bizarre situation where it encourages you to split your dice pools since that's the only way you can probabilistically crit or flub, but you also can or can't split dice pools amongst different action types.Kurieg posted:One thing to note is that this game uses white wolf's dice system, but with d6s instead of d10s, 123 is a failure, 456 is a success. Critical hits and failures still exist, but as "all 1s" and "all 6s", meaning that it's virtually impossible to crit once you get higher amounts of dice, but it's also nearly impossible to crit fail. Kurieg posted:Management Running a business... also apparently "Battle tactics". You can use the management roll as an action in combat to "remove a failure die from the rolls of an ally"...that's... that's not how the dice resolution system works... okay I re-read the gamemistress chapter and apparently 1s subtract successes and 6s count as two successes, except the dice roll examples sometimes show any combination of the resolution mechanics, and the quick reference sidebars don't mention anything of the kind. gently caress. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 22:14
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Kurieg posted:Up Next: Our Planet is a Lesbian, Big Whoop. So, (With the possible exception of Monsters, which haven't been mentioned until now) none of the Minions of the Serpent are more than vanilla mortals, and have no magic stat, so they're trivially easy to frogify or teleport to a torture dimension forever. A witch strike team seems like it has a pretty good chance of pulling off a straightforward assault on the PotUS and his entourage, an even better shot if they go for some more subtle voodoo rather than just charging in. Experienced witches can take on the US military with little issue, if the illustrations are to be believed. If I had any optimism left I'd point out that it's an interesting dynamic that the 'enemies' present little challenge, but considering the 'insidious corruption' of the serpent, polymorphing one corrupt cop/businessman/priest doesn't actually accomplish much. Except the moral kind of falls flat when it's not a 'Giant magical sledgehammers cannot fix the underlying societal issues' because the societal issues are all the fault of an evil snake god. And I'm clearly overthinking it, the game's pretty transparently a power/revenge fantasy with fetishiistic sprinkles.
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Apr 5, 2016 22:51
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 TOUR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM MERCURY  Mercury is not a fun place to live. The side that faces the sun is boiling hot all the time, the side that faces away is a frozen nightmare. The atmosphere is nonexistent, the gravity is light. None of the flyby expeditions of Mercury have picked up anything of interest; it's not even worth trying to mine there. People would rather try to mine Venus than Mercury. This is perfect for the Nazis, who've built a base called Festung Sieg on the dark side of Mercury beneath the ice and rock. Festung Sieg is a gigantic stockpile of Nazi technology, gasoline, food for a decade of constant war. SS supertroops are being trained and kept in constant circulation and Nazi scientists are working around the clock on reverse-engineering even more Ancient Martian technology, testing it and training the SS and Wehrmacht in its use. The fortress is the supply base for the Nazi's efforts, providing their supplies and resources for battle on Mars. They could wage World War II using the fortress' supplies alone and still have plenty saved on Earth and Mars. In addition to the Nazi war machine, there's the sinister Nazi science labs. The doctors are working on three main projects. The first is testing weapons and materials on captured subjects, making them test experimental implants and grafts before using them on their own soldiers. Second, and the biggest project by far, is the raising of Aryan ubersoldaten in isolation except for Party ideology and training to make them reach the pinnacle of human perfection. Third, and related to the Aryan project, is research into cloning technology to create artificial Aryan soldiers without needing a human mother, only a mechanical womb. Out of the three projects, the second has borne the most fruit; the oldest Aryan supersoldier is...five years old. Then there's the worst of it all: Lab 8, home of the Nazis' genetic engineering programs. The scientists of Lab 8 are the most dangerous/most loyal scientists the Reich has and take orders only from Hitler. Their mission is to try to hybridize alien races and mankind or transfer genetic traits. So far, hybridized insemination hasn't succeeded in creating a Venusian/Earthling or Martian/Earthling and the only experiments who've survived splicing make a terrible menagerie of monstrous, deformed or insane captives. For the sake of the solar system, they have not succeeded.  Doctor Ritterbach, Nazi madman/scientist. The head of Lab 8 is Doctor Ludwig Ritterbach, a true believer in the Reich and complete sadist. The doctor is constantly calm in the face of the horrors of Lab 8, and this scares the other scientists; they're either in awe of the strength of his mind or convinced he's a shell of a man about to snap). The fact of the matter is that Ritterbach is probably the Nazis' biggest problem but they don't know it yet. One of the subjects from Venus, a parasitic species of slugs, was far more intelligent than he expected and it burrowed into his spine one night after escaping captivity. Ritterbach is a walking body providing knowledge and mobility for the slug who is actively sabotaging the doctor's programs for its own purpose: to reproduce. The slug hasn't had any success yet (what it wants to do is alter the doctor's biology so it can reproduce biologically through a human host that way) but it's working on it and there's plenty of new hosts in Festung Sieg.  VENUS  Beautiful and deadly go hand in hand on Venus. The temperature swings from 24 to 41 Celsius from morning to noon to night with constant humidity. The planet is full of jungle mountains (highlands) and valleys (lowlands) with only the mountains being safe for humans to explore; the lowlands are shrouded in a fog with temperature and air pressure increasingly dangerously the further one goes. Nobody has gone below the fog and returned. The wildlife is dangerous, most of the fruits are poisonous, it's constantly hot and muggy on Venus and the Concordats (tribes/clans) of Venusians are of mixed opinion about the presence of humans.  The Highlands are the main focal area of Venus and so the main areas are laid out around the Highlands, especially focused on Ishtar Range. The Range is home to the Kind'alkakla (White Mountain) Concordat, a clan of Venusians who are mostly tolerant of human presence. The presence of corporations and nations of Venus are responsible for the colonization of the planet and bring most of the people (and problems). The main places of interest on Venus are Fort Washington, Roosevelt Station, Livingstone Lodge, the Ore Fields, Algontawanala and the Grand Crater. I like how the book starts with the places most important to the Venusians because it's their planet.  Normally I'm not one for slang in tabletop RPGs but oh goodness Rocket Age does it well and does it believably. Algontawanala is Venusian for "Tower of the People", a holy site on top of an extinct volcano in a caldera made of concentric blossoming rings like a ripple in a pond. The Tower (let's call it that for the sake of brevity) has nine rings with the ninth being the outmost and the first ring containing a giant stone tower. The Tower has two purposes. First, it's a place of gathering where the Speakers can come and address the Kind'alkakla or engage in religious rituals of dance and scarification. Second, it's a shelter from natural environments and war, each ring of the caldera holding supplies and living quarters and defense. Both reasons are why you can live on the Tower; Venusian meetings can last for weeks.  Algontawanala, sacred Kind'alkakla site. There's a big problem with the Tower, though: it's on top of a massive radium deposit (which has health effects on the Venusians but that's not why it's an issue). The Allied nations (USA, Britain, France) won't bother with trying to get access to Tower because they have the Ore Fields. Nations who aren't mining the Fields (specifically Japan and Germany) are trying to pressure the Kind'alkakla into giving them access. They're refusing, naturally, and Japan is preparing to try and take it by force. Which brings us to the secret alliance that the Kind'alkakla have forged with the USSR. The Venusians get guns and weapons to help defend themselves (and provide a nasty surprise) and in exchange some of their warriors will act as shock troops for Soviet activities. If the Japanese push their luck, things will quickly get out of hand.   The Grand Crater is the result of an ancient meteor strike. Its depths are unknown, going far into the lowlands and with an odd curve to the impact that makes it look like the meteor bounced and rolled. This mystery is exacerbated by the fact that the crater is littered with ancient machines that don't match any known alien inventions. Any attempt to use them has killed the explorer or done nothing, but the place is considered to be a treasure trove of research. The Crater has its own issues, though. First, it's at least a month away from the civilization of the Ishtar Range and there's nowhere for aircraft to land. Second, it's held in awe by the Venusians. It's not as important to the Kind'alkakla, and they're not particularly happy with explorers and scientists poking around (though "not as important" is still pretty drat important). However, it's on the edge of the Kind'alkakla territory. The other tribes it neighbors, the Jill'yalla and Bwaht'analk, have no contact or relationship with humans and it's up in the air how they'll react to people trespassing.   Fort Washington is home to the USA's 33rd Rocket Squadron and the "Flying Leather Heads", the 3rd Platoon of Company A of the First Rocket Rangers Battalion. Everything in Fort Washington is made of aluminum prefab huts with big fans; it sucks for heat but it's rust and corrosion resistant. Fort Washington is run by Captain Luther Running-Tree and his men and women are "misfits"; soldiers not 'fit to serve' or considered an embarrassment are shipped off to Fort Washington where Running-Tree and the other soldiers can get them into shape without worrying about army politics or bureaucracy. Fort Washington functions as the center for US, English and French expeditions and the soldiers are the closest thing to law enforcement the planet has. However, there's only so many of them. They do the absolute best they can to rescue people, repel creature attacks and deal with hostile Venusian Concordats. They're brave and heroic people, they just need some more soldiers. A lot more.   Roosevelt Station (named for Teddy) is the main port for rockets and travel on Venus. That sounds cool, but keep in mind this is the 1930s and on Venus. The landing pad is a dirt field with aluminum huts containing tools and personnel. Blossoming outwards from the pad is a shanty town of rotting houses, rotting tents and stone buildings. This is where the colonists of Venus live, divided by national lines into neighborhoods of Brazilian, British, French, German and American. There are even neighborhoods of Venusians who have fallen prey to the exotic drugs of alcohol and opium. Roosevelt Station is a frontier town, where people live and drink when they're not preparing for expeditions, weighing their finds or loading ore onto freighter ships. It's not nice and it doesn't help that the station itself is underfunded, underequipped and overworked. But they're all making do, working and surviving as best as they can.    The Ore Fields. The Ore Fields are where the people of Roosevelt Station don't want to end up. What was a couple of square kilos of lush, mineral-rich jungle have been turned into a muddy mining pit flanked by tent cities and factories. The pollution of the trucks, the smelters and chemicals make it rain constantly, dying the mud red, indigo, purple. Nobody claims the Ore Fields except the companies that hire miners to work for them and because it's not Earth...mining or labor regulations don't apply. Workers are seduced with the promise of a free trip to Venus, free lodging, free meals and medical care in exchange for work. In practice, the Ore Fields are a company town. The workers are paid in scrip and are in debt from their transportation and contract, the prices of all that held against them. As contract employees, they can't quit without paying their debt but their hauls are often undervalued. The only miners on Venus who make a profit are the wildcatters (who the corporations are gunning for). This isn't even mentioning the fact that the Venusians really aren't happy with how rampant industrialization is stripping the land of the Ore Fields.    Livingstone Lodge. Livingstone Lodge is probably the nicest place on Venus and that fact is often used to disparage the Lodge. Made of stone and wood, the Lodge is the premiere place for people to come and kill things on Venus. Run by the British, the Lodge offers the top meals from Venusian fruit and meat, hunts of the highlands and nature walks. It also offers bald-faced British Imperial racism. The entire place is like an African hunting lodge with bellhops and servants tending the guests' whims; the handful of Venusians on staff are mostly there to perform floor shows of their Concordat's dancing and rituals. It's a nice place, sure, but beneath the glamour and niceties, Venus is still a dangerous place and people don't like being taken advantage of.   PERSONALITIES OF VENUS Hambtruan is the High Speaker of the Kind'alkakla, a mighty warrior and leader of his people. On his sixtieth birthday, with his fur a gleaming silver, he cast aside the choice of leaving for one last Long Hunt or retiring to meditation in order to become High Speaker. On the day of his election on Algontawanala, the humans landed. Since then, Hambtruan has been the biggest proponent of letting the humans stay and treating them with respect, acting as a direct diplomat from his Concordat to nations of the world. This angers the warriors immensely but not the other Speakers, for they know Hambtruan's true plan. Once the Kind'alkakla have knowledge of mankind's secrets, strengths, weaknesses and technology, they plan to use our own technology against us and get us the gently caress off of Venus for good. Not even the Soviets will be spared, and the secret alliance is actually playing right into Hambtruan's hands by getting his people the knowledge of the weapons man uses. Kaltamala'k is a Venusian priest. Despite his withered and useless arm, he mastered the Thirty-Three Truths of the Venusian religion and proved himself to shrewd and intelligent. On the day of his coming of age, he impressed the elders by reciting the Thirty-Three Truths, the entire history of the Kind'alkakla and the Hashturik, a six-thousand line epic poem dedicated to their gods. He was elected to position of Speaker at the age of 19 and has remained Speaker since. Kaltamala'k originally supported Hambtruan's call to peace, but after watching how mankind treats itself and the environment he can barely stomach their presence anymore. He was the one who formed an alliance with Oleg Akhmerov of the USSR and found much in common with Communism and the Venusian way of life, and is now spreading the word that the time of waiting is drawing to a close; soon they rise and prevent mankind from taking Venus. Luther Running-Tree is Lakota Sioux and left the reservation to fight in the Great War. He stayed with the army after the war and was later transferred into the Rocket Corps in 1934 of his own decision. Venus is a punishment to some, but he has the strong hand the Rocket Rangers need to be the best they can be on Venus. He's getting up in years but remaining sharp, guiding from his heart. He has empathy for the Venusians and realizes how complex the situation is, and hasn't been afraid to go against mankind or the USA to do what he feels is right. Luther is a good man, a reasonable man, and a good ally to have on Venus. Daniel Steinwick was sent to Roosevelt Station to run it when the USRC couldn't actually prove he was stealing/misusing supplies on Edison Station, Mars. His help is bottom of the barrel, he is underfunded and he's expected to keep the station running. Despite all this, plus the harsh environment, Steinwick is succeeding. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty through theft or "accidental" misplacing of supplies and mixing that with ingenuity is getting the job done; it's making him feel good about himself, making him feel pride in his work for once. Johnny Iacoli is a first generation American from immigrant parents who served on Mars with the Rocket Corps as a pilot. He was discharged and joined a French expedition and made gigantic profit exploring the South polar regions at the cost of making enemies with the native Martians. Now Johnny lives on Venus with his own rocket ship, acting as a pilot for hire for people who need someone reckless and daring. Major Reginald Stratford-Collingham fought in India, France and Palestine. He's 63 year years old and still sees himself as a dashing young man. Before Venus, he turned what little money he had left from war/inheritance into big game hunting expeditions in Africa where he turned it into a business for himself. However, the Major was bad with money and leading expeditions grew boring until he was approached by the businessmen who built the Lodge to live there as a guide and fixture. Venus...is not good for him. In the year and a half since, he has rarely been sober, using quinine gin and tonic to control his malaria. The food and drinking has made him heavy, bloated, gouty and jaundiced. But hey, he's the real deal and that's still impressive to visitors. Emily Caruthers graduated from Cambridge as an archaeologist and went to the Middle East, working alongside T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell and playing second fiddle in their adventures. She managed to escape Egypt in the Great War with Lawrence's help (and a shepherd boy disguise) and kept working in the Middle East and China after the war. When Lawrence visited Venus, she came along again and became infatuated with the treasures of the Grand Crater. She's gone three times and has been planning for a fourth, but her willingness to violate the territory of the Kind'alkakla is something the US, England and France don't care for and has seen her deported from Venus or held in Fort Washington. Lisa Wells lost her parents in the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado (real thing, look it up) when she was six. The Unions took her in, paid for her education and used her as a speaker for change. When they sent her to college (for philosophy), she was seduced by radical American Communists and helped them bomb and steal for the cause. She's on Venus under an alias to escape the FBI and is more or less trapped in the Ore Fields on her contract. That's fine with her, though. She's been hard at work organizing the miners and flying under the radar of the mine owners. She's also been preventing the few Soviet agents she's encountered from getting a foothold; Lisa Wells may be a Communist, but she doesn't trust the USSR's own brand. THE MOON  There's not much to the Moon besides the ruins. The native Lunans are all dead, leaving behind humanoid skeletons with strong back and shoulders, possible mounts for gliding membranes, elongated head crests, jaw/elbow/knee spikes, six-fingered hands with thumbs and three-toed feet with heel-thumbs. There's traces of water on the Moon and the air is so thin that you can't survive longer than twelve hours unprotected without health problems. There are roads but there's no writing, there are empty frames and glass surfaces mounted on poles but nothing more advanced that furniture and tools. What has been found are small metal cases with black glass and thumb-sized plastic sticks in colors and shapes. Theoretically they go together and require power, but any attempt at using them attached to a power source has made them short out or explode. Doctor Felix Wentworth is a bit of a crackpot but he's still the leading British scientist in study of the Lunan ruins. He personally believes that the Lunans evolved from the dinosaurs and built rockets to flee to the Moon. His ties and connections make it easy for him to stay well funded and sabotage others, so despite his weird theories he has few critics and mostly just whiles away the hours studying the ruins.  NEXT TIME: Mars, part one. There is a lot to Mars. A lot to Mars. This is gonna take a while. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 22:57
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theironjef posted:Hey everyone, want some Afterthought? Off-topic (I own the topic now, and can off it), A Talking Cat?!? was actually made by David DeCoteau; he has often used female psudonyms for whatever reason.
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Apr 5, 2016 23:29
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Night10194 posted:To be fair, the witches probably aren't doing anything to those F-35s; exploding/malfunctioning is their natural state. Worse: They're using some sort of diabolical transfiguration spell to turn actual fighter jets into F-35:s.
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Apr 5, 2016 23:34
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Comrade Koba posted:Worse: They're using some sort of diabolical transfiguration spell to turn actual fighter jets into F-35:s. That's the most repulsive thing in the book yet!
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Apr 6, 2016 00:09
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 I really love Rocket Age. Just on Venus you have all these wonderful pulp backdrops like the Western's Mining/Company Town in the Ore Fields, the Darkest Africa unexplored jungles at the Crater for explorer types.... I hope the actual rules/role for the Rocket Ranger PCs and their gear stacks up to the worldbuilding.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:33
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 Part 6: Life in Autoduel America We're moving on from the AADA Guide with no transition into discussion of daily life in 2036. Jobs are in short supply, and unemployment is at "30%", which is a bit of a ridiculously high number, but at least conceivable if most of America has effectively become third-world. However, it notes that most of those unemployed are apparently on the ol' dole, which results in heavy taxes. The doesn't make a world of sense, because it doesn't seem the infrastructure to really enforce taxation - or distribute unemployement benefits - is widespread. Ultimately, the purpose of this is to show the appeal of being willing to make big bucks in arena bloodsports, but it doesn't quite follow. This gives a surprisingly minor penalty to job rolls (-1) and we get the big jobs table that came with every GURPS book of this period, now with exciting rules like payment fluctating for independent work! I can see this mattering for some games, like truckers or corporate troubleshooters, but it's a lot of detail considering many PCs (that is, the titular autoduellists) will be living off of endorsements and prize money, not paychecks.  Regular and satellite radio are a big deal, on account of the generally wrecked infrastruction. "Watching TV is the sole occupation of the vast majority of America's unemployed". Action series (like action-trucker series McDade) are popular along with sitcoms, along with sports like autoduelling and combat football. There's also a heavy following on "nostalgia TV" of ancient reruns. Small businesses run "micro booths" which charge a quaint $2 per minute for VR sessions, which are usually played in 10 to 30 minute chunks, and that allow you to save your session for longer serials. It's a quaint notion that people would be playing $60 for a half-hour in the days of 80-hour AAA games, but then I look to the whales of the mobile market and shrug. Guess it's possible. GURPS Autoduel posted:WARNING: The US Surgeon General has determined that playing Micros in sessions of longer than thirty minutes is harmful to your mental health. Widespread piracy of magazines and fiction on computer bulletin board systems has effectively ended the publishing industry, and new fiction or 'zines are published as a cottage industry. Of course, Autoduel doesn't anticipate the web or widespread internet access in general, so people are still dialing in on their modems and Gophering up some files, presumably. Travel for tourism is "almost dead" (which seems to contradict the talk of tourism in the AADA Guide), and travel is mostly done by personal vehicle, "busnought", blimps (popular because of the low fuel costs), passenger ships, and helicopters. Rail is dead outside of local lines in cities. Most planes are around but are far rarer now due to their gas-guzzling ways, with jets typically being the province of the military. The post office is dead, with "Elmay", or electronic mail, taking over in its stead. Yes, this is before "E-Mail" was in proper parlance. Even if you don't have a computer, most towns will have a public Elmay station. Couriers transport physical goods. A lot of people in autoduelling, civil defense, or other paramilitary groups take up "street names", which are typically things that make you sound cooler or adjectives added to your name, like Crazy Joe or Laserburn. Trophy-taking is common after a fight as well in America, like hood ornaments or license plates.  I do like the statement of intent here, which is a bit rare for a game of this age... GURPS Autoduel posted:The world of the 2030s may seem a grim place, but remember - your characters are NOT the people who stand in the welfare lines, collecting their checks, buying simulated food, watching their TVs, and living lives of quiet desperation. ... but also having the implication that poor people remain in their place because they just sit on their butts is... well, with America leaning towards being a corrupt socialist state of sorts, it's odd. And Car Wars is something of a libertarian dream, where the proliferation of arms and a few good local vigilantes is what pulls society back from collapse rather than the more likely turn of throwing it into a tailspin. But at the same time, it was part of the zeitgeist in the '80s that society was at risk becoming a culture of welfare vidiots, so it's hard to paint too broadly with a modern brush.  Next: All about the fella behind the windshield.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:59
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Night10194 posted:To be fair, the witches probably aren't doing anything to those F-35s; exploding/malfunctioning is their natural state. Those are F-22 Raptors, not Joint Strike Fighters.
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Apr 6, 2016 01:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:Those are F-22 Raptors, not Joint Strike Fighters. You're right, I mistook the fat, expensive, but very good plane for the fat, expensive, useless one.
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Apr 6, 2016 01:40
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Wow, that's an impressive density of Native American stereotypes in such a small space. quote:....Regan? I mean, I could understand maybe George W, but Regan Because Reagan's pure evil, at least according to my mainstream Democratic Party parents, a bunch of 80s punk bands, and the intended audience for this book? I dunno anything about math or military weapons, but the image of a bunch of witches blowing up expensive American weapons and loving with the Supreme Court is a cool one. The art is bad, the writing is bad, and the math is probably bad.... but I still like the 'RIGHT ON!', stick it to the man vibe. Things are poo poo and angry in America right now, and we need a bit of extreme left-wing revenge fantasy. Tho ideally this book would only be distributed in the form of photocopied zines in anarchist squats, like one I saw using Harry Potter as a symbol of resistance.
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Apr 6, 2016 01:59
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Count Chocula posted:I dunno anything about math or military weapons, but the image of a bunch of witches blowing up expensive American weapons and loving with the Supreme Court is a cool one. The art is bad, the writing is bad, and the math is probably bad.... but I still like the 'RIGHT ON!', stick it to the man vibe. Things are poo poo and angry in America right now, and we need a bit of extreme left-wing revenge fantasy. Because it isn't a left-wing revenge fantasy. It's not even really a feminist revenge fantasy. It's snuff fantasy and witch fantasy wrapping itself in the skin of a feminist agenda and hoping that you won't look too close and see the poo poo seeping out of the seams.
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Apr 6, 2016 02:44
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The Deviantart page for the Hobby Lobby pic had a bonus speech balloon. "Looks like the two of you could use a little birth control right about now!" Forcibly impregnating your ideological opponents is not cool, even if done in the context of magic. Also, what's up with randomized bolding in comics? I even see this in professional publications and not just amateur art.
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Apr 6, 2016 02:48
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Libertad! posted:The Deviantart page for the Hobby Lobby pic had a bonus speech balloon. Oh.. oh god, those weren't their lapels or weird shadows, she turned them into women and then forcibly impregnated them.
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Apr 6, 2016 02:57
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Libertad! posted:Also, what's up with randomized bolding in comics? I even see this in professional publications and not just amateur art. The intent is for emphasis: the words that the speaker stresses when speaking.
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Apr 6, 2016 03:21
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Kurieg posted:Oh.. oh god, those weren't their lapels or weird shadows, she turned them into women and then forcibly impregnated them. Well. At least that's something that took more effort than tracing and photoshop filters. I'm stayin' positive! 
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Apr 6, 2016 03:25
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Kurieg posted:Oh.. oh god, those weren't their lapels or weird shadows, she turned them into women and then forcibly impregnated them. When this first showed up, I knew this game was going to deliver something really special, and it delivered. 
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Apr 6, 2016 03:26
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