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Mover
Jun 30, 2008


I like it because its resonant with the symbol of the changing moon--you have your three big states but then these gibbous, waxing or waning places in between.

Honestly, I think the mechanics would look similar even if you got rid of them. While human form and wolf form are essentially non supernatural registering camouflage, you'd still want to give players the ability to manifest claws or extra strength in human form occasionally, or incredible speed and supernaturally bleeding wounds in wolf form. If only because going full werewolf is supposed to be big deal and scary as hell.

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Simian_Prime
Nov 6, 2011

When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.
Not sure how it plays out in practice, but in theory a variety of forms makes things more interesting for players. It makes a better dynamic if players can take different forms and gain a tactical advantage for it. Changing to hybrid form and just biting problems until they die is the Werewolf version of just saying "I hit it with my sword" over and over again in D&D combat.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Mors Rattus posted:

Werewolf senses are also vastly more potent than humans, and they get much more sensory input. Human experience is unable to comprehend it. Wolf forms grant them the power to smell prey, to hear it coming, to chase it for miles without tiring. And more than that, they notice why humans are 'prey'. Most humans are complacent, blind to threats. They think they're safe. They have no overt predators, so they live without fear of predation. While not all werewolves hunt humans, and certainly no werewolf hunts all humans, the Uratha can't help but notice prey behavior. People notice violence and shy away from it, keeping together in herds for protection. Werewolf instincts can't help but respond to it. The fact that these cues are often caused by a werewolf's presence just exacerbates the problem. And of course, the senses can't be turned off. They're always there. You can always smell the delicious meat, the sweat, the fear. You notice the nervous tics, the desire to flee. An Uratha can eventually discover just about anything their prey would want to hide, any clues to their behavior. But they can never go back to being human.

Huh, now I'm wondering how werewolves react to things like Demons, who specifically don't have all those nervous tics and such; given how honed their senses are, there's no way there werewolves wouldn't notice it.


Also, on the topic of werewolf forms, I agree that having the extra ones is probably better, even if it takes a little effort to learn the names and what they do. As was pointed out, it does match the moon phase thing rather well: Human - Big hairy human - Werewolf - Big wolf - Normal wolf. They all have uses, and also different werewolf stories and legends can support any or all of those forms, so it's not like there isn't precedent to werewolves becoming monster wolves instead of or in addition to normal ones, etc.

MollyMetroid
Jan 20, 2004

Trout Clan Daimyo


Part Three: The Hero’s Handbook

The Hero’s Handbook is the starting point for anyone who wants to make their own character instead of using one of the pregens - a fair enough position to take for an RPG. On the inside cover is a summary of the steps in creating characters. Only three races (human, elf, and dwarf) are represented in the Beginner Box, and only the four classes already spotted in the pregens (that’d be Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue.) A positive note, by the way, is that the picture they used to represent the Human race is a headshot of Seelah, the Paladin Iconic character.


Who is awesome.

Paizo are, as I said, in my previous post, really serious about diversity and inclusivity. It’s one of the things they’re really good at.

Rules, less so:



There are also page references for each step of character creation listed. A handy reference, overall, and in an easily located spot. Next, the book has a brief solo choose your own adventure style introductory adventure of 23 paragraphs - not really a lot of choices, a couple of places where you can die (through combat damage or trap damage plus combat damage) but overall a relatively simple dungeon. You fight a goblin, rescue a captured kid, encounter a trap and a dungeon mold hazard, and defeat a skeleton, then get like 500 gold and a magic sword as a reward. It uses very simplified rules, but gets the point across well enough.

Immediately following this is an example of play - we’ve all seen these. This one is nothing special. Then the remainder of the book is spent on the step by step process of creating a character. This actually covers everything that is needed, clearly outlined at each step, to create a full first level Pathfinder character, albeit with a very limited selection of choices available for spells and feats, and of course, races and classes. That said, by following the guidelines in the book, you’ll basically have a character that could be played alongside characters created with the core rulebook and other supplements. It also has the steps needed to level up to 5th level, and once the guided tour is done, suggested and simplified builds for each class are listed.

There are a total of about 30 feats listed, and maybe a dozen spells for each level of spellcasting that will be reached by wizard and cleric (so a dozen level 1, a dozen level 2, and a dozen level 3 options--a page for each level.) Mostly they are not of the type to render non-casters irrelevant, partly due to the limited selection and partly due to the low level nature of the Beginner Box.

This is one of the most straightforward guides I’ve seen on how to make a simple character. It holds the reader’s hand through the process, never offers so many options as to overwhelm, and gives enough direction that nobody should be coming out of the process with an unplayable wreck, assuming they didn’t roll for poo poo when they were generating stats. Rolling for stats is honestly the only problem I have with this portion of the Beginner Box, but I hesitate to suggest that point buy would have been a simpler option for new players. A single array of ability scores, built to match a point buy selection that should provide a decent range of high and lows, might have been better, but if rolling for ability scores is the worst sin this box commits it’s still doing better than many of the games covered elsewhere in this thread.

I mean, let’s face it, Beast it ain’t.

The Hero’s Handbook wraps up with an explanation of how PCs do things, including some simplified rules for exploration and a simplified combat system (it doesn’t include, among other things, attacks of opportunity, for example, though critical hits are included and explained clearly.) On the inside back cover there’s a glossary of terms, on the back cover proper there’s a summary of combat sequence and a reprint of the same flanking diagram and roll calculations shown within the book - always nice to have quick reference charts.

I'm not going bother summarizing the character creation rules or the combat rules--I can't imagine that folks aren't familiar with how creating a Pathfinder character works or how combat works in what is basically a D&D clone. Those truly interested can refer to the PRD. The main thing is, the book lays it out clearly and is easy enough to understand that new players should be able to get a game going and, if not get all the rules right (there's a lot to know, after all, even stripped down,) at least have a pretty reasonable facsimile and have a good time with the pack-in adventure..

As an amusing side note, the art in the book is fairly in keeping with Paizo’s standard production values (good, in general.) Remember how I talked about Regdar, D&D 3rd Edition’s Iconic Fighter, dying a lot in art?


Meet Lem. Lem’s the Iconic Bard for Pathfinder. Unlike Regdar, this isn’t an average day for Lem.

Next time: the Game Master’s Guide.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Simian_Prime posted:

Not sure how it plays out in practice, but in theory a variety of forms makes things more interesting for players. It makes a better dynamic if players can take different forms and gain a tactical advantage for it. Changing to hybrid form and just biting problems until they die is the Werewolf version of just saying "I hit it with my sword" over and over again in D&D combat.

And it works, though it's best if you have guys in Dalu (Lon Chaney) shooting it at the same time.

Roland Jones posted:

Huh, now I'm wondering how werewolves react to things like Demons, who specifically don't have all those nervous tics and such; given how honed their senses are, there's no way there werewolves wouldn't notice it.

I think the penalty to social roles was removed in 2nd Edition, though most Uratha are scary motherfuckers in their own right. Demons have total control over their cover's emotional appearance IIRC, so they would learn to fake being scared of people like that or cause suspicion. Though I imagine something would smell wrong anyway.

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Kavak posted:

And it works, though it's best if you have guys in Dalu (Lon Chaney) shooting it at the same time.

In the first edition, it was actually a sucker's game to ever go full wolfman, because going Dalu and using a giant gun/weapon was far more effective and came without the downside of uncontrollable berserker rage.

In 2e...well, Gauru is a hell of a lot more effective now.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Urshul (Dire Wolf) form was best for combat because it didn't carry the heavy frenzy risk and you could stay in it indefinitely.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
My favorite Forsaken Lodge is The Lodge of the Crossroads, from Blasphemies. They specialize in american folklore and legends, and were supposedly founded by a wolf who saw a bluesman sell his soul at the crossroads.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kavak posted:

I think the penalty to social roles was removed in 2nd Edition, though most Uratha are scary motherfuckers in their own right. Demons have total control over their cover's emotional appearance IIRC, so they would learn to fake being scared of people like that or cause suspicion. Though I imagine something would smell wrong anyway.

I actually wasn't thinking of it in the context of seeing a full on werewolf and reacting appropriately, but just a werewolf interacting with or watching a demon at all. Barring the demon manufacturing a million subtle signs, the wolf should be able to notice that there's something off about this individual. Though smell's one I wouldn't expect them to be suspicious of, unless the demon's been up to weird things (or is glitching out, but that's a different story); their Covers let them pass as human, after all, so they should smell human too. The issue is how they act, and the tiny things that humans don't even notice that a demon doesn't do unless they're consciously emulating them.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Roland Jones posted:

I actually wasn't thinking of it in the context of seeing a full on werewolf and reacting appropriately, but just a werewolf interacting with or watching a demon at all. Barring the demon manufacturing a million subtle signs, the wolf should be able to notice that there's something off about this individual. Though smell's one I wouldn't expect them to be suspicious of, unless the demon's been up to weird things (or is glitching out, but that's a different story); their Covers let them pass as human, after all, so they should smell human too. The issue is how they act, and the tiny things that humans don't even notice that a demon doesn't do unless they're consciously emulating them.

The penalty was in all forms and was a holdover from Apocalypse.

If that's the case than anybody trained to watch people should be able to pick out a demon. Someone more familiar with that game needs to decide that, though.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Count Chocula posted:

I never got why werewolves had 5 forms instead of just Human, Wolf, and Giant Wolf-Monster. But it is the WoD line that makes the least sense to me in general.

As other people said, it has to do with the phases of the moon, and also the differing representations of the werewolf in our culture. the big hulking bipedal wolf-man thing that Apocalypse and Forsaken thrive on wasn't all that common in media. More often than not you had something like the Lon Cheney wolfman or just a really loving huge wolf. Van Helsing is really the only movie I can think of off the top of my head that had a real Crinos/Gauru looking werewolf man.

Also Forsaken 2e tried to give the differing forms some kind of purpose and actually gave them mechanical benefits to do so. The Man-Shape is for blending in and literally gets a mechanical bonus to hide in a crowd. The Near-Man is for singling the prey out, and has an ability where you basically go "What can he do to you that I can't do worse, get out of my way" on an instinctual level (Said ability is called "Badass Motherfucker" :allears:). The Wolf Form is for chasing the prey, and gets a bonus to running in a foot-chase and can pre-empt a targets actions. The Near Wolf is for harrying the prey, and can apply free tilts to make the resulting combat easier. But the Gauru form is for killing, and it's second only to a Demon going loud at doing that.

I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

Kavak posted:

If that's the case than anybody trained to watch people should be able to pick out a demon. Someone more familiar with that game needs to decide that, though.

It's not a thing Demon stresses. There are no rolls made to avoid being an unblinking, perfectly steady creepo who people can tell is in some way weird, and the fluff generally seems to assume that, while demons don't have to perform any natural human tics, most don't find it a great effort to keep up enough from day to day. Some demons do seem to come across as plastic and unsettling, while others are such good liars that their body language can present "unconscious" tics entirely counter to how they're really feeling, but the game doesn't treat it as a risk factor or a big influence.

I figure your average demon probably reproduces enough little human tics that a werewolf couldn't sniff them out as something wrong or more/less than human, but that they would read to the wolf's senses as weirdos, either a little awkward and stiff or a little overconfident and unusually collected. Strange, but within the range of normal human strangeness. Some demons, depending on what they're trying to do and how much they care in general about fitting in, would be outliers, either dangerous chameleons or unsettling pod people.

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.
The big Crinos-looking Wolfman basically goes back to the Howling series, as near as I can tell. (Possibly American Werewolf in London, but they came out the same year) I kinda suspect that the Howling movie set in Australia with marsupial human thylacine werewolves is where the WOD Bunyip came from.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

I Am Just a Box posted:

It's not a thing Demon stresses. There are no rolls made to avoid being an unblinking, perfectly steady creepo who people can tell is in some way weird, and the fluff generally seems to assume that, while demons don't have to perform any natural human tics, most don't find it a great effort to keep up enough from day to day. Some demons do seem to come across as plastic and unsettling, while others are such good liars that their body language can present "unconscious" tics entirely counter to how they're really feeling, but the game doesn't treat it as a risk factor or a big influence.

Oh man someone could write a doctoral thesis on Demons and Lying, the book sure as hell tries to.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

unseenlibrarian posted:

The big Crinos-looking Wolfman basically goes back to the Howling series, as near as I can tell. (Possibly American Werewolf in London, but they came out the same year) I kinda suspect that the Howling movie set in Australia with marsupial human thylacine werewolves is where the WOD Bunyip came from.

You also had Jon Talbain from the Darkstalkers series, and given WW did Street Fighter: RPG, it's likely they looked at the one of the other Capcom Fighters too.

Also god drat The Howling went to poo poo fast as a franchise

Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN
Castlevania has kung-fu werewolves.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kavak posted:

The penalty was in all forms and was a holdover from Apocalypse.

If that's the case than anybody trained to watch people should be able to pick out a demon. Someone more familiar with that game needs to decide that, though.

I'm not talking about penalties. I don't even know what you're talking about at all. I mean, from context I'm guessing there was some social penalty werewolves used to have, but I am not talking about that. I just mean, in terms of interacting with or just watching a demon, a werewolf may be able to pick up on the subtle things that anyone else should miss. Assuming, of course, the demon wasn't aware of and actively emulating all those things; there's a bunch of subtle signs that a human wouldn't notice, but a highly-sensitive hunting machine like a werewolf could.

I Am Just a Box posted:

It's not a thing Demon stresses. There are no rolls made to avoid being an unblinking, perfectly steady creepo who people can tell is in some way weird, and the fluff generally seems to assume that, while demons don't have to perform any natural human tics, most don't find it a great effort to keep up enough from day to day. Some demons do seem to come across as plastic and unsettling, while others are such good liars that their body language can present "unconscious" tics entirely counter to how they're really feeling, but the game doesn't treat it as a risk factor or a big influence.

I figure your average demon probably reproduces enough little human tics that a werewolf couldn't sniff them out as something wrong or more/less than human, but that they would read to the wolf's senses as weirdos, either a little awkward and stiff or a little overconfident and unusually collected. Strange, but within the range of normal human strangeness. Some demons, depending on what they're trying to do and how much they care in general about fitting in, would be outliers, either dangerous chameleons or unsettling pod people.

Oh, yeah, I wasn't thinking of rolls (though I could see a Storyteller calling for them based on the situation), but, given how much it's emphasized that werewolves have those extremely, well, sensitive senses, I figure that they'd probably pick up on someone being odd just for their lack of reaction to some things. It would, of course, depend on the demon (some you don't need to be a wolf to tell they're not normal, as you say), but it seems, based on what Mors has written at least, if anyone could identify a demon without weird special poo poo or something, a werewolf could. Not that they'd know what was up with the demon, mind. In a passing encounter it'd be an oddity, while in a more direct interaction it might be a sign to the wolf there's more up with this person than meets the eye (or at least that they're very strange), but barring knowledge the werewolf probably won't have it likely wouldn't be more than that. Which, in the latter situation, might mean the wolf wouldn't think much of escalating things, which could get... "Interesting".

Edit: Actually rereading the rules, that might just fall under spoofing, actually. I don't know; I'm tired and haven't read this book in a long time.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 10:08 on May 29, 2016

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Has anyone written up newDemon? It sounds interesting.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Count Chocula posted:

I never got why werewolves had 5 forms instead of just Human, Wolf, and Giant Wolf-Monster. But it is the WoD line that makes the least sense to me in general.

I dunno, having those inbetween stages sounds reasonable. Sometimes, you just want to stop during the stock footage tranformation sequence.

Count Chocula posted:

Castlevania has kung-fu werewolves.

Can Werewolf werevolves (man, that sounds redundant) learn Shoryukens?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Robindaybird posted:

You also had Jon Talbain from the Darkstalkers series, and given WW did Street Fighter: RPG, it's likely they looked at the one of the other Capcom Fighters too.

Also god drat The Howling went to poo poo fast as a franchise

The first Darkstalkers Game came out in 1994, well after Spencer had established "This is what Crinos looks like", but they were probably influenced by the Howling.


Doresh posted:

Can Werewolf werevolves (man, that sounds redundant) learn Shoryukens?

Hengeyokai has some literal hadoukens in it, but Metis can learn "Create Element" AKA "I summon 8 cubic feet of fire into their engine compartment, the car chase is over."

Just Dan Again
Dec 16, 2012

Adventure!

Doresh posted:

Can Werewolf werevolves (man, that sounds redundant) learn Shoryukens?


Kurieg posted:

Hengeyokai has some literal hadoukens in it, but Metis can learn "Create Element" AKA "I summon 8 cubic feet of fire into their engine compartment, the car chase is over."

Apocalypse also had Kailindo, a werewolf-specific martial art that incorporated partial transformation into its techniques.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

Werewolf: the Forsaken, Second Edition

Werewolves are social animals, and that's why they form packs. Wolf-blooded and humans can fill out a pack, but the core is pretty much always actual werewolves. There's a few reasons for it. First, packs defend a territory. To do that, they need to hunt, and werewolves are the hunting party. When the Gauntlet is threatened by the shartha, they hunt them down. When a murder spirit perpetuates death in the area, they hunt it down. The Wolf-Blooded, however, perform valuable service. No pack can survive just on hunting. They need homes, food, and with the hunt coming at any time, it's not easy for an Uratha to hold down a job. Besides, Wolf-Blooded provide moral and emotional support, and help keep you connected to the world of Flesh. And, of course, some skilled Wolf-Blooded can and do join the hunt. It is rare, especially to take them into Shadow, but Flesh-based threats are just as well-handled by a bullet as a claw.

Packs do not go unnoticed, and against a threat, you have only your pack to rely on. One werewolf is powerful - a pack is beyond that. It centers you, lets you have people who will understand your problems. They are your family - indeed, some packs are literally family. Often, a werewolf finds they can only be themselves with the pack. No one else has the frame of reference to understand them. Most would think them insane - but the pack supports them. In a very real way, Uratha are like soldiers. They see hell, sometimes get PTSD. The pack is there for them then.

Outsiders are going to notice the pack's actions, though. Sooner or later, people will notice the group that's always around and is together all the time. Packs are like that, after all. They rarely let you act alone. Still, werewolves do have other friends and family - people from before the Change. For the young, it's often hard to cut those ties, even if the pack's ties are much deeper. For the safety of those loved ones, however, the ties must be severed. Werewolves make enemies that love to strike at weak points like your human family. A young werewolf might try to go it alone, concealing themselves from their family and trying to suppress what they are. They might act as a sort of vicious neighborhood watch, gathering up spirits of secrecy, paranoia and murder by their actions. But eventuelly, they'll realize they're drawing those spirits to their family. Most will just disappear, not even trying to explain. No one could understand, after all. They leave, taking the spirits with them. A pack can help drive the spirits off, but if you don't have one, you have to just deal with them yourself...and hope you took them all with you.

Every werewolf feels the urge to hunt. Their senses are tuned to finding and tracking prey. They sense weakness all around them, and even the newly Changed pick up on it quickly as a survival tool. While each tribe prefers a particular prey, none constrain themselves to it. Werewolves will hunt whatever they find suitable, with the help of their pack. Hunting and killing stronger prey is especially thrilling, affirming that a pack can defend its territory against any threat. But it's more than that. Werewolves hunt because they must, because it's sacred. It is what they were made to do. At no time besides the hunt do they feel as natural, as right. That is when they know for certain what they are and why they exist. Instinct takes over, and they feel the sheer joy of their existence.

Werewolf history is mostly oral - legends and stories passed on by packs, protectorates and tribes. It keeps the culture alive, but does mean actual fact is somewhat hard to come by. Still, most werewolves do get to hear tales of the time before time, how the Forsaken lost paradise. It's a common theme to werewolf history. The worlds of Flesh and Spirit used to be close enough to touch, and then they were ruined by the actions of the werewolves. Typically, the lesson is 'they hosed up, do it better now.' Broadly, this brand of tale is known as the Sundering.

Once, the Uratha could run and hunt through the worlds all over. Father Wolf maintained the balance of the world by predation, hunting spirits who grew too bold and thinning humans when they threatened to produce too much Essence, even driving off other great spirits that would exploit the borderlands for themselves - the creatures that would eventually become the Hosts. This ancient world is known to the Forsaken as Pangaea, a universe where spirit and flesh could more freely mix. The Sundering, which ended Pangaea, began with love.

Amahan Iduth - Luna, the warding moon - was a great spirit, protecting Shadow from the chaotic spirits of the void by her army of Lunes. Urfarah, the Wolf, was the spirit of hunting, watching over the Border Marches with his brood of wolf spirits. They were the two greatest guardian spirits of the Shadow, each preserving existence in their own way, and so they fell in love. Often Luna is spoken of as the mother, Wolf as the father, but in truth they were both spirits, neither beholden to any one shape or gender. The moon's protean nature merged with the Wolf's hunting instinct and guardianship, creating the People. Uratha. Bound to the earth, they joined Wolf's pack and received Luna's Gifts via the Lunes.

There are many stories of why Wolf began to weaken. Some say the creation of werewolves diminished him somehow, or that his Essence was weakened by his large brood. It doesn't matter why. All that matters is that he grew slow and weak, and both worlds suffered. Spirits set themselves up as gods among humans, and the progenitors of the Hosts escpaed total death by shattering themselves into too many pieces for Wolf to catch. The Uratha and the Firstborn knew that the young and strong must replace a weak elder. Like all spirits, Urfarah had a ban and bane. His ban was that he could not defend himself against a killing blow if challenged by those who could replace him, and his bane was the teeth of his children. Only a killing blow would work, so the Uratha and five of the Firstborn went for the throat. Urfarah's death howl shattered the Border Marches, killing everything within and raising the Gauntlet between worlds. Flesh and Spirit were forever divided. Luna saw what Wolf's children had done, and she cursed them with madness and to burn at silver's touch.

Even today, the Sundering divides the people. Those who believe killing Urfarah was a mistake follow Firstborn who did not take part in the murder. They name themselves Pure and obey the commands of spirits. Those who took up Father Wolf's role and have pledged to Luna that they will follow her lover's duty in guarding the border name themselves Forsaken. When the Uratha killed their father, the Gauntlet was raised, and now, open crossing between Flesh and Spirit is rare. Most travel requires a Locus - an object or person in the material world with a strong connection to shadow. Around a Locus, the Gauntlet is thin, and spirits flock to feast on the fountain of its Essence.

Next time: Life as Uratha

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Kurieg posted:

Hengeyokai has some literal hadoukens in it, but Metis can learn "Create Element" AKA "I summon 8 cubic feet of fire into their engine compartment, the car chase is over."
Old WoD was really bad about a) powers that let you conjure substances of your choosing and b) powers that let you teleport other people.

Just Dan Again posted:

Apocalypse also had Kailindo, a werewolf-specific martial art that incorporated partial transformation into its techniques.


Gonna review this someday.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

Halloween Jack posted:



Gonna review this someday.

This reminds me of the Eddie Izzard bit where he talks about how the martial art he'd want to practice is kendo, because 'I've got armor and a bat, so I'm already way ahead!'

Except with superhuman regenerating wolfman martial arts. Defense against a bat? Turn into a walking tank.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
There's also Iskakku which really deserves to be in a better book than TB:COG Revised.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

Werewolf: the Forsaken, Second Edition

A werewolf's hunting grounds lie in many worlds. Their place is found in a pack. And every pack needs a territory. Choosing that territory can face a lot of problems. Most common is the presence of other werewolves. Rivals will fight over the best territory. Because each tribe and even each pack has different ideas on the best prey, 'best' territory may not even exist, but that doesn't mean there's no conflict. There's always going to be arguments, and for werewolves, that often means fights. Packs stake out territory as large as they feel they can hold and hunt. Too large, your pack gets stretched too thin. Too narrow, they feel cramped. Werewolves, like humans, use landmarks to master an area's layout - so they might mark the edge of their territory with a tree covered in scratches, or an abandoned home. Even a 'small' territory for pack will cover several neighborhoods, while the largest and strongest packs cover most of a county or several rural towns. They'll hunt for days or weeks, crossing the entire thing. Only the most dangerous, however, hold such large territories - their prey will learn not to overstep in their absence.

Territories are fluid. A pack that gets stronger can expand in a week or two, and the expansion isn't really formal - it's just, they hunt further and get to know more of the land. Eventually, they just understand their territory to include the new area - and so do their neighbors and their prey. The loss of pack members or the emergence of new threats, like a Pure pack in the area, can diminish territory. Relations with neighbors can sour, and they might aggressively intervene if they feel you can't handle the job. Maybe two packs compete over the same prey or locations - especially in a city, where hunting's a bit trickier. Methods might clash. What works for one pack won't for another. Some packs encourage crime and violence to cover their tracks, while others prefer quieter neighborhoods, to better notice the arrival of foes. One pack might bloodily battle a Pure pack and drive them off, gaining three blocks. Another loses three in a similar war. Three blocks might sound minor - but it could be a warzone. The Shadow's hungry, too, and you always need to think of the Shadow in your territory. You might also make deals with neighbors - not so much as a protectorate, but enough for a little breathing room, especially if your favorite bar or convenience store is in their territory. Just don't gently caress up.

Werewolves live in a world with solid lines. Everyone is either predator, prey or rival. Stronger or weaker. They're not mad and overcome by bloodlust...but they do filter the world in those terms. Humans talk about equality, but werewolves know in the bone it's not real - not for them, at least. You rise to power with others at your heels. If you're weak, you get replaced it. It's the same with territory. Most packs try to maintain at least neutrality with their neighbors - few need even more enemies. But even so, growth of one territory comes at another's expense. Humans, other packs, other supernatural beings - they're all potential prey or rivals.

At least, that's what the older, stronger werewolves want you to think. Elders often enforce this sort of tooth and claw philosophy, but younger or more thoughtful werewolves see it as stupid. It's just falling back on base instinct - the basest of instincts, in fact, in which dominances is its own justification. Uratha can rise above this...in theory. When multiple packs coexist, the idea of dividing them into stronger or weaker often falls apart. The predator-prey dynamic requires there to be prey. Any region with multiple packs must have plenty of prey - and that means it's full of dangers. Fighting each other all the time just weakens every pack, and the prey is not simple and easy to cull. Packs weakened by infighting are not predators - they're prey. Sometimes, they even face challenges more than any one pack could ever overcome. And so, werewolves form protectorates.

On the basic level, a protectorate is a gathering of packs. They don't travel or hunt together except out of dire need - an idigam shows up or war is declared on the Pure, say. A protectorate's not even a democracy, at least in the human sense, and it needn't be a peaceful alliance. Meetings are full of arguments, even brawls. In many ways, a protectorate is a pack of packs. But what the protectorate brings is understanding. The packs within it come together because they can't afford to fight all the time. No one wants to try to hunt everything because noo ne can. Even a pack of Uratha can't rule a whole city...and so protectorates form the basis of a larger hunting ground.

Unlike a tribe or human hierarchy, a protectorate is formed bottom-up. Packs come together, exchange ideas, fight for territory, butt heads. Some have more formal systems, sure, with loose titles and duties, but most operate out of necessity. If one pack hunts the Hosts in the gutter trash neighborhoods, they need their neighbors to keep their own prey in line. If that doesn't happen, the Host-hunting pack has to take up their slack. The packs in their protectorate exchange stories, information, even small favors. Rather than a collection of disparate groups meeting only to fight each other, the protectorate grants some stability. They also help overcome problems too big or too abstract for any one pack. Maybe the city's politicians condemn the minority neighborhoods to destruction...or abandon them to drugs. One pack findds the results too hard to deal with - the spirits are too numerous, too fat on the Essence of suffering. Hosts thrive in the moldy basements, the people are apathetic or violent. A pack can't just kill its way to success - just killing the mayor gets him replaced.

But a protectorate? They can devote multiple packs to the problem. They cull the worst elements - removing dirty politicians, sure. But also hunting down their lawyers, the dirty cops making money off drugs, the greed spirits feasting on all of it. Multiple packs can hit all of these simultaneously, striking when they are vulnerable. They hunt like wolves, but they plan like insurgent cells. Most protectorates, of course, have an entire region or city to care about. Some even cover areas the size of entire US states or small countries. Individual packs within have to carry their own weight. When problems arise that concern everyone, that's when the protectorate comes together. War coming, urban expansion. They bat around ideas and solutions, then decide which pack will handle which part of the problem. If necessary, they team up. It's in the name - it's about protection. Packs form protectorates to protect each other form outsiders and themselves. Like a territory, a protectorate is a fluid construct, born out of need and ability - and like a territory, they need maintenance by the members or the whole thing will fall apart.

Next time: Spiritual cleansing for fun and profit.

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012
The day-to-day Werewolf duties as described are sounding pretty...reactive? It's usually ultimately about "fixing" a place and returning it to the correct normal condition. I keep seeing this stock example of "physically and spiritually cleaning up the slums of drugs and violence and corruption" when I hear Werewolf being described.

It's reminding me by contrast of the emphasis in the new edition of Unknown Armies that the PCs are actively trying to change the world, somehow. They don't like the way things are, they have a better idea (in their skewed but strong perceptions at least), and they're going to break poo poo and afflict the comfortable to make it happen. The status quo is the enemy, if there is one at all.

I think this comes back to the basically conservative style of most WoD games because of the assumption of the Masquerade and not wanting to expose yourself too much because it would move the setting away from "just like our own world, but with something more in the shadows." It just seems especially standout as you're reading through Werewolf. Like with the Eaters of the Dead, that actually sounds like an exciting chronicle hook as a change of pace, because questing and seeking to create a new Tribe could majorly shake up the setting.

The Pure have this going on as far as I can tell- like most antagonists in this genre, they actually want the world to change in a way the Forsaken kinda don't.

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Kellsterik posted:

The day-to-day Werewolf duties as described are sounding pretty...reactive? It's usually ultimately about "fixing" a place and returning it to the correct normal condition. I keep seeing this stock example of "physically and spiritually cleaning up the slums of drugs and violence and corruption" when I hear Werewolf being described.

It's reminding me by contrast of the emphasis in the new edition of Unknown Armies that the PCs are actively trying to change the world, somehow. They don't like the way things are, they have a better idea (in their skewed but strong perceptions at least), and they're going to break poo poo and afflict the comfortable to make it happen. The status quo is the enemy, if there is one at all.

I think this comes back to the basically conservative style of most WoD games because of the assumption of the Masquerade and not wanting to expose yourself too much because it would move the setting away from "just like our own world, but with something more in the shadows." It just seems especially standout as you're reading through Werewolf. Like with the Eaters of the Dead, that actually sounds like an exciting chronicle hook as a change of pace, because questing and seeking to create a new Tribe could majorly shake up the setting.

The Pure have this going on as far as I can tell- like most antagonists in this genre, they actually want the world to change in a way the Forsaken kinda don't.

I can totally see that as being an argument, but there's also a lot of proactive hooks in the system/fluff. By default, though, packs are often seen as reactive entities - they maintain or attempt to create the status quo in their territory, however they define the status quo.

The other end of the spectrum is when a pack decides to go on a road trip to hunt something down, or pre-emptively pursue the Sacred Hunt for their own reasons.

E: Also the Pure are 100% revanchist reactionaries in terms of wanting to go back to the Good Old Days, when they could just eat people and sort them into nice little breeding farms to make more proper werewolves.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!




The Whispering Vault: Part 2

Been a couple of weeks so here's a quick summary of the first chapter:

You're former humans turned crazy cenobite-security guards whose job it is to ensure that the human realm doesn't get screwed up by perverted gods. Except with a lot more Capital Letters. Here's the link so you don't have to crawl back for a reminder: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3758962&pagenumber=128#post459783153

Now we're on to the actual rules.



So, the game starts with rules for resolving basic challenges, called (appropriately) Challenge Rolls. Each Challenge is based on one of your Attributes and you roll a number of dice equal to the appropriate attribute. You keep only the highest roll or the sum of the highest matching dice. The difficulty of a Challenge is either based on a set target number:

Routine: 8
Easy: 10
Average: 12
Hard: 15
Very Hard: 18


Or it is based off another character's Attributes and then modified to reflect difficulty (from -4 for routine rolls to +5 for Very Hard rolls).

But attributes aren't all, there are also Skills. Skills don't adjust the number of dice you roll, instead they add directly to your roll result (so effectively they reduce the target number). You may also spend Karma on a roll, which allows you to reroll as many of the dice as you witch (to increase the odds of a match). Apparently the GM is allowed to forbid the use of Karma if it seems "frivolous" which seems unnecessarily restrictive.


So...you may have noticed something in the last example. I never mentioned the type of dice used in the game...that's because the rule section never actually tells you. That's right, its missing the actual central mechanic. Now, it is in the book, if you look at the "Welcome" page right after the table of contents (the page that most readers would skim or skip) you can find that the last segment on the page mentions that you'll need "a handful of six-sided dice", the fact that none of the example rolls ever go higher than a six is another clue...but it's still a massive and glaring omission in the rules.

So with the die-type revealed I can honestly say that I simply can't parse the probabilities for these rolls. A 12 as an "average" difficulty seems huge to me...but I actually don't know how you'd effectively calculate the odds of rolling a 12 on 5 dice. I'm sure someone else is more willing to crunch the numbers than I am but it's still maddeningly difficult to tell how good you are as a character. Of course, the difficulties are probably set with the assumption that you'll be using your Skills to reduce the target number.



Next we have combat.

First the game waxes on a bit about how "different" Whispering Vault is from other games:



The next few pages go on a bit more about how you should be flexible when adjudicating specific actions or consequences of your rolls, the importance of descriptive language, etc. It's not bad advice as such but it seems to think the advice is far more original and groundbreaking than it actually is. Even in the early 90s things like "don't just say 'I hit it with my axe' wasn't exactly cutting edge of game conception. But, as I mention its still good advice and it helps set the theme of the game a bit.

Anyway, down to the actual rules.

At the start of each round in combat each character makes a Dexterity Challenge and the final total is used as your Initiative score. This only applies for PCs...NPCs have a set initiative score that they always use. I'm noticing that while the game never says it outright it seems like the intent is that NPCs generally don't roll anything (with one exception being a small section on NPC v NPC actions).

Actual actions in combat are divided between Significant Actions and Insignificant Actions. Significant Actions are things like making an attack or using a power and Insignificant Actions are things like moving around, talking or dropping something. You get to make one of each every round.

Players make all the rolls in combat. You make an appropriate Challenge with an opponent's defense attribute serving as the target number. The same goes if you are attacked, making an appropriate Challenge against an opponent's attack attribute.



Damage is not a challenge (and its the only time the GM gets to roll). Your Damage is a collection of dice that get rolled. A Stalker's damage is either their Strength value or the Damage of whatever weapon they're using. It's confusion because they use the terms "Melee" and "Unarmed" as though they are interchangeable. But apparently weapons like swords don't actually benefit from your Strength bonus. Monsters have a Damage rating that indicates how much damage they inflict. All the dice you roll for damage are added up to determine the final damage.

There's also a special rule called a "Die Cap". It's an unusually complicated system that isn't actually very worthwhile considering it only applies to Mortals fighting beings of Essence so, as far as I can tell, it will never affect the Stalkers directly. It just means that Mortals are terrible at hurting Essence-based opponents, something that it seems could have been handled in a much simpler way. But apparently the Damage Cap doesn't apply to "Masked" Stalkers (something that hasn't been explained yet).

A Die Cap is a maximum amount of damage that the attacker can inflict, basically ignoring any results higher than your Damage Cap...which actually means it's possible for a really good roll to end up inflicting no damage at all because every result is above the Damage Cap.

The standard Damage Cap is 5. But if you are Demoralized and Terrified (both of these are capitalized, and it is not explained whether they're simply two terms for the same thing or if they actually have different effects) then your Damage Cap drops by one. If you are Inspired (such as by a strong leader or a personal motivation) then your Damage Cap increases by one. Fighting as a group also means your Damage Cap increases by one.

There is also the Law of Proximity, which actually does apply to Essence users, basically lowering Damage Cap by one for any ranged attacks made by or against a being of essence. Oh, and the other time a Die Cap affects a Stalker is when they attempt to use mortal weapons of any kind, causing them to suffer a -1 to their Die Cap...so picking up a mundane gun to shoot a mortal inflicts a -1 Die Cap (since you're attacking a mortal with a mortal weapon) but a -2 die cap if using it against another Essence being (since it's a mortal weapon and you still get hit by the Law Of Proximity).

So, in short, guns kind of suck unless you're using the absolutely highest powered guns which can unload double digits in the damage dice.



I'm already getting kind of annoyed with the Damage system here, but it gets even more complicated.

So, recall characters have two traits: Fortitude and Vitality. Fortitude is your damage resistance and you divide any damage you suffer by your Fortitude score, rounding down. So if you're hit with 30 Damage and have a Fortitude of 5 you lose 6 vitality.

The actual effect of damage depends on the type of victim you're attacking:

Shadows: An Awakened Shadow can manifest in the Realm of Flesh. If their Vitality is reduced to zero they are forced back into the Rift. It also notes that Shadows that have been Awakened by the Unbidden to serve as Minions are encased in shells of Flesh (not the shells of Flesh shadows normally use, these are other shells) called Husks which let them kind of pass as Human (yes, Human is capitalized) to enjoy the protection of the Veil (we don't know what that is) and the first time such a Minion takes damage the Husk is destroyed revealing the Shadows true (well, not true, but not human) form. Once a Shadow's physical form has been destroyed a being of Essence could choose to continue fighting them (and apparently formless Shadows can continue fighting back) but any attacks made by or against Formless Shadows suffers a -1 Die Cap.

Mortals: I'm not sure why this section is more than "Mortals are defeated when their Vitality is reduced to 0" but we're also filled in on how damage overflows for a mortal (extra damage reduces Fortitude and when Fortitude is at 0 the Mortal dies) and how many weeks it takes for them to heal.

The Unbidden: The Unbidden steal the body of human (not capitalized this time) Hosts in order to serve as Vessels, strengthening the Host's Flesh with their Essence. Despite being in a mortal body it is not clarified if this form is treated as mortal or not for purposes of Damage Caps. When the Host runs out of Vitality the Unbidden is forced to manifest its true form (despite being a being of Essence its true form is apparently a physical body?). In its true form the Unbidden can be Bound (we don't know what this is) otherwise it may attempt to find a new Vessel and until it does it cannot recover Vitality and is not protected by the Veil (we still don't know what this is) and it is vulnerable to Forbiddance (we also don't know what this is). When the Avatar (I guess this is the true form?) of the Unbidden loses its vitality it is helpless and can be bound. Actually killing the Unbidden is possible but is blasphemous.

Stalkers: When a Stalker runs out of Vitality they begin to lose points from their Vessel's Attributes. You get to decide which Attributes are reduced and how much damage to apply to each one. Losing all Strength or Dexterity means you cannot move, losing all your Fortitude means you die. You heal automatically if you go back to the Realm of Essence (since your body is just a construct) but its only possible to heal in the Realm of Flesh if you have the Weaving Discipline.



Finally, we have weapons. A short table is provided with example weapon damage, but it points out fairly directly that using a weapon as a Stalker is kind of a bad deal, you suffer not only a -1 Die Cap but a -2 penalty to actually using any weapons (without an appropriate focus skill). Despite this the ability to simply ignore your Strength and just go with a weapon's damage die is going to be tempting depending on the quantity of weaponry available.



And that's it for the "rules" chapter. Although some of the ideas are interesting, I've got to say that the combat rules are way too elaborate, especially in comparison to the one page rule for handling everything that isn't combat.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:


Chapter ???: Get off the loving tracks

We just did a podcast on Beast
Come listen to me say "Like" and "You know" a bunch because I'm bad at forming sentences in my head!

We do talk about the whole book though, so if you want to remain unspoiled (hah) you might want to wait until later to listen!

This is why I haven't been posting in a while, and I'm probably going to take some time off from this after shotgunning the entire book in two days.

Kurieg fucked around with this message at 01:45 on May 30, 2016

Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN

Kellsterik posted:

The day-to-day Werewolf duties as described are sounding pretty...reactive? It's usually ultimately about "fixing" a place and returning it to the correct normal condition. I keep seeing this stock example of "physically and spiritually cleaning up the slums of drugs and violence and corruption" when I hear Werewolf being described.

It's reminding me by contrast of the emphasis in the new edition of Unknown Armies that the PCs are actively trying to change the world, somehow. They don't like the way things are, they have a better idea (in their skewed but strong perceptions at least), and they're going to break poo poo and afflict the comfortable to make it happen. The status quo is the enemy, if there is one at all.

I think this comes back to the basically conservative style of most WoD games because of the assumption of the Masquerade and not wanting to expose yourself too much because it would move the setting away from "just like our own world, but with something more in the shadows." It just seems especially standout as you're reading through Werewolf. Like with the Eaters of the Dead, that actually sounds like an exciting chronicle hook as a change of pace, because questing and seeking to create a new Tribe could majorly shake up the setting.

The Pure have this going on as far as I can tell- like most antagonists in this genre, they actually want the world to change in a way the Forsaken kinda don't.

I mean the original game was about playing furry ecoterrorists. I can't see Werewolves as anything but antagonists, and I can't imagine playing them unless it was a biker gang like Sons of Anarchy or Werewolves on Wheels or Daredevil with his Hell's Kitchen and love of violence. They're a violent street gang who hate change and live to kill, and they don't have the style that vampires do. I guess they could appeal to crust punks and hippies, but they don't seem like big markets and oChangeling and Mage are better hippie games. I love the spiritual shaman stuff but you can do that in Mage.

Still, nWerewolf seems really well-written and good, just Not For Me.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

Well Savage Worlds: Rifts is a thing, and in two weeks I'll get my PDF of it.
I'm really looking forward to this. Depending on the reviews, I'll likely end up buying a copy.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

Werewolf: the Forsaken, Second Edition

Werewolves need to maintain their territory on both sides of the Gauntlet. Both halves of the world are linked, but each takes a different approach. A pack in the heart of a city probably has a harder time hunting, Flesh-side, than one with territory in an old forest. On the other hand, the urban pack has a lot of dark alleys, hiding places and other tools at their disposal that aren't available to the forest pack, plus contacts in various communities. In either case, their spirit prey will be more at home in the Hisil than the werewolves - and spirits are very dangerous, and as important to an area as its human and animal inhabitants. Packs vary in how they approach spirits and their territory. Some realize that humans effect great change with the Essence born of their actions, and that the Shadow reflects and reinforces this in a cycle. A poor and rundown area attracts crime and reeks of misery, and its spirit reflection is a place of dark alleys, sagging buildings and grime. The local spirits take forms reflecting urban decay. They might be exaggerated personifications of violence, creatures of greed or hunger, or immense masses of flesh covered in drug sores.

Changing one world requires changing the other. IT's not fast, it's not easy. If it were, Uratha would not be needed. You can't just kill the problematic spirits. It's about the ephemeral ecosystem - and thoughtless violence won't change the resonance. You also can't just kill the problem humans - that just gets hunters on your rear end, plus other monsters. You need to choose your prey carefully, split it from the herd, then drive it to ground. This applies even to prey that is less a living being and more a concept or attitude. To fix the problem, you have to view it from all aspects. People turn on each other because they need to survive, their lives of desperation generate Essence of pain and suffering. Spirits fed by this use their power across the Gauntlet to reinforce it. Some werewolves want to end this cycle of abuse out of a sense of justice, but many just want to improve the area they live in. Driving off the spirits or killing them won't fix it, however. Before long, new ones will be drawn in or created. Killing all the humans will just draw authority down on you and spread death and suffering.

Some packs are okay with this. Violent, bloodthirsty werewolves who don't care about those around them might appreciate the cover they get, the freedom to kill. Others, however, want to clean things up. But if they attack the local spirits, they'll just wear themselves out...though, on the other hand, the spirits can't just be allowed to do as they will. The werewolves must establish themselves as the top predators, hunting the spirits that go too far in their gluttony. In the material realm, they have to end the things that cause the conditions suitable for the spirits. That means driving off or killing vicious gangs and corrupt politicians, organizing volunteer work (with or without Wolf-Blooded help), fixing up homes, and so on. Change is steady, but slow. The seeds of joy Essence grow into joy spirits. These spirits are easy prey for the darker spirits - and so the werewolves must protect them. Keep it up, and change comes on both sides of the Gauntlet. It's a tricky balancing act. Even joy spirits can grow out of control, and they're as happy with the rush a burglar feels when succeeding or the physical pleasure of an addict as they are with genuine happiness. They push the things that strengthen them, and no spirit really has the ability to empathize with humans - or even other spirits. If you're not careful, you can go too far and make just as big a problem for the area.

Even within a protectorate, attitudes towards territory vary wildly. Some take a balanced approach, others gravitate to an extreme. Not all werewolves actually like humans outside their own packs. One pack might try to make a neighborhood better, but others don't care as long as their goals get accomplished. Some protect humans, others don't give a poo poo or even hunt them actively. Some do it because they like humans, others because a healthy community makes for an easier territory to control. A few packs don't even hold territory at all. They may call somewhere home, but they'll use it only as a base to wander a large area, even a whole county or more, hunting at will and trespassing as they like. These packs make many enemies. Only the strong or those who hunt very, very specialized prey survive very long.

Sometimes, however, a pack with a set territory will go a-wandering. They chase down a particularly dangerous piece of prey, or one whom they owe a debt of vengeance. It drives them to tear apart those who wronged them - or anyone in the way. Werewolves are rarely very trusting, after all, even of each other. Maybe the pack that's stopped by says they plan to move on soon. And if that's true after just a few nights, well, that's fine. But staying too long, asking too much? That starts fights.

Tribes can help. Werewolves join tribes for several reasons. Tribes encompass far more than any one territory. They're part tradition, part military veterans. They follow special rituals and tell old stories. Even within a pack, members of different tribes often don't entirely understand each other. The tribe understands. They provide a way of connecting packs, but it goes beyond the need that drives protectorates. Werewolves join tribes by choice, out of belief in the tribe's views, methods or favored prey. They're almost religions, with totems that embody their laws and leaders that enact secret rituals only the tribe understands. Maybe you share a tribe with a packmate, and you probably know maybe a dozen or two tribemates in the state. At times, you gather in moots to share lore and experiences. This lets you call on the tribe's resources, such as they are, and so you can maybe get some trust from them when your pack needs to use their territory.

Tribes also produce lodges - cult-like groups with specific goals and purposes, which share secrets and develop a closer bond than tribes do. To the lodges, a tribe may have part of the truth, but the lodge has the whole of it. Lodges ultimately represent an ideology greater than a tribe's. The bonds of a lodge are stronger, and no one understands you like your lodge - except for your pack, and even then, not always. A pack is your family, but a lodge is the people who share your beliefs.

And yet, beyond pack, tribe and lodge, there is a set of laws and traditions that hold all the Forsaken together: the Oath of the Moon.

Next time: The Oath of the Moon

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Kurieg posted:



Chapter ???: Get off the loving tracks

We just did a podcast on Beast
Come listen to me say "Like" and "You know" a bunch because I'm bad at forming sentences in my head!

We do talk about the whole book though, so if you want to remain unspoiled (hah) you might want to wait until later to listen!

This is why I haven't been posting in a while, and I'm probably going to take some time off from this after shotgunning the entire book in two days.

I just got to the point where you talked about the Storytelling chapter and :tviv:

MollyMetroid
Jan 20, 2004

Trout Clan Daimyo


Part Four: The Game Master’s Guide

The Game Master’s Guide (not to be confused with the GameMastery Guide, which is one of the corebooks of the line) is 100 pages, and contains, in no particular order:

A simple ten-room adventure
A sample map and suggested plot to use with it, for novice GMs to populate themselves for a second adventure
Advice and tips on how to plan adventures, run the game, and create new content, including a list of a dozen adventure hooks to get the juices flowing
12 pages of magic items
24 pages of monsters
Sandpoint, a sample town that DMs could use as a base for adventurers, with additional story hooks and a couple of key NPCs.
A few more rules, for environmental hazards and status conditions, plus examples of tasks for common DCs

We’ll tackle this one thing at a time. First, the ten-room adventure. It uses one side of the flip-mat included in the box (the other side is blank, which we’ll come back to later.) The encounters include a pair of goblins that attack the heroes (a simple combat encounter), the room the goblins sleep in (to demonstrate an exploration segment, as there is treasure to be had), a magic fountain that gives random effects - if you throw a coin in before drinking you remove the chance to have negative effects, otherwise you get either a +2 or -2 to something in the next fight, for the most part. Next, a trapped altar (showcasing trap type encounters), a giant spider (a fight with more going on tactically than a straight up slugfest, plus it has poison so can introduce conditions), a magic pillar with some nearby graffiti that offers a hint of what’s to come. The pillar grants a bonus to swimming and allows someone to breathe underwater if it is activated, which comes in handy in the next encounter--a pool of water with a nasty crab-monster hiding in it, but the most important treasure in the dungeon on the other side: a +1 dragon-bane longsword. And some potions and stuff, but really the sword is the one thing that’s going to make or break a party in this adventure. Then there’s a roleplay encounter with some goblins - you can fight ‘em or parlay with ‘em--and after that a set of skeletons guarding the final room of the dungeon, which is the lair of a young black dragon--that sword makes sense now, yeah?

I like a lot of things about this as an introductory dungeon. It does a very good job of having a variety of different things to show a new GM that there’s more than just fights to worry about. The goblins in the roleplay encounter can be dealt with by just killing them, or by finding a missing goblin (the giant spider killed her and she’s where the treasure in that encounter is from.) The dragon at the end is a tough fight, but it’s also made explicit that it doesn’t have any interest in dying - if the party does 25 damage (of 54 hit points) or hits it even once with that magic sword, it will flee to fight another day. It is suggested that it sticks around for at least two turns, but I really like that it sets up a recurring antagonist in the first adventure who will have a reason to go after the heroes and who the heroes will have a reason to go after. It also suggests half-a dozen possibilities of what to do next.

Which is another great thing about this Game Master’s Guide - it is not shy about providing adventure ideas. There are probably two dozen or more seeds throughout the book for adventures to get the novice GM thinking about what to do next. The book specifically points out as well that your job is not to “win” but to make sure everyone has fun, and so on.

There’s a section on building a dungeon, with a sample map given:



Not coincidentally this map is of perfect dimensions to be copied to the flip-mat. The guide also lists types of encounters (combat, roleplay, obstacle, story, etc) and how to set them up, along with rewards for them like treasure and experience. The section concludes with a short description of a dungeon, Raven’s Watch, the map for which is above--though the specific details of the map are left 100% to the GM.

I can’t say enough how cool I think that part is. For a D&D style game, building dungeons is often the meat and potatoes--and this Beginner Box not only provides a solid example dungeon with the full gamut of encounters, but follows it up with something that will allow a novice GM to get their feet wet a little more gradually than just diving right in from there.

Next there’s a section about different environments and what one might encounter there--dungeons, forest, deserts, mountains, swamps, and cities. The dungeon section includes rules for traps, breaking doors, and several environmental cues. The wilderness types are short and include rules for traversing them or terrain hazards. The section on cities talks about shops, laws, and several urban environments (including sewers, of course, because there’s always a sewer level.)

Next, 12 pages of magic items. It’s a limited selection, but covers the bases pretty well. Each item has a small illustration to accompany it, but very little fluff text or examples of how to flesh out magic item history--this isn’t actually all that uncommon in these style of games though, so it’s fair enough.

Following that, 24 pages of monsters--there’s a quick guide to reading their statblocks, and another reminder that combat isn’t always the best or only option heroes can take even with aggressive or evil foes. The Pawns included in the box provide a set of minis for each of the monsters listed in this section as well, which is very nice.

There’s a section following the monster list about random encounters, with a number of encounter tables provided for different environments. The following section of advice is also present here:



That’s something like the third or fourth time that’s been pointed out, and I really do appreciate it being there in a product like this, because it’s all too easy (especially with video games being a dominant form of exposure to this sort of genre for many people) to forget for tyro GMs.

The next section is Sandpoint, and it is not given tons of detail. There’s a map, a couple of key NPCs listed (the mayor, the innkeeper Ameiko Kaijitsu, the town priest, a couple of other suggested NPCs for each of the four classes to interact with) and a list of local adventure hooks.

Worth mentioning is that Sandpoint is the starting town for not one but two Adventure Paths, including the very first, Rise of the Runelords, and later the ninth, Jade Regent. In both adventures Ameiko Kaijitsu features prominently, largely because she is one of the developers’ former PCs, which is why I called her out by name in particular. Sandpoint is also featured in the Goblin themed adventures that Paizo produces for Free RPG Day. (So far there are three available in pdf for free from Paizo’s site, with a fourth due out this year as well.) None of this is mentioned in the Beginner Box, mind you, but it’s a neat little nod.

Then, a section on conditions (stunned, poisoned, sickened, unconscious--all the nasty things that the game lets you do to your foes or your players depending on which side of the board you’re on) which is illustrated with examples provided by the distinctive Pathfinder goblins for each condition. These are cute as hell, but not always the most illustrative--the disabled goblin below represents having 0 HP but being stable or conscious--doing any standard action causes damage, and if you’re still at negative HP you go unconscious and begin dying. That’s not what I get out of that illustration, but, most of the others are better.


Blinded, disabled, and deafened goblins.

Then wrapping up the book, the last page is “where to from here”, with suggestions being another free adventure, an additional bonus class (the barbarian), and some other free resources from the Paizo site for the beginner box specifically, as well as the Core Rulebook, the Bestiary, and the Inner Sea World Guide for setting details on Golarion.

On the inside rear cover is a pretty standard set of hand-drawn map symbols that should be familiar to anyone who’s ever designed a dungeon for a D&D style game, and on the rear cover exterior is another reference page with several more common conditions and a diagram illustrating the cover rules.

And that’s the Game Master’s Guide. Since I covered the flip-mat in this particular post for the most part, that leaves for further discussion the pawns and the Transition Guide, which I will discuss next post, and the supplemental downloadable freebies from the Paizo site, which I will examine if people are sufficiently interested as well.

Next time: The Transition Guide

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
The Werewolf updates here, combined with my memories of Demon and such, have had me imagining a cross-splat game where all the PCs have a shared goal of trying to clean up (or take over) a city in some manner, for whatever reason. Like, obviously the werewolf PC(s) would want to deal with all the spiritual landscape stuff described here, a demon might want to purge the city of God-Machine influence and make it their own Hell, a vampire could be trying to navigate if not outright end the bullshit vampire politics in the area, and so on. They all have similar goals (that don't quite line up all of the time, which could lead to interesting conflict), get embroiled in each other's politics and messes, and so on. It seems like it could be a fun game (though sadly one that would make it hard for a Promethean PC to be a part of it, though they could make an appearance as NPCs and present an interesting dilemma).

Beasts, given that everything they do would be anathema to nearly everyone's goals, would likely not be welcome and might wind up being B-plot antagonists or something. I dunno.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Roland Jones posted:

The Werewolf updates here, combined with my memories of Demon and such, have had me imagining a cross-splat game where all the PCs have a shared goal of trying to clean up (or take over) a city in some manner, for whatever reason. Like, obviously the werewolf PC(s) would want to deal with all the spiritual landscape stuff described here, a demon might want to purge the city of God-Machine influence and make it their own Hell, a vampire could be trying to navigate if not outright end the bullshit vampire politics in the area, and so on. They all have similar goals (that don't quite line up all of the time, which could lead to interesting conflict), get embroiled in each other's politics and messes, and so on. It seems like it could be a fun game (though sadly one that would make it hard for a Promethean PC to be a part of it, though they could make an appearance as NPCs and present an interesting dilemma).

Beasts, given that everything they do would be anathema to nearly everyone's goals, would likely not be welcome and might wind up being B-plot antagonists or something. I dunno.

Set it in Philadelphia. Task Force Valkyrie has developed what seems to do for the spirit world what nuclear bombs do in the physical world, and they're considering using it in Philadelphia because of all the spirit-related problems they've been having. What could possibly go wrong? :v:

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Young Freud posted:

I just got to the point where you talked about the Storytelling chapter and :tviv:

Sounds like Vancouver needs a visit from Task Force Valkyrie. I mean, with the whole "They're probably working for Vampires!" thing, (much as I might dislike it normally) they got a drat good reason to show some interest.

No supernatural powers work? Fine. Shotguns still do!

Hostile V
May 31, 2013

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



BRAVE NEW WORLD: DEFIANTS

BNW: Defiants is all about the Defiance movement; how it got started, what the movement is currently up to, who are the major movers and shakers and factions, etc. Because this is a more insular, tightly-focused book, it actually reads a lot easier and it’s going to be faster to cover. It also helps that for the most part it actually covers new territory. The main book and Ravaged Planet set the stage for Defiance as a bunch of anti-DRA protestors with underground rebellion elements with a dash of anti-government terrorists. Nothing was really explained or elaborated on besides the roles of Truth and Patriot. This is a substantial problem because the game definitely wants you to be on board with Defiance but just dumps a bunch of in character lore on your lap instead. The whole first half of this book is also in character (and some of the second half is too) but it actually answers the questions of “what is Defiance and what do they want?”

The book is divided into the first half (which is IC lore about Defiance and its goals) and the second half (new powers, new archetypes, adversaries and campaign secrets). The entire book is 130 pages long and the first half takes up 80 pages. Get used to more of this happening as we go along. The first half has five different narrators: The Truth on Defiance today, Yoshihama “The Yellow Journalist” Ishimori on the formation and history of Defiance, Enrique “Ricky” Salvador on the Isla Delta movement, Malachai “The Killer” Winter on Delta War and Reverend Darien Lange on Pax Delta. Let’s start with Yoshi Ishimori.

DEFIANT DAYS


Ishimori behind bars.

As mentioned in the core book, Yoshihama Ishimori is serving out a life’s sentence in New Alcatraz for the crime of being an unregistered Delta and an asset to Defiance. He’s an old man who has been in prison for about a decade or more and he doesn’t have much contact with the outside world, but he basically started Defiance.

Yoshi was born to Japanese parents in 1935 in LA. His parents immigrated to the US in 1920. When Yoshi was 6, he and his family were put in a Japanese internment camp after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was a smaller boy who was picked on by the kids actually born in Japan, and when he was 10 he was accidentally struck by a military jeep when he was being chased by an older girl named Juni Tanaka. He survived and awoke as a Delta, a fact that the Japanese doctor also interned in the camps kept secret from the American government. His powers ended up being a boost to his natural charisma that helped make him more likable and he first knowingly used them to calm down Juni the next time they crossed paths.


There's a lot of art in these sections so I'll try to keep it tight or relevant.

So Yoshi went into showbiz as a talent agent because he felt like it was a natural fit for his powers and ended up launching the careers of actors who actually could act (Clint Eastwood is explicitly namedropped. Also he’s not a Delta). It’s 1959 and he’s joking with one of his friends about how they should start a newspaper to bring the Delta community of America together. His friend loves the idea and Yoshi decides “hell, why not?” and starts the Delta Times as a subscription newspaper. He picks the pen-name The Yellow Journalist because he intends to engage in yellow journalism, not because he’s a Japanese-American (a fact the book makes abundantly clear). And the paper does well; it sells like gangbusters, he fosters a better sense of community and it’s even used to organize a Delta convention in 1962.


"I bet the man who runs this paper is super handsome."

Of course in 1963, JFK is shot in the head, yadda yadda. And Superior himself says to Yoshi “look, this has to change. I have an idea and you’ll see what happens”. He finds out that Superior is serious when Superior himself outs Congressman Bill Walsh (D, Georgia) in front of Congress and Walsh resists arrest to the extent that Superior has to beat him into submission. And Yoshi realizes that Superior knows his name and will be coming for him. So he goes on the run with his paper and uses fake names to write different articles protesting the DRA and includes a submission address. And he mails the paper out to everyone on the list, registered or not. The newspaper ends up bringing everyone who doesn’t want to register together but it also directly puts him on Delta Prime’s wanted list.


To my knowledge, this never happens.

So history takes its course and Defiance starts to come together into four main groups: the people on the mailing list, Pax Delta, Delta War and the Isla Delta Movement. Everyone uses the name Defiance at one point or another to confuse Delta Prime and the leaders of each group keep in contact to coordinate and keep abreast of the situation. But there’s still no singular leader, every group is doing their own thing under the same banner and there’s infighting. It’s the death of Patriot that starts getting everyone united and together under one cause and vision.

The rest of this part of the book is redundant information that will be covered later and Yoshi’s recollection of the time he met Patriot. They met in 1988 after the San Francisco bombing when Yoshi and one of his friends (Wilma) were trying to look for survivors. Patriot was still in Delta Prime and he captured them both for interrogation and torture on top of a skyscraper. Patriot ends up punching his second in command out a window in disgust when the man almost beats Wilma to death in the process of interrogating her. He doesn’t really get to know Patriot but he does thank him later in prison for joining the cause and remembering his heart.


Man look at this lady's angry face.

In retrospect they don’t make it clear when he was arrested but if I had to guess it would be during that incident. Also it’s not made clear if the guy died but when asked if he killed him, Patriot shrugs and says “not if he remembers he can fly”.

Our martyr, ladies and gents.

LIVING LA VIDA DELTA


One nation, under triangle.

Enrique Salvador is the leader of Congress on Isla Delta. If you care about who he might be, I hope you care more about the history of Isla Delta instead because Enrique gets one sentence of history. Basically he’s a native from Puerto Rico who manifested, didn’t want to join Delta Prime because he thinks the DRA shouldn’t apply to a US commonwealth and joined Defiance before getting political on Isla Delta. In his defense, he raises a pretty good question about if it should.


"Ladies and gentlemen, behold!"

Isla Delta is an island off the coast of Costa Rica. It was founded by Don Angel Oliveri Gandarillas aka the Spanish Delta hero known as El Cid. He fled Spain after he was unable to stop Franco’s revolution and eventually wandered to Costa Rica in 1965 where he realized he wanted to spend the rest of his life there. He also realized that he needed a place for people like him so he hashes out a deal with the government of Costa Rica for land. For those who don’t know much about Costa Rica, haven’t played MGS: Peace Walker or don’t remember from Ravaged Planet, Costa Rica has no standing military a la Japan but all Deltas are free to immigrate as long as they promise to help protect Costa Rica. The government comes back to Don Oliveri with an offer.

  • Isla Delta is a commonwealth of Costa Rica until it declares independence and is recognized by at least one nation.
  • In exchange for the land, the people of Isla Delta are to help protect Costa Rica as an additional defense force for 100 years.
  • Isla Delta can’t declare independence until it has a population of one thousand proven Deltas. If the island does and it petitions, Costa Rica will recognize Isla Delta as a nation and fulfill clause one.


Life on Isla Delta.

Because that’s a really good deal, Don Oliveri signs the agreement and makes two teams out of the first citizens. The first team is people who can do laborer, build and design to turn a desert island into a civilization. The second is made up of brave men and women willing to go to other nations to try and recruit people to Isla Delta who become known as Team Freedom. Team Freedom is less a recruitment drive and more a collection of deep-cover Deltas inserting themselves into other countries operating somewhat alone.

The book then diverges into how Team Freedom got exposed to the world for the next seven pages. It’s a somewhat irrelevant story that is basically told because it turns out that two of the characters are in fact Enrique’s mom and dad. In short: the Delta hero/Team Freedom agent Libertad (Enrique’s dad) went up against a Hispanic villain (and anti-government anarchist) Delta named El Diablo (whose crimes consisted of using his powers to blow up gas mains in buildings). Libertad (masquerading as a janitor) saves the life of Pilar Gomez (Enrique’s future mom) from El Diablo, she becomes a Delta as well and long story short they catch El Diablo. El D is in fact not a Hispanic anti-government anarchist, he’s the white Manhattan Chief of Police Rodney Davis who is false-flagging his destruction for his actual crimes: robbing buildings and killing political rivals. But it’s not a happy ending: Davis squeals to Prime, every major source of media makes Team Freedom look like a sinister bunch of fucks and Libertad is an Alpha and disappears in Chicago, leaving Pilar and Baby Enrique alone on Isla Delta. Phew. Still a loving mouthful, just not seven pages of it.


DRAMATIC SHOWDOWN

So anyway, Isla Delta has like 1200 people, not a lot of natural resources except tourism, but only 800 of those citizens are Deltas. The rest are non-Delta tourists and people who are living there who aren’t citizens because according to the charter, any citizens of Isla Delta must be granted it through Costa Rica and must be Deltas. It’s not clear as to who these non-Deltas are or what they do and some people call the residents of Isla Delta bigots. There…are definite sort of…Israel vibes at play here.


Of course it's a goddamn crescent.

The President is Yu Oliveri, Don Oliveri’s widowed wife, Vice President Henrik Strandberg and then Speaker is Enrique himself. The island is based on the American Constitution because of course it is and the place has no smaller government because it’s a small island. The island is defended by Aquarians and Flyers armed with rocket launchers and all sorts of other Deltas and the justice system’s highest form of punishment is power-stripping and banishment. Finally, the island’s main exports are tourism and web hosting.

You know what’s a palatable contrast to a “make our own!” movement? Domestic terrorism!

DELTA WAR


Dangerously smug terrorists with guns.

Malachai “The Killer” Winter is about as well adjusted as someone with the nickname “The Killer” would be. I hope you like me summarizing a manifesto because oh boy I’m summarizing a manifesto.

Delta War (and the Delta Warriors) was started in 1965 by Marcus Manley (because of course) who was a sergeant in Delta Squadron. When he was asked to sign onto Delta Prime after his last tour, his response was essentially “gently caress you, Kennedy’s a fascist” and he bailed. Delta War started as an editorial screed in the Delta Times and the basis of Delta War came from the people who mailed in letters asking what they could do to help or fight back. They went underground and formed a militia movement and let’s not mince words here: Delta War engages in terrorism. For the first eight years, they sent out flyers and bombed empty government buildings. Then in 1973, the Delta Warrior compound in Montana was besieged by the feds for 40 days when Delta Prime moved in and dropped a bomb on the compound, killing 250+ Deltas and normal people.


The Siege of Pilot Mountain.

“Killing”. The entire place disappeared and left an empty crater. Officially it was a neutron bomb. Unofficially, Winter will now postulate for the next two and a half pages that the device dropped was a prototype of the same bomb that The Devastator uses three years later in Chicago and clearly the US Government must have supplied the same bomb to Devastator. I mean he’s not wrong but I feel uncomfortable with the nuggets of truth being put in a whacko like a man called The Killer.

So anyway in revenge Delta War bombs a full building a year later on the exact date: they blow up the Supreme Court to make a statement, killing every judge and a hundred other people. “Shockingly”, the event doesn’t go over well with the public or the Deltas they’re trying to send a message to and Kennedy just replaces the Court with his own choices. This is capped off with six innocent Deltas in a Pax Delta cell in Chicago being attacked by the feds. Four of them are killed during arrest and the other two (a middle-aged black woman named Martha Jackson who refused to ever use her Blaster powers, an eleven year old black teen with armored skin named Lamar Howard) are tried for the bombing of the Supreme Court and are executed by firing squad. So not only are the wrong Deltas blamed for the bombing, they’re part of the peaceful resistance and they’re both black people from Chicago. Naturally the Delta Warriors are more than willing to keep up their campaign in their memory.


I'm pointedly not including most of the art for this bit because there's such pictures as "Martha and Lamar on the firing line" and "The Supreme Court Building exploding" and general explosions of cars and buildings and violence. So have this overexposed picture. Also some of the art in this book suffers from bad scanning into PDFs, it's not meant to be light.

So because it’s hard to approach the White House and get at Kennedy, the Warriors are actively engaging in eye-for-an-eye terrorism. A cell gets busted, a building gets bombed, a Warrior dies, a Primer gets killed. “And if you think Lamar deserved to die, gently caress off because you’re not going to be helpful to the cause” says the book (not exactly in those words but mostly). Winter is the current leader (and longest-lived leader at 10 years), he has three lieutenants and together they have cells all over America and the world coordinating attacks. If you join, you get taken to a training facility where you’re broken and indoctrinated into the cause. And on that note, have the final passage of this section.



PAX DELTA


Bird is the word.

Compared to the other sections of this intro, Pax Delta has only five pages of explanation and that’s because A: they’re pretty easy to understand and B: Reverend Lange actually has a good head on his shoulders and knows how to get to the drat point.

Darien Lange, black preacher of the First Baptist Church of Homewood Alabama, gets his powers when the KKK sets his church on fire while he’s asleep. What does he do? He calls the police on the guys who torched his church and gets them arrested for committing a hate crime, arson and attempted murder. And he explicitly says “yeah with my new power I could have killed them but what good would it have done to perpetuate the cycle of violence?” So he prays and he heals and he survives and gets past his trauma and moves on with his life.


Tadaa, it's MLK Jr.

Unfortunately for him, the fact that he walked out of the fire untouched immediately outs him as a Delta, and though he gets the guys arrested most of his flock leaves him. While he tries to figure out how to keep preaching love and tolerance, Dr. King moves through the area and Rev. Lange joins him. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a secret Delta, having survived the attempt on him by James Earl Ray, and he keeps working for peace and brotherhood (but with Deltas too this time). He’s outed by a Primer in 1978 at a civil rights rally but talks down the angry crowd. Since his outing his groups have been smaller, but he’s busy with running part of the Schism so he lets Rev. Lange help lead Pax Delta.

The gist of Pax Delta is “speak out against injustice, be better than your enemies, don’t stoop to violence and resist/protest peacefully”. Pax Delta is not religious, it’s a civil rights movement and it may be hard but if you gently caress up you should just try better next time. Attend meetings and support groups, try to take nonviolent protest step by step and do the best you can to help one another.

THE DEFIANCE TODAY



So Patriot's dead and he's become a martyr for the cause of Defiance. For starters there's riots of Deltas and regular folks divided into two groups. There are the people angry at his execution and saw themselves in his conviction and then there's the people who want to take advantage of rioting. However, the riots are a reminder that Defiance is here and it's angry, even if most of the Defiants were trying to prevent damages from the riots. People are running around dressed as Patriot in full costume, some of them more realistic than the others. As a result, there's a new branch of Defiance called the Patriot Corps. The Patriot Corps are men and women wearing Patriot masks and costumes when they protest, help people or strike out at the government. Of note is the lady who thinks she's possessed by Patriot's ghost.



In the wake of Patiot's death, Enrique and the Isla Delta movement launched a new recruitment drive and got a hundred more Deltas to become citizens of the island nation.

In the wake of Patriot's death, Winters and the Delta Warriors stormed Delta Prime HQ in Crescent City, guns blazing as they attacked the staff and Primers holding down the forts during the riots. The struggle ended when one of the Warriors ran into the building and used his power to explode to kill a bunch of Primers and human staff and damage the first floor of the building. Are you ready for the dumbest, edgiest, shittiest statement that I can add to this?

The exploding Delta was Ted Kaczynski, who you'd know better as the Unabomber. Yes, really. He gets straight-up murdered by a Primer with lightning powers the moment he reforms. How absolutely loving stupid. Look, vampires shouldn't be responsible for the Holocaust, anarchistic terrorists should not have super powers and if they loving do they should not do anything significant to the plot with those powers even if you somehow make them do it "for a good cause". Also despite being wildly unpopular, there's still people who support them for the bombing.

In the wake of Patriot's death, Lange and Pax Delta went out on the streets to preach nonviolent protest and try and calm down the riots (to mixed success).

THOUGHTS ON THE INTRO:

Oooooooooh boy. So. Uh. There are problems, predominantly with Delta War and the fact that a bunch of domestic terrorists are presented as a major player in Defiance. This means you'll have That Guy come down to the table and be like "this is my hero Murdersploder and he is in Delta War and he knows kung-fu and blows up dental offices for America because fluorine is a threat to Delta health, they're trying to sterilize people with superpowers by putting fluorine in the water". Delta War is immensely distasteful from the word go when Manley was like "gently caress it, let's be evil" and wholeheartedly embraced being one of the most hated men in America. Making the loving Unabomber one of their agents is just the poo poo-covered cherry on top.

Isla Delta is less problematic but could definitely be written better, mostly with less focus on a seven page recap of how the narrator's parents met nested in how their special ops got their cover blown by a guy they got arrested. The fact that it's a white guy running around as a stereotypically Hispanic supervillain is at least noted as being hosed up and problematic but this chapter also has the awkward 90s style of peppering Spanglish in sentences.

Everything else is good or at least tolerable. I mean, I have issues with the whole Yellow Journalist name and yet that's one of the less objectionable things said in this statement. This is all newer info at the very least but there's a shitload of it and even in this seventy-ish pages of fiction there is so much repetition. God this is so hard for me to find something else to say about this, I've been putting off finishing my thoughts for the last half hour. It's either tolerable or clumsy or it's just bad. But we're pretty much done with this until the GM section of things, thank God.

NEXT TIME: new powers and new premade dudes.

Hostile V fucked around with this message at 08:46 on May 30, 2016

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Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
I never owned this book so this is the first time I've ever heard that Matt Forbeck thought it was a great idea to make a Japanese-American journalist NPC and call him the Yellow Journalist. That's a special breed of classy right there. Oh and also the Unabomber's here too I guess, seriously what the gently caress.

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