|
Young Freud posted:It might be interesting to set it in the 70s, 25 years after Superior has taken over, and have it fit with the political conspiracy and science fiction dystopia of the time. That the world is on the precipice of either a great change or the apocalypse. 90's were a time of cynicism and conspiracy theories too. It's that thirty years of JFK is kinda lame.
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 08:37 |
|
|
The best Idigam theory is all of them, at once, always. Sure it seems like it makes no sense but on the other hand gently caress you it's Idigam.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:15
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I prefer Idigam Theory #4, for the effect of making the werewolves eventually realize that these mysterious, ineffable, extraordinarily dangerous entities are the spirits of the race most werewolves disregard as weak and unworthy prey. You'd have to be a really dumb werewolf to disregard humans on that level. So basically it would only shock the Pure. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:16
|
|
|
Kavak posted:You'd have to be a really dumb werewolf to disregard humans on that level. I think it would shock everyone except the Iron Masters, personally. At least, that's how I portrayed the Forsaken in my Hunter game - basically well intentioned and even necessary, but holy poo poo are they a bunch of ignorant, bloodthirsty rage-monsters prone to fatally underestimating anyone who doesn't fall into their traditional idea of a threat.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:19
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I think it would shock everyone except the Iron Masters, personally. Maybe it's because my only WtF characters have been Iron Masters, but I feel like that perspective shouldn't be that common among Forsaken. An entire lifetime of growing up believing you're human and following human codes of conduct doesn't disappear because of the Change. Maybe it's different in other parts of the world or in really rural areas, but the Iron Masters' perspective should seem very logical to a First World citizen. Of course in my campaign Valkyrie's come to the same conclusion and started Project Baresark to get (Or in some cases keep) these tribal psychos working for Uncle Sam.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:40
|
|
|
Kavak posted:Of course in my campaign Valkyrie's come to the same conclusion and started Project Baresark to get (Or in some cases keep) these tribal psychos working for Uncle Sam. My campaign had a few packs starting to, if not work directly work for Valkyrie and friends, then at least start to fill them in on what's happening. I based it on the 1E of Forsaken, though, and my players' first encounter with the Forsaken was breaking up a werewolf-run human trafficking operation that dealt in the Wolf-Blooded as sex slaves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:43
|
|
|
Kavak posted:Of course in my campaign Valkyrie's come to the same conclusion and started Project Baresark to get (Or in some cases keep) these tribal psychos working for Uncle Sam. I mean, if you redefine a pack's conception of territory to include your assets, and you give them a very wide berth, you can generally count them to be, if nothing else, fairly good at not making GBS threads where they eat, and dead-set on keeping bad mojo out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:44
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I based it on the 1E of Forsaken, though, and my players' first encounter with the Forsaken was breaking up a werewolf-run human trafficking operation that dealt in the Wolf-Blooded as sex slaves. Are you sure they weren't Pure? Because the Forsaken are supposed to be good and noble and not like them at all and you probably made the whole thing up #NotAllForsaken What compact or conspiracy was this campaign, Valkyrie?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:54
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I prefer Idigam Theory #4, for the effect of making the werewolves eventually realize that these mysterious, ineffable, extraordinarily dangerous entities are the spirits of the race most werewolves disregard as weak and unworthy prey.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 02:57
|
|
|
Kavak posted:Are you sure they weren't Pure? Because the Forsaken are supposed to be good and noble and not like them at all and you probably made the whole thing up #NotAllForsaken Yep, Valkyrie. Pretty light-hearted campaign. In that session, it was definitely the Forsaken - the pack in charge was a group of Storm Lords. But hey, gotta make babies for the continuing war whether the women like it or not, and as the Iron Masters say humans are prey. Prometheans were the only supernaturals I consistently portrayed in a positive light in the campaign - a few werewolf packs weren't assholes, a few mages were cooperative, but by and large the entire supernatural world considered themselves completely above and immune to such petty, mundane forces as human governments, and refused to take Valkyrie seriously at all. When Valkyrie destroyed a prominent vampire elder, all the vampires knew it was just an internal power play using human dupes. When an Adamantine Arrow archmage was trapped and slain by Valkyrie agents, every mage knew his hubris and paradox had gotten the better of him, Valkyrie's involvement was completely incidental. It was something of a theme that the supernaturals' arrogance regarding humanity was in part fear. No one in the supernatural world wants to admit that not only can ordinary humans (if ordinary humans with bleeding-edge technology and a budget of yes) hunt and kill even the greatest among them, ordinary humans might very well be right to do so. The supernaturals continue to play their little games of power and politics in the shadows, while out in the daylight human civilization continues to advance and thrive not knowing or caring anything about the supernatural world. Even the God Machine, of that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 03:35
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:It was something of a theme that the supernaturals' arrogance regarding humanity was in part fear. No one in the supernatural world wants to admit that not only can ordinary humans (if ordinary humans with bleeding-edge technology and a budget of yes) hunt and kill even the greatest among them, ordinary humans might very well be right to do so. The supernaturals continue to play their little games of power and politics in the shadows, while out in the daylight human civilization continues to advance and thrive not knowing or caring anything about the supernatural world. Even the God Machine, of that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 03:41
|
|
|
Count Chocula posted:I'd feel better about all the Beast hate, justified though it may be, if so many White Wolf fans in this thread didn't have detailed fantasies about playing the Technocracy and Hunter and gruesomely crushing Mages and Changlings with overwhelming technology and state power. That one is easy. The Technocracy are STEMlords, so it's not like they're evil queer monsters or anything, so STEMlord nerds dig them. Take for instance that really unfair Mage20 review that was going on, it was a celebration of sciency nerd types. Fashionable tattooed characters were despicable, fugly characters wearing Darwin t-shirts and sweatpants were awesome! Viking honor is conventionally masculine, so most straight nerds dig it. Queer Beasts? Burn them!
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 03:46
|
|
|
Actually, people hate Beast because 'I'm going to teach you a lesson by torture but it'll be for your own good' is exactly the kind of reasoning abusers have.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 03:52
|
|
|
Nessus posted:They should watch, very closely, the mages, werewolves, vampires and so on who did decide to become... "cooperative." Oh, they did. The mysterious Director of Task Force Valkyrie, the PCs eventually learned, had been a Promethean. A very old, very powerful Osiran who had long pursued the Refinement of Silver and learned so much of what there was to learn about supernatural beings of all kinds. She learned much from them, willingly taught and otherwise, wresting secrets even from Demons and angels made of glass and iron. All of this stoked the Divine Fire within her, but the moment of her transformation happened when she watched a group of American soldiers in some godforsaken hellhole of an island in the Pacific during the Second World War fight an abomination made of blood and fire, a malefic being awoken by the carnage of the war - a being known to the Maori people as Whiro. The Americans had no idea what they were fighting or what it was capable of, and the nightmare being reaped a horrific toll in lives. But the ordinary men overcame the ancient god, destroying it for all time without understanding the nature of their adversary. And not losing anything by that lack. And the Promethean masquerading as a native islander and interpreter for the Americans finally understood. Perhaps it was because of that moment of transformation that she kept all her memories and knowledge when she became human.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 03:59
|
|
|
Nancy_Noxious posted:That one is easy. The Technocracy are STEMlords, so it's not like they're evil queer monsters or anything, so STEMlord nerds dig them. Take for instance that really unfair Mage20 review that was going on, it was a celebration of sciency nerd types. Fashionable tattooed characters were despicable, fugly characters wearing Darwin t-shirts and sweatpants were awesome! That having been said, I'm not sure we read the same M20 review---at no point does the "fugly characters wearing Darwin t-shirts and sweatpants were awesome" thing come up, unless you're thinking of this, which, what? That's a woman of color with a robo-pokemon consulting a clipboard. I don't know where you're reading "fugly" or "pro-STEMlord nerd" into that. The review does lean into making fun of how many of the sample splat characters are depicted as tattooed 20-somethings in trendy clothing but: there are a lot, and it also goes on to list all the ways the representation inclusive (by being non-white, non-male, and older, where applicable. I think you may just hate your version of this thread, which may or may not resemble the one being written. It may complicate people talking to you about it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:05
|
|
|
Mr. Maltose posted:The best Idigam theory is all of them, at once, always. Sure it seems like it makes no sense but on the other hand gently caress you it's Idigam. This would be keeping with White Wolf tradition.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:10
|
|
|
Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:If you're siding with Count "devil's advocate for any game, the worse the better" Chocula on a point you're probably on the wrong end of an argument, fair warning.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:19
|
|
|
Idigam feel like a great way to link the God Machine and the Dark Mother into a Forsaken game. Huge, unfathomable entities that seemingly popped up from nowhere but powerful enough that they could fabricate their existence prior return from the moon. Or even being one of the Earth-bound idigam. I take it they're mostly hunted because they just warp reality by being, not because they're actually out to breakdown reality?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:23
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:Hey now Count Chocula is a much much better poster than Nancy_Noxious. Oh, sorry for not hating Beast hard enough! Edit: Beast fell to number 16 on drivethru rpg. I guess I will get off the fence and buy it to help the good guys. 
Nancy_Noxious fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jun 7, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:30
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Oh, they did. The mysterious Director of Task Force Valkyrie, the PCs eventually learned, had been a Promethean. A very old, very powerful Osiran who had long pursued the Refinement of Silver and learned so much of what there was to learn about supernatural beings of all kinds. She learned much from them, willingly taught and otherwise, wresting secrets even from Demons and angels made of glass and iron. All of this stoked the Divine Fire within her, but the moment of her transformation happened when she watched a group of American soldiers in some godforsaken hellhole of an island in the Pacific during the Second World War fight an abomination made of blood and fire, a malefic being awoken by the carnage of the war - a being known to the Maori people as Whiro. The Americans had no idea what they were fighting or what it was capable of, and the nightmare being reaped a horrific toll in lives. But the ordinary men overcame the ancient god, destroying it for all time without understanding the nature of their adversary. And not losing anything by that lack. And the Promethean masquerading as a native islander and interpreter for the Americans finally understood. Perhaps it was because of that moment of transformation that she kept all her memories and knowledge when she became human.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:31
|
|
|
potatocubed posted:The background stuff isn't great, no, but I'd feel like a bit of a hypocrite laying into it while I'm a-ok with Captain America or Jenny Sparks. potatocubed posted:I think a bulletproof soldier would still have been a nice thing to have back then, though. I can just imagine General Melchett paying some boffin to design him someone who "won't die when I send him over the top, what?" Stolze's Godlike is about superhumans in WWII, and it even indulges in the "Let's give someone super-powers with torture!" But Godlike is exhaustively researched, at least compared to AMP, and makes its alternate history plausible by putting events in context. Case in point, it was the Soviets who created superhumans with torture. First, their superhuman initiative was run by Lavrentiy Beria. Two, no one reported failure to Stalin if they wanted to keep breathing. Three, the idea that you could "reeducate" normal people into superhumans suited the official ideology. Four, the Soviet Union could absolutely send secret police to arrest, disappear, and torture hundreds of people for stupid reasons...they did it. And in the end, they scrapped the program because the superhumans it produced were useless. The Soviets fell way behind the other world powers in cultivating super-soldiers, not least because Stalin's paranoia encouraged Soviet supers to run or hide. potatocubed posted:1930s robber barons attempting to make supermen to fight the Japanese menace would have made more sense and not stumbled over the international history aspects.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:38
|
|
|
Tasoth posted:Idigam feel like a great way to link the God Machine and the Dark Mother into a Forsaken game. Huge, unfathomable entities that seemingly popped up from nowhere but powerful enough that they could fabricate their existence prior return from the moon. Or even being one of the Earth-bound idigam. I take it they're mostly hunted because they just warp reality by being, not because they're actually out to breakdown reality? The main issue with them is that: A. they're incredibly powerful, B. they hate werewolves and C. they tend to find some obsession to latch onto that causes problems. Generally speaking they are happy to allow reality to exist because that's where they live.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:40
|
|
|
Yeah say what you will about the idigam but they fit into the natural order somehow. They're not Abyssal entities, they're just inscrutable outside-context creatures.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:43
|
|
|
Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:If you're siding with Count "devil's advocate for any game, the worse the better" Chocula on a point you're probably on the wrong end of an argument, fair warning. I don't always agree with the Count's preferences but I like seeing his input and reactions here. Dude's earnest, he's not hostile, he's open to what he's reading, he seems to have changed some opinions about some games a little as he's read the writeups here. He's kinda refreshing. I don't want to suggest folks are arguing in bad faith just because they have different tastes. I'm down with the Count : ) Not a fan of his cereal, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 05:20
|
|
|
 GADGETEERING, REVISITED Let's do a quick recap of the core Gadgeteer.
Good news for anyone who still wants to play a Gadgeteer: they put rules for item creation and samples of items in the game! Bad news: they put rules for item creation and samples of items in the game and two of these eight pages are spent talking about the Armorgeddon program. In short: Armorgeddon suits are flown in squads of five by soldiers or pilots with Gadgeteers staying at the base to maintain them. The suits and pilots are replaceable, loyal Gadgeteers are not.  The new Armorgeddon suits aren't very interesting or important to me. Basically you can be faster or have more firepower than the original at the cost of speed or firepower. There's also a very important point of clarification: gadgets are products of a Gadgeteer's powers, they are not powers. What this means is that a power nullification field won't shut down power armor or a gadget and power armor does not actually protect against a Blaster's attacks or a Charger's lightning. Which is...okay, consider the fact that in the core book, the Armorgeddon Pilot is the only example of Delta Prime. And he is by far the Grand Master Shitkicker of the sample enemies, who might as well fight a Blaster in his underwear for protection. HOT NEW GADGETEERING RULES:
That's right, the world's least lucky Gadgeteer with 5 Tinkering can spend seven and a half months (six months of design, six weeks of assembly) to make something new. This is all in-game poo poo, folks. It gets better, though: the Gadgeteer does not make these rolls. The GM makes these rolls. And if the GM ever rolls a Disaster (that's a majority of 1s, folks) they're supposed to tell the Gadgeteer they succeeded and there's a fatally overlooked flaw in the process. So that way if they ever roll a disaster in the field, the flaw kicks in and the gadget is useless and destroyed in the process. If they want to make a new one, they can search the remains to figure out they need to start over from design. Thoughts on the new rules: They're rear end. Absolute rear end. They came up with something worse than "I don't know, do whatever, roleplay it out". Technically accurate to real world design? Sure. But who the gently caress would want to be unable to make anything new without a significant in-game time cost? You're going to keep having to put your own interests on hold for everything else. It's no fun for people to rubber-band between the plot and side plot meant for one character. You might as well just ignore the correction.  Suits on suits on suits on suits. NEW GADGETS The new gadgets have a major caveat. If you want premade design documents and blueprints for these gadgets, join Delta Prime. They have the patents and access. If you want to make these on your own? gently caress you, welcome to the Designing Stage. Hand Blaster: a gun that shoot plasma bullets that can be set to Stun or Kill. These guns have one major upside besides being the only long-range reliably nonlethal weapon: the bullets are just like Blaster blasts, they bypass armor not attached to a power. Give one of these to a Gunner and let them go to town. Blaster Cannon: The kind of weapon you'd see mounted on a Humvee. Requires Strength 8 to carry two-handed and use. Cold Fusion Reactor: CFRs are completely clean with no radioactive waste and require simple compounds to fuel fusion. Their size and power yield depends on how many Gadgeteers are maintaining the thing. One Gadgeteer with a reactor the size of a bread box can power a skyscraper but a city would need a dedicated team. In fact there are 20 Gadgeteers powering all of Crescent City with a reactor the size of a medium-sized room. Hoverbike: A bike what flies 'pon the air as if possessed by the dark energies of the Devil hisself. It's a motorcycle with jet fans and can have a front-mounted rocket launcher or machine gun. Hovercar: You can either build a six-person hovercar (eight if you squeeze) or retrofit an existing vehicle to hover (like, say, a Hummer). You can also attach up to three mounted guns on it. Netgun: Shoots nets to ensnare targets. The gunner needs to have the Entanglement trick otherwise the gun's shots are useless. Breaking free of a net is TN 20 Strength because the nets are made with nylon with woven steel cables. You can also wiggle free with TN 15 Escape. You can't Phase loose though because it's still attached to the gun and it's running an ambient field of electricity through the net. Two thoughts. 1: useless against teleporters. 2: useless without Entanglement. Just give them a Hand Blaster instead. Truthbeam: It's a flashlight that projects a beam on a target. Blue is truth, red is a lie. The target is aware of the beam, which can make things tricky because the knowledge might influence them, but they're still used nation-wide. So. Good job making Interrogators less useful with a single item, game.  Staaaaaats. Thoughts on the new gadgets: I dislike the netgun. The CFR is neat fluff but let's be honest it's very situational. Hover-vehicles are a nice addition except for the necessity to use high-efficiency fuels. The Lightning-Class Armorgeddon suit is the only one I think is worthwhile due to mounted Hand Blasters; they can now just bypass armor instead of all of the other suits. The Blaster guns are the best addition by far if only because they level the loving playing field among the other Deltas. The big question is how the gently caress you get plasma to fuel them and have upkeep for the whole team's guns. Let me be blunt here: it's a major gently caress you to John Doe Delta that these blueprints are only accessible through Delta Prime. It's less of a gently caress you when you realize that since these things are now plausible, someone playing a Gadgeteer can just make better ones. Replace the glove box of a van with a cold fusion reactor, strip the combustion engine and turn it into an electric car. Mount three Blaster Cannons to your van. Fly around and shoot Armorgeddon Pilots out of the sky. The downside, of course, is that you can develop all of these simultaneously but you still have to design and build them all. They still have to be maintained on a daily basis (on paper) for a hour. It's a loving time sink unless you manage to convince the GM that your new VW Superior only counts as one gadget. Even with the new lovely changes, it's still bad to be a Gadgeteer. NEXT TIME: GM secrets, new enemies, errata changes, the end of this book.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 05:45
|
|
|
Nancy_Noxious posted:That one is easy. The Technocracy are STEMlords, so it's not like they're evil queer monsters or anything, so STEMlord nerds dig them. Take for instance that really unfair Mage20 review that was going on, it was a celebration of sciency nerd types. Fashionable tattooed characters were despicable, fugly characters wearing Darwin t-shirts and sweatpants were awesome! This is really disingenuous, and also rather despicable; co-opting progressive language to insinuate that people who don't like a game with serious issues of abusive imagery and overtones (speaking as a queer person who's also been subject to various forms of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse through my lifetime, reading the original Beast draft made me feel sick, and I did not see myself in the Beasts at all but rather their victims, who in the old book were treated as having no right to object to their treatment and frequently deserving of their abuse, while the new one, in addition to mostly keeping that tone, also says it's for their own good now) are actually regressive GG-esque nerds is pretty disgusting. Though that you'd do that shows why you'd like Beast, given that its creator did the same thing when people pointed out that the game's protagonists were utterly reprehensible and the only reason to dislike the antagonists was that the book said to and all but explicitly said "These are stand-ins for MRAs and other bigots" without ever actually characterizing them as such, beyond including the one stereotypical Internet nerd in a trilby. Is your username's similarity to "Mandy Morbid" a coincidence, out of curiosity? Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jun 7, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 05:51
|
|
|
Nancy_Noxious posted:Oh, sorry for not hating Beast hard enough! Hey, last time I checked, this is FATAL and Friends, so try not to be such a Negative Nancy 
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 05:52
|
|
|
Nancy_Noxious posted:Oh, sorry for not hating Beast hard enough! That's okay, but could you please apologize for being an abuse apologist and arguing in bad faith?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 06:14
|
|
|
Nancy_Noxious posted:That one is easy. The Technocracy are STEMlords, so it's not like they're evil queer monsters or anything, so STEMlord nerds dig them. Take for instance that really unfair Mage20 review that was going on, it was a celebration of sciency nerd types. Fashionable tattooed characters were despicable, fugly characters wearing Darwin t-shirts and sweatpants were awesome! I find it vaguely amusing that you call me out for being a biased STEMlady with anti-queer sentiments by pointing out the characters I like are ugly.  And yeah, I like sciency nerd types. It comes with being a sciency nerd. I don't seem particularly drawn to the Traditions or Crafts, despite being a lesbian transwoman feminist.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 08:01
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:I find it vaguely amusing that you call me out for being a biased STEMlady with anti-queer sentiments by pointing out the characters I like are ugly. To be fair, the M20 version of the Tradition and Crafts are really bad. Sorcerer's Crusade/Revised give a much better version of them, so that the Traditions are flawed protagonists and the Technocracy are sympathetic villains. I used to love oMage to death, and even if my love has cooled down a lot, I still have "opinions" on it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 08:19
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:GADGETEERING, REVISITED So delta prime puts nothing but Snuffer's in those iron-man suits, right?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 08:25
|
|
|
Nancy_Noxious posted:Oh, sorry for not hating Beast hard enough! Look, either you're trolling, or you seem to genuinely believe that rape and murder are excusable, and indeed encouraged, when directed at the undesirables of society. Judging by the fact that your post history for the past two years or so consists almost entirely of bashing on 5e and singing the praises of 13th Age (While still bitching about Casters in 13th age) that would make you a very dedicated troll, or a true believer. So let me spell this out for you. I was a pasty, overweight, asthmatic nerd who was constantly picked on by the more popular kids at school. I had a shoulder and ankle dislocated right in front of a teacher who just sighed and went back to his smoke break, forcing me to limp to the nurses office on my own. When I tried to fight back against the bullies I was told that I was an instigator, and put in detention. I was sexually assaulted by someone who I thought was a friend and then proceeded to guilt trip me into thinking that the whole ordeal was my fault. I was repeatedly told that I was special because I was smart and that I should excel in everything I do, while simultaneously being told that I shouldn't stand out too much. My school counselor encouraged us to bottle up all our negative feelings deep down inside of us and only let them out in safe spaces. Because negative feelings were why people didn't like you. It took a psychotic break that's robbed me of most of my memory of 1999 but I'm a much healthier and happier person now than I was twenty years ago. Needless to say I am apparently Beast's target demographic. Beast isn't Empowering, it's exploitative. It riles up the years of pent up anger at the abuses we suffered at the hands of a system that did not care about us and tries to direct it at a target that the author hates. And if I were still a teenager I might have agreed with him. But I'm not, I know better, and so should Matt. To have a book tell me that the ten years of suffering I went through in school was some kind of cosmic right of passage is loving insulting and tone deaf in the extreme. And because I didn't embrace it that apparently means that I'm a dirty MRA and I deserved it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 08:56
|
|
|
^^ On a more powerful note, I'd like to thank everyone who is reviewing and explaining what it is they enjoy .
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:03
|
|
|
 Chapter Two: Forged in Fire Character generation! This one's a bit of a wall of text, I'm afraid. Bear in mind as we go through this chapter that at the moment all we know about the game system is what was sketched out in the introduction: that most tests are 1d20 + Skill A + Skill B vs a difficulty number, but there are a few tests that only use one skill (such as punching dudes, which uses Fighting) and they use 1d20 + (Skill A x 1.5). You round fractions down, but we don't discover that until chapter 4. Step One: Concept, Loyalties and Affiliation We're all veterans here, we know what a character concept is. AMPYO goes into some detail on the subject, though. There are several paragraphs of questions you could consider when rounding out your character, covering childhood, adulthood, gender/sexuality, ethnicity/race, and demeanour/appearance. It's nowhere near as elegant or simple as a playbook, but it's nice that so much food for thought is provided and it can deliver a bit more explanation and nuance than most playbooks do. Next up, we have Loyalties. Remember back in post #1 where I mentioned the Kickstarter copy for this game promised "fully integrat[ing] powers and character Loyalties into almost every die roll"? These are the Loyalties in question and this section is all the rules text they get. Fully integrated my rear end. Anyway, there are eight Loyalties and they're rated from 0 to 5. At chargen you get 10 points to spread around them as you like. There's a section on loyalty challenges and another on bonus XP, which I'll cover in a moment, then we get to the list of Loyalties and their descriptions:
So let's pull out a few points from this list, shall we? For starters, Community is going to be swingy as hell. If you're playing a wide-ranging kind of game, the number of times you're going to get to use your Community bonuses will approach zero. If you're playing a game focused in one area, you're going to be juiced up all the time. Although I can see it being useful if you run a game focused in one city, and Community loyalty applies to one neighbourhood or turf in that city. That does seem to be a possible mode for AMPYO play, given its low-level 'everyday folks with superpowers' atmosphere. Perfection, on the other hand, is just crazy good. The skill list is short enough that a free rank and 60% XP costs on up to five skills is a phenomenal deal. It specifically states that you can't use it to enhance powers (which use the same mechanics as skills) so it's not completely busted, but still. Love is probably my favourite, because it lets you break the game for laughs rather than ruining it for everyone else. Your love is a regular NPC, and you get 2 BP to customise them with per rank of Love. Now, bear in mind that your love has a target painted on their forehead... so take your legendary romance (Love 5) and make them the world's deadliest kung fu master with 9 ranks of Fighting. (Skills are rated from 0 to 10, and 10 is the cap, but levels 9 and 10 cost double.) Or if you're worried about mind controllers, 9 ranks of Discipline and a shotgun. Alternatively, buy 10 points of Hideout (a merit, which we'll see later this chapter) and have them own a sweet fortress which you and the gang can hang out in. Technically Hideout is an AMP-only merit, but I'd let it slide. And I don't think there's anything that says your love can't be another AMP -- their base stats are those of an Average Person (a specific NPC template) but you can spend 3 BP to give them a single power level in something. Possibly useful. Or drop 5 points on Wealth (enough for "a private jet and pretty much anything else they want"), 4 on Fame (another merit), 1 on Perform and be engaged to Justin Beiber. The possibilities are endless. Even more so if everyone in the group pulls the same stunt. Even more so if all the PCs are engaged in a poly relationship with a single NPC, letting you create Batman through the moral principles of free love. Sadly I don't think there's any way RAW to have your love be a dog, even if the GM lets you take flaws for them to boost their BP. Booooo. Something else worth noting is that at the top of the Loyalties section it calls out that none are "inherently good or evil". But... humanity is a straight-up good guy motivation. And so is justice. And community and truth skew more good than evil, although there is some wiggle room there. If you're trying to build a bastard, you're stuck looking at half the list. Although you could just stack Perfection and Self and laugh in your GM's face. That also works. Anyway: Before all this I mentioned loyalty challenges and bonus XP. Loyalty challenges are like the Hatred (Saxons) check from Pendragon: any time your character might act against one of their Loyalties, you roll an Intuition + Discipline check against a difficulty of 20 + Loyalty. If you succeed you can do what you like. If you fail, you have to follow the Loyalty. In practice this means that the weakest Loyalty is going to be compelling your actions at least 50% of the time and a Loyalty 5 will be leading you around 70% of the time even if you stack Intuition and Discipline at chargen -- which might be a feature or a bug depending on your point of view. There's also a small section on bonus XP which says that whenever you do something awesome with one of your Loyalties, or whenever one drags you into trouble or drama, you get 1 XP. Which is fine. It does mean that you're never going to get bonus points for Ultimate Kung Fu Husbando getting kidnapped, because his kidnapping isn't going to get you into trouble (probably) but it does provide a nice mechanical kickback for when your Comrades inevitably start asking you to do things for them. Finally in step one, you choose an Affiliation. You can pick Unaffiliated, Seeker of Enlightenment, Typhoon, Changeling, or UHF -- the latter of which I guess makes you a self-hating tool of oppression or something? Each Affiliation gives you certain bonuses, although they are not balanced. Changeling is the straight-up best, with 6 BP worth of bonuses, followed by unaffiliated (4 BP to spend as you like), and Typhoon brings up the rear by giving you a 'free' Indebted flaw as well as a couple of small bonuses. Step Two: Choose Skills There are 22 skills which can be rated 0 to 10 and you have 35 points to spread between them. None of the skills leap out at me as totally useless, although Fortitude and Beast Handling are probably the most niche. Skills you'll want to pump include one or more of the fightan skills (Fighting, Might, Marksmanship) and one or more of the defendan skills (Athletics, Speed). Unless you're particularly focused on being able to move fast, you're probably better off going with Athletics. There's a sidebar here that mentions that beginner characters should have their skills capped at 5, or 7 if they have a little more experience. It also mentions that this is optional, and I highly recommend you ditch it -- a typical DC in this system is 20-odd, meaning that if you limit people's skills to 5 they're going to be failing 45% of the time even in their area of expertise. The super-high 'moderate' DC which the game uses is one of its primary flaws, but I'll go on about this at length once we get around to the system chapter. Step Three: Choose Powers We'll cover powers in more detail next time, since they get a chapter to themselves. All you need to know for chargen is that you get a maximum of three powers ever. These can come from your primary strain and up to two other strains (secondary and tertiary), but you'll be lucky if you ever advance a tertiary power in a tertiary strain. There are six powers in each strain, plus each power has augments for further customisation. You buy levels in powers just like they were skills, so you'll have stuff like Claws 2, or Astral Projection 5, and you get a free augment at every even-numbered power level. You can buy extra augments but only for your primary strain powers. Oh, by the way? This section starts talking about Juice a lot, but that's a concept that isn't going to be intro-juiced (ho ho ho) until the very end of this chapter. Basically, it's points that you spend to fire up your powers. Step Four: Spend Bonus Points (BP) We all know how this goes: fine-tune your character by giving them all sorts of goodies. You can buy extra skills, powers, specialties (+2 skill in limited circumstances), powers, augments, loyalties... and then we get to the meat: As I've mentioned before, we're all veterans here. We know that merit/flaw systems are almost always a terrible idea, yet here one is. I'll just skip through this section and pull out the ones that grab my eye. There's a limit of 10 BP gained through drawbacks, so infinite abuse isn't possible, but you can still make some ridiculous builds with only a little work. Anyway, merits and flaws: Body Builder can be bought for 2 or 4 BP, and gives a +2 or +4 bonus to Might checks plus a bonus to Integrity (hit points, not that this comes up until the end of the chapter) and combat damage at the higher level. Which is strictly better than buying Might, since skills are bought with BP on a 1-for-1 basis. Wealth stands out as a game breaker. All characters start at Wealth 0 unless they spend points on it, but the point investment is linear and the level of wealth exponential. Something worth bearing in mind, though, is that 100 pages later in the 'buying stuff' section we discover that characters can pool their Wealth to buy bigger items. So five people with a disposable income of $500 per month each (Wealth 1) can get together and buy a private jet (Wealth 5). Also notable is Indebted, a drawback which gives you effectively negative Wealth and no ability to get credit while you have it. This is notable because if you're affiliated with Typhoon you automatically get this drawback without any bonus BP for it. I guess crime really doesn't pay. There are some other Wealth shenanigans you can get up to, but I'll cover them when we get to the aforementioned 'buying stuff' rules. In Control is an AMP-only gift that gives you a +2 to +6 bonus to resist the urge to Addiction is a drawback which gives you 4 BP in exchange for a slew of loving awful problems. You lose 2 Integrity (worth 2 BP right there) and if you go a day without your drug (or an hour if you're a smoker) you get the jitters and are at -3 penalty to everything. If you go without for a week you enter withdrawal and quote:will do anything to get the drug again, even injure their comrades. They can make a Tough (30) Mental Trauma check to resist urges at intervals determined by the GM. A mental trauma check is Discipline + Empathy. So even if you've got a superhuman will (Discipline 10) and a profound connection to your fellow humans (Empathy 10) you still have a 45% chance of chewing your best friend's face off if they come between you and your smack after a week of withdrawal. If your Discipline + Empathy is less than 10 you only have a 1-in-20 chance of resisting (thanks to the critical success rules, which we haven't got to yet). Which may not be too far from reality? Except that presumably smoking, which you have to indulge every hour, would similarly trigger after seven hours without a cigarette. So it's possible to have a good night's sleep, wake up to realise you forgot to buy a pack the night before, then fly into a berserk rage and kill someone for their Marlboro Lights. Oh, and you can't overcome an addiction by going cold turkey. You can only buy it off with XP at a 5-XP-to-1-BP ratio. On the other hand, if you keep putting yourself in situations where your withdrawal causes you to screw up your Loyalties you could probably score enough bonus XP to offset the cost somewhat. Similarly, a Phobia (3 BP) will completely incapacitate you in the presence of your object of fear if you don't pass a DC 20 Fear test (again, Discipline + Empathy). The DC goes up to 30 if the trigger is particularly bad. Remember that DC 20 is pretty hard and DC 30 is ludicrous! Being a Kid (12 or younger) will get you 5 BP, but if you're a ranged blaster type none of the disadvantages are really important, and you get a free +2 bonus to Athletics checks and +2 Movement as well as your five bonus BP. I'll be honest, I don't see the point in allowing PCs to be pre-teen children in a game that's not specifically about pre-teen children. Like... nothing good will come of this. Nothing. Animal Beacon is an AMP-only drawback that makes animals hate you, and if you use your powers in front of one then they automatically attack. "We're lost. Let me psychically connect to the internet to check our location on Google Maps."*vanishes in a cloud of angry pigeons* Power Addict (4 BP drawback) is pretty cool. Basically, you love one of your powers so much you use it for everything that might even be remotely applicable. (DC 20 D + E check to resist, as usual.) It's characterful, it causes both mechanical and fluff problems for you, but it's not overwhelmingly bad to the point where the character's unplayable. Side-Effect is a collection of 4 BP drawbacks, consisting of one for each AMP strain. Ferals suffer social penalties when there are lots of people around, Mindbenders get crippling migraines when they use their powers, and so on. There are a couple of oddities, as you'd expect. Bulging Muscles is the Bulk drawback, and it means that whenever you use your powers you... well, Hulk Out. Ripped clothes, massive frame, and you find it difficult to hide or talk to people until you de-Hulk. (Takes about an hour.) Buuuuut... the Bulk strain includes six powers, of which only Behemoth covers boosting strength. But there's nothing stopping you from taking this flaw in conjunction with Biomorph if you want to be immune to poisons -- while also hulking out. Or Evasion if you want to pull Matrix-style bullet-time dodges -- while also hulking out. Or Acceleration if you want to be able to run at 500 mph -- while also hulking out. Moving on, the side effect for Travellers is Lost: when you roll to activate your power and roll 1-4 (so, 20% of the time) you are instantly teleported to somewhere within one mile. (GM's choice, I think. It's implied but not made clear.) First of all, teleportation covers two of the six powers in the Traveller strain (Teleportation and Portals) and could theoretically work with one other (Chronos -- time manipulation). But you can totally take this drawback if you've got the ability to raise forcefields (Barrier), slap people about with telekinesis (Telekinesis) or just fly (Flight). You still get teleported. But it gets better! Of all the abilities in Portals, only three require a check at all (and one of those has no resistance listed, so I don't know why you're making a check or what you're checking against -- it should just work). In Teleportation there are two, and one of those is just for pulling combat tricks with teleport. So if you're an actual teleporter of some stripe, Lost is almost 4 free BP. Combat teleporting is awesome in theory, yes, but since to use it you need to make a DC 20 check each time you try you might as well grab Lost because it's not like any of your sweet tricks will work. Also, if you're an actual teleporter suddenly being a mile away is no big deal because you can just teleport back again. Step Five: The Rest Of It Your character also has Integrity equal to 10 + Fortitude. This is hit points by any other name, and damage is tracked using the bashing/lethal distinction you'll be familiar with from every White Wolf game ever. In this system it's renamed damage and brutal damage, but w/e. You have Juice, which has a 'baseline' of 3 (which it resets to after about half an hour of chilling out) and a maximum of 10. Juice is spent to fuel your powers, and is fuelled in turn by adrenaline -- so getting into fights, working out, getting laid, getting scared... all of these flood your system with tasty, tasty Juice. Which I suppose means that if you really need Juice in a hurry, you can just neck a load of amphetamines. The sample drugs section later on does cover coke (+1 Juice per dose) and EMT adrenaline syringes (2 Brutal Damage in exchange for Juice being set to 10) but not speed or the artificial adrenaline that Addisons sufferers get. Oh, and you get Juice when one of your Loyalties is harmed or threatened. I've got sort of vague visions of a supergoon with Lecherous (3 BP drawback), Phobia: Women (3 BP drawback), and Loyalty to some true You also get +1 Juice when you roll a critical success (nat 20) or a critical failure (nat 1). Which I like; the nat 1 angle takes a little of the sting out of screwing up something you should have been able to do easily. There's also a sidebar about how tuning the rate at which the GM hands out Juice can colour the way the game plays, which I think is good to call out. Moving on... we have Movement! It's based off Athletics + Speed and converted into a feet-per-round movement rate, which gives us the following fun stats:
Something worth noting is that the various movement powers -- mostly flight -- work based on your base Movement stat. Which on the one hand prevents you from cheesing a low Movement and bypassing it by flying everywhere, but on the other hand makes you painfully slow even if you're being propelled everywhere on a pillar of fire. Also, among other things the Elderly drawback gives you -4 Movement, which can drop your Movement to 1. That's a standard walk/jog of one foot per ten seconds, or almost a minute to cover a single 5 ft square. I know old people can be slow, but they're not that bloody slow. We've also got rules for jumping, climbing, and swimming. There are supposed to be rules for determining lift/carry weight and initiative checks here -- they're in the chargen summary page and the sample character creation blurb -- but they're not here. Step... Oh, no more steps. Experience Points! This is modelled on the White Wolf/Onyx Path system of 1 XP for showing up, 1 XP for doing something notable, etc. The book reckons people will get about 3 XP per session, which I think is a little low. You need 15 XP to raise a power in your primary strain by one level, for example, and since that's what people are going to want to be doing I'd be inclined to make things a little faster. Maybe 5 XP a session. The system is designed so that 5 XP = 1 BP, and it more or less works that way -- except for the Perfectionist Loyalty. Since Perfectionist gives you a 40% discount on raising a skill with XP but no discount on raising it with BP, you're better off starting your Perfectionist skills with nothing but the free rank in them that Perfectionist gives you then raising them with XP. If you start with, say Discipline 1 and raise it to 5, that'll take you ~4 sessions. Another character would take ~7 sessions to do the same thing. I mean, there's a story there -- someone who starts out sucking but wants to be the very best is a well-trodden fictional path -- but it doesn't change the fact that you're going to end up plain better than the other PCs. ---- Thoughts: My God, it's full of the 1990s. (This game came out in 2014, for the record.) Merits and flaws, crunch which doesn't quite line up with fluff, glacial character progression because of stingy XP rewards... This section in particular owes a significant debt to White Wolf/Onyx Path. The structure of character creation (build a mundane, then 'layer' powers on top, then spend bonus points), the two-page summary in callout boxes, the example character... yeah, all of that. Apart from the occasional flash of coolness I'm honestly struggling to see why people like this game so much. Like any d20-based game specialisation is the key to an effective character, but the way the skills are mixed and matched -- you can in theory roll any two together -- makes it really difficult to work out which ones to invest in. Discipline for sure, but I have no idea about the rest. Oh, and in case you were wondering how broken I can make the game with these merits and flaws? With just what you see here I can make an eleven-year-old chain-smoking bodybuilder who gains 2 BP (after buying back all the Integrity they would lose) and +2 Athletics, +2 Movement, and +4 Might (7 BP's worth of stuff) on top, all for the cost of a reduced carrying capacity, a -4 penalty on Intimidation checks against grown-ups, -1 Juice, and psychotic murder-frenzy if they ever run out of cigarettes. Which they can't buy, because they're eleven. Merits and flaws, folks. Not even once. Next Time: The Powers. The meat of many superhero games, once again presented before we understand any of the systems that they're going to depend on.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:19
|
|
Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:If you're siding with Count "devil's advocate for any game, the worse the better" Chocula on a point you're probably on the wrong end of an argument, fair warning. I'm not being a Devil's Advocate, and I tried to avoid saying STEMlord (too much). I just like what I like. oMage and oChangeling -at least how I saw them - are about weirdo artsy kids and hippies and outcasts of all stripes banding together, and getting power from what makes them different. The M20 review, and the general Technocracy wank in this thread, seemed really hostile to that. I know that, in real life, the scientists world view is more correct than the hippie/magickal world view 99% of the time. I've lost friends defending science! In the real world, being great at words and art and symbolism makes you less than useless compared to knowing how math and physics and all that boring stuff work. But RPGs are FANTASY. They're explicitly happy pretend funtime. Some of the games I defend (parts of) like Beast and Bellum Magica have harmful subtext - but at least they're punching UP. But some just say 'hey, those guys that rule the real world? That rigid paradigm of solid objects and linear time? You can imagine a world that isn't that. You can pretend that the depression you feel in shopping malls has metaphysical reality. You can play somebody who can change the world by being stylish and knowing the right words and the right place to say them.' It's as valid as imagining that the FBI had fancier guns and legitimate targets to use them on. Plus, my number 1 A+ most beloved game is Unknown Armies, with Feng Shui and FATE high up there. I'm not a contrarian for the sake of it. I just like imagining strange things, and isn't that what RPGs are all about? Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Jun 7, 2016 |
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:22
|
|
|
Personally I find punching up overrated. Perhaps less egregious than punching down, but still all about punching, and it has this uncomfortable undertone of legitimizing hate against groups on the basis of their group identifiers. We punch, but, see, our targets are bad so they deserve it; that's a way of thinking that all too quickly can be subverted to punching sideways, or down.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:32
|
|
|
Beast isn't about punching Up. Yes, at some point in the past you were a member of the disenfranchised suffering at the hands of a more properly entrenched power center. But then the dark mother came along, gave you a ludicrous pile of nightmare powers, and elevated you above the rest of humanity. When you're taking down a hero you aren't punching up, you're punching down. You're showing that stupid little hero that he's only human and that his rightful place is at your heels, as ashes, because he should be dead. This isn't "unfortunate subtext" this is "Chapters two through seven of the book and also two of the appendices (because the third one is a quick reference guide)". I mean for fucks sake, Anakim and Tyrants are literally about punching down, that is what they do. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Jun 7, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:33
|
|
|
Also the issues with Beast and Bellum Maga aren't even necessarily ones that involve the punching up, down, or sideways thereof. A large part of it is that they co-opt legitimate issues then turn around and make the ostensible "heroes" (not capital-H Heroes) repugnantly monstrous and vile, so much so that they warp back around into effectively portraying the minorities and their struggles the way someone on a smear campaign caricaturing such people and beliefs would. Beasts are supposed to be stand-ins for persecuted minorities, and Beasts are also abusers draped in abuse apologia all of which is presented as objectively right and good by the author. Do you really think that GLBT people searching for a game that speaks to their inner selves want something that enables them to pretend to be stalkers and abusers, or at best petty health inspectors and sadistic assistant principals? These games aren't affirming and empowering, they're pathetic and petty and frequently run contrary to the ideals they cheaply drape themselves in, oh and they're pretty gross in places too.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:46
|
|
|
Beast does not punch up, though. The Beasts are at the top; the examples even include some corporate jackass who is climbing as high as he can. The Beasts are automatically liked by everyone (who matters; at some points mundane people are almost explicitly just prey for the much-more-important Beasts), they have no stigma or grand force fighting them or keeping them down, and the book itself tries to present their every action, no matter how heinous, as justified. Hell, the way Beasts act reflects that of the privileged more than the not; when they fight Heroes they're described as doing things such as leveraging their connections and assets against them, turning the masses against them and ostracizing them and trying to make them look bad regardless of the facts of the matter, and basically reveling in their ability to ruin their lives in every imaginable way. The things they are described as doing (that aren't just real life abusive situations; I seriously don't think some people get how uncomfortably, disturbingly close what some Beast actions in the book are to real life abuser tactics and actions, or how the book's narrative mirrors the justifications of actual abusers almost perfectly even after they tried to scrub that out of it) are what the people the Heroes supposedly represent actually do in real life. Were it not for the Beasts and Heroes being labeled as if they were characters in a political cartoon, there would be nothing signifying that they're at all decent, just the book telling you "these are the good guys, that's why they're allowed to murder people and torture them and drive them to mental breakdowns". The supposed narrative doesn't match what it actually presents at all. Making the murderous assholes queer doesn't suddenly make the game progressive. If anything, it makes it more uncomfortable when the book alternates between detailing how two Beasts are gay lovers and how they ruthlessly exploit people for the express purpose of murdering them; the emphasis on those aspects while describing the characters committing abuse and atrocity is... Well, like I said. Uncomfortable, to put it mildly. Edit: Very late but whatever. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Jun 7, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 08:37 |
|
|
Also, there is absolutely nothing in the game that enforces any kind of actual morality on Beasts other than the fact that you are apparently a moral person. Somewhere there is a Beast who internalized all the terrible abuse they got for being different and goes around 'teaching lessons' about how being gay is a mortal sin and that they should stay closeted their entire lives. That being smart and standing out are the surest ways to get yourself hammered down. That Conformity is the one and only key to a long and happy life. In fact I'm pretty sure that's really loving common.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 09:50
|
|