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Alien Rope Burn posted:FYI, Everway did have collectible card packs, in case you didn't get your fill of fantasy pin-up art in the main box; just do a search for Everway Companion Collector Cards. My guess is that we have several packs worth, as a lot of the cards have variant color card backs, or weird quest prompts instead of the vision questions, plus we have more than will comfortably fit in the trays the game ships with.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:31
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Truly this is the darkest timeline if most of Youthquake are decent people and the ones that aren't have issues that can be recognized by showing care and support for your teammate and therapy. I mean also the Nazis too but that's somehow way less notable. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 14:40
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Young Freud posted:Oh man, never was there something that would turn me against an artist like that comic. Year 100 was even enjoyable to that point, when I find that Pope's a libertarian. The whole thing about the German Batman saving the works of Von Mises was
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Jun 22, 2016 15:16
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Halloween Jack posted:Wow, that's just unbelievably disgusting. I don't know how DC lets out stuff like that. (That, and Alan Grant being allowed to use Anarky as a platform to rant about the New Agey variant of Objectivism to which he subscribed.) Isn't that the point of Anarky though? To be the representative of whatever crazy political spectrum the author likes or dislikes this week?
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Jun 22, 2016 16:41
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Count Chocula posted:There was a 1 page backup strip with Batman as a foppish German during WWII. I think it was collected with Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100. I prefer my Batman to be a crazy Soviet, trying to overthrow Superman's regime  Kavak posted:This map hurts to look at. A Delta did it.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:45
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Youthquake's costumes are terrible. I get that they're supposed to be uniform, but you can do better than that.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:55
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Those drawings are...well they're something  Finally finished the next part of my Planes of Chaos review. Once I get home and extract the pictures I'll post it.
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Jun 22, 2016 17:19
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Demon: The Descent Every demon has a Cipher, a series of four interlocked Embeds that reveals to them a great truth. Ciphers are extremely personal, and no two demons are going to have one that's exactly alike. When you discover one of the four Key Embeds, you undergo a transcendental moment of awareness, a sudden boost that is always life-changing. The Cipher does not come from the God-Machine - indeed, following along it is something that takes you away from the Machine, further towards your own selfhood. All attempts to find if there might be a fifth Key have ended badly, usually spectacularly so. During chargen, the player selects the demon's first Key, which can be any Embed the demon knows but which probably ties into their reason for Falling or their beliefs. The ST chooses the other three Keys and does not reveal them. The ST has more to do, however. The Cipher's not just learning four Embeds. The ST must also develop bonus powers, called Interlocks, which are earned by discovering your Keys. On top of that, the Cipher also has its final secret, a koan or insight revealed by completing it. Key Embeds should not be chosen at random, but based on a player's concept, history and playstyle. The final secret of the Cipher isn't an endgame or anything, but it is a truth that should help the character confirm or clarify their own personal vision of Hell. No one knows where the secrets come from, but they seem to always grant a demon more of an idea of how to reach freedom. Interlocks, meanwhile, are custom powers. They are typically based, conceptually, on a combination of two Key Embeds and what combining these powers might do - both literally and conceptually. The GM comes up with them custom for each demon, and they aren't Embeds so they don't have to obey all the Embed rules...but they're not Exploits either, so they don't have to obey those rules, either. The game says that you can either choose to assume that all of your starting Embeds have been tested with your First Key to see if they're your Second Key...or not, but the ST should always tell the players which is the case, so they can know whether they have to test those Embeds. See, at any point you may try to test an Embed with your Cipher to see if it's a Key. You activate it as normal, but spend an Aether. If it is your next Key, you immediately gain one Primum and a new Interlock. If it's not, you get a Beat, but also take damage and suffer a temporary glitch. If the tested Embed is a Key but is not your next Key, you instead get 3 Beats, but the damage you take is aggravated and the glitch check is for a permanent glitch. Note, however, ther'es a way to check if you know your Keys without just randomly trying them all. At the end of each scene involving angels, demons, stigmatics or the God-Machine in which you gain a Beat, you can make an Intelligence+Wits roll to be able to intuit the answer to one of the following questions, in sequence:
2. What Attribute does my next Key use? 3. What category is the next Key Embed? 4. What is my next Key? You always ask in order, and of course you can choose to test Keys without knowing the answers. You start the game on Question #2, however, because you know your First Key and it's usually assumed that you don't know your Second Key yet and know that. Anyway, Interlocks are super loving cool, but a lot of work, because...well, they're all custom powers, and the game can at best provide you with rough guidelines in the ST section on how to maybe make them. Now, Exploits! Exploits are, unlike Embeds, entirely unsubtle. They use the same sort of metaphysical pathways, but they're taking the knowledge of those paths and forcing them open with extreme power. They're very effective, but attention-grabbing. Angels never use Exploits, ever, even if their powers may resemble instinctually used Embeds. Indeed, an angel that even tries to use an Exploit is probably going to Fall soon. Learning an Exploit means you need an Embed you could draw the knowledge from. While the game lists potential prerequisited Embeds, any Embed you and your ST agree could be used to learn a given Exploit will work, and lateral thinking should be allowed. Exploits include:
Next time: The basic state of being a demon.
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Jun 22, 2016 17:22
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Does Four Minutes Ago refund Aether you spent during those four minutes?
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Jun 22, 2016 17:52
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wiegieman posted:Isn't that the point of Anarky though? To be the representative of whatever crazy political spectrum the author likes or dislikes this week? Anarky's an anarchist, although more the pop-culture "destroy everything!" kind than the legitimate far-left variety. I don't really consider AnCaps like Von Mises to be part of traditional anarchism, in that they're overall fine with hierarchy in the workforce and really only follow the "anti-government" part of anarchism while discarding the rest. On the one hand, what we see as anarchy in pop culture and media is a highly misconstrued notion of how it really works, but there is an element of truth. A lot of Reddit anarchists (the real kind, not the "drat government destroying masculism/Western civilization!" kind) have an unfortunate tendency to romanticize violence and don't fully understand the implications of wide-scale dismantling of huge government-funded projects will have. So yeah, Anarky isn't really supposed to represent any consistent politicial ideology, but having him be an Ayn Rand supporter will still be ridiculous.* It would be equivalent to having a cartoon Communist talk about how Sweden is Karl Marx's dream come true. *Ayn Rand was still in favor of having a military and laws supplemented by courts, as well as technologically advanced civilizations imposing their values through force on less developed civilizations. She's far from a genuine anarchist, or even libertarian. Also, major figureheads at the Ayn Rand institute believed that the US military should not care about civilian casualties in the War in Iraq, and that such a thing is even desirable.
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Jun 22, 2016 19:07
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Zereth posted:Does Four Minutes Ago refund Aether you spent during those four minutes? Any Aether and Willpower spent or gained in those four minutes reverts, yes, with the exception of any spent activating Four Minutes Ago.
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Jun 22, 2016 19:19
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What happens if you Go Loud and then use Four Minutes Ago?
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Jun 22, 2016 19:48
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wdarkk posted:What happens if you Go Loud and then use Four Minutes Ago? You can fake your death *really* convincingly.
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Jun 22, 2016 19:50
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Mages start swarming around the new Mystery like ants at a picnic.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:20
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Not exactly. "Metahuman" was a term invented by Keith Giffen for DC as part of the "metagene" concept; the idea that certain people have the ability to develop powers under physical and emotional stress. The difference from, say, mutants, was that the metagene was a shared origin meant to explain how chemicals or radiation or other Silver Age origins actually worked, because it's the eighties and genetics is the new Mystery Science. Yeah; Marvel also has metahumans, additionally. Usually it's someone who has superpowers who is not a mutant or an Inhuman or something like that. At this stage, it's a fairly generic and brand agnostic term for "person with superpowers." (sometimes in DC, it's used informally in-universe to describe any costumed weirdo regardless of whether or not they have 'powers'. Because when you're a random mercenary goon and you run into a man wearing a cape or some poo poo like that, you need something to shout and aren't exactly going to wait and find out if he's the kind of cape person who shoots lasers or the kind who punches really hard)
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Jun 22, 2016 20:27
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Not exactly. "Metahuman" was a term invented by Keith Giffen for DC as part of the "metagene" concept; the idea that certain people have the ability to develop powers under physical and emotional stress. The difference from, say, mutants, was that the metagene was a shared origin meant to explain how chemicals or radiation or other Silver Age origins actually worked, because it's the eighties and genetics is the new Mystery Science. Marvel and DC will both use the term, acrually. Marvel usually conflates it with mutants and dc will use it on general superhumans. Originally the term was conceptualized by GRRM's wildcard books and earlier superhero rpg. E:fb E2:also don't accidentally delete your whole post when ur phone posting 
Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 20:28
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My explanation may seem contradictory to Nuns with Guns' explanation, but they're both about equally correct in that the term means whatever a specific writer thinks it does that given week.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:34
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Libertad! posted:Anarky's an anarchist, although more the pop-culture "destroy everything!" kind than the legitimate far-left variety. Anarky was definitely a reaction to Alan Moore's "V For Vendetta", which is probably more even-handed take on what exactly is anarchism since Moore's an anarchist. Libertad! posted:I don't really consider AnCaps like Von Mises to be part of traditional anarchism, in that they're overall fine with hierarchy in the workforce and really only follow the "anti-government" part of anarchism while discarding the rest. Ludwig von Mises might have been one of these grandfather's of libertarian thought but never forget he was a proto-fascist who happened to belong to the wrong religion. Like he wrote pages in "Liberalism" extorting that it was a lesser but necessary evil against Bolshevism and that while socialism can only be won against in a war with ideas, fascism helps when the socialists and communists get violent. Also, he worked with monarchists like Otto von Hapsburg and Austrofascists before they became Nazis. If he hadn't been Jewish, his books would likely be in the garbage with all the rest of discredited Nazi and fascist philosophy and theory. Gazetteer posted:Yeah; Marvel also has metahumans, additionally. Usually it's someone who has superpowers who is not a mutant or an Inhuman or something like that. At this stage, it's a fairly generic and brand agnostic term for "person with superpowers." Don't forget that "metahuman" has been popping up in Shadowrun books for awhile to describe generic people be they human, UGE-birthed, or goblinized.
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Jun 22, 2016 21:01
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Mors Rattus posted:Any Aether and Willpower spent or gained in those four minutes reverts, yes, with the exception of any spent activating Four Minutes Ago. Especially if the entire PC group has it.
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Jun 22, 2016 21:12
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 Bubblegumshoe: Rules If you've played GUMSHOE before, don't expect any surprises here. Clues The core of the system! A clue is exactly what it sounds like, and to get it, you need to:
Inconspicuous Clues are clues that the character would definitely notice, but the party might not go out of their way to mention using the relevant ability every time - Notice and BS Detector are the usual suspects here. When a clue like this comes up, the GM will check who has the biggest pool for that ability, and tell them the clue without being prompted. Spends and Benefits Sometimes, when you get a clue, you can get extra mileage out of it by spending points from an ability pool. The GM should let you know when the option is available, and the benefit can take various forms:
Failsafe Tests Sometimes, it really does look like a clue will be hard to get - locked doors, encrypted files, something that obviously calls for a general test. In this case, you do a Failsafe Test. Set the difficulty mentally, but if the character making the test spends any points at all, they automatically succeed. If they don't spend any points, and then they fail, they still get the clue, but something else bad happens, usually in the form of increased danger after getting the clue. Tests Speaking of tests! See difficulty, roll 1d6. If roll is at least difficulty, you succeed. You can spend X points from any relevant ability pool to add +X to the result. Spend before rolling. Your roll, whatever the result, represents your character's best effort - you can't just try again and do better. If your first attempt fails, you're SOL unless you take some other action to make your effort easier. If you do manage to change up the situation so that you can try again, if you want to spend points, you have to spend more points than you did last time. If multiple people are doing something together, any of them can spend 1 point from a relevant pool to Piggyback on the person making the roll, not increasing the roll value. If someone wants to Piggyback but doesn't have enough points, they can, but the difficulty goes up by 2. If someone wants to cooperate to help the roller succeed, they can spend X points from a relevant pool to boost the roll by X-1.  When something is going to take longer than a single test, run it as a Continuing Challenge. The challenge gets a total difficulty (15+ usually), and as time passes the sleuths can make rolls of Difficulty 4 to make progress on it. The challence is completed when the total combined value of all successful rolls against the challenge reaches the total difficulty. If something bad happens to you, you might be called to make a Cool test. If you fail, you lose a bunch of Cool, so it might be worth spending a point or two to ensure you don't lose even more. Difficulty is always 4.  If you want something to take effort, but not have a chance of failure, don't call for a roll. Instead, just call for a Spend. Contests Head to head tests! These come in two varieties. The simpler variety is Player-Facing Contests. These work just like other tests, for the most part - roll Sneaking to get past the guard. If you fail, though, there's no chance to regroup and retry, because you're facing the immediate consequence of the other person having beaten you. Difficulty is usually 4, but may vary based on enemy Alertness/Stealth/Status Modifiers. If a player-facing contest is social, things get a bit more complicated. Obstacle NPCs can spend points from their interpersonal abilities to raise the difficulty by +1 per point. You can spend on your own interpersonal abilities (usually Throwdown) for +2 per point. Remember, though, a contest is never required to get a capital-C Clue out of someone. Full Contests are for longer, more involved contests, or player-against-player contests. Involved characters act in turn, but can call on Relationships or Cooperation for help. On your turn, you roll against a set difficulty for the contest. Then, the other side rolls against the same difficulty. The first side to fail loses. I'm actually not wild about this system, since it rewards whoever goes last with a higher chance of success. Next: Conflict!
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Jun 22, 2016 21:25
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Kevin Siembada's Foreward to the new Savage Worlds RIFTS Player's Guide posted:When I first conceived Rifts®, I wanted to create a fully realized universe that was unique, expansive, and would blow people’s minds. A setting that melded the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, wrapped in a blanket of post-apocalyptic Earth and cool alien strangeness. The familiar and the bizarre. High technology and magic. The Megaverse® was born. BOLDING mine...
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Jun 22, 2016 21:38
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Young Freud posted:Also, he worked with monarchists like Otto von Hapsburg and Austrofascists before they became Nazis. Not defending von Mises, but Otto was not a Nazi and was decidedly an enemy of them. He was definitely anti-Communist, though.
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Jun 22, 2016 21:49
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theironjef posted:My guess is that we have several packs worth, as a lot of the cards have variant color card backs, or weird quest prompts instead of the vision questions, plus we have more than will comfortably fit in the trays the game ships with. Probably, then! Everway feels a lot to me like Amber DRPG, only with a much heavier storytelling /improv element that was in vogue at the time. In should be noted that it bombed hard, tho- I think it was the final straw that resulted in WotC no longer producing RPGs until they bought out TSR and got the D&D license. Everway didn't do it on its own, mind, they had been losing money on their RPG lines essentially since their founding, but it was a big financial failure, if not necessarily a creative failure.
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Jun 22, 2016 21:50
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Nuns with Guns posted:Marvel and DC will both use the term, acrually. Marvel usually conflates it with mutants and dc will use it on general superhumans. Originally the term was conceptualized by GRRM's wildcard books and earlier superhero rpg. Aren't metahumans the superpowered freaks that are not persecuted by the general population every other weeks? Like Spider-Man? Humbug Scoolbus posted:BOLDING mine... There are no right or wrong ways to roleplay. As long as you are going the Siembieda way. And just because he playtested doesn't mean he had to learn anything from it. Doresh fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 22:19
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Kavak posted:Not defending von Mises, but Otto was not a Nazi and was decidedly an enemy of them. He was definitely anti-Communist, though. Which given what communism in eastern Europe at the time entailed was perfectly understandable.
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Jun 22, 2016 22:23
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I almost feel like scanning the "NO NEUTRAL ALIGNMENTS!" bit from every Palladium book, or the lovely hissy about people who don't like the magic system in Federation of Magic. I think I'll put that remnant PPE toward dinner.
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Jun 22, 2016 22:24
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Doresh posted:There are no right or wrong ways to roleplay. As long as you are going the Siembieda way. That was what I was thinking too.
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Jun 22, 2016 22:36
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Bieeardo posted:I almost feel like scanning the "NO NEUTRAL ALIGNMENTS!" bit from every Palladium book, or the lovely hissy about people who don't like the magic system in Federation of Magic. I think I'll put that remnant PPE toward dinner. DO EEET!  Planescape: Planes of Chaos - Arborea (part 2) As I mentioned earlier, The first layer Olympus is where Planescape spends most of its time. The Greeks and Elves have their main kip here, but they aren’t exactly next-door neighbors. In fact, the two realms are separated by hundreds of miles of wilderness. The layer of Olympus (not to be confused with the realm of the Greeks) is actually slightly convex, so while Arvandor and Mount Olympus both occupy the highest points of the layer, neither realm can see the other. Apart from the massive scale everything lives on, Olympus is pretty similar to the typical D&D setting. Arvandor is the home of the Elven Pantheon, the Seldarine. Corellon Larethian is the chief deity. Compared to the Greek Powers, the Seldarine live in more modest abodes. Arvandor is hues more to Lorien than Rivendell, and Gondolin and cave-strongholds are right out. The Elf gods allow ecology to do it’s thing, so there are enough natural hazards in the realm to make things interesting. Besides dire bears and ettercaps, the ruins of the giants are scattered throughout the realm, and the elves apparently never cleaned out Lolth’s old residence. So there is plenty in Arvandor to distract players with when they get tired of hanging around elves. Elmoriel the Enchantress posted:Arvandor is the only civilized wilderness While there are no towns per se in Arvandor, the Elven petitioners and other servants of the Seldarine like to congregate in a few locations. Grandfather Oak was already mentioned in the Travelogue, and there are a number of other huge trees that are similar in broad strokes. Some of the deities have a structure or landmark that is pretty much their home. The aptly named Pale Tree is the center of Solonor Thelandira’s domain (what’s he the god of? I don’t know). Hanali Celanil has a crystal palace which is occasionally home to the fountain Evergold (more on that later). The Sparkling Sea links Arvandor to Deep Sashelas’s realm in Ossa. Erevan Illesre hangs out near a root of Yggdrasil that links directly to Alfeim. Other conduits include The Roaring Gate which leads to the Beastlands. And in a stunning display of planning, the portal to Arborea’s gate-town in Outlands (Sylvania if you forgot) is located near Lloth’s former domain, now home to huge spiders and banshees. Wee. There are a couple special conditions in Arvandor. Time doesn’t flow linearly, although rules for this are given. Anyone who isn’t an elf or The important non-god elves are the High Kings and Queens, “rulers of the entire races of elves.” As far as I know none of the other D&D campaigns with elves make mention of these people. The High Kings and Queens are elected, and their followers are shy about violently ejecting any gently caress-ups. There is one monarch for each sub-race besides Drow, and the current bunch are fairly high level. Labelas Thenorean is the Grey Elf High King, and his court is usually at Grandfather Oak, so he’s probably the one PCs are most likely to meet. Alternatively, the High Elf High Queen, (that’s a mouthful) Marrisa Snowplover, is a bachelorette, in case a player wants to roleplay courting a noble or something. The entry for Arvandor ends with some bullshit on services. The most interesting one is that a High King or Queen will sponsor killing a big monster that’s wandered into the Realm. Evergold is the Fountain of Youth. It’s a wandering site that rotates among the different beauty deities in Arborea (Aphrodite, Hanali and Sune). A player that bathes in the fountain for more than an hour has his Charisma boosted by 1 point for every 5 points of existing CHA (rounded up). This effect lasts one year. What the fountain doesn’t do is change Charisma into something other than a stat for poorly written rules that most groups choose to ignore outside of class requirements, so who cares. The entry for Grandfather Oak doesn’t give much information that wasn’t in the Travelogue. There is a plothook involving an elf that’s actually a Doomguard who has apprenticed herself to the tree’s master woodcarver, so if the DM wants to run an adventure involving the Doomguard in Arborea then she’s a good starting point. Now we come to the realm of Olympus in the layer of Olympus. For my own sanity, I’ll be referring to the realm as Mount Olympus. This is where most of the Greek Gods live. Like a lot of 90s RPGs, Planescape stays in character, so it assumes the reader doesn’t know any more about historical (or modern!) deities than the gods TSR made up. The booklet describes the Olympians as “a short-tempered, lustful, partying lot,” which sounds about right. There are seven big god palaces near the top of the mountain, belonging to Zeus-Hera, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Athena, Dionysus and Hermes. The rest of the deities have smaller-scale temples in the realm (smaller-scale is a relative term). Further down the slopes, the realm is mediterranean in climate, closely resembling a Sword and Sandals movies made by Ray Harryhausen and starring Steve Reeves as Hercules. Minorus, Keeper of the Grove posted:The gentle slopes of Mount Olympus hide a thousand silent deaths. The sacrifices to the spirits of Arborea have claimed many thousand more. Mount Olympus has special magical conditions, although in practice they’re just the general conditions of Arborea repeated “respect the nature spirits or else” The main difference is that while in Mount Olympus it’ll probably be Furies delivering the smackdown. Important cutters in Olympus include Galen, a powerful centaur druid, a wood nymph named Greenfire of the Wormwood, and a Sensate “philosopher of hedonism” named Epiros Thuridiphon. The service section states that Mount Olympus only has items available during the Ancient Period. What that includes is in the DMG optional rules. I’m sure a historian can pick that list to pieces, but that’s neither here nor there. Ultimately, item availability in a particular region is pointless when a portal back to Sigil can provide a player with whatever he or she can afford. Mount Olympus has three major cities. Arkenos is Sparta but with Amazons. Thalassia is port-town. Polykeptolon is Plato’s Republic, and is popular with the Guvners. Just outside of the Realm is literally off-brand Athens. Really: “Thrassos is a cosmopolitan petitioner’s burg modeled after a town on one of the Greek powers’ favorite prime material worlds.” Like historical Athens, only the male petitioners have the right to vote. But no need to fret, ladies, because the elections are in fact controlled by a zero-level petitioner named Helena Toliopolos. Thrassos has a gate to the Outlands for anyone that doesn’t want to walk past the abandoned domain of a banished power. The downside is that opening it requires the consent of the town elders. The Militia is your basic citizen army. Services are dumb, save maybe a guy that knows 18 languages. There’s an amphitheater for if the DM wants to rope the players into staging a play. And there’s a 12-headed hydra nearby for players to murder.  Now we get a whole section on the city-realm Brightwater, home to a trio of Forgotten Realms deities: Llira, Sune and Tymora.  Okay, TSR, I get it. Your strategy was to connect all your setting together so players would buy material for every setting. As it turned out this was a bad strategy, and groups that were interested in one setting stuck to that setting, but the industry was still young, and you certainly weren’t the only publisher that tried to awkwardly connect all it’s different games together (*cough* White Wolf *cough*). Still, I have to ask, is there something here that would be of interest to players and DMs of Planescape and just Planescape?It turns out there is. Winifred, a halfling priestess of Tymora, throws dinner parties that can include anyone who is anyone in Planescape. Since the invitees can be wildly divergent, a good DM could whip up plenty of opportunities for shenanigans. So good job TSR, you gave Brightwater a reason to exist for groups that would rather ignore Ed Greenwood’s Magical Realm. Also there’s this line in the description: “The city-realm of Brightwater consists of three sectors, one devoted to each of the three powers. Go figure.” That tells me all I need to know about what the Planescape writers thought about this entry.  That concludes the layer of Olympus. Next up is Ossa, a watery layer where Poseidon and Deep Sashelas spend most of their time. Unlike other water layers like Gaping Maw or Thalasia in Elysium, Ossa’s waters are shallow, only 3 feet, meaning it’s possible to wade through the water unless you are a gnome or halfling (anyone that ran Black Morass as a gnome is permitted to shudder). Unfortunately the actual realms occupy deep chasms, so bring your water-breathing potion and free movement ring.  Poseidon’s realm is known as Caletto. According to the description, it “is remarkably habitable for most travelers - those who can breathe water anyway.” I think that’s sort of a sticky point for even a low-level group of adventurers. There are only a few small rocky islands above water and the petitioners here pay no attention to them. There’s a group of islands collectively named Mymos, and at least Poseidon’s high priest lives nearby. Despite the lack of real estate, the realm is apparently known for it’s horses, because that was one of the things Poseidon held dominion over. The waters of Caletto may or may not have special qualities that restore a berk’s health-the booklet just annoyingly leaves it up in the air. Overall Caletto just amounts to a big “meh” for me. The other location described in Ossa is the town of Elshava, which is pictured on the bottom half of the reverse side of Arborea’s map. Elshava sits on the border between Arvandor and Ossa (which the elves call Aquillor if you were curious). The section on Elshava is huge, taking up two pages (by comparison, Thrassos has approximately a little over a page’s worth of content). I won’t go into everything, but compared to Caletto Elshava is much more suitable for water and water-adjacent adventures. The town floats over the water and is built in a spiral pattern, resembling an ever-growing seashell. The water itself is very cold-you have to make a Constitution Check every 10 minutes or suffer hypothermia “resulting in drowning”. Despite this rule the water-dwelling creatures have no problem moving through the water. Elshava is described as one of the cities of the Sea Folk, “an ocean-going culture of mixed ancestry.” The book implies that Sea Folk are a half-breed of selkies and sea-elves, even though the NPCs are stated as either selkie or sea elf. Sea Folk are not mentioned anywhere else, and I’m not sure what the point of them are. There is a simmering power struggle between the Fisher Queen, a selkie elementalist named Elothien the silent, and the marshall of the militia, a disguised sea wolf named Cinnabus. There are plenty of water monsters nearby for adventurers to kill. Unlike other places Elshava actually has a service players may need, A petitioner named Amarillis Silverton is capable of waterproofing anything (and will seal up anything she can’t), which I can see as being important even outside of underwater adventures. The third layer of Arborea is Pelion, or Mithardir in Elven. This mostly barren layer is an open-ended mystery. The Greeks and Elves have their own legends about what used to be here. The Olympians say that Pelion was the original home of all the Egyptian powers, but the realm disappeared as their followers dwindled and now only Nephythys remains. According to the Seldarine, Pelion used to be inhabited by the Animal Lords until for some reason they shifted over to the Beastlands, leaving only badlands behind. Whatever the case, while the deserts of Pelion are by no means harsh (it even supports a desert ecosystem), a cutter can’t help but feel that something essential is gone from here. Nephythys is the Egyptian deity of wealth and death. Her realm is named Amun-Thys. This realm matches the rest of the layer, but is dotted with forgotten tombs and lost treasures. The sense of loss is especially strong in this realm. Nephythys’ petitioners guard and maintain these monuments, and occasionally construct a new one. Breaking up the endless sand and dust are the carcasses of titans. Their remains have been repurposed into shelters and necropoli by the inhabitants. The booklet is somewhat inconsistent in its description of the principle necropolis, Bal-Tiref. On the one hand, the tombs are supposed to be thoroughly plundered after long habitation. But the ruins in the wilderness are less profitable. So...idk. If I were a DM and wanted my players to have an Indiana Jones adventure, I’d be sure to place something worthwhile at the end instead of telling them “sorry, this tomb was cleaned out centuries ago”. Within Amun-Thys, spells relating to sleep, dreaming and the dead either affect twice as many creatures or last twice as long. In addition, the spell Fool’s Gold is permanent within this realm. Petitioners are aware of this, and won’t take coin without first touching it with cold-wrought iron rod. Tribes of lycanthrope-bandits roam the wastes of Amun-Thys, including werebats, werehyenas, werelions, and even werevultures. The greatest of these is a werebat named Osirem the Cruel. Osirem is also a level 17 Fighter, which should clue the DM in that this is ultimately meant to be a high-level zone. Assuming the PCs evade or more likely hobomurder the lycanthropes, they can reach the settlement of Scarab (the top-half of the map reverse). Scarab is run by Isiratet, the White Ibis, Nephythys’ high priestess. Isiratet will insist on all visitors swearing a magic Peace Oath. If you break this oath, you die of mummy rot in 24 hours (death save still leaves you with normal mummy rot). There’s also an ancient brass dragon in this realm named Argevar. Despite being a metallic dragon, he’s sort of an rear end in a top hat, and the followers of Nephythys are looking to kick his poo poo in. Besides the dragon and lycanthropes there are a few other cool adventure hooks in Amun-Thys. The Minions of Set frequent Amun-Thys, hoping to persuade Nephythys to forgive Set for being a Lawful Evil prick. A phoenix has been sighted blowing itself up each night. And finally, there’s a tribe of Dark Sun elves that have somehow made their way into Pelion. Now that’s a tie-in I can get behind! And of course there are services. Anything worthwhile, you ask? Well if a player ever wanted to be a mummy, it’s rumored that can be done here (and honestly, when have rumors not been true in some way?) Last thoughts on Arborea: I can’t help but feel that an opportunity was missed in not describing what the relation are between the Olympians and the Seldarine. It’s one of the cool things about Planescape, and just off the top of my head I can imagine running an adventure where the PCs have to prevent a holy jihad because Hermes stole Corellon’s undies. What if the stereotypical elven attitudes about humans come from the fact that their gods live next to a frat house? If this had been a White Wolf product you’d have a bunch of side bars where each pantheon says snarky bullshit about their neighbors, and while I don’t need that, a few tidbits of how Powers relate to each other would go along way. As it is, we get told that the inhabitants of the Upper Planes fight amongst each other but it’s never fleshed out why this happens except “uh, gods compete for worshippers, I guess?” Okay, but most of the worshippers are on the Prime Material Plane according to Planescape-what purpose does escalating serve? Finally, it was this chapter that I noticed that there is not a whole lot of art in this box set, especially compared later ones. So to make up for that, here’s a picture of a Per that I wasn’t able to find on GIS in my last review:  Time! random hope :you enjoy bullshit Next I
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Jun 23, 2016 00:07
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Bieeardo posted:I almost feel like scanning the "NO NEUTRAL ALIGNMENTS!" bit from every Palladium book, or the lovely hissy about people who don't like the magic system in Federation of Magic. I think I'll put that remnant PPE toward dinner. If you can't post the Federation of Magic bit, I will. It is just too good not to.
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Jun 23, 2016 02:05
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 This is from my '95 copy of the RIFTS Ultimate Edition, which is virtually identical to my original printing, save for a few little tweaks here and there. The identical passage was also in the Sentinels RPG manual I cracked open, and I can about guarantee that it's in the ancient Robotech RPG book I've got too. Palladium. Palladium never changes. I misremembered the exact wording of the FoM screed, and I didn't feel like wrestling with my scanner for two and a half pages of wank, but this is a huge dose of STDH.txt plus confirmation of those things we've heard about Siembieda just chucking his own rules. But here's the lead-in:  ...and then, while magic is perfectly useful, they've also added 120 new spells to the game. So stop bitching!
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Jun 23, 2016 04:59
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Why not include "The Shirt" in there while you're at it? You know what I'm talking about "The Shirt" when it comes to Rifts, right?
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Jun 23, 2016 05:36
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You can still buy it.
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Jun 23, 2016 06:35
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Even by the standards of nerd tat, that shirt is incredibly pathetic.
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Jun 23, 2016 07:21
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 THE REST OF THE WAR THE AFRICAN FRONT  The war in Africa predominantly takes place in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. Italy invades Ethiopia in 1935 and also invades Libya and parts of Kenya, the Sudan and British Somaliland. This is undone in 1941 when Britain helps the Ethiopians retake their land but Italy still has Libya and from there Italy is dicking around in the desert in 1942. Most of the Africans fighting and helping the Allies are Libyan partisans, Egyptians with British educations and assorted nomadic groups, Deltas or regular people.  "What's that?" "Looks like metaplot." "I'll ride ahead and alert the others and get the dynamite." Italy has a force of Deltas lead by Captain Italy (a Bouncer) and his two lieutenants The Ghost (a Phaser and former female fashion model turned killer) and Lucio Cavarozzi, a Flyer messenger and actual Italian cousin of The Gangster. The Gangster has sworn to bring down Lucio without using his powers. His powers being Gun. Against a guy who can fly. Look he’s your cousin and there’s honor and all that but come on. The Nazis are lead by Erwin Rommel who is a Delta due to a failed assassination attempt. As a result, he’s a Genius and he’s in charge of the whole German army in Africa. Kapitan Krieg spends most of his time helping in the desert and he has problems keeping lieutenants alive. Rudolf Klein (Blaster) was shot in the back of the head by an American Speedster as Klein tried to blow up the water plants of Tobruk. The War Giant was stopped by a Shrinker named The Flea distracting him while running around under his uniform while a Teleporter named The Coyote put three live grenades down his pants followed by shoving the barrel of his rifle down the guy’s throat to make him surrender. The grenades did not kill him somehow. Finally, The Night was a Sneak cutting the throats of sleeping soldiers until Sparky used himself as bait and shot her in the face when her blade deflected on his skin. His current assistant is a Lazarus named Walther Braun, meaning it’s going to take some effort to kill him but that’s all he can do.  Sand knife! Sh-sh-shah! The British are not British, they’re mostly Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders operating on behalf of the British. The Imperial League has only three Deltas in the area. The Sniper is Sergeant-Major Niles Copland, a Welshman with Gunner powers who watches the desert with a rifle. The Red One (*sighs* yes because of the saying that “the red racecars go faster”) is Dudley Mansfield, Speedster courier. Third, Sir Edwin Durghart is a Flyer who carries supplies and orders. The two Australian Deltas of Australia’s Delta Company are Major John Morgan (a Blaster) and Warrant Officer Miles Tennant (a Tough famous for slowly walking through fire and taking the time to line up his shot). Allied with the British is a leader of a group of raiders, an Irishman named Dennis O’Day who is a Dunemaster (a new type of Delta with Desert Powers). Delta Squadron is mostly centered in Tobruk, Libya or wherever they’re needed. Most of them are assigned as needed but there are four permanent assignments to Africa divided into two groups. The first group is Brick Magoo and The Tank, two Goliath buddies with a fondness for throwing tanks. The second group is The Padre and the Cowboy, a gun-toting Covenant priest and Gunslinger who likes shooting Nazis through their Swastika insignias.  Welcome to whatever the gently caress this is! THE EASTERN FRONT  America doesn’t really like Russia but they’re helping for now so the friendship is tenuous. The Germans have been trying to invade Russia through Poland since 1941 and then Russia joined the Allies. Then winter came (Germany tried to invade in June). Now it’s June again and Leningrad is still under siege by the Nazis. Russia still has the Red Brigade if you remember them. Spoilers: they’re Delta Prime but Stalinist and internally fighting constantly. The Nazi threat has made them stop backstabbing each other and now they’re totally concentrated on national defense. Deltas are celebrities in the USSR and instead of turning to crime most of them join the Brigade and abuse their position if they see fit. The ones who go too far are quickly killed by their allies and reported as having valiantly died promoting Communist values. The Red Brigade is broken into four companies lead by four colonels who report to a general major. That general major is Yuri Raskolnikov, code-named Big Bear because
 I think I've read this slash-fic before. Germany has a lot of Nazis at play around Russia.
 Do you get it, he's some Father Winter-rear end Delta. THE PACIFIC THEATER  Japan controls most of the Pacific ocean and is also trying its hand at a ground war with China. The US isn’t officially allied with China but they’re united against a common enemy after Pearl Harbor. McArthur is chomping at the bit to try and retake the Philippines, Australia is chipping in, the US is mad that the Japanese have taken two Alaskan islands and everything is popping off. Side note: Sparky doesn’t understand kanji and has nothing nice to say about it.  Welcome to what the gently caress this is! Japan segregates its Deltas by gender. The men are forced to join the Rising Sons where they’re indoctrinated into an Imperial cult and dedicated to strength and physical prowess along with being told to follow the rules of bushido as samurai. Or they’re turned into metaphorical samurai with their swords being whatever you’re assigned (like a plane). The women are forced to join the Ladies League where they’re trained in espionage and sabotage. They all live by rules of honor and kamikaze and all that jazz. Worth noting is that there’s a new type of kamikaze bomber which is a Flyer dropping a Bomber onto a deck of a ship. The impact pulps the body and the Bomber explodes and the Flyer hangs around and picks their friend out of the sea. So that’s just delightful. At least it's explicitly mentioned that this is kind of a waste of two Deltas because you're risking both of them.  Actually nothing is said about Buddhism at all in this book, which is interesting. This feels out of place. The Rising Sons report directly to Emperor Hirohito and Prime Minister Hideki. Their leader is Colonel Matsumoto Shonan, a Tough who often throws himself into danger to motivate the troops and demonstrate the squad's ideals. Beneath Colonel Shonan are three platoons named after historical periods run by three Majors who report to him.
 I have definitely read this slash fiction before. The Americans are being commanded by Harlan Hayes from the USS Wasp, an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Rim. Hayes' second in command is Robin Finney, an Aquarian who runs a Navy submarine and uses Aquarians and Gadgeteers for a daring sort of search and destroy missions. Basically, a Gadgeteer creates a timer for a mine and the mine is fired out of a torpedo tube with an Aquarian in tow who helps position it towards the enemy before the timer goes off. American Aquarians are also generally present below the waves countering Japanese Aquarians. And that's pretty much it for the fronts. Thoughts on the fronts: Wow, Japan really gets the short end of the stick. Seriously, there's just 11 pages. Russia also gets 11 but there's just...more to it. Africa gets 13. There seriously isn't much of a historical aspect or context presented, the majority of it is just Delta Stuff and lightly interesting plot hooks. This is marginally more interesting because (maybe with the exception of the Pacific) this isn't really touched on too much in my history classes. But it's still all just very thin. All of these big players, movers and shakers get a brief physical description, their powers and roughly 5-10 paragraphs. And some of these paragraphs are a handful of sentences or just one long sentence formatted to fit the column to look proper. Now imagine all of this stretched out over 100 pages in two columns with some margin fuckery. It just doesn't read well in the slightest, it's not particularly compelling and it doesn't set the scene well for anything. It's just "here are all the Deltas and here is what they do, here is the in-universe uses of powers". Fortunately, we can throw all this boring poo poo in the trash! I never thought that the mechanics of the characters would interest me way more than the fluff would, that's a first for this series. So NEXT TIME let's marvel at the Deltas of World War II and how goddamn situational they are pretty much across the board.  As Shakespeare once wrote, "Entrance, lead by a bear". Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Jun 23, 2016 |
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Jun 23, 2016 07:34
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For such a terribly written game, they sure name drop a bunch of good Russian writers.
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Jun 23, 2016 08:37
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God, Brave New World is the most boring superhero stuff I've seen in ages.
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Jun 23, 2016 14:06
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I've never played RIFTS, but I get the impression that Kevin Siembada is the Tommy Wiseau of roleplaying games.Count Chocula posted:For such a terribly written game, they sure name drop a bunch of good Russian writers. Maybe it's like how bad movies love to load themselves with Casablanca references.
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Jun 23, 2016 15:12
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When did they make that godawful shirt? This is the first I've heard of it.
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Jun 23, 2016 15:16
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Hostile V posted:
1. There is no 's' in Cameroon. 2. That's French Equatorial Africa. There is no French Equatorial Guinea. Equatorial Guinea was a Spanish colony. 3. That's not Palestine, that's the Sinai. quote:THE EASTERN FRONT I already grumbled about them not keeping the Baltic states seperate and labelling it the USSR, so I'm just going to be impressed that they remembered Tannu Tuva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvan_People%27s_Republic but not to label it. quote:THE PACIFIC THEATER This is okay I guess. I've never heard the Philippines called the Philippine Islands before, and they distinguished Manchukuo on the map but failed to label it. I'm not even going to try and figure out if those battle lines are right- what date in 1942 is this being written from?
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Jun 23, 2016 15:39
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Oh well poo poo, that's awesome. I'm gonna rip that off and put it on the System Mastery store. Then I'm gonna buy both.
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Jun 23, 2016 15:46
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