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Wizards are not samurai.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:40
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Count Chocula posted:No, your clarification makes me want to play the game MORE (minus the rape). Solipsistic anger makes way more sense to me than Werewolf's hyper-masculine VIKING RAGE/Klingon Honor crap and anger about 'nature'. It the game knew it and focused around it it would be great - hell I'd love some way to use it as an anger management therapy tool. It looks like 'solipsistic rage' returns no search results on Google, but it's a valuable idea and term. ....Right, Got it then. Well I don't like this game, and I am going to continue to be harsh on it because that is what it deserves. I have read the whole thing, I have podcast on it twice, this game has injured me and I am not going to be nice on it just because you want to play a hyperrapist. e: and you have missed the point on nWerewolf2 so badly that I don't even know where to start.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:42
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He may not have missed it. He may have just assumed we meant oWoD werewolf, because 
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Aug 18, 2016 00:45
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Count Chocula posted:No, your clarification makes me want to play the game MORE (minus the rape). Solipsistic anger makes way more sense to me than Werewolf's hyper-masculine VIKING RAGE/Klingon Honor crap and anger about 'nature'. It the game knew it and focused around it it would be great - hell I'd love some way to use it as an anger management therapy tool. It looks like 'solipsistic rage' returns no search results on Google, but it's a valuable idea and term. I mean that's normal anger not like supernatural Rage, but even in old Werewolf Rage was mystical wolfpower as much as it was "I am actually super angry." That would actually be an interesting system, to try and create a game system which encourages you to channel anger constructively.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:46
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Gimme the Shadowlands, I hunger for the Shadowlands.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:56
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 Magic Part 2: Orders Orders are the second half of the magic system. While Orders are mostly flavor, tied to the setting, they also have a variety of mechanical effects, as well as narrative limitations that make each Order unique. I’ll be going over the basic flavor of each order, what makes them unique, and a few of the cooler sample spells for each. Cartomancy It means “Card Magic”. This is an Order which casts spells using an enchanted deck of “Zodar” cards, the Talislantan equivalent of Tarot, made of twenty cards each with a unique meaning and use. The most common use of the Zodar is in fortune telling and prophecy, which are generally difficult to understand if always correct. More traditional spellcasting is done by shuffling the cards, arranging them in specific orders and combinations that shape the magic, with each card having a specific function and use in spells. Cartomancers keep the actual spellcasting part secret, using it rarely. It isn’t an art learned in schools, and is self-taught. Anybody who uses the Zodar long enough slowly becomes attuned to the magic, slowly developing Cartomancy. The Zodar Deck posted:The twenty cards of the Zodar are: Physical Components: Cartomancers cast spells by shuffing and manipulating the Zodar. A Cartomancer must have at least one hand free to manipulate the cards to cast spells. No need for magic words or other gestures, just the cards. Advantages: Basically, Cartomancy is stealthy. Most people don’t know it even exists as a form of magic, just considering Zodar to be playing cards or fortune telling toys, and Cartomancy have no magical effects like magic lights or noises. A Cartomancer can cast spells in a crowded room, and just look like he’s playing solitaire. Limitations You need your Zodar deck to cast spells. If you don’t have it, you can’t cast magic. If you lose your Zodar, or it’s destroyed, you can’t just pick up a new one. The Zodar are inherently magic, and you need to spend one week attuning yourself to the new deck before you can cast spells again. Modes Cartomancy cannot use the Transform or Summon Modes. Alter spells can affect anything relating to one of the cards of the Zodar, such as The Warrior improving Combat Rating, or The Wanderer increasing Speed. Enchantment Cartomancers can only Enchant new Zodar cards, and are unable to make other magical items. Sample Spells posted:Hand of Destiny (Reveal) Cryptomancy Cryptomancy is the magic of writing. It uses mystic sigils, runes, and inscriptions to cast spells. Once created, these sigils can maintain their magic indefinitely, until activated. Cryptomancy is taught, generally by memorizing the various magical symbols from Cryptographic manuals. These books are always encrypted in a secret alphabet only known to other Cryptomancers. Physical Components Cryptomancers must have one hand free to at least trace the mystic patterns needed to cast magic. Most spells actually require the cryptomancer to make a physical mark of some kind, so many cryptomancers carry papers, ink, charcoal, brushes, pens, knives, and chisels to write with. Advantages When a Cryptomantic spell is cast, the magician may define a “trigger”, a condition that activates the spell. The spell will last until that condition is met and the magic is activated. Spells in this stasis condition can be detected and countered like any other spell. Setting a trigger on a spell adds a -5 to the difficulty, and the sigil must be clearly inscribed. These spells only activate once, for runes and such that work multiple times you’d use the enchanting rules to make a magic item. Limitations Because a Cryptomancer has to accurately duplicate complex magic symbols, casting a spell can take a while. The default casting time for all Cryptomantic spells is 2 rounds minimum. Modes Cryptomancy cannot use the Transform Mode. Cryptomancy gets a +3 bonus to Ward and Reveal, but a -2 penalty to Illusion and Influence. Cryptomancers use magical runes to communicate with extradimensional beings for the purpose of summoning. Cryptomancers use Alter by inscribing or drawing runes upon the target of the alteration. Enchantment This Order is very useful for enchantment, and it’s honestly one of the main uses for Cryptomancy. Some example uses are making magical traps and alarms, magical tattoos, inscribing on magic jewelry, and enchanted cages, manacles, and chains meant to hold extra-dimensional or super-powerful beings. It’s magic runes, it’s really really suited for enchanting things. Sample Spells posted:Symbol of Clarity (Reveal) Crystalomancy Crystalomancy is both a form of magic and a holy art, seen as a gift from Terra, the Earth Mother the chief god of the Gnomekin. Crystalomancy is therefore protected as a holy order, and practitioners are considered to be priests as well as magicians. It is passed down orally from one magician to another, and has no known written works. It is almost impossible to be allowed to learn if one is not a Gnomekin. This order casts spells using magical specially grown crystals. Physical Components All spells require a specially grown crystal of the appropriate type for the mode to cast: MODE CRYSTAL Color Alter Topazine Rich yellow Attack Rubiate Fiery crimson Conjure Albinite Milky white Defend Amberite Warm orange Heal Emeralite Deep green Illusion Prismatite Clear/refractive Influence Amethyte Vivid purple Move Azurite Bright blue Reveal Glassine Perfectly clear Summon Ebonite Glossy black Transform Variagate Multicolored Ward Umberate Dark brown Advantages A Crystalomancer can store a spell inside of the proper crystal for later use. This adds 10 rounds to the casting time per level of the spell, but once stored the spell can be used at any time. Even non-Crystalomancers can activate the crystal to cast the spell. Once a crystal’s spell is cast, the crystal is now useless and cannot be used to cast magic again. When a crystal has a spell stored, it counts against the limit for enchanted items. Affinity Crystalomancers get a +1 to spell-casting when using crystals they grew themselves. Limitations A Crystalomancer cannot perform magic without their crystals. Crystals also have a carat level, which limits what level of spells can be cast with that crystal. Modes Crystalomancer’s cannot use the Conjure or Transform modes. They get a +3 bonus to Defend and Heal spells, and a -3 to Attack and Summon. Alter spells can only affect stone, earth, and crystal, not living beings or abstract qualities. Summoning can only be used to call up Earth elementals. Enchantment Crystalomancers can create permanently enchanted crystals, which can be used on their own, such as crystals that heal the holder when activated, or worked into other objects, such as a supernaturally sharp sword with the crystal set into the pommel. Crystal Growing A Crystalomancer can create their own crystals! It’s covered by the Agriculture (Crystals) skill. Crystals grow at 1 carat per week. A Grower can maintain one growing crystal per skill level. Crystals stop growing once harvested. There are also wild crystals, which work for spellcasting, but at a -5 penalty to use. Crystalomancers still seek them out though, in the hopes of finding a new kind of crystal, or one that allows new uses for their magic. Sample Spells posted:Rubiate Beam (Attack) Okay, I’ve realized that these are going to be giant posts at this rate, so I’ll be splitting Orders up into about… 3 posts I’d say. So next time, more orders!
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Aug 18, 2016 01:23
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 Here's a little relevant music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf4eu5y0418 INTRODUCTION  Corporation is a RPG that began its run in 2009. It’s a d20 based game that is best described as a cross between the original Syndicate game and 2000AD’s progs set in the 26th century in a world where megacorporations and a unified world government control the Earth. The player characters are all humans who have been recruited by the major corporations of the world to serve as their Agents. Agents are chosen from people who are at least above average and then made better through the use of cybernetic implants and augmentations. From the get-go, let’s talk about two problems I have with this game. The first is that the layout is kind of weird! The sections are (in order):
The other major problem is that the game lets the players do a lot and there are loose guidelines for letting them do that (want to make money betting on professional sports? You can!). Also the rules are a bit cumbersome at times (like, for example, rules for item/armor conditions). There are a lot of books for Corporation that offer more and more things to do and buy and they also bring new guidelines to the table (“getting infections from stolen nanotech implants because the guy didn’t bake the plates properly and kill off the self-replicating ones” and “how to make money from selling clones” come to mind). The game really does run the risk of offering you Too Much but I do understand the idea behind it. It’s less “these are the concrete rules!” and more “maybe one of your players will have an idea to do this so we want to at least offer you a loose framework for how they can do it. This is assuming you want to make this be a part of your game or allow the player to do it”.  I do enjoy this game, I do think it has some interesting ideas and I have some appreciation for the fact that it’s not just a hardcore cyberpunk dystopia that has somehow existed for at least a century. It’s a bit like Transmetropolitan in those regards; the world is not in the best state but it’s better because when it was at its lowest, mankind almost wiped itself out for dumb reasons. Also I’m not one to quibble about the definition of “cyberpunk” but you are most definitely working for The Man and it’s really not that awful. It’s much more of a sci-fi espionage/action game with augmentation, alien technology and future shenanigans than cyberpunk. And on that note, let’s get into a proper introduction to the game and world proper. A quick note on what I will and will not be including: I'll be including sidebars and pictures when appropriate. There's a lot of in-universe writing in the book sprinkled pretty liberally and while it's decent, I'm not going to focus on that and talk more about the mechanical content and descriptions. CORPORATION: INTRODUCTION  Let's skip the section that explains what a role-playing game is. The year is 2500 and the world is united under the banner of the United International Government. Beneath the UIG are the five corporations that control large swathes of the world, enforcing their own laws and way of life. The five corporations are:
Players control Agents of a Corporation. You sign a contract and they turn you into enforcers and street-level executives for your corporation while trying not to attract the intervention of the UIG. It’s a lot like EVE Online and how Concord doesn’t give a poo poo about what you’re up to, you have broken the law and you need to be punished. Your jobs might be legal or illegal but completion gets you paid and brings benefits. Plus, playing by the rules grants you better perks of citizenship in the UIG, which gets you paid better. The threat in the field isn’t going to be some civilian and in fact you really shouldn’t use overwhelming force against normal people. The real threat comes from the fact that Agents doing other missions have the same basic strengths as you and won’t go down without a fight. WHAT MAKES AN AGENT? For starters, Agents are selected from individuals who are more skilled than the common person. When they sign a contract to become an Agent, their Corporation will outfit them with a collection of augmentations that are standard across all Agents for any corporation. They will also foot the bill for the price of these cybernetics and will pay monthly for their upkeep (plus if you lose them due to, say, total loss of body, they’ll pay for installation of new ones). Basically this is the starter pack that makes you more than human and no matter your employer you get these benefits that can’t be taken away from you.
 NEXT TIME: We’re going to skip ahead some to chapters 8 and 5. After that we’ll get to chapter 1 proper and see what it’s like to build an Agent.  A stylized picture of a process socket.
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Aug 18, 2016 01:25
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quote:4. Ardan: The Purple Moon. Romance, passion, desire. Does it have a picture of Prince on it? Does Atrophic DNA mean Agents are sterile?
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Aug 18, 2016 01:38
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Agents aren't said to be sterile and even if they were there's always cloning and genetic engineering and artificial insemination to pick up the slack.
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Aug 18, 2016 01:49
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Count Chocula posted:Does Atrophic DNA mean Agents are sterile? Honestly, I read "Atrophic DNA" being more a curse than a benefit. If your DNA decays at insane rate outside your body, which normally has a half-life of 521 years and can last for 7 million years in ideal cases, how long does your own cellular structure last inside you? Not that it's without merit, it fits perfectly with the theme. I'd imagine that the various corporations use that special formula mentioned in it's text as part of their monthly regimen of drugs and supplements given to Agents. If an Agent dies, their body decomposes rapidly as their DNA breaks down quickly so as to be a deniable person. And if an Agent runs from the program or goes turncoat, they start aging quickly without access to the formula.
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Aug 18, 2016 02:04
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Makes their blood clot faster, eh? Don't bang your head too much, Agents!
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Aug 18, 2016 02:11
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It's really just a hand-wavey way of saying "look you don't have to worry about the GM being like 'ha ha you left behind an eyelash, prepare for the UIG ramraid!'" so the PCs don't have to get bogged down in cleaning up after themselves whenever they do something illegal. I'm not even going to pretend that any of this is scientific in the slightest, it's a future where one of the most common breakfast meals is an egg the size of your fist that has the motto "an Egg-U-Like a day keeps cellular mutogenesis at bay!" and you can just glue on detached limbs without needing to keep it on ice. We're on the soft side of science here, soft like butterscotch pudding.
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Aug 18, 2016 02:17
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With regard to Beast chat, the most efficient way of feeding Satiety as any Hunger at any level is to buy a box of feeder mice, tip them out in your basement, then hunt them all down and smash each one with a claw hammer. Prey's Low Satiety threshold explicitly notes you can hunt animal targets to fulfill it despite the mechanic being about human fears, and this gives you a pool of 1 (low satiety) + 3 (abundant feeding) + 4 (victims die) = 8 dice. Getting too full? Just catch the mice and put them back in the box, or kill two or three. Even disregarding Family Dinner - which, as mentioned, turns Beasts into gigantic hypocrites for actively choosing to torture people despite it being the riskier and harder option - the Satiety rules are written to incentivize playing "that really creepy guy in Accounts Receivable who's way too interested in your pets" long before doing anything the text actually says it wants.
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Aug 18, 2016 02:46
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Would some kind of automated Rube Goldberg-esque Mousetrap count as a lair? Speaking of Grant Morrison, he based on Professor Pyg on both HH Holmes (the Murder House guy) and the professor who built elaborate rat cities with different conditions to study human and rat emotions. Possible Beasts all? And you could handwave it that animal fear tastes 'like cold coffee', to use Lestat's description of drinking rat blood.
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Aug 18, 2016 03:15
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Count Chocula posted:Wizards are not samurai. Shugenja are samurai, which is a social caste. Shugenja are NOT Bushi, which are warrior samurai
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Aug 18, 2016 03:19
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Count Chocula posted:Would some kind of automated Rube Goldberg-esque Mousetrap count as a lair? Speaking of Grant Morrison, he based on Professor Pyg on both HH Holmes (the Murder House guy) and the professor who built elaborate rat cities with different conditions to study human and rat emotions. Possible Beasts all? Of course you could but It's still not a physical location and has to be represented via tags and tilts. Also yes I guess in that they're incredibly hosed up people who aren't supposed to be aspirational figures in the least and villains at best?
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Aug 18, 2016 03:37
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Count Chocula posted:And you could handwave it that animal fear tastes 'like cold coffee', to use Lestat's description of drinking rat blood. The Astral, Primordial Dream, etc. are all explicitly and repeatedly stated to be humanity's collective unconscious, and beasts work on human fears. The way feeding works is how fear resonates in humanity's oversoul. Killing animals in an isolated basement should give a horror sweet gently caress all for nourishment. You also missed my point where killing twenty bucks of feeder mice is by-mechanics more satisfying than anything short of hunting down and killing a werewolf in single combat. That ain't cold coffee.
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Aug 18, 2016 04:08
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If I really wanted to defend everything about this game I could argue that many people - like the poster mentioned above - are scared of loners who slaughter animals for fun, but you're right, it is a dumb rule. And that fear is usually based on the perception that killing animals leads on to worse crimes. "Like flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods - they kill us for their sport".
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Aug 18, 2016 05:17
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Daeren posted:
A character that is Renfield but with potent monster powers is kind of terrifying. Although I thin Renfield was already that way since I think he could match Dracula in physical strength. Been a while since I read the book.
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Aug 18, 2016 05:17
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I assume that everybody in the WoD calls ghouls 'Renfields'.
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Aug 18, 2016 05:19
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Kurieg posted:....Right, Got it then. Well I don't like this game, and I am going to continue to be harsh on it because that is what it deserves. I have read the whole thing, I have podcast on it twice, this game has injured me and I am not going to be nice on it just because you want to play a hyperrapist. Where was the second podcast on it?
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Aug 18, 2016 05:55
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Robin Laws just posted this - https://www.academia.edu/27610983/What_Does_it_Mean_to_be_Orlanthi_Hermeneutic_Challenge_in_King_of_Dragon_Pass What Does it Mean to be Orlanthi? Hermeneutic Challenge in King of Dragon Pass I look forward to reading it.
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Aug 18, 2016 06:00
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Terrible Opinions posted:Where was the second podcast on it? We did a podcast based on the Kickstarter preview when it first came out http://podcast.darker-days.org/e/darker-days-radio-episode-64/
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Aug 18, 2016 06:14
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Tasoth posted:A character that is Renfield but with potent monster powers is kind of terrifying. Although I thin Renfield was already that way since I think he could match Dracula in physical strength. Been a while since I read the book. You also have the revenants if you want that sort of half-vampire thing going on.I always thought that was kind of an underexplored concept.
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Aug 18, 2016 07:51
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Count Chocula posted:Robin Laws just posted this - https://www.academia.edu/27610983/What_Does_it_Mean_to_be_Orlanthi_Hermeneutic_Challenge_in_King_of_Dragon_Pass It's interesting but somewhat straightforward - essentially the article's thesis is that while other games require you to learn physical skills or strategy to master them, KoDP requires you to understand what it means to be Orlanthi and act within their cultural mores. I'd have appreciated a bit more discussion on how it teaches you Gloranthan Magic and hero quests as well as Orlanthi customs and social mores, but I thought it was a pretty great read.
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Aug 18, 2016 09:17
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Nessus posted:Renfield was the clear inspiration for ghouls, yeah, including why they inexplicably and automatically and inevitably have a dot of Potence. Why not Fortitude? Why not Celerity? Why not "whatever the least bullshit clan discipline is for your clan"? Because Renfield, and also, because gently caress you. Revenants in Masquerade are incredibly conceptually cool, but they also suffer a bit from the fact that every new Revenant family you introduce to the setting makes them more commonplace and therefore more mundane and dull. That's why I think they work the best for the Tzimisce, because that gates them behind only appearing when a specific subset of antagonists appear, and moreover, ties them to certain geographical areas. But then suddenly the Tremere has Revenants, the Giovanni have Revenants, the Baali have Revenants, the Assamites have Revenants, and there's a Ventrue Revenant family somewhere in Greece, the True Black Hand used to have three on their own which are now all independent... Though I do have a weakness for adding more, even as I critique the books for having too many. 
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Aug 18, 2016 12:29
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The Dhampir from the Kindred of the East were cool for that too...except for all the Kindred of the East stuff of course.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:39
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So literally the only way I can see to use beasts as players is to, like, ignore or rewrite large swathes of the splat which is way more effort than its worth, or, more simply, to throw the "everyone loves me!" poo poo right out the window and use them as antagonists and not player characters. Like a buncha mummies wake up because someone's stealing their relics, some Mysterious Benefactor helps them figure everything out, they go off to retrieve the relics, turns out they've been stolen by a Hero so he can use them to kill a Beast (who was SURPRISE the mysterious benefactor all along), the mummies punk the hero, punk the beast, get the relics back, go back to bed, the end.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:16
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FrostyPox posted:So literally the only way I can see to use beasts as players is to, like, ignore or rewrite large swathes of the splat which is way more effort than its worth, or, more simply, to throw the "everyone loves me!" poo poo right out the window and use them as antagonists and not player characters. You start a Beast game set in a small town, pitching it in such a way to play up the self-righteousness of it all, to encourage the players to really get into the horrible swing of things. Focus on the individual damage they're doing and the effect on the environment of the town. Then one session, they arrive and you hand them all Hunter character sheets and now they're playing the Union here to kick the crap out of the Beasts.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:28
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Traveller posted:John, shugenja are already samurai. It's a reference to the original CCG set where cards would have the "Samurai" (warrior) tag or "Shugenja" (wizard) tag, and samurai wasn't an all-encompassing term applied to shugenja or courtiers. Togashi Yokuni was the only card with both the Samurai and Shugenja tags. This was more symbolic than anything else, since though Shugenja let you attach spells (and that was a big deal), very few cards referenced the Samurai keyword, and most of them were negative. Still, it did mark him as unusual story-wise, and wouldn't be until late in the first block that he'd be revealed as the original Togashi when he fights Fu Leng and both of them take the form of dragons.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:40
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Hang on--Wapole Languray posted:
There is a crystal that does Transform, but the only people who use crystals cannot use Transform? I hope I'm missing something.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:48
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Kaza42 posted:You start a Beast game set in a small town, pitching it in such a way to play up the self-righteousness of it all, to encourage the players to really get into the horrible swing of things. Focus on the individual damage they're doing and the effect on the environment of the town. Then one session, they arrive and you hand them all Hunter character sheets and now they're playing the Union here to kick the crap out of the Beasts. I like this one a lot, too.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:51
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Flavivirus posted:It's interesting but somewhat straightforward - essentially the article's thesis is that while other games require you to learn physical skills or strategy to master them, KoDP requires you to understand what it means to be Orlanthi and act within their cultural mores. I'd have appreciated a bit more discussion on how it teaches you Gloranthan Magic and hero quests as well as Orlanthi customs and social mores, but I thought it was a pretty great read. That is an interesting twist of KoDP, yes, although it's worth keeping in mind it's not entirely just an Orlanthi custom simulator either; you can do reasonably well even while skirting custom constantly, although it's also easy to handwave that since, ah, how was it put? Something like 'it's good to follow the ancestors because that's respectful, but it's bad to never try anything new'. The very idea of changing tradition to avoid stagnation is itself codified in there somewhere. Otherwise you'd all be dwarves, and that's a fate no Orlanthi would tolerate.
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Aug 18, 2016 18:56
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Yeah, he kind of misses the big point of the game; you're building something no one has ever seen before and you'll have to write the new tradition.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:18
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 Our Elves Are Different... Let's Read Cryptomancer! (Part 4) The first salvo of crypto spent, let's quickly get through the three racial chapters so we can get into the mechanics, shall we? Up first, our friends from Down Under, the Dwarves! In the world of Cryptomancer, Dwarves are "as diverse as they are numerous," which perhaps the first time that phrase hasn't been used to describe an RPG setting's humans. Dwarven society is split into clans, which used to be based on a common bloodline, but has now expanded to include many different families who share a common allegiance. The leader of a clan is called the mogul. The book goes to great length to stress that, even for the unusually-paranoid world of Cryptomancer, the dwarves stand out for sheer amount of time spent scheming. Power struggles and espionage are the rule of dwarven life - rare is the mogul who can rest easily. Dwarven clanhalls are a clan's underground home base. Because dwarves love gilded poo poo almost as much as stabbing their enemies in the back, clanhalls are ridiculously ornate, with every possible surface being covered in gems and gold. The most common exports of clanhalls (and the source of their opulence) are precious metals and shardnets, the latter of which is the reason the dwarves have been able to stay competitive in the modern economy. Mining is considered indelicate now that the dwarves have moved on to the finer things, so being assigned to the mines is considered a severe punishment. Aside from raw resources, dwarves also export their engineering prowess: as is the law in settings without gnomes, the dwarves are the masters of steam-powered tech. The dwarven psyche is dominated by a concern for aesthetics and pleasure - in this way, they hew closer to the traditional concept of elves than of dwarves. They look down upon humans and elves for focusing on material things, ignoring art and philosophy. Some long-beard dwarves pine for a return to the simple, bloody warfare of the Mythic Age, but that grows less and less likely by each passing day. The only way for the race to survive is to hold on to their economic dominance and never let go. The section on dwarves ends with some fiction about two dwarves who assassinate their dinner host - one is appalled, while the other is more shocked by the host's poor wine pairing and the blood that's ruined his coat. They prepare to fight some guards, and the story ends. Elves Cryptomancer posted:The elves are the great parasite of Sylvetica. If you chop the gigaphid out of the tree after a few years, it can be reared as an enormous and intelligent winged mount - something that gives the elves undisputed air superiority in battle. But if you leave it trapped for a solid decade, it will become a giant fount of soma, the single most important commodity on the planet. Needless to say, the elves took to gigaphid rearing with a vengeance. Gigaphid mounts and soma production has helped assure their importance in Sphere society, but it's also resulted in the slow death of their home forest. Now, miles of deadwood are all that remain of their once-verdant home. Elves don't age physically past 40, but their minds start to go at 120, and few survive to 150. Elven society is tribal (note: also described as "diverse as they are numerous") and based around soma production. Tribes have a single leader - called a speaker - and a council of elders as advisors. The speaker's role isn't fixed by vote or law and can instead gradually shift as one's influence waxes and another wanes. There's no formality, no ceremony, but everyone in the tribe simply knows when a new speaker has taken over (which confuses other races' attempts to infiltrate or suborn the tribe's power structure). Tribes built out around the soma tree, living in nearby hollow trees and mushrooms and travelling by strings of ladders and bridges between the rotten treeline. Larger tribes have enough territory to also practice gigaphid ranching. The trees holding infant gigaphids can then become staging grounds for warbands, or tactical goals in internecine struggles. As a people, elves are humorless and unemotional. They don't mind humans, but really hate dwarves, who they think have fallen from paragons of might to a group of conniving epicurians. The section ends with another bit of fiction - an elf warrior bargains with some gnolls that they'll leave the village if they win a duel. The elf wins, the gnolls turn to leave, and then the elf commands her hidden warriors to cut the remaining survivors down with poisoned arrows. Next time: Humans and Risk Eaters!
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Aug 18, 2016 21:01
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Alright I like the idea that the Elves are basically Appalachian drug clans who have polluted the land with their stills and labs and I also like the idea that the Dwarves have become weird techbros who shun physical labor and think the tech bubble totally isn't going to burst we'll make money forever.
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Aug 18, 2016 21:10
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Ahahahaha dwarves are coders who politicked their way into management and elves are investors running incubators. This game owns bones.
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Aug 18, 2016 21:21
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"The SomaCoin tree was growing well until it caught fire and we lost everything."
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Aug 18, 2016 21:23
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gradenko_2000 posted:The thing that really makes it fall apart is the assumption that the game's rules define the world ... rather than just being the rules to play a game with. I have to admit I always had trouble with that approach, though, the idea that things only ran by the rules in the book in the region around the PC's, and everywhere else just worked on real-world logic. It seems... off. But it's a preference thing, obviously. I honestly like those attempts at making rulesets that would result in a more-or-less coherent world if they were applied across the gameworld, at all times. Obviously it only works down to a certain level of detail, the carpenter doesn't have to make to-hit rolls against every single nail he hammers in, but, still. It feels more right to me, even though that's silly.
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Aug 18, 2016 21:40
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BirdsUponBirds posted:Hang on-- The Order rules that modify or ban Modes are optional. Those are included in case your GM doesn't want to limit Modes, so that they can still use the whole crystal flavor aspect. 90% of the Order rules are to differentiate and let casters feel different while still mostly using identical mechanics, so a lot of the hard rules modifications are explicitly optional and are free to throw out.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:45
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