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Cythereal posted:That surprises me. I would have thought Wick would be all over "You can be gay, but it's a huge dishonor on your family and ancestors" thing, which as far as I know is a big deal in a lot of east Asian cultures today and historically. Samurai were actually super okay with homosexuality, as long as you had kids. Indeed, they were actual books and poetry about how the love of a woman could never equal the love of a man.
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Aug 29, 2016 05:33
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Adnachiel posted:Does that have anything to do with how I'm covering it? Or is it just the subject matter is too much? I've been in a habit of skipping quoted passages since the Let's Reads of Piers Anthony novels, but I still usually read the reviewer's bits in-between. This time I just had to read Vykos's description.
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Aug 29, 2016 05:38
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Traveller posted:I mean, the mistake was mine, I don't know why I was writing the wrong pronouns. Sometimes I get that when I'm doing effortposts. Ameiko is consistently identified as "she" and "her" in her writeup. It's also pretty accurate to pre-European contact Japan (or maybe pre-Perry Japan), which was almost like antiquity Greece when it came to sexual diversity. They made a whole lot of ukiyo-e prints of guys balling cross-dressing prostitutes.
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Aug 29, 2016 05:45
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Traveller posted:Daidoji Bodyguard 4, just a little short of Insight, with Fascination (Gaijin) and the skills Gaijin Culture 2, Lore: Gaijin Warfare 3 and "Sai-bore" Technique (Gaijin Weapon) 2. "Sai-bore"? I've generally assumed that "Sai-bore" is a somewhat cringe-inducing attempt to render into Rokugani the word "sabre".
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Aug 29, 2016 05:53
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Young Freud posted:It's also pretty accurate to pre-European contact Japan (or maybe pre-Perry Japan), which was almost like antiquity Greece when it came to sexual diversity. They made a whole lot of ukiyo-e prints of guys balling cross-dressing prostitutes. Yeah, the Chinese and Japanese shifts toward homophobia has a lot to do with Western contact and the adoption of Western thought in the 19th century.
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Aug 29, 2016 05:55
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Traveller posted:When they achieved their gempukku, Kuwanan was betrothed to a Phoenix girl, Shiba Nosuriko. Shortly before their wedding day, the girl hanged herself in her quarters leaving no note or reason. Uh I think we identified a possible reason here, folks.
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Aug 29, 2016 06:00
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taichara posted:I've generally assumed that "Sai-bore" is a somewhat cringe-inducing attempt to render into Rokugani the word "sabre". That would make sense, actually. Assuming the Portuguese pronunciation of the word (just as powder is "polvora") then perhaps "sabure" would be closer. But who knows - an early word for a Catholic priest in Japan was "bateren," derived from the Portuguese "padre". Phonetics are weird even without poorly researched '90s roleplaying setting design.
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Aug 29, 2016 06:01
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Adnachiel posted:Does that have anything to do with how I'm covering it? Or is it just the subject matter is too much? It is absolutely the subject matter. You must have incredible fortitude. 
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Aug 29, 2016 06:23
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Mors Rattus posted:Samurai were actually super okay with homosexuality, as long as you had kids. Indeed, they were actual books and poetry about how the love of a woman could never equal the love of a man. I think 'super okay' is a bit of a stretch but yea they, like a few other 'warrior cultures' pretty much had the unspoken rule of 'if you have kids, and don't embarrass yourself and your spouse by making any affair public, yea whatever gently caress who you want' and that translated for a lot of closeted guys as 'cool so I can have my boyfriend and just grit my teeth and bear it when it comes time to make a baby'.
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Aug 29, 2016 06:25
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Welp I managed to find the official art for Vykos for Eternal Hearts and you weren't kidding, they are indeed a bejeweled dick goblin.
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Aug 29, 2016 08:15
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Traveller posted:
Maybe this wasn't covered or I forgot, but how big of a deal is this? Is a secret of this caliber something that would make a Scorpion soil his pants in glee? Are Rokugani kitsune the type that eats your liver?
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Aug 29, 2016 08:19
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SirPhoebos posted:If Satanic Panic still had momentum when White Wolf started, I bet that WW would just have doubled down on all the horrific elements. Yeah, probably. They made a parody of a Chick Tract as part of their advertising campaign for Demon: The Fallen and really seemed to play up the "yeah, you play fallen angels, like  SATAN. What are you gonna do about it, DAD? " aspect.Hostile V posted:I mean I personally enjoy your commentary, you give me fun sentences to share with my friends who ask me "what the hell is this from?". But then again my formative internet years were spent reading reviews of lovely fanfiction and writing for entertainment. It's not you, it's the subject matter. It's excessive and gross and hardcore just for the lovely "gently caress YOU DAD, I'M MATURE!" way 90s White Wolf/Black Dog did poo poo. It is also badly and catering to a weird part of the audience like more than half of the people who play Storyteller wouldn't recognize. You're doing the best you can with crap, like with the Witch Girls stuff, except this is just some kinda weird and irredeemable fringe product. That's just my opinion, though. How much of the book is left? 72 pages, divided up into 17 chapters. wiegieman posted:It is absolutely the subject matter. It's gotten to the point where I just shake my head at it all. It's not offensive to me. Just incredibly dumb. Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 10:33
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Tatum Girlparts posted:I think 'super okay' is a bit of a stretch but yea they, like a few other 'warrior cultures' pretty much had the unspoken rule of 'if you have kids, and don't embarrass yourself and your spouse by making any affair public, yea whatever gently caress who you want' and that translated for a lot of closeted guys as 'cool so I can have my boyfriend and just grit my teeth and bear it when it comes time to make a baby'. I am now struck by the idea of a plot point being a torrid secret love affair between two women, a Crab samurai living at the wall and a Crane artisan or courtier.
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Aug 29, 2016 14:09
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 Part 8: Perverted Little Peccadilloes Hours or a day or whatever later, Becca finds out about Francine and rushes home. As you can imagine, the scene is gruesome and she is not in good shape. quote:In a voice that suggested he was reading a recipe, the detective continued enumerating the atrocities that had been committed upon Francine's body. Unable to listen any longer, Becca walked out of the room when he was in mid-sentence. She slumped down on the steps, buried her face in her hands, and gave way to sobs so harsh and gut-wrenching they made her ribs ache. Her mind immediately goes to vampires doing it and thinking it was all meant for her. After the questioning is over, the random masturbator from Chapter Seven shows up and asks if she’s looking for the devil… while masturbating. She asks if he’s Leo, then leaves in a hurry when she finds out he isn’t… and is masturbating. This chapter is one and a half pages long. Chapter 12. In his church, the Cathedral of the Order of Angels, Emmet is praying. (A cathedral by that name doesn’t exist in D.C. But I have a hunch, based on its description, that it’s based at least in some part on the National Cathedral (and maybe the cathedrals surrounding it), and the thought of using an actual person or replacing them with an expy in a porn book was just too questionable.) He’s found out about Torres’s death and has decided that the best thing to do with the art object that he was interested in is to destroy it. He’s praying that he will not take any pleasure in doing so. quote:Finishing his prayer, he stood up and looked around the church's vast interior. Although remodled less than twenty years earlier, the cathedral was a prime example of the revival in medieval architecture that had accompanied the upsurge in violent crime, doomsday cults, and mass suicides that swelled during the same period. Some said that superstition had flourished, too. Where once stained-glass windows had depicted the stations of the cross, now they illustrated sword-wielding angels battling demons. Above the nave, light filtered through a circular window spanned by the unfurling wings of a magnificent male angel. There is a point to all of these mentions of angels, I assure you. Also, I think this is a pretty nice passage. 30 feet below the basement of the church is a series of catacombs which used to be inhabited by the local Nosferatu. The Society turned it into a dungeon/torture/interrogation chamber after they, along with Emmet, drove them out. Only select Society individuals, including Becca, know about it. Except she might not because the wording later makes it a little confusing, at least for me. quote:As far as Emmet knew only he, Becca, and a hand-picked few of the Society of Leopold's top epople were even aware that such a labyrinth existed. quote:Emmet proceeded down a stairway behind the altar to his basement office. From there, a second, hidden stairway allowed him to descend twenty feet to the first level of the catacombs. The level below this one not even Becca or his assistant Tony knew about. Or maybe I’m reading it wrong. Emmet heads down to his basement office clad in his black robes and onyx cross. He has True Faith, so brandishing religious symbols works for him and pretty much catches vampires off guard every time. Unlike most people. His latest “subject”, who he is letting stay in a spare room, is Odette. Tony brought her in. He’s got her chained up in his office since she tries to run off at every opportunity. He tries to feed her, but she insists that he’s just trying to poison her. He calmly tries to talk her down, but she only insists that he’s going to use her to hurt Victoria. He eventually breaks her by mentioning Victoria exploiting her desire to be loved and how her parents (who Odette insists are dead to her and vice versa) must be worried about her. Then this happens. quote:The loose-fitting tunic top that she was wearing had slipped down over one shoulder, revealing the tops of her breasts. A trickle of sweat appeared between her collar bones and wended its way down. He followed it with his eyes, remembering the lump ripeness of those breasts when he had seen them through binoculars the night that he and Becca had spied upon Victoria Ash's apartment. An image came to him, unbidden, as pornographic as anything he'd ever witnessed in his years of spying. He tried to move away from her, but found he lacked the will. The first thought when I first read this scene was “Oh God damnit, no…” The last thing this character needs is her trying to take advantage of someone. Thankfully, quote:Emmet withdrew a cigarette lighter from his pocket and flicked the flame on and off in her face until her eyes opened. He burns a lock of her hair to drive the point home and keeps being super intense about it just as Becca unlocks the door and walks in. quote:The door opened. Becca stood there, taking it all in, while Odette resumed her screaming. Becca looked as pale as Odette now, the freckles on her nose and forehead stood out like flecks of blood. Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen from sobbing. Oh yeah, Becca has freckles now, if you care. She fills him in on the details outside of the room, then chides him for torturing Odette. Emmet tries to justify himself, saying that Odette is a danger to herself and others in her current state, but Becca doesn’t want to hear any of it and demands that he give her the key to the girl’s chains. quote:"Becca, we can't let her go yet. She's a danger to us and to herself. You've just had a terrible shock, and you're not thinking clearly." Becca gives Odette her coat and leads her out. When she returns, Emmet has poured himself a glass of scotch and wants to talk. But Becca still needs to deal with all of the bullshit surrounding Francine’s death. quote:She started to sob. Emmet reached to touch her. If she hated all of this so much, why didn’t she stop doing this a long time ago? Why did she even start? There isn’t an explained motivation for why she’s started hunting beyond “Dad does it”. Up to this point, she comes off like she’s just going through the motions to please her father, who she fights with every step of the way. I would think that Francine’s death would be a great motivator for her to want to get even more involved, not conclude that the Society are the true monsters and want to stop. And if her loved ones getting caught in the crossfire was a concern for her, wouldn’t she have realized that that was a possibility a long while ago? Wouldn’t Emmet have told her that? That’s kind of a no-brainer thing when you’re dealing with powerful immortal monsters with questionable moral codes. Anyway, Becca goes all “no you shut the gently caress up dad” on him, saying that there’s no way he knows what she’s going through. He tells her that that’s not true, and that there is something that he never wanted to tell her that he wants to tell her now: the reason why he got into vampire hunting. quote:She looked at him sadly. "All right. I'll listen. But right now all I know is that both of us are doing something terribly wrong. I think the punishment has already started." She rolls over real quick for someone fighting the supposed agents of Satan. I don’t think she would have made a good lawyer if she did go to study law. Also, you just let someone go back to their abuser to prove a point. Good job. Elsewhere, in Chapter 13, Erasmus Bonhomme is in the middle of his shift as a night watchman in a psychiatric facility. You remember him, right? He was the Nosferatu from way back in Chapter Two who helped Lucita get out of the sewers. Like Jean, there is a specific reason for his presence, I assure you. quote:Intermittently he read from a small pocket volume of untranslated Proust, pausing every few paragraphs to contemplate a passage. I like to think that he’s reading all of In Search of Lost Time very very slowly. quote:His large, knobby hands rested on a gelatinous belly that lolled over the waistband of his trousers in flabby folds. A gray-black beard and mustache concealed some of his facial deformities. A wig helped hide the peculiar, half-inch high ridge of bone that jutted up along the center of his skull like a crested dinosaur. Nothing could improve the appearance of his eyes, however, which were like flat, reddish scabs imbedded in sockets of loamy, pitted flesh. Still he felt content tonight, even buoyant. Why is he happy? A woman named Valerie Chase has readmitted herself into the facility. When her husband died, Erasmus visited her at night, causing her to suffer a mental breakdown and admit herself the first time. Considering this is a porn book, you can probably guess why. He goes into her room and molests her. Have a picture.  http://imgur.com/M7x9JwfStill doesn’t quite match what I see in my head when I read his descriptions… quote:Valerie Chase drew a deep breath. "No, not you. It can't be you. You aren't real." That took effort on his part. Valerie insists that he and the other person in the room are just hallucinations, just as her doctors and family said he was, and that they will be gone when she wakes up in the morning. Lucita has broken into the hospital and accidentally on purpose twists Valerie’s neck, disabling her. She internally quells the Beast, feeds from Valerie to put her out of her misery, then demands information from him. As they leave, the drugs from Valerie’s system kicks in and doesn’t really affect Lucita much besides making her slightly lightheaded. Erasmus is annoyed because now there’s going to be an investigation into Valerie’s death, which might cause him to lose his “job”. quote:"That woman was my hobby," he pouted. "I drove her straight down the road to paranoid schizophrenia. I had plans for her -- a life as a catatonic vegetable. Mon petit chou, as the French would say. My little cabbage. Now you've ruined her." That’s such a weird phrase, “perverted little peccadilloes”… Also, did none of his clanmates tell him that sex dolls are a thing you can buy on the Internet? Amazon was around in ’99. Erasmus suggests that they talk in the basement where the hospital keeps all of the old equipment that you would expect to be in a stereotypical mental hospital: straightjackets, electroshock machines, and the like. Erasmus likens it to an “S&M boutique” because this is a porn book. quote:Fingering one of the straitjackets, Lucita had an image of a captive, struggling prey, and smiled despite herself. Lucita has somehow figured out that Sascha was the one who attacked her and is the possible culprit behind Senator Rosenthal’s freak-out. She wants Erasmus to tell her what it's doing in D.C. quote:"It was like somebody had hosed their way into her head and stolen her soul." Of course it was. Erasmus thinks that Sascha is trying to break down the masquerade and start a war between vampires and humans. When the numbers issue is pointed out, he elaborates that Sascha might be operating on the assumption that humans are naturally inclined to be servants and, with some trickery, they can be made to do anything. (So it’s not really a war more than it is an open attempt to enslave humanity… Also, this isn’t really the M.O. of the Sabbat. So who knows why Sascha wants to do this.) When asked about its whereabouts, Erasmus can’t give her an answer. But he does point out that Sascha has a long standing hatred of Jan Pieterzoon, and there’s very little chance that Sascha left him alone. Jan has three havens, one normal and two decoys, in the D.C. area. Erasmus suggests that the real one would be a good place to look. Why she didn’t think of finding his haven and looking there before is never said.
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Aug 29, 2016 14:59
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I bet the chronic public masturbator is either an insert for one of the authors or is in fact Caine.
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Aug 29, 2016 16:07
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I'm hoping it's Caine. He needs to take the edge off after a shift in his taxi.
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Aug 29, 2016 17:03
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 Godlike, Chapter IV Part III: More Miracle Talents Last update, I gave an overview of Talents and their powers, explained Hyperstats and Hyperskills, and covered about a third of the Miracle powers. This update covers the rest of the Miracles. Ghost (RU 3/6/12): You can enter a trance and leave your body behind, traveling as an invisible, intangible ghostly form. As a ghost, you can walk or run about normally and pass through walls and other objects, but this also means you can’t touch objects or ride a vehicle. So scouting or spying can take a long time, and you can’t steal anything. You can only activate Ghost in a safe, quiet place, and anything that disturbs your body snaps you back to it. But the biggest limit on Ghost is that your ghost form isn’t invisible to Talents, and any Talent that sees you can dissipate your Ghost by spending a Will point. So you won’t be sneaking into Mussolini’s office while his Talent guards are on duty. Physical (+3/6/12): Your Ghost can pick up objects and even attack people, using your stats as normal. Any successful attack on your Ghost dissipates it. Disturbing (+1/2/4): Animals can see your Ghost. I’m not sure how this is an advantage. Dream walk (-1/2/4): Your Ghost only works when you’re asleep.  Presented without comment. Go First (ARU I Don’t Know): Go First is another power that’s never rolled. Each “die” of Go First increases the Width of all your rolls in combat, but only for initiative purposes. The tricky thing about Go First is that...I can’t tell you how much it costs. The table says it’s 8 points per level, the entry then says it’s 2, and I found an old preview pdf by Stolze with another table that says it costs 1. I’m going with 2, since for not much more you could buy dice in Hypercool that do the same thing and more. Combat Precognition (+2/level): Go First works by allowing you to predict other people’s actions. If your action is a reaction to something someone else is doing (like dodging or trying to disarm someone who’s coming at you with a knife) add +1d to your action.  Our speech balloon technology is light years ahead of yours. Goldberg Science (ADRU 5/10/20): Named after Rube Goldberg, this power allows you to create technological marvels that are decades ahead of modern science. The catch is that no matter how much time you spend tinkering with your creations, they’re really just junk--the devices are just a focus for your Talent. But who cares? Whether you really know how to build a raygun, or just use your Talent powers to trick reality into thinking that you do, the point is that it works. Well, there are a few sharp limitations to Goldberg Science. (This is easily the most complex Talent in the game.) First, Goldberg Science takes time and materials. The more powerful and convenient the device, the more difficult it is to build. You need access to a lab or workshop and heavy industry. Second, Goldberg Science is extremely expensive, Will-wise. The power itself is expensive, and your creations have to be “invested” with Will points. Speaking of which, Goldberg devices are susceptible to being resisted or interfered with by Talents just as if you were using a power on them directly. If a device loses a contest of wills, it stops working forever the Will you invested in it is lost. The same thing happens if the device breaks, and most are quite fragile. Last, your Goldberg devices only work within the range of your perception. You can arm the rest of the party with rayguns, but they’ll only work while you’re around and conscious. You can’t invest all your Will in creating an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, write “To Hitler, XOXO Marvin” on it, and fire it at Berlin, because it’ll drop out of the air as soon as it leaves your sight. So with all those limitations, what’s the point? There are two huge advantages to Goldberg Science. First, your devices can imitate any other Talent power--for other Talents, buying completely new and different powers is very expensive after character creation. Second, this is the only way to “give” Talent powers to other people--even non-Talents! (Provided you’re around to watch them use it, that is). So, uh, about actually creating stuff. First the Goldberg Scientist decides what power he wants to put in the device, and what kind of device it will be. This will determine the Difficulty of the roll to create it. Next they spend Will points to purchase the powers for the device. It costs the same amount of Will as if you were buying those powers outright. Then they have to actually create the device. The Difficulty of the roll is a base 2, 4, or 6, depending on whether the device is room, vehicle, or handheld-sized, plus 1/10th the Will cost of its powers. So a pair of super-gloves that grant Break 5d (20 Will) would increase the Difficulty by 2. You can’t build a device with a higher pool than your Goldberg Science Pool. Get a match, you made it. Fail, and you just lost all the Will you spent. Yes, it’s just gone. Using a Goldberg device is simple; just roll its pool as if you had that power. Even non-Talents can do it! Goldberg devices can even gain and lose will like a Talent using their power; the Will gained is “held in escrow” in the device. Again, if the device loses a Contest of Wills, it fizzles out and dies. But once the device is created, the creator has several other tricky issues to contend with. First, a Goldberg Scientist can’t have more active devices than dice in his pool. He can’t make more until he disassembles one, claiming that Will “held in escrow.” Second, a Goldberg Scientist with any active devices can’t gain Will normally--he only gains Will while using his devices, which absorb the Will, and any other Will gains are lost. Frankly, I’d never want to play a Goldberg Scientist. Although it’s possible to make huge Will gains and wield great power by arming the party with your creations, it’s really loving expensive and there are too many ways to just lose a huge amount of Will outright. Fiddly Bits (+2/4/8): You can make your devices out of any old junk lying around, as long as you have a safe place to work on them. Not Affected (+4/8/16): Your devices can’t be shut down by other Talents’ Will. Voila! (+5/10/20): You don’t build your devices at all--simply concentrate on them and they appear from thin air. Strenuous (-2/4/8): Building your devices inflicts [Width] Shock to your torso from the exertion of the effort. One of a Kind (+3/6/12): You can only create one type of Goldberg device, simulating one power.  Kurt Vonnegut’s going to write a book about this. Harm (ADRU 5/10/20): Simply put, Harm fucks poo poo up. Whether your Harm power takes the form of laser beams from your eyes or bolts of lightning from your arse is entirely up to you. All forms of Harm inflict Width in both Killing and Shock damage. It also has a lot of Extras you can add to simulate various kinds of Harm. Also note that Harm is a Defend power and can be used to Gobble dice from attacks! Area (+1/2/4 and 5 Will per Area die): Harm causes an explosion that does Killing damage, plus 2 automatic Shock to everyone, within 10 yards. Penetrating (+1/2/4 and 3 Will per rating point): Harm has a Penetration rating, able to blast through heavy armour. Spray (+1/2/4 and 3 Will per rating point): Harm has a Spray rating like a submachine gun, representing a flurry of attacks (or perhaps a beam you can sweep across targets). Electrocuting (+4/8/16): Harm hurts your victim twice, both normally and as an electrocution hazard. Splash and Spread (+2/4/8): Harm inflicts 1 Shock on each hit location to the one you struck, and continues to spread, doing 1 Shock for [Width] rounds. Suitable for freezing or poisoning attacks, I suppose. Burn (+1/2/4): Harm sets the target on fire. Vicious (+1/2/4): Harm does an extra level of Killing damage. Graphic (-1/2/4): The effects of your powers are as horrible to behold as any tank or machinegun. Make a Cool+Mental Stability roll when regarding your own handiwork. Jumpy (-1/2/4): When surprised or startled, make a Cool+Mental Stability roll to avoid having your power go off in a randomly-rolled direction. Healing (RU 3/6/12): You can heal injuries. Activate your power, and heal [Width-1] Killing damage and twice that amount in Shock damage to the target hit location. Plants and animals are easier to heal; use Width instead of Width-1. Healing repairs wounds without leaving scars or permanent injuries, and it heals those things too, even crippled or severed limbs. The bad news is that human targets need to be conscious and willing, and Healing has no effect on diseases, just injuries. Force of Will (+1/2/4): For each 5 Will you spend, you can increase the Width of a successful roll. Empathic Healing (-1/2/4): Any damage still remaining on the target hit location affects you, as well. Leaves Scars (-1/2/4): Your power can’t heal Killing damage without leaving normal scars.  Heavy Armour (7/level): Another power with a fixed cost that isn’t rolled, Heavy Armour gives you a HAR, reducing the Width of all attacks against you (and negating any attacks with their Width reduced to 1 or less). Penetrating weapons affect it normally, and anything that penetrates your Heavy Armour knocks it out for a round. (Though if you’re relying on your armour to protect you from a tank gun and it fails, that may not be a concern.) Like similar powers, Heavy Armour is Always On by default. Focus (+5/level): You can spend a round to “focus” your HA and move points from one hit location to another. Hardened (+7/level): Penetration has no effect on your HAR. Ablative (-1/level): Area, Spray, and Penetrating weapons reduce your HAR. You can spend 1 Will per point to restore it. Immunity (DRU 4/8/16): You’re practically immune to a common source of harm. When it would hurt you, all Shock damage is erased, all Killing damage becomes Shock, and even that Shock damage is reduced by your pool. (This power is Always On and you don’t often need to roll it, but you will need to roll to reactivate it if you do get hurt.) The listed cost assumed a very common form of injury, like kinetic damage. Less common threats cost less, 2/4/8 for things like cold and starvation, and 1/2/4 for rare dangers like acid or radiation. Shared (+2/4/8): You can share your Immunity with a single target by touching them. Unshaken (+1/2/4): Only Killing damage can shut off your power. Perception-based (-2/4/8): Your power doesn’t work if you can’t see the threat coming. Instant Death (AR -/6/-): This power kills people. Period. You can only buy Hard Dice, and it’s only good for killing people. Instant Death does Width in Shock and Killing, so 3hd is just more than enough to kill any normal human (effectively doing 4 Killing and 1 Shock to the head). You can narrate the effects however you like--maybe you cause heart attacks, or turn people to stone, or make the earth open up and swallow them. But in any case, Instant Death means you just will people to die, so it bypasses any kind of physical armour or cover. If you see them, you can kill them. However, Instant Death doesn’t defend against attacks, damage vehicles or objects, or disable people non-lethally--it kills people. Period. The other, “meta” disadvantage is that if you use Instant Death on another Talent, be prepared for them to burn all their Will trying to resist you. I might take my chances against another dangerous power rather than go to Will 0, but if I’m targeted by Instant Death I have nothing to lose. But against normal people, in Patton’s words, you’ll go through the enemy like poo poo through a tin-horn. Multiple Targets (+2/4/8): You can split your dice between multiple targets at no penalty. Must Beat Target’s Body (-2/4/8): You have to beat the target’s Body roll in either Height or Width to hurt them. If they win, they take no damage.  Insubstantiality (DRU 4/8/16): Welcome to the most annoying power in the whole loving game. I originally wanted to make my example PC, Paul Beckert, a guy who could walk through walls. Hacking this power into something anyone would actually want to use turned out to be not worth it. Here’s how Insubstantiality works: activate your power and you, and what you’re wearing and carrying, are now insubstantial. You pass through objects and creatures and are immune to any attack. So why is that complicated? Because your body no longer interacts with other matter. You can’t breathe, hear, or speak, because you’re no longer touching the air. You also sink into the ground just as readily as you pass through other objects. (I’m not sure why they didn’t declare that you’re blind, since light isn’t touching your eyes. For that matter, they might as well have said you aren’t affected by gravity, either, so you’re now standing in outer space as the Earth goes on spinning around the sun.) The only way to actually use Insubstantiality to pass through things is to hop at them and turn insubstantial as you pass through them, then turn it off just before your feet hit the ground. I hope you have a big dice pool, or the other soldiers are going to laugh at you for running around jumping face-first into doors. You can turn objects insubstantial (up to half your max lift), and they become substantial again when you let go of them. Also thanks to these weird assumptions about how Insubstantiality should work, there’s one way you can use it to attack people even though it’s not an Attack power. Make a multiple action (Insubstantiality and Body+Brawl) to leap at someone and pass through them, briefly turning them insubstantial as well. Succeed, and they take Width+1 in Killing damage to both legs from being merged into the ground. I’m not sure, though, why I wouldn’t rather use this power to just lodge a handful of junk inside someone, and there are no guidelines for other tricks that turn other people insubstantial. (And why wouldn’t it make a door drop off its hinges and through the ground?) This is particularly odd because, as you’ll see later, one of the most famous uses of Talent powers in WWII was when someone used this power to foil an assassination attempt--turning the assassin and his bomb insubstantial, so that only the two of them were killed by a visible but silent explosion that didn’t touch anything else. I’m unsatisfied with this power, but I think I understand why they handled it this way. Interpreting the power in a “common sense” way makes it quite potent in the world of Godlike. Assuming a Talent can breathe, move normally, and carry clothes and gear while insubstantial, there’s virtually nothing you can do to stop them. The main way to stop a Talent using their powers is to injure them, or beat them in a Contest of Wills. Insubstantial Talents are immune to any physical attack and their power isn’t offensive, so that’s out. An insubstantial Talent could walk around with a sack of grenades, immune to all harm, tossing bombs that became substantial again as soon as they left his hands. And that’s not an edge case, but something soldiers would figure out quickly. But not being able to phase anything but clothes would be a severe limitation in war. And if phased objects remained uncontrollably phased, now the Talent has the ability to dispose of any small object. It’s a conundrum. Breather (+2/4/8): You can breathe. No Sink (+1/2/4): You don’t fall through the loving floor. Lose Possessions (-1/-2/-4): All your gear and clothes fall off.  Invisibility (DRU 4/8/16): You can become invisible. Activate it and you go invisible for [Width] rounds in combat, or [Width] minutes out of it. Besides being able to dodge attacks, once you’re already invisible, anyone firing at an invisible target loses 2d (and Wiggle dice go before normal dice do). Invisible people also can’t be dodged in close combat. (This doesn’t apply to people with lots of Hypersense, of course.) There are two kinds of invisibility: mental and physical. The mental kind is much cheaper because you can take the No Physical Change Flaw. Physical invisibility requires you to buy an Extra if you don’t want to go blind from the light passing through your eyes instead of reflecting off them. Since it’s not like there were security cameras in the 1940s, I don’t know why you’d care. Sidestep (Power Stunt): Add this when you’re going invisible to dodge attacks. See While Invisible (+1/2/4): You don’t go loving blind when you’re invisible. Unshakeable (+2/4/8): Even being injured can’t cause your invisibility to fail. Tiring (-1/2/4): Being invisible does a point of Shock damage to your torso each minute.  No springs! Jinx (ADRU 5/10/20): The opposite of Aces, Jinx fucks people up when they do stuff you don’t want them to do. It can be rolled to Gobble dice from any opposing pool. Like Aces, Jinx is expensive, costing Will for any die thrown, and it can’t interfere with Talent powers. Unconscious (-1/2/4): Your Jinx power acts uncontrollably on your subconscious impulses, affecting your shitbird drill sergeant and other people you don’t like. You still have to pay Will for it, too. Multiple Actions (10/level): Surprisingly, this one isn’t too complicated. Each level of this power offsets a -1d penalty for doing multiple actions. You also get your Multiple Actions level in “free” Width to distribute among sets you roll. You still have to use the lowest pool if you’re taking different types of actions. For non-combat tasks, the increased Width reduces the time it takes to perform tasks, so you can potentially do hours-long jobs in seconds. Switcheroo (Power Stunt): Add this when performing sleight-of-hand. Blunt (-1/2/4): Your super-speed doesn’t all for delicate tasks. You can run, fight, and shoot, but not perform surgery or look for a proverbial needle in a haystack. Perception (RU 3/6/12): You have some kind of sensory perception that humans don’t have. (This doesn’t simulate something like super-hearing; for that, you want Hypersense or a related Hyperskill.) You have to “switch” back and forth between your Perception and your normal senses, and you have to link your new sense to one of your existing ones. (So you have the ability to “hear” emotions, “see” radio waves, or “feel” heat like a pit viper.) On top of the base 3/6/12 cost, there’s an additional cost based on what sense you have. The ability to invent any new sense each time you activate your power is very powerful and very expensive.  Mind reading doesn’t exist in the Godlike universe, but this power can detect things like emotions or intent by reading subtle physiological changes. A sidebar also notes that something like “X-Ray Vision” doesn’t work the way we imagine it. You can see someone behind a wall, see the gun in their pocket, even see how many bullets are in the gun. But you can’t see colours, or read papers, and seeing through people’s clothes isn’t erotic--because you’re not technically seeing them. Superimposed (+1/2/4): Your Perception is laid over your other senses, so you don’t have to “switch” when you activate and deactivate your power. Sensitive (-1/2/4): You’re vulnerable to having your Perception overloaded (as if by a blinding flash or sickening odor) which knocks it out of commission for a few hours. Precognition (RU 3/6/12): You can see visions of the future. Events depicted are not inevitable; on the contrary, as soon as you begin acting on or even talking about your vision, the “butterfly effect” makes it less and less accurate. Precogs tend to be mysterious and secretive, saying and doing just enough to effect positive outcomes without creating unknown variables or negating the usefulness of their vision. Precognition works in one of three ways, and it always costs Will. You can deliberately enter a trance and ask a question, which can be specific or open-ended. This costs 5/10/20 Will for each 1d/1hd/1wd you roll. It can also activate spontaneously at the GM’s discretion when you’re near something that will be important in the near future; this only costs 1/2/4. It can also activate spontaneously in your dreams, which only costs the 1 Will you would’ve gained from a night’s rest.  Update (Power Stunt): Add this when you’re trying to get an updated vision of something you’ve envisioned before. Mothering (+1/2/4): Your power looks out for your close friends and family. Static (-2/4/8): Your visions are only still images.  Like my invisible guitar? Anyway, I call this one the Blitzkrieg Bop. Psychic Artifact (ADRU 5/10/20): This power creates fully-functional objects you can use, with a limit of 5 lbs. at 2d up to a half-ton at 10d. The objects last for Width in rounds (in combat) or minutes (out of combat). They’re only visible to Talents, and any Talent can attempt to destroy one by entering a Contest of Wills with you. Machines like guns, radios, and vehicles require at least 2 points in a relevant skill, but simple tools do not. Weapons can’t do more than Width in Killing, and making weapons with qualities like Spray and Penetration costs 2 Will per level. (You can only duplicate weapons that exist, so no wonder weapons, no matter how much Will you have to spend.) Psychic weapons and vehicles never run out of ammo or gas, though. This power Defends since, for example, you could summon an invisible brick wall in front of yourself. Everything you make is created in contact with you, though, so you can’t attack people directly. Extended Duration (+2/+4/+8): Your artifacts last 3 times as long. Levitating (+2/+4/+8): Your artifacts float in the air and can be controlled by your thoughts. Visible (-1/-2/-4): Your Psychic Artifacts are fully visible, and look like an idealized version of the object made from translucent glass. Rapport (U 2/4/8): You can establish a connection with a person or object you touch; after that, you can see and sense them by focusing. You can see what they see, their body, and their surroundings. You can target a number of subjects equal to your dice pool. Other Talents can sense a Rapport, and break it by spending 1 Will. If your target dies, you take equivalent Shock damage to the same hit location. Read Lips (Power Stunt): You can’t hear through the Rapport link, but add this when trying to read lips through it. Emotional Rapport (-1/2/4): You can only form a Rapport with someone or something you feel very strongly about. Regeneration (RU 3/6/12): With a successful activation and a small Will expenditure, you can heal wounds and even diseases. Activate your power and spend 1 Will, and you can heal either Width in Killing to one damage location, all Shock damage to all hit locations, or a disease (it even cures cancer). You can heal a crippled limb by spending 5 Will, but you can’t regrow severed limbs. Losing your head is still fatal, Highlander. Automatic (+2/4/8): Regeneration activates automatically if you have Will to spend, even if you’re unconscious. Regrowth (+1/2/4): You can regenerate severed limbs. Side Step (DRU 4/8/16): You have the uncanny ability to avoid danger. Whether it’s limited precognition, bursts of super speed, or just miraculously standing in just the right spot, this power gobbles dice from anything threatening you. You can also use this power to “lead” an enemy’s attack into another enemy nearby, at a -1d penalty. Side Step has two limitations: First, it’s an active power; it doesn’t passively defend you while you do other stuff with no multiple action penalty, or help against attacks you don’t see coming. Second, it’s not so great against Area attacks. Sure, you can dodge a grenade being thrown at you, but you still take the Area damage from being in the blast area. Same thing if the grenade landed at the feet of the ally next to you. Leading (Power Stunt): Add this when redirecting an attack at another enemy. Hand-to-Hand Only (-1/2/4): Only works in close combat. Sidekick (ADRU 5/10/20): You have an invisible friend who follows you around and obeys your orders. Divide your Sidekick pool between its Body and Coordination; its other stats are the same as yours. You can buy other powers for your Sidekick with the Attached flaw. Sidekicks are invisible to non-Talents, and enjoy the relevant benefits (-2d to attacks against them). If the Sidekick is hit in combat, it’s a dynamic contest between the attack and your Sidekick pool. Lose, and the Sidekick disappears for an hour and you lose a point of Will. Second Pair of Eyes (+2/4/8): By holding still and concentrating, you can see through your Sidekick’s eyes. Bad Dog (-1/2/4): Your Sidekick has a mind of its own. It obeys orders, but spends its free time getting into mischief. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fu-Xmq0DHE Stun (AR 3/6/12): This is a specialized Harm that only does Shock damage. Though it can never inflict Killing damage, it deals twice Width in Shock, and extra damage overflows into an adjacent location. Bear in mind, unlike Harm, Stun can’t defend against attacks. Multiple Stun (Power Stunt): Add this when attacking multiple targets, to offset the die penalties. Touch Only (-1/2/4): You have to hit your target in close combat, using a multiple action, to activate the power. On the plus side, the Brawl attack deals damage too. Super-Speed (DRU 4/8/16): You can move incredibly fast. By itself, this power doesn’t let you perform multiple tasks deftly or quickly--you want Multiple Actions for that. It’s more like driving a car or flying a plane, increasing speed without increasing reaction time. It does Defend, however.  Super-Speed has to be attached to another ability--perhaps another movement power like Flying, or your Running skill or Body stat. Mach One Punch (Power Stunt): Add this to your pool and use it to make a hand-to-hand attack. You punch an enemy many times at super-speed, dealing Width Shock. This only works if you add the Attacks quality. No G’s (+2/4/8): You are unaffected by G forces, able to make hairpin turns at full speed. Braking (-2/4/8): You need a full round to come to a safe stop. If you can’t, you roll 1d per 100 yards/round and take Width in Shock and Killing. Ouch. Telekinesis (ADRU 5/10/20): You can move things with your mind. To use it, just activate it successfully--the weight limits for TK are the exact same as for the Body stat, using your TK pool instead. You can use TK to attack people, rolling a dynamic contest against their Body. You do Width Shock, or Width Killing at TK 7+. You can also use your TK pool to choke people, or to pick up a weapon and use it. (The virtues of telekinesis are versatility and working at a distance. If you just want to lift stuff, or to kill people, TK is an expensive way to do it.) Multiple Hands (Power Stunt): Points in this skill offset the multiple action penalty for lifting multiple objects. Touch (+1/+2/+4): Your telekinetic “hands” have a sense of touch, so you can use your power to feel around what you can’t see. Clumsy (-1/-2/-4): You have to roll two sets, or beat a Difficulty of 5, when moving objects with finesse or handling fragile objects. Otherwise, your TK roughly jerks its targets around. Teleport (ADRU 5/10/20): You can instantly teleport objects and creatures, including yourself. The limits on Teleportation are mass and distance, as seen in the table below. But unlike other powers, Teleportation is modular--you can take a step down on the Mass chart to increase Distance, and vice versa.  Teleportation is tricky. You have to touch the target, and you have to have a clear mental picture of where you want it (or yourself) to go. However, a good teleporter is very dangerous in combat--you can teleport grenades or heavy pieces of rubble right above targets. (They can roll Coordination+Dodge to get clear.) And if you can actually get ahold of an enemy, by taking a multiple action or pinning them first, you can easily kill most people by teleporting them high in the air. Teleportation makes a loud noise, like a rifle shot, from air rushing in to fill the mass you displaced. Reorientation (Power Stunt): Add this when you’re trying to change your body’s orientation without traveling far--like turning an instant about-face or going from prone to standing. Silent (+2/4/8): Your teleportation doesn’t make noise. Blind Teleportation (+3/+6/+12): You can teleport to places you’ve never seen before. Your power makes sure you “land” on solid ground, and not merged with other objects, but doesn’t protect you from any other dangers. Forced Attendance (-1/-2/-4): You can’t teleport anything without going along for the ride. Nothing Biological (-2/-4/-8): You cannot teleport anything biological (except yourself). Self Only (-2/-4/-8): You can only teleport yourself. This doesn’t include clothes and gear. Greg Stolze wants you naked. Slow (-1/-2/-4): You take multiple rounds to teleport, slowly fading away and reappearing. The upshot is that it’s relatively quiet. Uncertain Arrival (-3/-6/-12): Depending on how well you roll, you may wind up to the left or right of where you intend, or up to 20 feet off the ground, risking injury. Thought Control: Hypercommand 7+ Godlike is quick to point out that it doesn’t have any straightforward mind-reading or mind-control powers. But Hypercommand is close, and there are some Extras you can buy for it. Buddy, Buddy (+1/2/4): No matter how horrible you are, people think you’re a great guy and feel compelled to go out of their way to help you. You probably know a guy like this. Non-Verbal (+3/6/12): You can issue compelling commands non-verbally. Eye Contact (-1/2/4): You must maintain eye contact with the target to convince them. Thought Control: Projected Hallucination (ADRU 5/10/20): You can change people’s perceptions. This can be used for dramatic things like making people believe they’re covered with scorpions, or subtly, such as making someone think they’re talking to a different person. Using Projected Hallucination is pretty simple: it’s a dynamic contest between your pool and the target’s Sense+Skill. If you’re fooling multiple senses, they get to roll whichever relevant skill is highest. If you’re just creating a bunch of distracting nonsense with no plan, your Width becomes a Difficulty for all actions. In any case, you have to keep concentrating to maintain illusions, and can’t take most offensive actions while doing so. By the way, you can use this power to make someone feel like their arm is on fire or a vice is squeezing their head--roll the power to attack, and if you succeed, you temporarily disable that hit location as if it was filled with Shock. Time Fugue (ADRU 5/10/20): You can freeze an object in time. If you beat a Difficulty based on the size of the object (a person is 4 and a 10-ton object is 10) you can freeze it for (Width) rounds. Frozen people and objects don’t move, aren’t affected by gravity, and can’t be damaged or changed in any way while time is frozen for them. When the fugue ends, they resume doing whatever they were doing--a truck will keep going, a rock will fall to the ground, bullets will speed toward their target, a grenade will explode, etc. A person will keep doing whatever they were doing, but likely stop and do a double-take as the world appears to have instantly changed around them. (The rules don’t explain what happens when you do shoot someone who’s frozen in time, or hit them with a car, etc. If the bullets just stopped when they touch them and resume their path when the power wears off, that’s as good as shooting them right away. I suppose anything touching the target would lose its momentum.) Vanish (+1/2/4): Your target disappears completely while it’s frozen. Touch Only (-2/4/8):You have to touch your target. Transform (ADRU 5/10/20): You can transform yourself into pretty much any creature or inanimate object, ranging in size from a bug to an elephant depending on your pool.  Turning into an inert, inanimate object is easy; activate your power and you become that thing for (Width) hours. The change is purely cosmetic, and any damage causes you to revert to human form. Turning into living creatures is more expensive: you have to spend 1 Will for each die needed to mimic that creature (so turning into a rat-sized animal costs 8 Will). When you become an animal, you pool your Body, Coordination, and Sense stats and reassign those points in a way that makes sense (GM’s call). You also get your Transform pool as points to assign to stats or skills that make sense for that form. You can also “exchange” your Transform dice for Miracle dice that make sense for that animal (like a bat’s ability to fly and echolocate). But while you can turn into a fantastical creature, you can’t give yourself supernatural powers. Most interesting is that any form you take looks like a generic, indistinctive example of that thing or animal. Most people don’t notice this when it comes to animals, but if you assume a “human” form you will look bland and indistinct to the point of being creepy. Metamorph (Power Stunt): Add this and spend 1 extra Will when transforming to give your form some distinct features. Light Armor (+1/2/4 and 2/level): This gives your Transformed forms a Light Armor rating. Human Senses (+1/2/4 per sense): You can use your human senses while transformed into inanimate objects. Turn into a chair and spy on people. Animate or Inanimate (-1/2/4): You can only turn into animate or inanimate objects, your choice. Transmutation (ADRU 5/10/20): You can transform the substance of a target into another substance. You can’t change its shape, but of course if you turn a gun into steam or a bottle into snowflakes, it will do that on its own. You aren’t limited to base chemical compounds; you could turn Hitler into a Hitler-shaped statue made of matzo. (Note that if you just want to use this to kill people, an Instant Death power would be better, with an Extra to represent all that free bread.)  So why don’t you just make tons of gold? Any Talent can see that an object has been Transmuted and reverse the process by spending a Will point. (Anything you kill stays dead, though.) Results Specialist (Power Stunt): Add this when turning the target into a particular substance you’ve chosen. Selective (+2/4/8): You don’t have to target a whole object. Why strain yourself turning a truck into mustard when you could just turn the axles to mustard? Zed (ADR 4/8/16): Named for the British term for zero, Zed is the only power that exclusively negates other Talent powers. It doesn’t work by stopping them from working--no Talent can do that--but by sensing what they’re doing and counteracting it. If your enemy is flying, it pushes him down to the ground. If he’s lifting something it makes it heavier. Zed doesn’t work on non-physical powers, or ones that only affect the Talent using them. (Zed does work on powers that are physical but don’t invoke laws of physics, like Transmutation or Teleportation.) Using Zed doesn’t invoke a Contest of Wills. Specific Power (Power Stunt): Add this when you cancel a specific power you’ve chosen. Radius (+3/6/12 and 3/level): Zed affects everyone in a radius around you, from a few feet up to 10 miles. No Go (-1/2/4): There’s a specific power your Zed just doesn’t work against. Next time on Godlike: Okay, it turns out that that was very long and it took a long time. I’m going to save all the details of Will, experience, and creating some sample characters for a future update!
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Aug 29, 2016 19:58
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You gotta look in the recommended media section and see if Jojo's is in there, because this is getting comically eerie in its precision.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:29
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Crasical posted:Maybe this wasn't covered or I forgot, but how big of a deal is this? Is a secret of this caliber something that would make a Scorpion soil his pants in glee? As far as I remember, gently caress all comes of this plot point.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:43
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Tatum Girlparts posted:I think 'super okay' is a bit of a stretch but yea they, like a few other 'warrior cultures' pretty much had the unspoken rule of 'if you have kids, and don't embarrass yourself and your spouse by making any affair public, yea whatever gently caress who you want' and that translated for a lot of closeted guys as 'cool so I can have my boyfriend and just grit my teeth and bear it when it comes time to make a baby'. It really depends on what sources you look to. This is a pretty well-cited article on the prevalence of homosexual relationships in feudal Japan, both among adult men and between men and adolescent boys. (Apparently that was a thing in China and Japan, much as it was in ancient Greece.)
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Aug 29, 2016 22:45
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Legend of the Five Rings First Edition Way of the Crane: Get Flipped Finally, the appendices! We start with an overview of the lands of the Crane. They cover most of the coastline of Rokugan, from the Mountains of Regret up north to the southern peninsula that they share with the Crab by Imperial decree. The people of the Crane live a good life. The lands are rich, the taxes are light and the magistrates pride themselves on their honorable, just nature. Many peasants of other areas of Rokugan immigrate to Crane lands every year. However, their military presence is minimal, and sometimes forces arrive too late to solve bandit troubles. The peasants make do with swift runners to call for help as well as simple hand to hand fighting techniques, as commoners are not allowed weapons. The northern lands close to the borders with the Dragon and the Phoenix are peaceful and placid - they rarely see much war, or much of anything at all. The lands that are commonly held to be the northern border of the Crane and the Doji regions are held by the Emerald Champion: as the Champion is often a Crane, these lands are usually under Crane control. On these plains stands the castle of the Emerald Champion, as well as the Imperial capital of Otosan Uchi. In the Imperial Court, diplomats and courtiers arrange marriages, negotiate alliances, conduct business. Entire wars are fought without loss of life. The Court is not a physical place, but the entire entourage of ambassadors and diplomats that follows the Emperor around. They stay for six months in Otosan Uchi, then the rest of the year in one of the Clan palaces. Hosting the Emperor is a great honor and it is given to each Clan in turn, though it is known that the Emperor is much more inclined to visit Crane and Phoenix palaces than the Dragon or Crab. The Imperial Advisor, Kakita Yoshi, goes to great lengths to see that everything is prepared to receive the Emperor in these journeys, and the highly trustworthy envoys he sends in advance are expected to ferret out anything that could endanger the Imperial person. Imperial authority comes from the fact that no one technically owns land in the Empire. Everything belongs to the Emperor, but he gives certain Clans the right to rule and farm in his stead. The Emperor also authorizes the teaching of the Tao to people and is the last authority in religious disputes. No Emperor has gone as far as rewriting the Tao, but altering its readings or premises based on the Tao is entirely within his jurisdiction. The Emperor also must approve every change in the feudal structure, from the ascension of a daimyo to naming a heimin samurai, but he leaves that busywork to his Advisor most of the time. The Emperor could technically forbid a samurai from becoming Clan Champion, and that Clan would not have to follow them. The Emperor also has the authority to give formal and religious sanction to all events in the Empire, though again he can delegate those tasks to those he finds appropriate. One of the most powerful Imperial prerogatives is granting Imperial Protection: those under it cannot be harmed or restrained from completing their assigned duties, or else the entire Empire will shun the offender, going as far as removing major Clan status, loss of samurai rank or execution. Since the Crane take up so much of the coast, they have a near chokehold on seagoing trade. They have firmly established marketplaces and ports along the sea routes, and inland trade roads and markets to maintain economic superiority. Theft is not a major problem, as the roads are regularly patrolled by Daidoji forces and city samurai. Bandits also risk robbing Imperial tax caravans that regularly use Crane roads and having the wrath of the Empire fall on their heads. The Crane ports are bustling with activity, with larger cities containing the major Crane palaces. One such city has the reputed place where the Kami descended to the earth. The western plains have fertile farmlands and acres of rich rice fields cultivated by Crane heimin; the only aberration in these lands is Shiro no Yojin, now under Lion control. The crops grown here are one of Rokugan's primary food sources and they are traded all over, particularly with the land-poor Crab and Dragon. Only twice have the Crane enacted a full trade embargo against a Clan: last time, they enforced it against the Lion and even the Yasuki had to stop providing supplies for the Matsu forces. At the southern end of these provinces lies the vital Beiden Pass, fought over time and again by Lion, Crane and Scorpion due to its strategic location and control of the trade going through the mountains. Currently the Lion and Scorpion squabble over the corridor, while the Crane sits back to jump whoever wins the conflict. The southern border includes the Daidoji cities and the Kenkai Hanto peninsula. Bandit activity is virtually nonexistent due to the proliferation of Daidoji warriors and the cities are heavily guarded, prompting many Crab and Lion traders to do their business in the southern Crane lands. There are swampy reaches where people claim to have seen kenku, kappa and even the elusive Naga. The Crane themselves rarely venture into the swamplands.  Hoturi looks like he scored the dankest gaijin weed. Mizu-do, the "way of water," is a martial art born from Crane stage fighting techniques. Since the artists had no desire to actually harm anyone, mizu-do has evolved into a very defensive martial art, used by courtiers and artists. Its kata are performed in dance maneuvers and in productions of famous plays. It is focused on throws and joint locks, and practitioners are taught to fall and roll to receive minimum damage while still appearing to be injured. Most bushi schools have little respect for such a "soft" art, and the Crane have never attempted to popularize it. It does not teach weapon usage, and in fact it does not even use punches or kicks like jiujutsu or kaze-do. Mizu-do is, like kaze-do, a Hand to Hand variant. Only Crane characters can buy it at chargen; other characters can learn mizu-do in-game but they can't start with it. The first rank bought at chargen gives two techniques to use, with an extra technique every new rank. If mizu-do is bought after chargen, then the first rank only gives one technique. All mizu-do techniques require a reactionary roll: the practitioner declares Full Defense in one round, and may choose their technique after the opponent begins their attack, but if they use a technique they don't gain the benefits of Full Defense. If the practitioner chooses not to react to an attack, they can't change their mind later. If the technique is unsuccessful, the attacker gains a free raise on their attack. Mizu-do cannot be used against someone not attacking the character - it is purely defensive. It is a High skill.
Ouch. Mizu-do handily beats the crap out of the Dragon's kaze-do. About the only real advantage kaze-do and regular jiujutsu have is the ability to initiate an attack, and even armored opponents are in danger of getting suplexed or locked into submission. The thing where some maneuvers have people rolling Reflexes and others Agility can get weird in terms of remembering what to roll, but also mean that the character can't just dump everything into Reflexes and have a high TN to be hit as well as being certain to execute their abilities. New spells! The Asahina often share formulae with their Phoenix cousins, but these spells are in-house and rarely shown to outsiders. Air
Nemuranai! These are some of the most well known Crane magic artifacts, most of which are kept in the Asahina temples. Shukujo is the Ancestral Sword of the Crane, the blade that Doji Konishiko worn into the Shadowlands and that Daidoji Hayaku brought back. It is unique among the nemuranai, as it contains two completely sentient souls - Konishiko and her twin brother. Only a true descendant of Doji (so a Kakita, Doji or Daidoji) may even attempt to draw the blade. Those who are not and try it lose their minds to the fury of the souls. Bushi that wear the blade can call on a number of Doji Courtier school ranks equal to their own School Rank, while Courtiers or Artisans get a number of Kakita Iaijutsu ranks equal to their own School Rank. Also, the wielder may always strike first in an iaijutsu duel, no matter who calls for a strike first. Doji Hoturi wields this sword. Sasageru is the ancestral armor of the Crane, left by Doji as one of her last gifts to her descendants. It is made of a strange metal and shines a pale blue rather than steel grey, with a crane enameled on the breastplate. It seems to be indestructible, and nothing can scratch or dent it. It adds 1 to the wearer's Honor Rank, which makes them able to reach Honor Rank 6 instead of the maximum of 5. They may also use their Honor instead of any Trait. The Five Asahina Nemuranai were given to the Clan upon Isawa Asahina's marriage to Doji Kiriko. They are rarely allowed outside the Asahina temple except for the obi, which is used by Kakita Yoshi. The Mempo of Pure Thought, presented to the Doji, adds and keeps dice equal to the wearer's Honor in contested rolls to determine if someone is lying to them. The wearer of the Courtier's Obi can reroll any dice in social skill rolls that roll less than the skill. The Standard of the Iron Crane, presented to the Daidoji, gives +2 to any roll in the mass battle chart for an army, or +4 if the army is outnumbered by more than two to one. The Merchant Coins were presented to the Yasuki when they still were part of the Clan: they are one koku coins with an image of each of the twelve creatures that represent the hours of a day (Hare, Dragon, Serpent, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Dog, Rooster, Boar, Rat, Ox and Tiger). Anyone that bears one of these coins gets a 2k2 bonus in contested or simple rolls pertaining to negotiation or trade during the relevant hour. Having more coins gives one extra die to add. Alternative, the character can waive the bonuses and reroll as if they had the Luck advantage. The Crane own a full set, and Yasuki Taka is reported to own at least two and he prefers to do his business just after lunch or after sunset. Heaven and Earth, presented to the Kakita, is an exquisite daisho set. Heaven is the katana, and it replaces its normal damage rating for the wielder's Honor, rolling and keeping that many dice. It also gives an 1k1 bonus in an iaijutsu duel. Earth is the wakizashi: it gives as many extra dice to add as the wearer's Glory, and the wielder may spend a Void Point to keep them instead of the wakizashi's regular k2 rating. Other items include the Serpent's Tooth (wielder adds School Rank to the initiative, can reroll missed attacks with a +5 to TN spending a Void Point), the Windblade (it negates all defenses except armor if the wielder's Honor is greater than their target, and it changes form depending on the wielder's Honor, from a tanto at Honor 2 to a huge no-dachi at Honor 5, its damage rating depends on the form it takes and it adds and keeps bonus dice equal to the relative difference between attacker and defender's Honor ratings), the Biwa of Kakita (+3k3 bonus to any music-related skill roll, the bearer adds one Honor point) and Doji's Fan (a Courtier that bears it gains one School Rank and gets +2 dice to any interaction with Unicorn)  gently caress YOU LIOOOOOON Fetishes are, as mentioned, one-shot magic items. Most are small and easy to carry. Creating a fetish requires usually fine materials, a hallowed place like a temple, three days of undisturbed meditation and a a Tsangusuri + Fire roll at TN 15: more complex items both increase the TN and the material requirements for it. Creating something like the Ancestral Sword of the Scorpion requires ridiculous stuff like forging 12 swords quenched in the poison of a hundred scorpions, getting three egg-sized rubies, asking Bayushi Kachiko and other notables to fast for a week in the Asahina temples, and making the roll against a TN of 40. An Asahina shugenja can begin creating fetishes at Rank 2 and objects of "permanent power" at Rank 4. None of these will be offensive or harm-causing, and if the Asahina masters know how to create offensive fetishes they aren't teaching anyone. Examples of fetishes are Incense of Concentration (user regains 2 Void Points with 15 minutes of meditation), Feather of the Crane (user's weight is reduced to 1/10 for an hour, they take triple damage from physical attacks during this period), Tortoise Shell (user is protected from all ranged attacks for ten rounds) or White Sheaf of Grain (heals 2d10 Wounds, can be to the user or another target) Finally, after the CCG section (including a deck made by Ree Soesbee herself) we have a couple of adventure hooks regarding an Asahina fetish ritual gone wrong, and one involving Daidoji Chiroku, the lady that got the ki-rin tattoo from the Dragon early in the book and that apparently became ageless after that. Next: MATSUUUUUUUUUU
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Aug 29, 2016 23:23
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Traveller posted:Then again, I've heard rumors of Wick actively trying to erase Stolze's contributions to the line, but I guess we're in the realm of hearsay at that point. Well, I imagine it applied a lot more to the CCG story and the CCG characters - it's kind of striking when I realize how few weddings there are, or, indeed, married characters when it comes to the CCG. I can't think of a single reference to homosexuality outside of City of Lies, and it certainly might be possible I missed something. But there's probably some truth to Wick's accusations, but probably more applicable to the CCG than the RPG. I don't know if Wick was actively trying to undo Stolze, but as I've mentioned before, I playtested Stolze's original draft for Code of Bushido, and the final product was completely rewritten with quite nearly nothing at all remaining from Stolze's original draft. It's worth mentioning Stolze didn't even seem aware of what had happened when I told him, but he didn't seem particularly broken up, either. I get the impression that working for the 1st edition was probably quite the odd experience, between Wick's raging egotism (gotta just call a spade a spade there) and people like Zinser trying to rein him in and put out coherent product (and just look at the actual credits for L5R 1e for a pointed example of that).
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Aug 29, 2016 23:34
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Mors Rattus posted:It really depends on what sources you look to. This is a pretty well-cited article on the prevalence of homosexual relationships in feudal Japan, both among adult men and between men and adolescent boys. (Apparently that was a thing in China and Japan, much as it was in ancient Greece.) The samurai, about as gay as Spartans, and they got pretty gay. It also explains a whole lot about Yukio Mishima.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:38
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Well, y'know, I imagine Greg Stolze got his paycheck and was done, it's not like it was his personal baby.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:48
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His response was something like "Well, the check cleared, so whatever."
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Aug 29, 2016 23:53
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Hostile V posted:Some people have flashbacks to the time they trained in Japan under a cruel master when they're buried alive, finding the strength and means to get out of their grave. Other people just remember when an internet fuckbuddy with an OC Do Not Steal persona didn't believe they were actually a suicidal self-destructive soccer mom. Maybe she should have tried stalking that senator again so we wouldn't have to hear any of this crap. I recall a similar scene in a Clive Barker novel (Imajica?) but somehow it ended up being surprisingly tender and sweet.
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Aug 30, 2016 00:11
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Part 9: How Do Disciplines Work? At the start of Chapter 14, Victoria is having herself a nice little outing to a place called Club Osiris. quote:As she glided past, Victoria Ash surveyed the crowd with cold, knowing eyes, ignoring the gawkers who recognized her as a singing star, but acknowledging those few whom she might wish to know with a gaze held slightly longer than normal. Inevitably these objects of her interest either grew wide-eyed with abject enthrallment or shrank subtly away, as though struck by a whiff of disease. For the most part, though, where she passed, only whispers and longing stares followed. One thing was assured -- that she would pass through the gilded doors of the Club Osiris with no waiting in line and no questions. And amazingly, there is absolutely no paparazzi following her. The club is your basic gothpunk 2edgy4you club that are probably a dime a dozen in oWoD, but with a slightly “sexy” twist. quote:Inside, the multilevel club was adorned with steel sculptures of gigantic, plated insects and bizarre, twisted trees whose emaciated branches bore foliage of sculpted hands and feet. Steel sheeting covered the tables, bars, and light fixtures, while the bartender and waitstaff, unusually comely specimens all, wore steel armbands and high, chokingly tight steel collars over their black spandex uniforms. The clientele crowded around the bar, where drink menus listed forty-six different kinds of martinis and the glittering array of bottles was bookended by vending machines offering Cuban and other imported cigars. The air stung with smoke and pulsed with the rhythm of hypnotic acid jazz. Everyone in the club is high as a kite. This is an issue for Victoria, since the club offers blood dolls for its kindred clients, and those blood dolls are also high as a kite, and she doesn’t want to drink from an intoxicated person. (Though it’s mentioned she does make an exception for coke users.) So she settles on an old stand-by: Reiko, the daughter of a Japanese embassy official and former blood doll for a Kuei-Jin Osiris cult based in Shinjuku. Unfortunately, her key is not with the bartender, so Victoria goes upstairs to the “kissing floor” to find her herself. quote:It was in one of the grottoes that she found Reiko, half-naked in the arms of a dark-skinned, leather-clad brute whose mouth was clamped to her slender throat even as his hand roved over her white, dark-tipped breasts. His long greasy hair was tied back in a ponytail. His jeans were unzipped and tugged down, revealing the tops of white, well-muscled buttocks. Despite the heated nature of the work he was engaged in, he'd kept on a bulky aviator jacket that made his broad upper body look even more imposing. His rough appearance and crude style of copulating -- bothering only to unzip his fly and take his dick out -- aroused Victoria. Although she didn't know Reiko's despoiler, she took him for a neonate of Clan Brujah, a ruffian of the most violent, criminal ilk. In her view, the Brujah were a squalid lot, given to such primitive behaviors as home invasions and gangbanging. She was annoyed, but also frankly titillated... The “neonate” tells her to piss off. Victoria does the whole “do you know who I am?” celebrity bullshit. They snip at each other until Victoria demands that he get Reiko dressed so that the three of them can go somewhere more private. quote:"You look like a bitch who wants a helluva lot." Considering the paparazzi seem to give no shits about her, I don't think she's as famous as she thinks she is. The three head back to Victoria’s apartment with little incident (other than some mention of Gangrel coteries bullying the DCPD into submission over the previous months) and get down to work making the sex. During which we learn that Victoria apparently has a knack for picking up Asian diabetics. quote:She and the Brujah took turns sucking at the puncture wounds on Reiko's neck. Her blood was thick and flavorful, almost drug-free and faintly sweet, a taste Victoria thought must be peculiar to the blood of Asians, for she had seldom tasted it from whites and blacks. Want a picture? Of course you don’t. But you’re getting one anyway. http://imgur.com/l1oiCdPWilliam and Odette are both in the room, and sometime during their make-out session, Odette starts screaming her head off. quote:She was still gazing down at Reiko's lovely face, devouring her exotic beauty with rapt fascination when she finally became aware that Odette was shrieking and speaking in tongues. Yes, in the hour or so that she was with him, and in close proximity to him, Victoria never once noticed that the guy she was with was human. Either Tony has some sort of special ability or she was a special kind of distracted. (If you care about the numbers aspect of this, her character sheet from the revised Toreador clanbook says that she has Perception 5 and Alertness 3. She probably would have rolled a success or two.) A fight breaks out, and Tony manages to get a shot in on Victoria before William strangles him to death with the chain that he’s tied to. This almost sends Victoria into a frenzy, but frenzying isn’t sexy so she uses her worries of losing her singing fame to force the Beast down. Since she worries that would make her lose the ability to infuse her singing with real emotions. She screams at Odette and William to get rid of the body and take Reiko back to the club. She then puts on a long coat and says that she’s going somewhere safe where she can heal, worried that someone heard the gunshot and called the cops. Back with Emmet in Chapter 15; he’s in his upstairs office trying to write the sermon in which he explains why he is stepping down from his position in the church and running for mayor. He’s scheduled it for Sunday night, which he realizes is a bad idea, but is doing it anyway because it will allow for a dramatic confrontation to take place at the climax of the book. He finally admits to himself that he tortures vampires because he gets pleasure out of it, and that Becca was right all along. He vows to stop drinking as well, since the habit has caused his sixth sense for ferreting out vampires to weaken. It turns out the reason why he had gotten into vampire hunting, and the thing he told Becca, was that her mother had been killed by a vampire. He hoped that by telling her, it would make her hate them as much as he did. Why he didn’t tell her this from the very start is beyond me. Since it probably would have made her actually be on board with the whole thing from the start. While he’s writing, the cops call him about Tony’s death. That destroys his resolve to continue his new found sobriety. quote:When the phone call ended, he sat for a long moment with his head in his hands. He felt sledgehammered, knowing he should do something, but feeling too weak and powerless even to get out of his chair. Unfortunately, Sascha is waiting for him down there, and it’s Vicissitude’d itself some more edgy features. quote:Its voice was a raspy, reptilian whisper, its eyes hooded and languid, the pupils flecked with what looked like tiny, overlapping scales. Around it hung a glittering aura of icy fog, as though it had just stepped from inside a meatlocker. The talons of its hands clicked hollowly on Vargas's desk. Rows of larger talons descended its pale, plated belly and sprouted on either side of its grotesque, exposed genitals. And now, the picture I'm sure you've all been eagerly waiting for: A full frontal color shot of Sascha Vykos. http://imgur.com/twjBRfcLike I said, “bejeweled dick goblin”. quote:Emmet watched as the thing-from-hell rose to its full height and emitted a low, rank-smelling belch of fetid air. Then slowly, with the torpidity of a sated slug, it glided toward him. What’s with the burping? Does Vicissitude give you gas? Is Sascha just being gross for the sake of being gross? Emmet tries to ward Sascha off with his cross, but it doesn’t work. quote:"There was a time I might even have been impressed. Why do you think I waited this long to find you, Emmet? I wasn't waiting to destroy you. I was waiting for you to destroy yourself. And you've done a pretty good job of that, I'd say. You've made the transition from piety to perversion with commendable dispatch." Emmet is literally almost scared shitless. He backs up toward the statue of an onyx angel as he continues to hold the cross out. Sascha leisurely strolls towards him, taunting him. quote:"If you think your angels will save you," said Vykos, in that sweet, sighing voice that was infused with both debauchery and surrender, "then why are you trembling like a cow going into the slaughterhouse? Is it because you know you're not the same man who built this church? Is it because you know you're farther from the angels these nights, and closer to me?" I have stairs in my church. I have stairs in my church. …Sorry. quote:As the thing slunk slowly, furtively toward him, he realized it was also hypnotizing him. Its appearance, although ghastly, was also spellbinding. Its fluid, undulating gait, like wine poured from a poisoned chalice, was also mesmerizing. Like watching a torture victim writhe in agony, it was a sight so numbingly hideous as to preclude looking away. Emmet pulls the statue’s wing down with a scream, revealing a hidden staircase down into the catacombs, and manages to close the door before Sascha can follow him. He continues down it long after hearing silence. quote:To his left branched a corridor so narrow it could only accommodate the passage of a single person of average build. At its end, a blue light reflected feebly and there was the barest suggestion of motion, a pale form floating or hovering. He could hear the burble and cascade of water descending over stone, peaceful and almost musical. At that point, he can hear the statue toppling over from above, and continues onward. Blindly, as he doesn’t have the entire catacombs memorized. quote:For a moment his heart stuttered raggedly and he had a wild hope -- that it would fail before the thing got to him. He clutched his chest.
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Aug 30, 2016 02:17
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Mors Rattus posted:It really depends on what sources you look to. This is a pretty well-cited article on the prevalence of homosexual relationships in feudal Japan, both among adult men and between men and adolescent boys. (Apparently that was a thing in China and Japan, much as it was in ancient Greece.) A related article informs me that 'bushido' was made up in the 19th century, which I didn't know. Making all of L5R's 'honor' stuff even sillier. https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/
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Aug 30, 2016 02:57
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SirPhoebos posted:As far as I remember, gently caress all comes of this plot point. You'd think they could have spared a half-dozen lines or so to let us know what the general public opinion is on 'Foxes coming into our country, stealing away our samurai mans', and what the implications of the son of the emerald champion being married to a not-human are.
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Aug 30, 2016 03:35
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Allow System Mastery to briefly interrupt the long-form porn that seems to be the new thing (You know I actually love it Adnachiel) with some very short-form porn: It's Macho Women with Guns, an early 90s RPG that managed to pack a incredible ratio of sexism per word into only a few short pages, a density not replicated with such skill again until twitter was invented.
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Aug 30, 2016 05:30
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Nessus posted:You gotta look in the recommended media section and see if Jojo's is in there, because this is getting comically eerie in its precision.
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Aug 30, 2016 05:42
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't know if you mean me or the porno vampires. Eternal Farts' vampires aren't nearly homoerotic enough for it to be influenced by JJBA. Also, I thought Vykos was an it because they turned themselves into a neuter. Shouldn't the book be using "him" if it's given him a penis?
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Aug 30, 2016 06:01
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Count Chocula posted:A related article informs me that 'bushido' was made up in the 19th century, which I didn't know. Making all of L5R's 'honor' stuff even sillier. https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/ It's more complex than this article makes it out but the modern definition of bushido is bullshit but bushido is something that existed in a form and was written about for several centuries prior to Nitobe.The author also gives too much credit to Nitobe on his influence on Japanese culture. Most Japanese scholars also criticized his work for being too Western. Even though bushido existed as well, Japanese people aren't robots who adhere to rules. More blame as well can be placed on Yamamoto Tsunetomo and the Hagakure. The Hagakure is to samurai culture as a history book by Glenn Beck is to American culture. Bushido is the culmination of Neo-Confucianism being bolted onto a governmental structure it wasn't meant to be adapted to. Due to the inability of imperial army of the Heian period being unable to subjugate the Emishi people, regional military leaders were able to become successful and the strongest among them installed himself as the shogun. This essentially ended the Chinese based structure of imperial rule in Japan and began the feudal system under the shogun. The leadership though still had to follow Chinese culture for a number of reasons. Not knowing how to handle this, Japanese philosophers tried to remake the Confucian model so that it included a warrior class since Confucius felt that society should be ruled by philosopher bureaucrats, something that functionally ceased to exist in the turmoil of the end of the Heian period. The whole loyalty and honor thing comes from that, since an upright man was supposed to be a paragon to the people. The upright man of Confucianism is able to overthrow an unjust leader as well but this gets murky because Japan is theologically very different than China since the Emperor is a living avatar of a god while the Chinese emperor is possibly formerly an illiterate farmer and very human. There's so much betrayal because it's easy to make a quick tally of how much your boss has gone against a value system that puts little value on professional soldiers. This all leads to these very lofty writings about what a samurai should and shouldn't be that's not based on reality. It's more a loose guide than an actual set in stone moral code, what a samurai should be, not what they actually are. This is in the tradition of Confucian writing. The Tokugawa period was marked by the kokugaku period, where Japanese scholars disregarded foreign works and just followed the Japanese works based on them because they were viewed as more correct. The Meiji Era just saw this go into overdrive as Japanese society was rife with corruption and foreign evils like anarchism and communism. Japanese generals pushed the Hagakure as a Japanese alternative since foreign thinking had gotten them nowhere in the Russo-Japanese War. It was also pushed hard on young men because they were expected to fight in the coming war with China and the eventual final battle for living space in Asia against the Western powers, as well as defeating the spectre of communism. tl;dr The author has a false premise due to using English sources and is mostly incorrect. Bushido existed for centuries but is very complex, varies between authors, and is more of a guide of what a samurai should be, not what they are or were. It's mostly finding a high place in Confucianism for a group that Confucius viewed as being detrimental to society.
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Aug 30, 2016 06:30
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:tl;dr The author has a false premise due to using English sources and is mostly incorrect. Bushido existed for centuries but is very complex, varies between authors, and is more of a guide of what a samurai should be, not what they are or were. It's mostly finding a high place in Confucianism for a group that Confucius viewed as being detrimental to society. So basically the difference between what chivalry is for late Medieval writers, and what chivalry is for late Medieval knights and men-at-arms.
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Aug 30, 2016 06:42
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I'm trying to read this, honest to God, but at some point my eyes glaze over and only every other word gets through to me. That bit explained, I gotta ask, this is an RPG right? I see oWoD mechanics, or words that point to the mechanics, but I don't see any actual RPG bits inside this novella of garbage.
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Aug 30, 2016 06:56
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NachtSieger posted:I'm trying to read this, honest to God, but at some point my eyes glaze over and only every other word gets through to me. That bit explained, I gotta ask, this is an RPG right? I see oWoD mechanics, or words that point to the mechanics, but I don't see any actual RPG bits inside this novella of garbage. It's a licensed book. Like Dragonlance, or a Forgotten Realms book, only devoid of any entertainment or merit and very, very concerned with being as "adult" as possible.
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Aug 30, 2016 07:14
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Kavak posted:Eternal Farts' vampires aren't nearly homoerotic enough for it to be influenced by JJBA.
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Aug 30, 2016 13:39
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Nessus posted:You gotta look in the recommended media section and see if Jojo's is in there, because this is getting comically eerie in its precision.
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Aug 30, 2016 13:55
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golden bubble posted:So basically the difference between what chivalry is for late Medieval writers, and what chivalry is for late Medieval knights and men-at-arms. Pretty much, it's a very similar situation.
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Aug 30, 2016 14:35
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Oh gently caress, Eternal Hearts. I had successfully repressed that piece of poo poo for at least a decade before now. Though if its any consolation, I remember when this came out, and even among WW fans, it was viewed as laughably bad. Really, almost all their attempts at sex scenes in prose were. I was in the LARP scene at white wolf's peak, with people who were uber-goth, and even there "werewolf hosed on a picnic table" or "leopardprint toreador with a machinegun" were regular sources of mockery when discussing the world.
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Aug 30, 2016 15:27
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