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NutritiousSnack posted:That's how Evangelion got shipped over. Couple of other big American favorites were bargin bin discounts (though only a few got popular like Evangelion did later on) I thought EVA got huge in Japan pretty quick? Or did they assume Americans wouldn't be into it and sold it for cheap?
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Nov 30, 2016 02:21
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure that I see the point of Middenarde when WFRP2e already exists. There's even a retroclone if you don't like the setting. I mean there is probably room for other grim, picaresque low fantasy games, but probably not ones that blather on about how lovely the PCs' lives are supposed to be. What else is weird is (and I swear I'll go back and finish my review some day) very few of the WHFRP2e games I've run or played in have turned out quite like that. I mean I'm currently playing a ridiculous Spanish fencer lady who is trying to raise a stolen gryphon while arguing with a depressed frenchman that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and running a buddy game about a cosmopolitan elf and a college dropout who break into ancient ruins to try to be german low fantasy Indiana Jones. That's how WFRP can go, too.
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Nov 30, 2016 02:27
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Kavak posted:I thought EVA got huge in Japan pretty quick? Or did they assume Americans wouldn't be into it and sold it for cheap? Evangelion failed big time during it's first run. It's when it was put on late night cable reruns for adults it took off and became a cultural phenomenon. The producers actually wanted it to fail too, as they were embezzling money from Ganix
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Nov 30, 2016 02:32
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Night10194 posted:What else is weird is (and I swear I'll go back and finish my review some day) very few of the WHFRP2e games I've run or played in have turned out quite like that. I mean I'm currently playing a ridiculous Spanish fencer lady who is trying to raise a stolen gryphon while arguing with a depressed frenchman that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and running a buddy game about a cosmopolitan elf and a college dropout who break into ancient ruins to try to be german low fantasy Indiana Jones. That's how WFRP can go, too. Didn't realize they made a Fantasy Candide RPG, good to know.
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Nov 30, 2016 02:33
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Night10194 posted:What else is weird is (and I swear I'll go back and finish my review some day) very few of the WHFRP2e games I've run or played in have turned out quite like that. I mean I'm currently playing a ridiculous Spanish fencer lady who is trying to raise a stolen gryphon while arguing with a depressed frenchman that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and running a buddy game about a cosmopolitan elf and a college dropout who break into ancient ruins to try to be german low fantasy Indiana Jones. That's how WFRP can go, too. So you're playing Fantasy Candide? fake e: I need to read comments before I try to be clever
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Nov 30, 2016 02:37
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NutritiousSnack posted:Evangelion failed big time during it's first run. It's when it was put on late night cable reruns for adults it took off and became a cultural phenomenon. The producers actually wanted it to fail too, as they were embezzling money from Ganix That must've been in 1996 then because it was a phenomenon by '97.
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Nov 30, 2016 02:39
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Didn't realize they made a Fantasy Candide RPG, good to know. Specifically and intentionally.
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Nov 30, 2016 02:43
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Asimo posted:That's another big gimmick thing yeah. Not sure how prominent it is these days, but during the early 00's anime DVD boom this reason is why a lot of crappy C-tier things nobody would ever buy or watch got released. I forget the exact title, but I know for a fact there was at least one retail release acquired through a deal like this that sold double digit copies. The Humanoid, IIRC. That or Root Search. U.S. Manga Corps's catalog was filled with absolute garbage that they got on the cheap, but The Humanoid was famously a turd that was handed to them as part of a deal. NutritiousSnack posted:That's how Evangelion got shipped over. Couple of other big American favorites were bargin bin discounts (though only a few got popular like Evangelion did later on) Nah, Evangelion was already super popular in Japan, or at least by the time it got here it was already passed it's second run where it got super popular. You might be thinking about Bubblegum Crisis and Project A-Ko, since it was part of the 1988 GaGa Communications fire sale..
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Nov 30, 2016 02:44
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Kavak posted:That must've been in 1996 then because it was a phenomenon by '97. Yeah, maybe I'm giving too much credit to the validity of the ADV commentaries. They lie like poo poo on them but according to them they were angling for another release and Ganix asked them if they wanted Evangelion with it too while they were at it with ADV mostly uninterested but picking it up as a bonus.
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Nov 30, 2016 02:45
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Night10194 posted:What else is weird is (and I swear I'll go back and finish my review some day) very few of the WHFRP2e games I've run or played in have turned out quite like that. I mean I'm currently playing a ridiculous Spanish fencer lady who is trying to raise a stolen gryphon while arguing with a depressed frenchman that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and running a buddy game about a cosmopolitan elf and a college dropout who break into ancient ruins to try to be german low fantasy Indiana Jones. That's how WFRP can go, too. There are actually a lot of fantasy games that let you start as a farmboy conscript, but few represent it in an interesting way. (Like, "you're a peasant farmer" is represented mechanically by "you have no skills." Peasant isn't a bad starting career in WFRP!)
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Nov 30, 2016 02:54
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Halloween Jack posted:Somebody, I think it was Ettin, pointed out that there's a subset of WFRP fans who talk it up by saying "WFRP is AWESOME because you're a WORTHLESS LOSER and you IMMEDIATELY DIE from GROSS DISEASES." I don't wanna play WFRP to stay a rag-and-bone-man; I'm jumping on the Rag Picker > Cat Burglar > Master Thief train as soon as I can. But the Profession system is a good bedrock. You can get from peasant to Elector Count (Noble Lord) in 3 careers in WFRP. I want to run that campaign some day.
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Nov 30, 2016 03:22
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Night10194 posted:You can get from peasant to Elector Count (Noble Lord) in 3 careers in WFRP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFCP-tae6Fk Yeah I think the fun thing in WFRP is narrowly avoiding getting owned in your first career, than working up to an actual good career. Makes you feel like you've really advanced in your game.
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Nov 30, 2016 03:24
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Most people who say that WFRP is incredibly lethal aren't running WFRP correctly, and do things like making the players roll when they're not at risk. It's a game about being a hero with bad teeth who takes crotch shots with his turret pistols at vampire lords, or a wizard who's been kicked out of the school and into his journeyman program and his magic is so hard to control it changes how he looks, or a dwarf who is so greedy he'll charge people on fire for putting them out, or a backwoods hick elf who can shoot you in the eye from across a city. It's not about dying as a poo poo-covered peasant.
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Nov 30, 2016 03:35
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure that I see the point of Middenarde when WFRP2e already exists. There's even a retroclone if you don't like the setting. I mean there is probably room for other grim, picaresque low fantasy games, but probably not ones that blather on about how lovely the PCs' lives are supposed to be. NutritiousSnack posted:There is a WFRP retroclone? The Zweihander retroclone is a retroclone of WHFRP first edition
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Nov 30, 2016 03:42
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Kavak posted:I thought EVA got huge in Japan pretty quick? Or did they assume Americans wouldn't be into it and sold it for cheap? I know EVA got popular, but Cowboy Bebop was only average in Japan and Big O was a flop, but Americans loved both shows - to the point the latter got a second season specifically for Americans (only... it's Big O's Second Season)
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Nov 30, 2016 03:50
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Young Freud posted:Nah, Evangelion was already super popular in Japan, or at least by the time it got here it was already passed it's second run where it got super popular. You might be thinking about Bubblegum Crisis and Project A-Ko, since it was part of the 1988 GaGa Communications fire sale.. Evangelion didn't have the ratings initially, it was getting beat by Wedding Peach at the time in its timeslot, IIRC. But that ending was so controversial it got a lot more attention after that. It exploded in fandom pretty quickly, but the heavier budget cuts it struggled with as the series went on was a direct result of it being seen as a failure. It took a little while to get wider recognition and be considered a commercial success, and once it did it snowballed into what it is eventually became, a soulless marketing monster. I know when I watched it, I was thinking "You know what would be neat? Bowling pins! That makes perfect sense. Wait, no! Baby clothes! Buckets! See, at least you can throw the rest of the Evangelion crap into the loving buckets since they double as garbage pails-" Well. Evangelion wasn't always recognized as a huge deal is all I'm trying to say.
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Nov 30, 2016 04:06
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Also it wasn't really budget cuts so much as a monstrously unhealthy time crunch that killed EVA's original TV run.
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Nov 30, 2016 04:22
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wiegieman posted:Most people who say that WFRP is incredibly lethal aren't running WFRP correctly, and do things like making the players roll when they're not at risk. It's a game about being a hero with bad teeth who takes crotch shots with his turret pistols at vampire lords, or a wizard who's been kicked out of the school and into his journeyman program and his magic is so hard to control it changes how he looks, or a dwarf who is so greedy he'll charge people on fire for putting them out, or a backwoods hick elf who can shoot you in the eye from across a city. It's not about dying as a poo poo-covered peasant. This, precisely. Was even something I was going to touch on because the game's adventures that I've read all talk about how you should constantly need -10% skill checks to even advance the plot, which gives players the wrong idea entirely and screws with new GMs. WHFRP is basically a crotchety old man with a heart of gold (and that heart is fate points) where you randomly roll up a character and then do silly poo poo like be a super buff elf who decides 'sod it' and learns to use a gun or the world's most charming dwarf or a weak-willed hotshot horseman who annoys vampires, not dying of cholera. I mean the game gives you extra lives right off the bat. You're clearly not meant to just die alone and sad. E: I mean for christ's sake the PC I rolled as an example for the review was a goddamn hobbit luchadore just by following the tables. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 04:30
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 CHAPTER THREE HARD BOILED CORPSES Hong Kong was returned to China from Britain back in 1997, and in the current day (the setting in the book is 2000ish) there are still problems acclimating. The control of the Chinese government doesn't mesh so well with the Hong Kong Triads and the Hong Kong PD. Before the return, the dance between the Police and the Triads was a difficult dance of bribery, corruption, justice and violence. Now a third person has burst into the dance and thrown the whole thing off. The Chinese government cares less about rights and protocol and is more than willing to crush everything left over from British control to assert dominance, giving the Police more freedom. This major shift in balance has put the Police and Chinese government up against the Triads with the Police going for the above-ground fight while the government goes underground. The government is more than willing to engage in illegal skullduggery and have come upon a master plan to crush the drug trade and the Triads. This plan is masterminded by Colonel Tsai Hsing, a man who saw how the CIA flooded black neighborhoods with crack cocaine and decided "yeah, this is a good start". Hsing's plan is called OPERATION WHITE THUNDER. White Thunder's goal was to explicitly to kill addicts and crash the Hong Kong drug trade using funds from the Chinese government, assigned directly to Hsing by them. Hsing assembled a group of scientists, pharmacologists and drug enforcement agents to do two things: amass a collection of cheap heroin and then cut it so it's more dangerous. Like a Chinese krokodil, the scientists collected chemical compounds to make the high stronger and make it more addictive with no care for the user's health. They even picked the most dangerous additive of all: a small smidgen of radioactive waste from Chinese nuclear plants was enough to make a kilo ten times more addictive and potent. This cocktail of waste and chemicals and other dangerous materials was used to cut the cheap heroin to create the titular White Thunder in great amounts. Phase two of White Thunder was to flood the Hong Kong drug market with White Thunder, replacing vanilla heroin with the special strain and making it cheaper and easier to get than any other drug. The hyper addictiveness of the product was enough to hook anyone on the first hit with even just a whiff or a taste. Very soon, the majority of the Hong Kong underground was addicted to White Thunder if they were involved in the drug trade. And thanks to the super potency they started dropping like flies from overdoses. Unfortunately, there was a side effect that the Chinese scientists didn't sniff out. When they did the drug trials, they used prisoners to basically see how strong White Thunder was and how fast it would take to addict and kill someone. They got the info they needed, but they didn't test long enough to catch the fact that White Thunder brings some of its addicts back as undead junkies. It takes a few weeks of White Thunder use to have the stuff saturate the body to grant the effect of reanimation. It takes hold when you die from either overdose or some other means and coming back is a lot like waking up from a bad session. Addict Zombies retain their memories and personality and mind and can pretty easily pass for still living. They can take all sorts of punishment as long as the brain is untouched and they just have a weird smell. In short, it's hard to tell the difference between an unwashed heroin addict and an Addict Zombie. The main problem is that the Addict Zombies still need a fix of White Thunder to keep their minds together and keep their bodies going. But what happens if the zombie can't get their skag? Well, the human brain is a good source of dopamine, and eating a fresh human brain makes the perfect substitute to get them all of the chemicals they need. And when you're dead and living on smack and brains, you're not particularly employable. In the process of killing off the Hong Kong underworld, the Chinese government has inadvertently created a threat of a new criminal society run by zombie gangsters when they couldn't return to their old gangs.   In order to cement themselves as a new player, the Addict Zombies performed a reckless series of daylight robberies. The final one consisted of a zombie leaping in front of an armored car so their allies could attack the guards when they came out to look at the damage done so all of the zombies could kill all the guards and just steal the truck. The Police and Chinese government are spinning these crimes as being perpetrated by junkies in body armor, but they're both now privately panicking. The Triad also has to contend with ex-members being angry with them for trafficking the drugs that got them killed. Hong Kong is quickly reaching a boiling point where violence will spill out onto the streets.  FACTIONS The Police: The Heinous Crimes Task Force has been formed by Inspector Sammy Deng to deal specifically with the undead gangster threat. The HCTF has to rely solely on police firepower, investigations and tough cops. Any attempts to ask the Chinese for government for help has resulted in them not returning their calls. Inspector Deng can't hit the streets anymore since he lost his leg to a shotgun blast, but his years of experience in the drug game makes him an invaluable leader of the Task Force. His main man in the field is one David Chung, a man of action who's been promoted and demoted many times for not letting regulations get in the way of bringing criminals to justice. The HCTF is pretty rock-solid and on the level except for one member: Charlie Jeng. Jeng has been working undercover within the Triad since he left the academy and has had a long and storied career as a deep cover operative. Jeng is also undead thanks to taking some White Thunder to maintain his cover and now he's deep within the undead mob. He's got all of the information the HCTF needs to understand the plans of the zombie mob and crush them, but he's gone silent and hasn't been checking in due to his addiction. Jeng is still loyal the cops but he just needs to be in a place of safety and security to actually help them.    The Triads: There used to be dozens upon dozens of major gangs. After the crackdowns by the government and police and the threat of White Thunder, only five Triad gangs remain in power. The most notorious gang is run by the most dangerous gangster in Hong Kong: Ting Sui, Nine-Finger Ting. Ting owns major real estate and a big cut of the business of the underworld, but not the drug trade. His organization had moved out of drugs for moving guns and stocks years ago, so the rise of White Thunder didn't do much to shake his hold on the city. When the smaller gangs broke into pieces from the deaths and the zombies, they all fled to Ting for protection. Ting "graciously" equipped his new allies with guns and re-organized the underworld to give him more of a benefit...but underestimated the tenacity of the undead. Putting all the criminals together under his banner gave him unparalleled power, but it also made it clear to the zombies who is trying to put them back in the ground. Mix this with the fact that the other four gangs dislike being under Ting's control and are starting to chafe because his plans are ineffective and you've got a deadly combination. The zombies are targeting Ting's businesses, looking to draw blood and hurt him, while the other gangs don't trust each other and are starting to raise tensions. The only thing really keeping Ting safe is his best hitman Victor Cho. Cho's job is to stop any gang uprisings and to get to the bottom of the zombie problem. This is going to be harder than it sounds; they have no idea who is behind the White Thunder, they have no idea what's causing the zombies and they have no idea how to stop them. The Triads very well might collapse before the undead are ever dealt with.    Operation White Thunder: The central base of Operation White Thunder is a warehouse in Kowloon. Its existence is a complete secret to all of Hong Kong and nobody above Hsing knows anything about the operation; he's been feeding the Chinese government slivers of information about the program's successes and failures. The scientists and soldiers of White Thunder managed to figure out the zombie problem fairly quickly when Hsing's top agent Meng Shan managed to capture two zombies for interrogation and study. The truth of what they've done has put Hsing into panic mode; he (accurately) believes that if the government finds out what he's done, he'll either be killed by them or poo poo-canned. The operation has shut down as a result and instead Hsing is enacting a series of plans. First, they cut the flow of the drug back to a crawl so it couldn't get outside of Hong Kong and cause someone else to rise and lead international authorities back to them. Smart move, but now the zombies have to go after brains. Second, don't tell the Chinese government anything. Problem: Hsing might not be a true believer, but there are staff members that are like Meng. Third, keep capturing zombies to bring them back to the headquarters. The operation's doctors have figured out how to use brain surgery to break the wills of the Addict Zombies and they've been keeping them fed with the drug, using them as labor and to do other jobs. Fourth, Hsing has been skimming millions of dollars off the drug sales and using the enslaved zombies to commit crimes for him. Fifth, let Hong Kong burn while he runs away with his cash and private army, leaving the original staff of White Thunder to hold the bag and take the fall.     The Zombies: In life, Shen Lu Chua was a high-ranking lieutenant of a Triad gang who fell prey to a White Thunder addiction that blossomed when he did a purity test during a drug deal. Shen was one of the first to die and come back and for a while he was devoid of purpose and control over his body. It was Shen who looked at the broken undead souls around him and decided that they needed to organize if they were going to survive. Now he controls 90% of the zombie gangs in Hong Kong with the simple goal of survival. The main goal of the zombie gang is to get control of the White Thunder to keep themselves going and to keep their minds in line. Without White Thunder, the zombies are compelled to crack skulls and eat brains which ends up being bad for morale and control over the gang. Everything they've been doing up to this point was to get money, guns and safehouses; their headquarters is a collection of rickety junks out in the harbor that the zombies come and go to using underwater ropes and the sewers. Now their goal is to control the White Thunder and thanks to Ting's machinations they think he's the one behind the drug. Shen and his undead criminals won't stop fighting the Triad until the drug is theirs, but they're completely unaware of Hsing's operation. If the Operation is brought to their attention, they'll change track completely and go after the Colonel, but that doesn't mean the Triad won't come after them in revenge. The zombies are dedicated, but that misplaced dedication might be their downfall.   SCENARIOS The Thin Blue Line The basic premise of The Thin Blue Line is that the players are all cops who have been hand-picked for the Heinous Crimes Task Force. This scenario can be used as either the starting point of a campaign or as a stepping stone from an intro campaign based around playing Heroic Bloodshed cops. There's no specific recommendation for what kinds of characters you should be playing as, you should all just be police officers. The campaign begins with the players being assigned with investigating the aftermath of a recent shooting between two groups of gangsters outside of a noodle shop. The forensic guys are already on the scene, prodding at the mutilated remains of a bunch of regular Triad Toughs. Grilling the forensic team and investigation should reveal a few key facts: the six dead men died from gunshots but their heads have been cracked open to remove the brain, there is old blood at the crime scene that's already congealed and couldn't have belonged to the victims, the witnesses saw the other shooters take multiple fatal shots and walk away with no effect. Finally, one of the corpses has a packet of White Thunder in their possession, but the zombies were more hungry for brains than drugs and ignored it. The big complication comes when a bunch of Triad show up at the crime scene to hassle the cops about the shooting...and a zombie gunman armed with a high-powered rifle starts taking shots at them from a nearby rooftop, having stuck around to send a message to anyone investigating the shooting. The players should chase the gunman to the harbor, where he leaps into the water and disappears. The GM has free reign to improvise and go where they will from here. The players should be thrown feet-first into the seedy underbelly of Hong Kong and teased with the knowledge of the White Thunder conspiracy, letting them chase leads and get in shoot-outs. The GM is also encouraged to get the players to take the law into their own hands, cut deals with the Triads, get threatened by Colonel Hsing's goons, get involved in Shen's gang of zombies, get messy. Ideally the campaign should end with a massive (or series of) free-for-all gunfights between all of the factions, fights that level the secret bases and bring the wicked to justice or die trying. If they play their cards right, they might even be able to expose the Chinese government's role in Operation White Thunder. No matter what they do or who they choose to side with, the basic point is for the players to up-end the unstable equilibrium of the city and shake it to its core. I Want A New Drug On the other hand, let's put those new zombie creation rules to work! The players are all victims of White Thunder addiction, resurrected from some sort of death back into a world of vice and hunger. The point of this campaign is less about justice and more about ensuring their next fix. The players can be part of Shen's gang, but the book says to make them be their own independent group of undead is a lot more interesting and helps stack the deck against them. The Police are trying to catch the players and make them face the consequences of their actions. The Triads are trying to get revenge against the players for going against them. Operation White Thunder wants to catch them to clean up their mess. Shen wants them to join his operation, won't take no for an answer and won't allow a rival to exist for long. The players are likely to figure out the truth of the whole scenario not by investigating but by chasing the drug back to its source. Ultimately, how do a bunch of undead bring the fight to a well-guarded warehouse full of the heroin they need? And if they succeed, what then? Sample Characters     NEXT TIME, something smells rotten in San Francisco and that something is FLESH EATERS IN LITTLE CHINA!
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Nov 30, 2016 05:15
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I liked All Flesh Must Be Eaten (the core book,) (and later, really adored the Atlas of the Walking Dead) but Enter the Zombie is the book that got me on the wagon for buying PDFs of all the other books in the game system. Enter the Zombie just looks at its subject matter(s) and goes 'gently caress Yeah!', opens up the turbo, and floors it. Movie style martial arts and gun-fu rules, zombie PC rules, rules for zombies with Ninja Scroll level crazy powers. It's all very modular, too. I mean, they say that zombies don't have to follow human limits on ability scores, but I don't see why Wuxia martial artists need to either, and I can see it very easy to justify some super secret mystic traditions allowing their artists to animate their hair or turn their fingernails into shuriken. I've seen wilder martial artist films/anime. Hard Boiled Corpses is one of those Deadworlds I'm surprised isn't already a zombie/cop flick, because it's a very creative and well realized idea. It's also very modular, and I could see it set anywhere where there' are big cities, powerful criminal organizations fighting beleaguered cops, a corrupt secret government program, and a seriously bad drug trade. Also, now I'm just gushing, which is probably the reason why I'm not the one doing a Fatal & Friends summary of AFMBE. Heck, 'I've kind of been over with zombies for a while now, and I still really dig this game. Drakli fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 07:24
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Middenarde  4 - KNACKS Knacks are similar to feats, in that they're abilities with skill-prerequisites(and sometimes feat prerequisites) that give you new abilities that are, generally, meant to be more interesting than a generic +1 to doing a thing. In Middenarde, you get these, but at each level-up, you can get a +1 to a skill, or you can get a Knack, so good luck ever getting many of these especially considering that some require over ten skill points invested purely in combat abilities and prerequisite combat Knacks. In other words, despite the creator's comments about how characters are meant to not be hyper-specialized(despite no rules preventing this, like, say, separate combat and non-combat skill point pools), there are obviously skills made for hyper-specialized characters, which can only be attained by hyper-specialized characters. To get an idea of how much specializing they'd require, getting the "apex" sword Knack would require 15 points. You get a minimum of 10 XP per session, with suggested 20XP for a session in which they actually accomplish something, 50 for hard goals. So let's assume that you get 30XP per session, since some are just shooting the poo poo, others involve minor goals, and some involve major goals. To get to level 14(because we get 1 free skill point at first level) we need... 10+13+18+25+34+45+58+73+90+109+130+154+178+205... 1142XP. Divided by 30, that's 38 sessions of play where you invest in NOTHING but combat skills. Even if we assume the GM is super generous and the game fast-paced, with 50 XP per session, that's something like 22 sessions of specializing in nothing but combat, if someone wants to beeline for that knack. And if they don't beeline for it, drat, it's gonna take them a long time to get there. Now, if we look at the actual knacks themselves... Middenarde posted:Parrier Seeking the Flaws Hang on a mome- Middenarde posted:Subduing the Honored Foe Okay, we get it, you like Exalted(and what the hell do kangaroos have to do with spear combat...). I wasn't expecting DRAMATIC MARTIAL ARTS STYLE NAMES in my SHITFARMER: THE DYING RPG, though. Anyway, the first thing that I notice, aside from the crazy requirements and the stupid names, is the imbalance in knack distribution. Swords have PILES of them, six pages, while blunt weapons, spears, daggers, flails and axes have only two each. Considering that some are just renamings of the same basic attack, like a knockdown for swords and a knockdown for blunt weapons, why not just combine some of those into a general "melee combat" knack tree, and have some of the branches be specialized per weapon? There's also no overview of the skill tree anywhere, or even alphabetic organization, so if you want to find the prerequisite for a Knack you really like, prepare for some paging back and forth. We also get to revisit 3.5th edition D&D's Fighter feats in the sense that stuff that should just be basic abilities, gets gated behind investing in Knacks. For instance, keeping enemies at bay with a spear, that is, getting an attack against them if they try to charge past the point of your weapon, requires a Knack. Opportunistic Attack posted:Requirements: Readiness I, Specialization: Spear II I'm sorry but this is the loving basic POINT of a spear, so essentially polearms can't even be used for their intended purpose without investing four skill points(three for prereqs, one for the knack.) into them, and reading on you can get the exact same ability with a dagger. There's a similar feat for getting an advantage when using polearms against mounted enemies. Similarly, it takes eight skill points(six skills, two knacks) to get to knock people down with a blunt weapon. You can only get an advantage for attacking someone from behind if you're using a dagger(and then again, only with knacks)... Pincushion posted:Requirements: Heal I, Specialization: Dagger IV I'll be honest here, I've never been stabbed with a knife, but I suspect that you don't need special skills to not pull your weapon out after stabbing someone, and that generally having a knife through your arm will discourage you from using it even if it's not in a special nerve cluster. I mean, really, just getting a glass splinter in my foot is enough to discourage me from using it until its removed. Normally I wouldn't complain about this, but in a game that prides itself on HIGH MORTALITY and REALISM? gently caress off. Continuing on with daggers, they might be the best weapon, seeing as how they can copy spears in keeping enemies at bay and also get to instantly kill anyone. Really. Gentle Embrace of Death posted:Requirements: Specialization: Dagger V, Stealth III, Backstab As long as you're not spotted, you can kill anyone, regardless of HP, armor or what they are. An elephant? A dragon? Beelzebub? As long as they don't see you coming, they're dead within six minutes. There also doesn't seem to be anything that really defines a "hidden position," so presumably it just means that you, personally, are not being seen by the target. Just need someone else to distract your victim in combat and it's an in-combat instakill, too. There's a ranged skill that allows you to attach things to your arrows as long as they weigh "less than a half-unit." Checking the list of equipment, this means that you cannot, for instance, use this skill to attach a rope(weighs two units) and fire it over some battlements, or in fact, anything of utility. The only things you can attach to your arrow is a torch, gunpowder vials, some articles of clothing, knuckle dusters or darts. So it's effectively useless for "utility" purposes, but at no point does it write whether firing a pair of knuckle dusters at someone's dumb face adds the knuckle dusters' damage to the arrow or what effect it might have. It just gets dumber the farther we get into the chapter, mind you. For instance, we've got an entire skill devoted to nothing but rope use... but knacks for things like rope snares also exist for Animal Handling, making it an even more purposeless niche talent. At this point I'd also like to address the magic in the game. Namely: It feels like the author forgot 90% of the rules for them. There's the Attunement talent, and there are spells in potions and on scrolls later, there are Attunement knacks related to memorizing spells, but nowhere is there even a single page with an overview on magic and its effects and how it works. There's a knack that lets me memorize a spell from a scroll and cast it at will, which "counts as a use on the scroll," but nowhere does it seem to say that scrolls have limited uses, or even what the limited number of uses is. The scrolls appear to have "Man Hours" for crafting listed, but there's no crafting skill to craft them with, unless that's assumed to be Literature or Exotic. All I can really find that references the functioning of scrolls is the specific spells on them, and what they do, and that you need Attunement to read a scroll off a spell, but then it also says that you need Craft: Literature(Runes) to do it in the first place! Attunement posted:Easy: Identifying the purpose of a potion. After searching everywhere I eventually give up and search for "runes" in the .PDF, and finally find where the actual scroll/spellcasting rules are... sandwiched as a single paragraph in the Equipment chapter, between Pets and Potions. It turns out that scrolls have four uses per rank, and apparently the only purpose to "memorizing" a scroll is that it's necessary for copying it, and also that it lets you have your hands free while casting the contents... since it still consumes a use of the scroll. Also for some reason, the more uses and the higher quality a scroll has, the harder it is to actually use(the DC increases. For instance, for a highest-level, "Glowing" scroll, you'd need to pass an Attunement DC of 18 and a Craft: Literature(Runes) DC of 22, but if the scroll is basically on its last legs, the DC's would only be 3 and 7, respectively, instead. Why? You'd think that more garbage-quality scrolls would be harder to use.). There are no rules for creating magic from scratch, so if you get your hands on a scroll of decent quality, you should just lock it in a safe somewhere after memorizing it, and then become rich by using your craft and attunement skills to mass produce scrolls of Flying or similar. There are prices listed for scrolls, but all of them are out of reach at chargen, so it's basically up to the GM entirely whether any points invested in Attunement will be worth jack poo poo. There don't appear to be any potentially horrible consequences for loving up scrollcrafting other than some wasted paper. Now, Cleverness knacks... Cleverness posted:Common Sense Alright so, what's the point of a hyper-lethal game that requires CAREFUL CONSIDERATIONS... if you can just buy feats that mean the GM has to absolve you from actually using your brain? Plus, in any case, what sort of jackass GM doesn't at least obliquely hint to the players when they're about to get themselves killed doing something stupid or about to waste their time on something pointless? Anachronism posted:Requirements: Cleverness VI I guess this is what puts a limit to the Craft:Exotic skill, at last. Skills cap out at 10 points, so you can really only get 250 years into the future with this. Since the game is assumed to take place in 1450, that means up to the year 1700 for technology. Just at a quick glance, I can see how this could be used to upset the setting rapidly and make yourself the richest man, woman or street urchin around in short order. It takes 1 year's worth of man-hours per year into the future you want to "invent," but you can spread this out over a team. The game's intended for 4 to 7 players, supposedly, so just make seven crafting-obsessives and have them sit around collecting XP just for existing until they can invent all sorts of timeline-breaking poo poo. What would YOU make with this to upset the game setting? Cover Up posted:Requirements: Disguise II The game appears to have no real provision for "taking 10(or 20)", and only PC's get to break the odds with Luck Points, so good luck to the scrub NPC's who try to figure out where you hid their stuff. It also says any stationary object. I'm not seeing any limit in size... so you can literally use this to disguise a bridge, then when the advancing army of 0th-level pikemen and their generals arrive, they can't find the river crossing and will have to abandon their war. You could use it to hide a ship at harbor. Or a house. Or a castle. It doesn't even list a minimum time it takes to use... in general the only time unit used outside of combat is "man hours" for crafting, otherwise rounds and turns only exist in combat. Conceal posted:Requirements: Disguise III, Cover Up Units are the game's made-up weight values. Let's assume we have Disguise 10, what can we then hide on our person? Sadly there are no "units" listed for animals, so we'll never know if we can hide a horse under our coat, and nowhere are "units" translated to pounds or kilos or something we can use for items not in the book. A raft or a door are entirely possible, however. Also, at maxed disguise, we can hide two coffins on our person. Now, from that I guess we can extrapolate a bit. "Units" are listed as being "Weight," not something more nebulous like "encumbrance" that might encompass size as well. At a quick google, the "average coffin" seems to weigh between 100 and 300 pounds. So I guess we can hide 200 to 600 pounds of "stuff" under our coat if the authorities come poking around. Sadly this means we can't smuggle an adult horse around in our pants. But a young one... Or we could just carry one coffin and 100 to 300 pounds of person inside it. I'm gonna skip over some of the stuff I looked over, but we can carry 1% of a siege tower(in "units"), and the only siege tower weight I found online would put that 1% at 1.6 tons of stuff we can hide under our coat. Maybe the author should've just gone ahead and written "pounds" or "kilos" instead. EDIT: A friend pointed out that the person you're concealing could also have the same Knack and, themselves, be concealing another person(and/or coffin) and so on. Moving on to the Escape Artist knacks! Turning the Tables posted:Requirements: Escape Artist IV Now, it's already hilarious that you can warp out of ropes and capture your captor. BUT! It doesn't say they have to be the ones who restrained you in the first place. Tie your hands together, walk up behind someone, use this skill... and now you're free and their hands are tied together. Or their feet. Or whatever... or wait a moment. A key you DON'T possess? If you handcuff yourself, and have the key, then you CAN use this, and they'll end up NOT having the key! Or lock yourself in a box with the key, when they walk up to examine it. SHAZAM. Now they're in the box! You're outside! This is getting funny now. There's still roughly half the knacks to go, but this post is long enough for the time being. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 11:56
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PurpleXVI posted:Middenarde Actually, the point of a spear is the bit at the tip.
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Nov 30, 2016 12:49
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So what I'm hearing is that Middenarde is terrible at being the shitfarmer game it pretends it is but it is actually quite serviceable for playing Exalted. EDIT: "Okay so the plan is for Jim to hide the river, forcing the invading army to a standstill. While they're stopped Joe and Sam will let themselves get captured so they can brought in front of the enemy general. Joe will then flip it around so they are all in jail instead of him and Sam will take advantage of their surprise to instakill all of them perfectly. They will then make their escape over the hidden river using the motorboat I just built." EDIT2: "Also you have to tell me whether this plan is a good idea or not." ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 13:04
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FMguru posted:I thought the D20 license and the advent of supercheap PDF creation and distribution would mean an end to the Fantasy Heartbreaker, but I guess nerds will never, ever, ever stop making "AD&D but with more stuff that is also more realistic and complicated" games. It's remarkable what crap will get only-just KSed in RPGs. I have a copy of The Hunted, a KS RPG which nobody's heard of because the creator sold it exclusively through Amazon POD rather than somewhere where people actually buy RPGs from. It's crap. Also, wasn't part of the problem with Eva that it was supposed to parody existing anime/manga tropes but after export was often the first anime Westerners saw, so all that was missed?
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Nov 30, 2016 13:43
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I remember a friend explaining the 'Gainax Girl', and how Rei and Asuka subverted whatever it was supposed to be. I can't remember anything else, because I think I was stoned at the time. I may have thought it was overthought twaddle too, like the people who swore up and down that including crucifixion and Quabbalistic imagery meant it was deep and meaningful. Man. This is making me remember the 'crucifixion in anime' wikipederast.
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Nov 30, 2016 13:52
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hyphz posted:Also, wasn't part of the problem with Eva that it was supposed to parody existing anime/manga tropes but after export was often the first anime Westerners saw, so all that was missed? It was missed pretty hard in Japan too. Bieeardo posted:I remember a friend explaining the 'Gainax Girl', and how Rei and Asuka subverted whatever it was supposed to be. I can't remember anything else, because I think I was stoned at the time. I may have thought it was overthought twaddle too, like the people who swore up and down that including crucifixion and Quabbalistic imagery meant it was deep and meaningful. Anno himself admitted that the majority of the religious imagery and names in Eva were just to sound cool and meant nothing.
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Nov 30, 2016 14:27
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A parody is supposed to make you laugh. But it's true that Anno took all the giant robot cartoons he loved and then did an ~adult take~ on them. It's actually pretty amazing how well Eva works even if you've never seen Combattler V or whatever.
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Nov 30, 2016 14:34
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It´s sad that the game is shiite (Middenarde), because that art is great. Did the artist work on anything else?
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Nov 30, 2016 14:45
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Siivola posted:A parody is supposed to make you laugh. But it's true that Anno took all the giant robot cartoons he loved and then did an ~adult take~ on them. It's actually pretty amazing how well Eva works even if you've never seen Combattler V or whatever. Wasn't EVA mostly just Anno working through his crippling depression?
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Nov 30, 2016 14:53
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Mr.Misfit posted:It´s sad that the game is shiite (Middenarde), because that art is great. Artist Credits posted:González, Marco; cover https://www.artstation.com/artist/septicwd I think that I can find Wadim Kashin, but Marco Gonzalez seems to be generic enough a name that it's popping up multiple hits, and I'm not exactly sure which of them he is. https://www.artstation.com/artist/asfodelo May be this guy, though. I'll ask the author for links to their stuff when I talk to him next.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:02
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Hide inside a small box, then instantly subdue anyone who approaches, eh? Middenarde: the fantasy Metal Gear shitfarming deathsim
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Nov 30, 2016 15:21
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Evangelion was a deconstruction, not a parody.
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Nov 30, 2016 17:42
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Rand Brittain posted:Evangelion was a deconstruction, not a parody. True. The whole of NGE can be advertized with "Giant Robot shows with underaged pilots are stupid, here's why". Kavak posted:Anno himself admitted that the majority of the religious imagery and names in Eva were just to sound cool and meant nothing. That's what he wants you to believe! FMguru posted:I thought the D20 license and the advent of supercheap PDF creation and distribution would mean an end to the Fantasy Heartbreaker, but I guess nerds will never, ever, ever stop making "AD&D but with more stuff that is also more realistic and complicated" games. I dream of making a Heartbreaker that finally throws a bone to the Linear Warriors. All spellcasters will be frail wimps who bleed out of at least their nose whenever they try to do anything fancier than a cantrip. And they'll probably die of magic cancer before they can alter reality. The whole book will of course be prefaced with some smug bullshit about how spellcaster fans should be glad they are in this game at all, for clearly magic is quite unrealistic.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:08
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That reminds me, did they ever do a Thieves' World RPG?
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Nov 30, 2016 18:14
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Middenarde reminds me of when a friend was trying to explain Exalted to me for a game that could happen and I was like "oh cool you can play regular mortals in this game? That sounds neat. I wanna play a regular person who tags around with the other players until I Exalt". He was like "no you really don't want to do that, combat is based around breaking the rules of regular combat. You wouldn't be able to do anything or take many hits without getting turned into a fine paste. The game is designed around actually playing Exalted". Whereas Middenarde would have probably put a hand on my shoulder and given me a worrying smile and helped me write up a sheet.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:20
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Bieeardo posted:That reminds me, did they ever do a Thieves' World RPG? Yep. BRP based, though it had a big book of conversions. 
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Nov 30, 2016 18:24
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Green Ronin also has a D20 Thieves World game.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:28
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unseenlibrarian posted:Yep. BRP based, though it had a big book of conversions. Man, what a bunch of studs.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:30
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Doresh posted:I dream of making a Heartbreaker that finally throws a bone to the Linear Warriors. All spellcasters will be frail wimps who bleed out of at least their nose whenever they try to do anything fancier than a cantrip. And they'll probably die of magic cancer before they can alter reality. Say hello to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e. I think it really did do everything we wish these realism heartbreakers would. I think I'ma go back and finish my review of it and put Myriad Song on hold until after that's done.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:33
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"Studded Leather" is such a peculiar thing. It's persisted even though everyone knows it's actually the result of someone not understanding what a brigandine was when they saw it and thought "oh, that's just some leather with a little metal, it must be better."
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Nov 30, 2016 18:43
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