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Night10194 posted:The other reason I don't like Ulric, and I'm going to diverge a little from the review here, is that if you know what to look for there are definitely some weird white supremacist overtones in parts of Warhammer fantasy. The game actually had a larger neo-nazi following than 40k, the game about catholic space nazis, to the point that GW had to demand players who painted their armies with swastika banners couldn't attend official tournies. So does that mean it is okay for the 40k fans to use their Imperial Wehrmacht/SS Guard army in official tournies o_O ?
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Dec 6, 2016 19:24
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Doresh posted:So does that mean it is okay for the 40k fans to use their Imperial Wehrmacht/SS Guard army in official tournies o_O ? I have no idea. 40k's writing has been thoroughly taken over by the 'Yes the Imperium is actually awesome and not at all satire' brigade in recent years that I just stopped following anything they wrote past the incredibly awful End Times and Age of Sigmar. Similar for just ceasing to pay attention to 40k writing past the Grey Knights rewrite where they decided it was heroic to wear a bunch of slaughtered Sisters of Battle as hats so they could protect themselves with their holy blood.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:29
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Hostile V posted:Every Monday I make the hike to the apothecary for all of the beeswax suppositories I can carry for my mother in law who got a fever from losing both of her legs but getting an infection before she got her new prosthetics. I can't tell if the apothecary is undercharging or overcharging me; I can't read and I don't know if a songbird is actually capable of writing by dipping its beak in ink. I just keep giving it money until it stops looking angry and starts nodding. Hilarious as this is, some sort of ANECDOTES like this, written in first person, about medieval life, might not have been bad. From the perspectives of knights and lords, peasants and clergy, adventurers and druids and whatever. Have all of them be at least partially unreliable narrators so the GM can throw in his own twist on things if he wants, without having to countermand "canon." It would at least have been a far sight better than the muddled mess of trivia that we actually got. Middenarde  ADVENTURE MODULES   Middenarde has three Adventure Modules, 97 pages of them, in their own .PDF. There's zero introduction for the .PDF as a whole, instead we get two pieces of(as usual, excellent) art, and then we leap straight into the first adventure module... 1 - SCROLLS OF POWER So, there's some historical trivia about noble infighting in England during the appropriate period, then we're told that this time history's different, because a conspiracy attempting to unseat one of the kings isn't just powerful in money and manpower, it's also trying to acquire dark gypsy magics(seriously, a Romani magical scroll) from a merchant, who doesn't know the value of what he's got lying around on his back shelves. They bungle it, getting the merchant suspicious of them, and rather than taking a fat load of cash to sell them some dusty paper, he packs his bags and legs it. He gets stabbed by an assassin in a tavern, however, where the PC's just happen to be having a drink, and then he gives them a QUEST to avenge him with his dying breaths. quote:The players, all hard-working men and/or women of Westbury, happen to be sharing a table that winter evening, and in the aftermath of the gruesome killing, they are brought together by their determination to uncover the reason behind his murder. With his dying breaths, he sends them on a journey that will make them pawns in a dangerous game that may have terrible and far-reaching effects on England and all of Christendom. quote:Scrolls of Power is intended for a group of 3-6 ordinary level 1 characters, all peasants of the town of Westbury, toiling away for its lord and living in houses owned by him. I feel like one of the bigger issues with this is that we're in a country that ostensibly has guards and some degree of authority, rather than large swathes of monster-infested wilderness and a mostly-absent central authority. The player characters are likely people with jobs, apprentice whatevers, cobblers, blacksmiths, farmers or something. And yet they're still supposed to be eager to pick up a mysterious and magical quest, rather than just telling the guards that this guy got shivved and would you please stop the guy with the knife before anyone else gets stabbed. Why not just assume that the players ARE the guards summoned by the locals? That'd make considerably more sense. I mean, if they're "toiling away" for their lord... won't the guards come after THEM if they just pick up their pitchforks and go adventuring? quote:The quiet roar of many simultaneous conversations is interrupted by a shout from the middle of the crowd. A hush instantly falls over the ale house as all heads turn to the source of the commotion, where a man in a black robe and a hood has seized what appears to be a merchant or some other member of the middle class. The man pulls a dagger out of the merchant's side and shoves him to the ground, before making a move for the door. As the assassin pushes his way through the front doors and into the dark, the barkeep points and shouts, "Stop him! Call the lord's men!" So, there are multiple hilarious things about this. Cutting back to the Setting, specifically Clothing, section of the "core" book... quote:Black would have been rarely worn unless for religious reasons: mourning, a pilgrim’s garb, a priest’s cassock, a scholar’s robe (scholars were still largely church educated). If you're an ASSASSIN, why the gently caress are you wearing what is, essentially, a highly visible and noticeable colour, and stabbing a guy in the middle of a crowd, rather than just wearing something normal and murdering the dude later in the night, when most people are in their homes and asleep? Everything about this is so poorly conceived and planned. Also, by the game's rules, you couldn't kill a healthy guy with a single knife stab to the torso, at least, not instantly, he'd have to start bleeding out. And bleeding out can be stopped or stabilized by normal Bandaging skills, so the book, here, has to remind us that we're not allowed to save the merchant, only stabilize him for a couple of seconds with a pretty difficult(DC 15 from 3d6, with a maximal bonus of +1 at this point). Also despite clearly describing Bandaging in the core book as the skill used for this, it here says we should use Heal for it. By default, all they're going to hear from the merchant before he dies is: quote:“The scroll… you’ve got to save the scroll. Don’t let them find it.” And then the authorities show up and take over. If they try to pursue the assassin, the writing says that no matter what, he just escapes. But based on this incredibly vague amount of... nothing at all, they're supposed to wait until the guards have left, being pretty ineffectual, then loot the dead guy's room. Barring them passing some mildly challenging spot checks(sorry, Visual Acuity checks), they'll find nothing. Also if they fail to pat down the guy's body for the key to his room(in the middle of the loving common room with everyone watching), before the guards show up and take the body away, the innkeeper will just go: "Oh, whatever, dead guy, not my problem, go take his stuff."(there's technically an Influence check to convince him to do so, but it's really easy, and if you've gotten this far without them getting into the room, they're probably gonna go start training the local birds instead.) Also at this point we're told that if the players patched the merchant up enough to "provide more information" before dying, that doesn't mean more information right when they patched him up, but instead more information upon visiting him, half-dead, the next day, at the local physician's house. Of course, he then dies immediately after providing exposition. quote:is able to speak with the players and tell them who he is, what he knows about the scroll, and where he’s hidden it, making the task of retrieving it much easier. Unfortunately, he knows very little about what it does, who wants it, and why they were willing to kill him for it. Aside from the assumption that "wow, we four peasants can totally make some money off of messing with a conspiracy that stabs people in broad daylight!" the players still have no motivation whatsoever to gently caress with this. Especially since they now know it's a magical scroll, and it's reinforced that magic is looked upon as heretical, even suggested that the players may be unwilling to mess with the scroll as a result. quote:Once the party has found the Scroll of Power, inform them (assuming they don’t ask) that the best place to take it if they want to determine its purpose is the closest town, Riversdale. Also inform them that if they’re willing to wait a day, a caravan of Romani travelers (known pejoratively as ‘gypsies’) will likely pass through the village to peddle their wares and may be interested in purchasing some of the things they’ve obtained from John. Furthermore, they might be able to pay one of their wagons to take them there, which would make the 40km journey considerably easier. If they’d rather leave right away, that’s fine; there are several villages along the way where they can stop, including Warminster, Heytesbury, and Codford. Still struggling with why a bunch of peasants would do this, the answer is apparently "because the GM tells them where their players should want to go." Also ha ha wow the gypsies are all loving assholes, like, amoral scam-artists to the point where it feels a bit like a racist stereotype. quote:the Romani are in the business of finding or making and selling magical trinkets, they don’t actually much care what they do as long as they can get Englishmen to pay top penny for them. If you’re feeling particularly evil, you might allow them to meet an elderly Romani woman who will, for a ‘nominal’ fee, offer to read the runes on it. Their attitude basically written as "gently caress whitey, let's pass him a magical nuke so he can blow himself up while we laugh." The players at this point are probably 2nd level unless the GM says "gently caress that noise, this is retarded," and the adventure module encourages immediately throwing level 4 and 3 enemies at them. Combat-specialized level 3 and 4 enemies, with magical potions, real weapons, and generally unless the players sent both their initial and second skill points on combat, expect at least one of them to die or lose a limb here. The book acknowledges this and suggests letting anyone who died make new characters who join the party for ????? reasons, starting at level 1. They should level up relatively quickly if the GM isn't a fuckface, but even so, for the few seasons where they're behind, DC's will be hosed with regards to them, and it also makes the reasoning behind why the party is on the quest at all even harder to sustain. The module also says that the assassin at first tries to convince the players to give up the scroll peacefully... but says nothing about what happens if they do. Do they get an invitation to the conspiracy? Maybe a cash reward to stay silent? Does he attack anyway? Who the gently caress knows. So anyway, assuming they don't get a TPK, the party arrives at Riverdale. quote:Most importantly, they’re going to want to find someone who can either read the scroll they’re carrying or tell them what to do with it. This will be difficult; there are few people in England who can actually use the scroll the party is carrying, due to its incredible power, and there are none in Riversdale. No matter what, their search will likely uncover the wrong sort of attention, and they may face threats from both unaffiliated thieves and continued attacks by the organization behind the merchant’s death. Why didn't they just go to the guards and go "yo, look, that dead guy was carrying a magical scroll and said it was dangerous." in the first loving town, get escorted to the local lord to give testimony, etc.? That could've been more interesting, as the assassin(s) could've come after them because A) they have the scroll and B) don't know if the players know more than they do and... it would've just generally made some degree of sense. But anyway, they arrive in Riversdale, and the only quest-related thing to do there is to find out that there's only one guy who knows a lot about magic scrolls, and he lives outside of town. 37 kilometers outside of town. In another town. Just far enough for the PC's to be ambushed again on the way there. This time the opposition is more equal in level, but unequal in numbers and, again, probably considerably better equipped, for one thing actually wearing armor and, again, having magic potions of healing and stuff, which gives, once more, a pretty good chance of the PC's getting chopped in half by these combat specialized enemies. UNLESS, of course, the enemies flub a morale roll. quote:Whenever the target witnesses an ally fall in battle or lose a limb, they must make a morale roll to continue fighting. If the group has a leader, he or she may roll an Influence check with a DC of 20 minus 1 for each member of the group still alive, even if the leader is not in sight. If successful, no morale roll needs to be made. Otherwise, the target makes a Willpower check with a DC of 12 minus 1 for each ally who is still in sight. If the target fails his morale roll, he is too frightened to continue fighting. Probably the best strategy in either of the forced combat encounters so far is to just focus on killing the weakest enemy so the rest are forced to make morale rolls, since none of them have any Willpower to give them bonuses on that front. If the players manage to take the leader alive, they can get a sub-quest! A sub-quest that results in them getting loving sliced wide open since it most likely involves, without any loving warning, combat with a level 20 opponent. No armor, but decked out in badass combat skills(almost purely combat skills except for being literate, actually...), boosted attack dice, boosted evasion dice and ha ha wow. Even on a four against one situation, the players will loving die like chumps since there are no rules for opponents getting less block/evasion dice against multiple opponents, or having a limited number of blocking/evading actions per turn. Their only reward for getting out of this alive is a letter that tells them that someone wants the scroll they have and is willing to kill them to get it. what a grand reward So, they meet the guy who knows about scrolls. He tells them jack poo poo except that he can point them to ANOTHER guy who knows MORE about scrolls. Or he can pay them for the scroll and they can go home, considerably richer, since they don't really have much motivation to keep going, unless it's now revenge against the jackasses who keep trying to have them killed. Mr. Level 20 then shows up(if the players didn't capture the bandit leader and then meet and kill the guy first) and tells them that if they're tired of almost being murdered, they can join his evil conspiracy instead, and get loving rich off of it. Staying loyal means they go to Southampton and, again, get told that the local wizard doesn't know what the gently caress they've got their hands on. What a useful guy. So he sends them to London. We're told how dangerous it is to travel overland to London, but there's no thought given to the fact that the players could take the long way around by sailing from Southampton to London, since we're only given land-based encounters, none sea-based. Anyway, they arrive at the last wizard in the adventure's house, he deduces that the scroll is intended for making a brainwashed clone of the King, sends a messenger to the court to get knights to show up and secure it, and then the wizard and the PC's wait. Until the Badguy Conspiracy shows up and starts battering the door down. It might go badly for them, though, since the wizard is loving Level 47 and has attack dice better than what any PC can have(he has d12's, where PC's can only upgrade to d10's), he could probably handle this encounter by himself entirely, since he's a combination of badass wizard, badass archer and badass fencer(despite the book insisting he's "no good at combat" in the description). Poor evasion dice, though, but if the PC's can just keep the bad guys away from close combat with him, he can probably start blasting them out of existence pretty fast, trivializing the fight somewhat. quote:The GM should exercise good judgment as to how long the fight will last before help arrives, but 32 rounds is recommended, as that’s how many attempts the soldiers will have to make on average for a dozen of them to enter the fray. Sir Ronald will at first attempt to kill them as they enter with his crossbow, but if they start to overwhelm the group, he will focus on keeping his allies alive as long as possible. Two full sessions is also a good length for the fight, as it will allow for the building up of tension over the cliffhanger, and then combat can be resolved the next session. So, the creator is recommending a fight between 17 combatants. Four PC's, twelve Badguy Goons and the Wizard Warrior. He suggests 32 rounds of this loving mess, stretching over two full sessions, Jesus Christ. Any fight that starts to last longer than an hour is something I, personally, rush to a conclusion since at that point my players are probably starting to get distracted unless it's something really pivotal. Also all the attacking soldiers are level 15 and, as is usual for enemies in this game by now, entirely combat specialized. The players are unlikely to be any more than 10th level, and will probably have invested in utility skills as well, so they're probably going to get, as usual, loving sliced wide open. I'd also like to point out that after EVERY combat forced by the adventure module, it starts off the post-combat description with "IF THE PARTY IS ALIVE." If the party isn't alive, the GM and module writer have hosed up, that's what. You chode. So, the LOYALTY path in this adventure is basically being sent from location to location with a fight at each location, or between each location. It's pretty dull. What about the BETRAYAL path? If they hand over the scroll to Mr. Level 20? Well, much the same, but more interesting since, rather than being arbitrarily ambushed at various points, the players are initiating the fights and, seeing them coming, can be more creative with use of their non-combat skills and gear in easing the way. For instance, killing loyalist guards before they can remove their corrupt captain. Or infiltrating a castle to make sure the gates are open and the defenders disorganized in advance of the bad guys' attack proper. The fights are generally also better balanced and less likely to end in TPK's, both because they're not surprise ambushes and because, well, the enemies aren't always numerically superior and higher level than the PC's. They've also got a way more powerful wizard buddy this time, level 55. Anyone the players can't take down, he can probably either soften up for them, or straight-up nuke from the back row. But in this case, instead of the final fight being in a wizard's study, they're busting into the royal palace and killing the king's guards so the wizard can make an evil clone of him that will serve the bad guys. Surprisingly enough, the bad guys actually keep all their promises and BETRAYAL players get pretty much the same rewards as LOYALIST players. Buddies with the king, land, titles, money and basically no reason to ever leave any longer unless they want to fire crossbow bolts at passing peasants for chuckles. What a garbage loving "adventure." Which I'll note will just hard lock if the players neither pass the spot checks in the dead merchant's room, or stabilize him enough to tell them where the scroll is the next day.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:31
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What's stopping the party from tossing the magic scroll into a fire and then go back to learning how to teach birds to be locksmiths and commanders?
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Dec 6, 2016 19:55
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ArkInBlack posted:What's stopping the party from tossing the magic scroll into a fire and then go back to learning how to teach birds to be locksmiths and commanders? Presumably, the real villain. The DM.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:55
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Night10194 posted:I have no idea. 40k's writing has been thoroughly taken over by the 'Yes the Imperium is actually awesome and not at all satire' brigade in recent years that I just stopped following anything they wrote past the incredibly awful End Times and Age of Sigmar. Similar for just ceasing to pay attention to 40k writing past the Grey Knights rewrite where they decided it was heroic to wear a bunch of slaughtered Sisters of Battle as hats so they could protect themselves with their holy blood. I have a friend that's really into the Horus Heresy end of things, he made it sound fun, but I took a long look at the huge Pro-Fascism fandom and the writing of way the Imperium is written made really turned me off.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:59
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ArkInBlack posted:What's stopping the party from tossing the magic scroll into a fire and then go back to learning how to teach birds to be locksmiths and commanders? As far as I can tell? Not a loving thing. Scrolls don't have any resistance to being burned up or tossed into the ocean. Alternately no one would know they had the scroll until they started investigating it, so they could just keep it until they had the necessary Attunement and Runecrafting to read and use it themselves(Runes 10, Attunement 9, for the one NPC who uses the scroll), then they could make their OWN brainwashed magic clones.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:03
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Robindaybird posted:I have a friend that's really into the Horus Heresy end of things, he made it sound fun, but I took a long look at the huge Pro-Fascism fandom and the writing of way the Imperium is written made really turned me off. 40k is a setting that (5 years from now, when I finish Fantasy) I want to write up as well, because it's fascinating. Watching the rules problems from the first game metastasize over the course of the gameline even as the art, writing, and everything else are vastly improved by FFG's influence. FFG 'gets' 40k way better than the current GW writers and gets that it's a setting where you either play things for black comedy or write about why things aren't actually quite as bad as the normal authors make 'em out to be, one or the other. They also still get that the Imperium is in every way the author of its own doom, constantly pining for a strongman to return and save it, when his rule was a complete disaster and he was basically an evil rear end in a top hat who screwed everything up (gently caress you Emperor). Plus, I'm not kidding when I say the rules metastasized. It was like a cancer. In some other universe, instead of being chained to an old system written by Black Library (who I obviously like, considering my love of WHFRP2e, but who wanted to do something completely different from FFG) FFG got to write their own system for 40k RP and while I probably wouldn't enjoy it personally, I would have loved to see what they came up with. Plus, they deserved the opportunity. They did a great job with making 40k non-lovely. They even wrote a goddamn Chaos game that managed to be more power metal than immensely creepy, for god's sake. All of that makes 40kRP a fascinating case study and I've run every game in the line, watching it shift from Space Ratcatchers Try To Survive to Epic Adventures with the same rules framework and fail to pull it off at all.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:07
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Good Christ, I've run complete 13th Age adventures that have had less than 32 rounds of combat total over seven or eight combats. I mean, yeah, the whole adventure is poo poo but that really stood out to me. That and the GM flat-out telling the players what to do instead of letting them decide or figure it out on their own.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:28
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Evil Mastermind posted:Good Christ, I've run complete 13th Age adventures that have had less than 32 rounds of combat total over seven or eight combats. This is also reminding me of those CthulhuTech adventures where the writer also had highly unrealistic expectations of how long combat and other scenes will take.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:29
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Evil Mastermind posted:Good Christ, I've run complete 13th Age adventures that have had less than 32 rounds of combat total over seven or eight combats. Admittedly that's partly because 13A is designed to have fights usually end within 6 rounds, more commonly 3-4.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:30
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LatwPIAT posted:As someone who thinks Phoenix Command is the best thing ever, it's also the prime example everyone always brings up when talking about there being too much math. It's the game that goes beyond the limit of "but no more than this", and consequently is only spoken of in hushed voices as an example of what simulation excess leads to. I love Phoenix Command and was in a long term Living Steel game (lasted two years) but yeah, all the players were engineers or Physics or Chem Majors.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:03
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Night10194 posted:Admittedly that's partly because 13A is designed to have fights usually end within 6 rounds, more commonly 3-4. True, but that's one of the best parts of the system. Three to four rounds makes for a good combat length in 13th Age, though it kind of sucks for some classes (sorry Monks  ).
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Dec 6, 2016 23:34
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Big Mad Drongo posted:True, but that's one of the best parts of the system. Three to four rounds makes for a good combat length in 13th Age, though it kind of sucks for some classes (sorry Monks Monks are awful in every way in almost every d20 like game, though. It is a universal constant.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:35
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Night10194 posted:Monks are awful in every way in almost every d20 like game, though. They have to be in there because of tradition, but d20-like games seem to be universally written by people who have nothing but contempt for Monks.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:47
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Doresh posted:They have to be in there because of tradition, but d20-like games seem to be universally written by people who have nothing but contempt for Monks. I'm pretty sure Robin Laws had a big hand in the Monk for 13A because it reminds me a lot of Feng Shui's martial arts.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:53
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I love Phoenix Command and was in a long term Living Steel game (lasted two years) but yeah, all the players were engineers or Physics or Chem Majors. I've ended up writing an Excel sheet that does all the calculations and table-lookups for hit locations for up to twelve bullets simultaneously. It's rather fun to be able to generate samples of shots and instantly being told the survival chance and critical period.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:56
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Doresh posted:They have to be in there because of tradition, but d20-like games seem to be universally written by people who have nothing but contempt for Monks.
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Dec 7, 2016 00:41
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 5: Dragonorb Z  A few of the entries in the Book of Artifacts are very long, encompassing a number of related items. One such entry is the Orbs of Dragonkind. There are twelve such orbs and each is made of the finest crystal. Close inspection shows faint writing in a forgotten language. The orbs vary in size, although the difference is only apparent if they are put next to each other. Each orb comes with a three-armed stand, but the stand is not a part of the artifact. When an orb is used, it glows with an internal fire that matches the color of its dragon type. The Book of Artifact says that the Orbs of Dragonkind in this book are not the same as the ones from the Dragonlance setting, which raises the question of why they just didn’t present those artifacts instead (and it’s not like setting-specific artifacts aren’t included). The origins of the Orbs of Dragonkind go back to the beginnings of whatever setting they’re in-by including them, a DM is basically making them an important part of their lore. There are three versions of how the Orbs were created - one told by humans, another told by elves, and a third told by dwarves. It’s broadly Tolkien-esque, in that in the before times everything was awesome, with dragons and mortals living together, then something happened that made things suck like they do now, and the orbs being created is part of the reason things suck. As to the specifics of each story, here’s the tl;dr for the three stories: Human: Jonah becomes the Dovakim Elf: Seriously, elves are dicks Dwarf:    Honestly, I think my summaries make those stories sound more interesting than they actually are, but who cares? All three stories have each Orb holding the essence of a dragon paragon who was uniquely powerful in a way contemporary dragons can’t match. Since their creation the Orbs have surfaced many times throughout the world, bringing both weal and woe. And dragons.  an entirely different artifact is pictured here The Book of Artifacts has a lot of advice on how to use the Orbs. The first advice is that a given campaign shouldn’t feature all 12 Orbs, and the players should never have all 12 or even half that number in their possession. Second, the dragons within each orb should have a distinct personality, and the book offers suggestions in that department. Finally the orbs are unique in their power, and not just by color. See, in 2nd edition (and most editions besides 4th I believe) dragons came in 12 age category. I assume this was done so a DM could include the game’s titular monster in a campaign without necessarily going through the slog of getting PCs to high level, but that’s not important. What is important is that there’s not only an orb for each species of dragon, but each age group. Which makes no goddamn sense given the history of the orbs, seeing that they were made to imprison the strongest of the ancient dragons. But instead the book assumes that these Orbs are as likely to contain Spike from My Little Pony as they are to hold Ancalagon the Black. So the campaign arc the book suggests is a major adventure that climaxes with the discovery, use, and/or destruction of one of the Orbs. The existence of the other orbs is just suggested, but only a few should be used in a given adventure. But the book doesn’t ignore the idea of using all 12 orbs in an epic campaign. It does have some of TSR’s allergy to giving players too much power, but I’ll be fair and say that at least it offers solutions to the problem it perceives rather than throw up its hands and declare that campaigns must never include all 12 orbs. In this case, it suggests that the acquisition of each orb should be varied in the obstacles. The book also suggests building an entire campaign world centered around the Orbs being the keystones to the different kingdoms, and it reads like a summary of the D&D movie from 2000. And like many artifacts, the book is pretty insistent on taking it away from the players once it has served its purpose. Whatever, you’re going to have to do better to rile me up in this post-election review, TSR. Most if not all the powers of each Orb depends on the type and age of the dragon trapped inside, while the dragon’s personality plays into how those powers are called upon. The main variable is the trapped dragon’s HD. Each color has a base HD, and this is modified by the dragon’s age. All 12 Orbs have more than a few powers in common. Anyone within 10 feet of the Orb has the THAC0, AC, and saving throw of the dragon within. (does this override a better value?  ). These individuals are also immune to breath weapon attacks of dragons of the same color. The trapped dragon is telepathic to any creature within 60 visual range and possesses full awareness of its surrounding, including invisible or concealed creatures and objects. Whether it makes the Orbs owner aware of these is up to the dragon. Each Orb functions as a Crystal Ball to any other Orb, provided the identity of the other Orb’s owner is known. The owner can use the dragon’s breath weapon 3/day, use dragon-fear 3/day, and cast any spell (including special powers) known by the dragon. Finally the owner can use a domination spell on any dragon of matching color. This power is more difficult to resist the older the trapped dragon is. This power can be used 1/round. Beyond these powers are the ones unique to each color:
Next a DM determines the age of the Orb’s dragon. Besides modifying the HD value, ages also have an assortment of random powers. Generally the older the dragon the better the selection, although some random tables get phased out from the older dragons.  Here’s a sampling of random powers you might find associated with with an Orb: Roll Link 4 Combat: 18, 17, 10, 14
The final component to each Orb is its personality. This is important for two things. First is the effect of the curse. Second is that the personality is important to actually using the artifact. The dragon in each Orb has to be convinced to use its power. Methods of convincing listed by the book are cajoling, promising, threatening, or bribing. How any of these can be applied to an ancient immortal dragon trapped inside a near-invulnerable artifact isn’t addressed, but there you go. While a DM can create his own characters, the book gives 12 samples. The 12 personalities suggested are Naive, Sullen, Tricky, Patient, Impatient, Curious, Bored, Hate-filled, Despairing, Stoic, Mad and Desperate. Any three of Color, Age or Personality can be combined together in any way, without regard to the standard behavior of a dragon species. So a Hate-Filled Bronze Hatchling is totally legitimate, as is a Naive Cloud Great Wyrm. The Orbs have the twin curses of Artifact Possession and Artifact Transformation. Over time the owner is possessed by the dragon trapped inside while being transformed into the dragon’s original form. When the process is complete, the trapped dragon is freed while the owner’s spirit is lost to the void. Presumably this would destroy the Orb, but this isn’t indicated in the suggested means of destruction. In fact it suggests that the artifact is only destroyed if the user is willingly possessed. Also the freed dragon is apparently just a contemporary dragon and not some ancient super-dragon, which the history seems to imply.  Suggested Means of Destruction
SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 00:59
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 CHAPTER FOUR FLESH EATERS IN LITTLE CHINA Once upon a time, five thousand years ago when magic flowed freely through the world and the flesh was closer to the spirit, there was a Chinese boy named Hung Shao. Hung Shao was descended from many strong magicians and had a deep ambitious streak to learn and master magic. Unfortunately what he had in ambition he lacked in empathy and generosity. So he carved out a little piece of China for himself, settled down as a magical warlord and spent a few decades honing his magical skills for a few decades. But Hung Shao was a mortal man, and he was afraid of death. His fear of death was so great, he abandoned his realm and dedicated himself to exploring China to find a cure for death. And he succeeded. Using a mixture of jade, a rare flower and some other ingredients, he permanently froze his biological age at 50 years old and became immortal as long as he could mix the ingredients and ingest them. The next 5000 years were a blast for him; he became an archetypical villain par excellence, killing people, ruling pockets of China, burning cities to the ground, sleeping with women, summoning demons. Along the way he wanted company and servants that wouldn't die on his watch, so he simply animated some corpses to become his eternally loyal army/manservants. Everything was awesome for Hung Shao up until the 19th century. A decades-long game of Go with a demon was interrupted by the British army approaching his palace to figure out where the local women had gone. That was the day that Hung Shao realized that his comfortable pocket of the world was woefully behind compared to the rest of the world; geopolitics had shifted immensely since he last checked and so had technology. When the cannons of the British army leveled his palace, Hung Shao also learned something very important: people were not scared of him anymore. When faced with something fearsome or dangerous, their response was to draw a weapon and attack it. After having many more of his holdings get destroyed every time he moved somewhere new, Hung Shao decided to relocate everything to the place people would last expect: the New World, America.  So he packed everything he owned (zombies, luxuries, gold) and came to San Francisco in the late 19th century. He bought an inconspicuous warehouse, moved in and had his undead servants kill anyone who attempted to extort him. By the 20th century, he had a comfortable palace beneath the warehouse (mined out by zombie labor and stolen immigrants who would later become zombies) and the warehouse itself was a sweatshop. Hung Shao realized that keeping a low profile worked a lot better than advertising yourself as the local monster, so in 1964 Chinatown became home to the reclusive millionaire Daniel Hong, owner of the Chuan Fa Import/Export Company. Hung Shao used the personality of Daniel Hong to establish a legitimate business on his property and donated money gained from illegal trade and sweat shop work to get closer to his ultimate goal: ruling San Francisco. Now, when I say "ruling San Francisco", I don't mean that Hung Shao meant he wanted to use the identity of Daniel Hong to become a kingpin of the underworld. Let's not forget that Hung Shao is a 5000 year sorcerer who is pretty set in his ways. No, in the 2000s Hung Shao unleashed his army of trained zombie soldiers on San Francisco to take over the city and rule through villainy and fear once more, setting them against the secret societies and gangs of the city. The first few months of the campaign went swimmingly but then things hit a major snag. See, when you're an immortal who needs a certain little something-something to keep that immortality, you like to keep tabs on where your supply is at all times. But at a certain point, the times change and the world changes in ways you can't expect. And when you're the kind of person who'll play a game of Go for half a century, you get wrapped up in things and forget to pay attention the world. Hung Shao never expected the flower needed for his immortality potion to go extinct. It was perfectly fine when he left China in the 19th century, but strip-mining and environmental pollution killed the plant's species faster than he ever could have expected. Hung Shao immediately pumped the breaks on his evil plan to rule San Francisco and regrouped all of his resources at his warehouse. Hung Shao's current plan is to find a replacement for the flower or find a new form of immortality so he can go back to being a magical warlord. Without it, he's screwed because the weight of the ages will catch up to him. However, the other forces of Chinatown are now aware of him and his power and like the British soldiers and every person who drove him out of China, they're not just scared, they're pissed. FORCES OF CHINATOWN Ever since the first Chinese workers started building the railroads in the West and immigration picked up in earnest, there was a concentrated effort to watch each other's backs in the New World. In the face of discrimination, Chinese immigrants banded together to protect their heritage and each other. This has had both good and bad results especially as the years have gone by. There are three main types of groups at play: secret societies, gangs and Brotherhoods (combat schools). As compared to Hard Boiled Corpses, each group was free to let the others live and let live as long as they didn't openly attack someone else. Hung Shao's actions threw the relative peace into turmoil and they're all angry about that. Secret Societies The secret societies started off as mutual aid groups that weren't allowed to exist under the government or couldn't exist formally due to racism and fear of the Chinese. The secret societies are still around and the two biggest ones fight Hung Shao directly. The Jade Friendship Society started out as the Chinese equivalent of the Freemasons; members can call on other members through networks without having to go to the authorities for help. They own more than half of all property in Chinatown and their main source of money is construction, zoning and real estate. Hung Shao's zombies attacked high-up members directly and as a result the JFS started funding guns for hire and mercenaries to go after the mad sorcerer. They may not have magic, but they've got money to pay for skilled gunmen and big weapons. The China Gate Society was originally a protection group that had the role of protecting new immigrants from exploitation. Unfortunately, times have changed the group and now they're one of the biggest human trafficking groups on the west coast. They smuggle immigrants in from China at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars and put them to work in sweatshops to pay off the debt. Hung Shao attacked the CGS for the purposes of taking over their business and supplementing his own, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Their response is to funnel money to the Triad gangs and local sorcerers to strike back.  The Triads Fukien Dragons: The Dragons are the oldest Triad group and have the most power of them all, making most of their money through the drug trade. The street members live fast and die young while the heads of the gang operate from the safety of protected buildings away from the streets. The Dragons didn't get hit too hard by Hung Shao's zombies and they actually managed to catch one and find out what they're up against. Their current plan is to sacrifice minor thugs to get experience about Daniel Hong. Crimson Fists: The headquarters of the Crimson Fists was only a small distance from Hong's/Hung Shao's warehouse, giving them a slight edge over the other gangs in knowing that something fishy was going on there. However, Hung Shao's attacks killed half of their members and all of their leaders. In an attempt to save their skins they cut a deal with Hung Shao, who brought their leaders back as undead. Now the Fists, living or dead, work for Hung Shao as his defenders.  The Brotherhoods The Brotherhoods were formed by the martial artists and warriors who left China and came together to refine their craft in America. The true secrets of martial arts can only be found by people who seek the Brotherhoods, training that will let you perfect and hone your mind, body and spirit. You know, that old chestnut. There are three main Brotherhoods. The Golden Tigers: The Tigers are masters of the five Animal Schools of Shaolin Kung-Fu, combining Tiger, Crane, Dragon, Snake and Monkey under one roof. Grandmaster Li Ho leads the Tigers and their 50 members as protectors of the innocent sworn to fight back the dark forces of Hung Shao.  The Night Boxers: The Boxers are a secretive Brotherhood, working as assassins and spies but not as mercenaries. Their leader, Madame Zhao, commands less members than the Tigers and their current goal is unknown. Zhao is known for being crafty and there are rumors that she might be extending a hand of friendship to Hung Shao.  The Wind Dancers: The Dancers have a public identity as a troupe of Lion Dancers, but that's really just a cover to pick talented kids and teens and train them in martial arts. The Dancers have the benefit of being beneath Hung Shao's suspicion up until recently; he viewed them as nothing more than a bunch of traditional entertainers until they saved a Chinese mystic from a group of zombies. They may be young, but their mission to protect their families and their communities is sincere.  Mystics and Sorcerers Traditional Chinese magic also came to America, but it never really organized along the lines of the other groups. True practitioners of magic with the powers of Hung Shao are hard to find amongst the liars and legitimate healers and most of them keep to themselves. They're known in Chinatown, but they're either known affectionately as fixtures of the neighborhood or as someone you don't want to mess with. The game provides two such mystics. Eg Chin is a good man through and through. He runs a soup kitchen and homeless shelter, he's involved in mahjong tournaments for the elderly and he's well-known tour guide and herbalist. He's also a legitimate magician, a master of divining and clairvoyance who has known Hung Shao's secret for close to 20 years and has been keeping an eye on him. Now he wants to rally the community to fight back, which won't be easy. Charlie Mak was the youngest of eight children and was apprenticed to a Chinatown healer/wizard when he was a boy. His teacher taught him well but was not a nice man and Charlie grew up to be a bitter man. Charlie is a full time magician and makes a living from people coming to him for potions and spells. His loyalty and willingness to care about other people's problems only extends to the money they pay him; anything else that happens from using his services is not his problem. Hung Shao knew enough about his business to attack him, but Charlie escaped and is now focused on getting revenge. With only his apprentices and servants at his side, he's decided to fight fire with fire by raising his own dead to fight Hung Shao's zombies.  MAGIC IN CHINATOWN We actually have a small addition to the system because they include actual spells and stuff beyond Chi abilities. So how do they work? Well. Same as Chi abilities; you gather Essence then make a roll. Anyway, the spells:  SCENARIOS A Night on the Town If you've never heard of Big Trouble in Little China, let me be blunt here: this Deadworld is based on Big Trouble in Little China and this scenario is basically "let the players make Jack Burtons". You should all make Survivors or Inspired who are adventurous and visiting San Francisco (sample groups from the book: a biker gang, navy sailors on shore leave, street gang from another city scoping out the city, radical militia on vacation, tourists who can take care of themselves) or Martial Artists who have come to investigate the secrets of the Brotherhood. Regardless of the reason, the group gets lost attempting to follow the guidebook's restaurant recommendations and the Crimson Fists decide to mug the PCs. Fighting the Fists isn't much of an issue. What is an issue is that the GM should work with the players to create something they're attached to (a supporting character, a vehicle, a watch, etc.) that they will do dumb things and take risks to get back. While some of the Fists engage the players in a fight, the other Fists abscond with the Precious Thing and invite the PCs to give chase to get it back. The PCs should end up turning to the populace of Chinatown for help and come across a Brotherhood or Eg Shin who will help them determine where to find the Fists' hangout. The PCs should fight their first zombie in the Fists' hideout and then figure out they have to take the fight to "Daniel Hong"/Hung Shao and infiltrate his compound. Making things worse is the fact that the Precious Thing has some relevance to Hung Shao's attempts to regain his longevity and if they don't get it back, a powerful ancient wizard now has true immortality. To sum it up, this scenario should keep things fresh and moving along. The PCs should cross paths with the groups of Chinatown and make enemies or allies and eventually launch an attack on the palace of Hung Shao to stop the mad magician (or, more importantly, get their Precious Thing back). We Band of Brothers This scenario has the players make Martial Artists that are part of a Brotherhood in Chinatown. It all starts with a normal day of training until zombies suddenly burst into the school and attack the Grandmaster. This is the first day of Hung Shao's attack and they're not the only target; the Dragons will later show up at their door and ask how the PCs managed to beat back the undead, possibly becoming allies if cooler heads prevail between the players and the Triads. The attacks will continue and though the PCs won't be targeted further by Hung Shao, the other factions will come to them for help and protection. Helping the other groups will reveal that the zombies aren't trying to kill people anymore, they're trying to kidnap them. All sorts of people are being targeted, even people related to the players. Snooping around will lead the PCs to Hung Shao's warehouse and a little stealth will reveal what has happened to the kidnapping victims: Hung Shao is draining their Essence as a stop-gap to stave off aging, killing one person a day in the process and getting more years back the younger the victim is. The PCs shouldn't be able to fight him directly at this point, they should regroup and get help, but now Hung Shao is onto them and sends the Fists their way in a drive-by. When that fails, he'll send two of his most dangerous warriors to kill the PCs, two very tough undead with years of training. This attack will reinforce two things. First, Hung Shao isn't kidding around. Second, they don't have much time to try and bring him down. Every day the PCs wait, one more person dies and Hung Shao sends more zombies their way. I did this chapter a little out of order; the scenarios come at the end but I felt like putting them in the back half so I can end with this. THE PALACE OF HUNG SHAO Yup, the developers had some foresight and laid out some major fixtures of Hung Shao's palace/warehouse for the inevitable showdown. It also answers the question of "why not just wait until Hung Shao dies?". Not counting the fact that both scenarios involve him finding a stopgap/cure, Hung Shao ages one year per month. He's physically 55. This means it would take at least a year for him to die from rapid aging, which is a problem because he still has all of his zombie warriors and magic at his beck and call. Waiting for him to die isn't going to cut it, you're going to have to kill him. The Warehouse The warehouse takes up a block and is in the center of Chinatown. The entire warehouse is surrounded by run-down low income housing whose occupants know about Hung Shao, but won't act against him. There's an agreement between him and the locals: he keeps the area free of crime and they keep their mouths shut. The warehouse itself is woefully lacking in defenses by modern standards because Hung Shao hasn't bothered catching up with technology, so the most technologically advanced defenses he has are locks. That doesn't mean it's undefended; Hung Shao relies on his zombies and magic to act as defenses. His Zombie Warriors are no pushovers when it comes to combat and he's loaded the palace itself with magical detection spells. The warehouse itself is a legitimate warehouse with three floors of boxes and goods. The front of the building holds the living employees who do paperwork. This amounts to two security guards with guns who will press a button that opens a hidden door in the foyer that unleashes six zombie warriors. From there the players have access to the warehouse proper which is full of zombie workers (who ignore the players) moving boxes while warriors patrol the warehouse. Deep in the back of the warehouse is an old freight elevator with two warriors inside, and this is what the players are looking for.   The Underground Lair Quick note on the zombies that applies from here on: they automatically attack anyone not wearing a magical jade talisman enchanted by Hung Shao that makes them ignore the wearers. Making a talisman is simple...if you can make such a talisman. All it has is Hung Shao's name written on the jade and then it's enchanted. Otherwise, these talismans can only be found in the pocket of the warehouse's head of security (from the lobby) or in the possession of some of the Crimson Fists' leaders. It's likely that the PCs have squared off with the Fists' enough to get a few talismans, otherwise the GM is going to have to be careful not to annoy the players with constant fights. Anyway, the elevator. The elevator is a rickety piece of work that hasn't been repaired or maintained in the 40 years it was installed. It has a panel of 20 unmarked buttons that will cause the elevator to descend when pressed. If the button to the entrance hall is pressed, the elevator descends normally and takes the players to the entrance hall. There actually are 20 floors to Hung Shao's palace. The problem is that they're constantly moving around thanks to magic and a mechanical system that was built to rotate and move around rooms and floors. The other problem is that the elevator itself is a trap designed to kill intruders. Only one button leads to the entrance hall while the rest activate the trap. On top of that, Hung Shao changes which button is the right button on a daily basis. So the players have a 95% chance of getting this wrong, which means that the elevator will immediately drop 20 floors into a large pool of salt water, flooding the elevator with water. The elevator was designed to be reusable: dunk the intruders, drown them, raise the elevator back up. Fortunately, cutting corners on elevator maintenance means that the doors no longer lock like they were originally designed to. The players take 1d10 damage from the fall, but they can escape by prying the doors open and swimming out. However, Hung Shao did put a backup in place. The elevator falling triggers a magical alarm that summons some warriors down to the pool to investigate what happened to the intruders. The PCs will have to either fight or flee the pool; either way from here they can use things like vents, crawlspaces, ladders, hatches or behind-the-scenes corridors to get into the palace proper. The Entrance Hall Say the PCs luck out and press the right button. Should this happen, the elevator descends normally and the players get out in the entrance hall. The hall is a long corridor with red and gold carpets, classical Chinese paintings and a collection of life-sized statues of soldiers with spears and armor that the carpet passes by. Four of the statues are actually painted zombies who are waiting to attack anyone who doesn't have a talisman walking by. At the end of the corridor is a 20 foot tall portrait of Hung Shao. The corridor itself has wooden doors all along the entrance hall every ten feet. Each door has some icon of Chinese mythology etched on it, and the etchings don't actually correspond to any specific room because of how the lair keeps shifting around. Sometimes a door leads to a stone wall, sometimes it leads to a place you've already been. What follows are popular rooms the players are likely to encounter. Use them, don't use them, come up with your own, it's up to you. The Earth Prison Hung Shao decided to make a little slice of Chinese hell on earth for his own entertainment and because the sound of suffering soothes him. The Earth Prison takes up a whole floor and is made of rooms of various torture instruments staffed by Warriors who have been taught how to torture. This is where captured intruders are taken. If there are no intruders, then Hung Shao just has the zombies torture each other and commands them to scream even if they can't feel pain anymore. The zombies dislike the Earth Prison for this reason, but the tortured workers won't try to escape and the torturing warriors don't attack intruders unless they interfere with their work. The Laboratory Hung Shao's lab is where he reanimates the dead and researches immortality. One wall is lined with vats of corpses soaking to prepare for reanimation and the wall directly across from it is full of alchemical ingredients, herbs and more. The middle of the room is empty except for a table (where the dead are reanimated) and another table covered in various tools and objects and recently dissected human bodies. Factory Floor The factory runs 24/7 with zombies hunched over work benches making sweatshop goods by hand (there are absolutely no machines in this area). It's quiet except for the sound of work as the zombies make everything: cheap toys, knockoff jeans, counterfeit designer clothes. There are no guards, just hundreds to thousands of zombies who can't be roused from their work. The only purpose the factory serves is an alternate escape route: finished goods are put in crates that get sent straight to the warehouse above.  Shelves The Shelves are where replacement zombies are kept for when a worker zombie literally wears itself out. This takes the form of a bunch of connected rooms, all of them 60 cubic feet and lined with cubbies big enough to fit a sitting human. Every cubby has a sitting zombie that does nothing but sit and stare and wait until when it's needed. The zombies don't respond to anything short of magic or being activated by Hung Shao. The floor exists to psyche out the players and put them on edge, making them worry about the rooms full of staring undead. The Throne Room The throne room is always located in the center of the palace, being the focal point that everything shifts around. The throne room is opulent with marble floors, priceless art, a gold inlaid ceiling and numerous murals that depict things Hung Shao has done. In the center of the room is Hung Shao on a moving golden throne and flanked by ten warriors wearing jade armor. The warriors are normal warriors and represent phase one. Phase two is when Hung Shao's throne splits apart to reveal five zombie warriors coated in actual gold that was enchanted to be flexible. These zombies are the Golden Five and they're the best warriors under his control, some of them being in his service for at least a millennia. If the chips are down, the Golden Five are capable of using Strength in Numbers to meld into one omega zombie.  Also let's be honest: if Hung Shao sees the Golden Five losing against the players, he'd probably be more than willing to step up and throw some magic around.  Sample Characters     NEXT TIME, a tale of assassinations, injustice and kung-fu set ONCE UPON A CORPSE IN CHINA!
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Dec 7, 2016 03:42
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Night10194 posted:A friend of mine who has run almost every Warhams Fantasy game I've played in rather than run (and he's run more of them than I have!) plays Ulric as a God who knows he's sort of fading from the world and is content to do so. Sitting back and letting Sigmar take over and quietly letting things change so his children can kick the poo poo out of the hellvikings, while tut-tutting about all the craziness. Basically, the God is chill, the followers are not, and Ulric doesn't give enough of a poo poo anymore to actually correct them much. Figures someone will give them the asskicking they're cruising for if they keep it up. When I briefly ran a Fantasy game, I characterized Ulric as being impatient with his followers for a different reason, namely that Ulric gets annoyed at his followers who spend too much time politicking and being jerks and not enough time kicking the poo poo out of hellvikings. My take on him was that Ulric likes his followers to lead and evangelize by example and deed, not words or politics. In his eyes, if you want to persuade people that Ulric is king poo poo of the gods, go forth and be king poo poo in Ulric's name and let the people make their own judgment.
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Dec 7, 2016 03:54
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That last Enter the Zombie writup gave me flashbacks to Shadow Warrior, which was fun. It sounds like a lost Feng Shui module.
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Dec 7, 2016 05:13
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SirPhoebos posted:I asked this in the Palladium thread, but I doubt that anyone checks it: Why does Erin Tarn get so much flak in the RIFTS reviews? Compared to other author inserts she seems pretty harmless. She was discussed several months ago in a predecessor to this thread. Alien Rope Burn can give you the best perspective on her.
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Dec 7, 2016 05:23
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Edit, double.
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Dec 7, 2016 07:08
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Doresh posted:Yes. What makes this complex is that you also have to reference a Speed chart to know in which of the 12 phases/segments/whatever you can take your actions. Setting this as a universal constant helps speed things up. I'm pretty sure this is cribbed from Star Fleet Battles, too.
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Dec 7, 2016 11:53
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Midjack posted:She was discussed several months ago in a predecessor to this thread. Alien Rope Burn can give you the best perspective on her. I'll be able to address this pressing matter soon enough. 
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Dec 7, 2016 13:37
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Middenarde So far the only piece of art I haven't liked. In parts of this piece it just looks like there's pixelated artifacting at first glance. 2 - BESIEGED After the art, this bit starts off with a :wikipedia copypaste: dump of historical trivia that has literally zero bearing on the setup for the adventure, which is as follows: There's noble infighting in England, the PC's are on the receiving end of a siege. This is gonna suck. On the bright side, here the PC's are starting at level 12 and so they can begin the battle with some of the gamebreaking abilities mentioned earlier in the review. The players are outnumbered about three to one, however, so even that would probably take a bit of cleverness. Additionally, if the players haven't actually earned a knighthood in the previous adventure module prior to playing this one, the GM is encouraged to just have them as squires to whoever's actually leading the defense, meaning they don't get to really make any important decisions unless they also have the social skills necessary to mind control him. Or kill him and take his place. We're given a description of the castle in text, but no maps or similar overviews, which is strange considering that the game encourages using maps and grids for all your combat. In fact, none of the .PDF's have even included a map of England or similar for a sense of scale and distance, presumably assuming that the players can just go ahead and google themselves up a map of 1450's England and work off of that. quote:You should have informed your players before the game began that they would most likely not be leaving Castle Lawshall, so they should have made their characters with useful long-term skills that they can pass the time with. We're also, as mentioned, encouraged to bring in characters from the previous adventure module, which will almost certainly have ended in a TPK if the players invested in any long-term or crafting skills at all, rather than raw combat prowess to match their NPC opponents. And of course, the lazy gently caress who wrote this piece of garbage didn't write up any NPC's like that himself, offloading the entirety of that effort to the GM. Of course, he does offer SOME help... consisting of a bunch of meaningless minor events such as chickens escaping the coop. A servant committing suicide and... quote:A horse being exercised in the Ward bucks its handler, and its loud whinny startles one of the practicing archers, whose shot goes wide and hits someone nearby, possibly one of the players. Players randomly getting hit by arrows with no warning, save or anything. Awesome. Mostly the random events are either A) "someone's having some harmless fun, like playing some dice or having a snowball fight in the yard."(the siege is during winter) or B) "someone does something implausibly retarded." Like bored soldiers letting out a loving captured boar and teasing it in the middle of the castle. Like what. Boars are loving scary and actually catching one alive probably risked several lives in the process. I know people do stupid poo poo, but Jesus, that one just seems implausible even in a fantasy setting. So anyway, after the first couple of days of the siege littered with this random garbage, we get some actual events, which are also garbage. Like, in theory it's not a bad idea to have some enemy soldiers infiltrate the castle at night... except they kill a patrol on the walls and put on their uniforms, then pretend to be friendly soldiers, gathering intelligence and preparing to open the gates on a future day. Because yeah, everyone's just gonna believe they're part of the defending crew because they're wearing the right uniforms. No one will miss the three or four guys who are mysteriously gone. No one will see the great big ol' loving blood spatters on the tabards. Stelath is a bit more complicated than goddamn Hitman. A force of 200-something isn't a place where it's easy for someone to disappear or for others to vanish into the crowd. If the players don't find the infiltrators after they start cutting more throats and stuff inside the castle walls, they'll manage to stay hidden for ten days before opening the gates. Maybe the first day is plausible, but that's about it. These infiltrators are literally also all that happens, minor GM-invented events aside, for the first week of the siege. Then we get more minor events, and just like the first, they're characterized by the fact that they're just poo poo that happens to the PC's and other defenders, not, for the most part, anything they can react to, or try to head off with clever planning and good management/leadership. Just "this guy dies" or "this stuff gets broken" or "lol now you have less food" entirely at random. Next, fourteen days into the siege, the attackers have tunnelled under the castle and into the basement levels, where there's a catacomb, and have started sneaking men in and mapping the place out as best as they can without getting discovered. Also snatching a servant away to interrogate about the layout and defenses... then pulling the same moron Hitman trick with him by stuffing someone else into his clothes and hoping no one loving notices. In general, it feels like this would be a way more interesting game from the perspective of the besieging force, since they're really the only ones actually getting to do poo poo, if their deadline wasn't "we run out of food" but "reinforcements arrive to break the siege," and they had to come up with tricks to break the defense. Like digging tunnels, sneaking in, using magic, bringing a squad of Trailblazers to harass the defenders with sonic booms, etc. At three weeks in, the attackers finally mount an actual attack, assuming they haven't managed to win by sneaking people in to take the leadership hostage or open the gates already. After surviving this, which is just more straight-up combat, the GM is finally supposed to suggest to the PC's that: "Gee, you're hosed if you don't go call for some help!" and now the PC's have to sneak out and summon help from a nearby castle. You'd think this is one of the first things the defenders would try to do, if they didn't have it on good authority that there was help already on the way. Anyway, blah blah, the players ride off, the trip is pretty much trivial since they're at least level 12 and can ice any common soldiers who try to stop them or bandits they might blunder into unless the GM is an absolute retard. Then they reach the nearby count, who just wants to be promised something in return for helping, really just about anything will do it, and then... quote:"With Count Ipswich’s army behind them, the players can feel confident that they will win the day if they return to the castle before it falls. Since there’s no significant threat to the players anymore, the last session or two should be spent reflecting on the trials they’ve overcome, the friends they’ve lost, and the horrors of war." "Now have the PC's spend two entire sessions doing loving nothing." And then it ends on the PC's getting a bit of money and the chance to participate in more exciting medieval warfare which the adventure module leaves thoroughly and utterly undetailed. Also, again, why would you make two adventure modules heavily featuring large group combats, or even army vs army warfare, without any rules for making those proceed faster other than "kill 1dx soldiers from each side per round" for the siege?  3 - INNOCENCE LOST This time, we're going to Wales! Basically, the players are Welsh, they're being dominated by the English who want their magical Welsh gold. So he sends some goons into the Welsh mountains to prospect, they don't return, so he goes down to the local village and asks some peasants(the PC's) to go poke around the caves and find out where his mans went. The PC's, presumably, accept, otherwise this is gonna be a pretty short adventure. Also according to the writing, Welshmen hate being farmers and prefer having dangerous adventures. All of them. So, the baron's men show up and make the proposal to the village at large. Surprisingly, the PC's are the only ones who consider it seriously... oh wait not loving surprisingly because the offer is to leave their lands behind to go on a potentially dangerous adventure into the mountains, to a location that may already have killed one group of the baron's men, in exchange for barely enough money to buy a loving bottle of wine. And not a GOOD bottle of wine, they can afford one of those if they all pool their rewards together. But anyway, assuming that the PC's are loving morons, they go into the mountains and find out that the baron's men were eaten by a loving griffon. Which was badly wounded in the fight and has a loving polearm sticking out of one eye socket. Ow. It has a pretty good chance of mangling at least one of them before they get the better of it, though it being wounded gives them a better than normal chance of winning. The cave contains a bunch of garbage and decent equipment(all already pre-damaged, enjoy keeping track of those loving durability scores, nerds!), and a locked chest which the PC's will likely flub lockpicking(DC 15), and if they break it open, lol they smash the potion inside, which also ruins the scrolls inside, basically depriving them of the best loot in the cave. Then they come back, get paid worth a bottle of wine by the baron's men, go to bed, and some other baron, jackass that he is, attacks their village. The attacking soldiers are, in fact, more dangerous than the gryphon due to their larger number, meaning they both have more HP and get more attacks. Also we're just told there are "far too many soldiers for them to fight," so presumably if they do try to stand their ground rather than legging it into the woods, you're supposed to give them a TPK. This situation, we're also told, is supposed to make the PC's want revenge on the raiders, meaning that their entire motivation from this point on is to kill or severely ruin this guy who's destroyed the village that the players have known for all of one session. Maybe have it last a bit longer so the players will actually give a poo poo, Mr. Writer Man. quote:The players will soon realize that they have no hope of doing anything to the Baron Cruciaith and his army without allies and power. The allies they can hope to make by diplomacy and bribery. The power will only come through training and adventuring. Fortunately for them, every town and city in Wales is rife with gossip about ruins and ancient sites which are said to hold artefacts of magical power. So far, the game's wimpy magic available to the PC's is distinctly superior to the physics-breaking fuckery that Knacks can provide, so just signing up as mercenaries or becoming tradesmen or something would probably be a safer way to get the means necessary for revenge. In any case, the text now dumps a ton of potential places to explore for power and money on us but, as is usual, no loving map. GRAVE OF THE WOLF SPIDER The players are warned away from the spooky grave by the local peasants! The spooky grave is spooky as they approach! There's a fresh corpse inside the spooky grave! ...and ultimately nothing happens and they just get some free money and a free sword. MYNYW CLEARING A clearing with a MYSTERIOUS RITUAL CIRCLE that compelled a monk to kill one of his brethren when said brethren advocated razing the ritual circle for being heathen and awful. The players won't find out about it unless they happen to get this one particular random monk in a tavern drunk, and then they have to either force him into the wilderness or poke around his old abbey to find it. Their reward for finding it is a pittance of gold, a scroll of healing and having to stab a monk(because the monk is angry that they're desecrating the place for loot). GRAVEYARD OF SAINTS So, there's another spooky burial ground, but this one is in the mountains and requires hiring a guide to take them most of the way there. They'll be warned off by a guy who lost his arm trying to loot the place before them... but not really told why or how he lost his arm there. Just: "BEWARE, THIS PLACE WILL CUT YOUR ARM OFF." Then once they get there they get attacked by loving SKELETON WARRIORS. Their reward for killing all the skeletons and looting the graveyard is finding an ANCIENT DRUID in MAGICAL HIBERNATION whom they can awaken as a level 7 ally who'll just help them as thanks for waking him up. Though, this is the weird part, despite being a Celt, he confirms that the Devil exists(Satan put him in magical hibernation for tricking him out of collecting a soul). Why are there no rules for divine shenanigans in the game? If Satan canonically exists, God must as well, Miracles must as well. Prayer ought to have real power and stuff. But no, the only magic is DRUID MAGIC and GYPSY MAGIC. LIBRARY OF ANVALLUS This time, while the party's passing through a town, a guy who's angry about the shoes he just bought, spots the PC's and immediately cheers up, feeling that they look like ROUGH DUDES who would be up for going to Ireland with him and raiding the LIBRARY OF ANVALLUS. Getting to Ireland goes off without a hitch, and then they get searching! quote:Every hour they search, allow the party to make a Very Difficult Visual Acuity (DC 16) check to find the ruins of the library. If they fail to find it before nightfall, they can return to Kilmacthomas and come back the next day. Be sure to make it entertaining; that is why Brendan is there, to guide their search and keep their morale up. He should lead them across the mountains and talk to himself and them about his thought process. I'm sure you can all see why this is loving stupid. I doubt I need to comment much. Keep in mind, the PC's are rolling 3d6, at most 3d6+1 or 3d6+2, to hit that DC16, but more likely just straight 3d6, and there are four of them. But anyway, eventually they probably find the library, either because the GM gets tired of all the failed checks or they pass one. They find their way in, with their guide waiting outside because he knows drat well its dangerous. Upon arriving they discover that most of the library's contents have been eaten by glowing worms, and then 500lbs of rock block the exit and a stone golem with a sword animates and tries to kill them. Thankfully the Golem is a huge chump, it has really minimal armor, despite being made of stone, and is basically incapable of dodging any attack, so there's a good chance the PC's will have it dead before the first round of combat is over. The reward is, as usual, a bunch of generic magic potions and scrolls with their boring D&D-lite magic. SHRINE AT RHOS Again, some RANDOM STRANGER just happens to have a clue to a major celtic artifact site and decides to let the PC's in on it. In this case he's just a bored guy who wants to prove he knew the right hints to find the place, not someone who asks to come along and get a cut. Actually finding the orb at the SHRINE OF RHOS(yes, it's just a big glowing blue orb) has no real challenge, the challenge is that the Orb itself basically has a save-or-die effect for anyone who touches it or looks at it too much(how much is too much, or how long is too long, remains undefined by the author). Even attempting to use Attunement to figure out what the Orb is all about has the same save-or-die effect. If they succeed, though, they basically have an ORB OF MIND CONTROL, though they have to pass the check again every day or it turns on them and tries to brainwash them. Other than the orb, just some zombies and some cultists guarding it. Forgettable. In general that describes all of these locations so far. One item, and then on to the next. So I'm just gonna start skipping the remainder unless some of them have SOMETHING interesting in them. Like, about the only interesting thing about the next place is that it has angry merpeople. A ruined castle that has some bad poetry, generic monsters and some CRYSTAL GOLEMS that are actually moderately threatening. And then they go to a Welsh castle through a magical portal, kill some bandits, kill some more skeletons, kapow, more generic magic items. And now the adventure's out of dungeons to explore, so they gotta go get their revenge on the Baron who burnt their home village down. Or just, you know, retire, rich and happy, in Ireland or something. Hilariously, the last part, about actually getting the revenge, is incredibly threadbare. We're not even given the baron's stats, we're just told where he lives, and what his daily routines are, and the rest is left up to the GM to decide himself. And then there's a Welsh pronounciation guide. Jesus, these adventures were some tepid trash. EDIT: That's it for everything Middenarde so far. But if the creator carries through on his promise of a heavy rewrite, I'll review that as well, if the changes are large enough to warrant it. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 16:30
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I think my favorite thing about MIDDENARDE is the way that the guy just keeps infodumping his stupid, irrelevant, and almost certainly false "Did You Know?" factoids about Ye Olde Medieval Times into his game. That's something of an old-time gamer trick, being a font of all kinds of dubious information about history and how weapons really work and how the modern military does things. We've all had That Guy at the table who wouldn't shut up about bullets really kill people by the hydrostatic shock waves they create, haven't we?
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Dec 7, 2016 16:48
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My favourite gamer nerd gun myth is that a .50 BMG that misses you will still rip your limb off thanks to the shockwave. Ironically, after years of bullshit like that, it appears that hydrostatic shock is actually a thing...or at least that the debate is still ongoing.
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Dec 7, 2016 17:42
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Evil Mastermind posted:Good Christ, I've run complete 13th Age adventures that have had less than 32 rounds of combat total over seven or eight combats. I'm reminded of one of L5R's worst adventures, Twilight Honor, which presumes a 12-hour battle at one point. Now, 12 hours = 12 turns in a system never intended for fights over a few turns. Even if they cower in the back ranks, they're probably taking around 6 wounds a turn (more like 17 if they're actually acting like PCs), and they probably don't have more than 30 wounds total. You can do the math, but it's obvious the author didn't.
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Dec 7, 2016 17:55
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm reminded of one of L5R's worst adventures, Twilight Honor, which presumes a 12-hour battle at one point. Now, 12 hours = 12 turns in a system never intended for fights over a few turns. Even if they cower in the back ranks, they're probably taking around 6 wounds a turn (more like 17 if they're actually acting like PCs), and they probably don't have more than 30 wounds total. Alternatively the author did do the math, it's just that his name rhymes with "kick" EDIT: I'm curious, why do Palladium RPGs make 15 their max level?
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Dec 7, 2016 18:36
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Halloween Jack posted:Monks are just tricky as hell to design because their concept goes against some basic assumptions of the D&D combat system; namely, how much your character's fighting ability comes from their equipment. Then let's go Dynasty Warriors. Fuse the Monk and the Fighter into a class worthy of Lu Bu. And the Monk is pretty much a class were a sensible designer should've seen some flaws, namely that there is little synergy between going fast, bein utterly dependant on Full Attacks, and gaining abilities most spellcasters can pull off at half the level. hyphz posted:I'm pretty sure this is cribbed from Star Fleet Battles, too. Now I'm picturing an intrigate wargame in which Superman punches the Enterprise. Hostile V posted:
We need more zombie movies with Zombie Wuxia Voltron. Halloween Jack posted:My favourite gamer nerd gun myth is that a .50 BMG that misses you will still rip your limb off thanks to the shockwave. .50 MG - the original Boom Gun. Doresh fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 18:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm reminded of one of L5R's worst adventures, Twilight Honor, which presumes a 12-hour battle at one point. Now, 12 hours = 12 turns in a system never intended for fights over a few turns. Even if they cower in the back ranks, they're probably taking around 6 wounds a turn (more like 17 if they're actually acting like PCs), and they probably don't have more than 30 wounds total. Which reminds me of a Torg adventure where the PCs have to face off against 200 fully-stated bad guys. This is immediately after a fight against about 80 fully-stated bad guys, then immediately followed by a fight against 50 fully-stated bad guys.
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Dec 7, 2016 18:41
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Evil Mastermind posted:Which reminds me of a Torg adventure where the PCs have to face off against 200 fully-stated bad guys. This is immediately after a fight against about 80 fully-stated bad guys, then immediately followed by a fight against 50 fully-stated bad guys. Ironically, in games with less of a math fetish and no twitching compulsion to roll every action for every nameless mook, this sort of thing would be not only possible but fun.
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Dec 7, 2016 18:49
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wiegieman posted:Ironically, in games with less of a math fetish and no twitching compulsion to roll every action for every nameless mook, this sort of thing would be not only possible but fun. I'm planning a 100 man battle for one of the heroes in Ironclaw because she has Giant, Improved Strength, and the highest possible Body die, plus a massive greatsword, so, you know, Berserk. Just that game has A: Rules for mooks deciding 'Oh no I do not want to get close to the giant blender' after they see three men get bisected with one blow, and B: Has rules for bisecting 3 men with one blow.
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Dec 7, 2016 18:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:Which reminds me of a Torg adventure where the PCs have to face off against 200 fully-stated bad guys. This is immediately after a fight against about 80 fully-stated bad guys, then immediately followed by a fight against 50 fully-stated bad guys. Torg adventures are perfect for Godbound. LatwPIAT posted:I've ended up writing an Excel sheet that does all the calculations and table-lookups for hit locations for up to twelve bullets simultaneously. It's rather fun to be able to generate samples of shots and instantly being told the survival chance and critical period. Could you imagine a Phoenix Command video game in the style of XCOM?
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Dec 7, 2016 19:07
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Evil Mastermind posted:Which reminds me of a Torg adventure where the PCs have to face off against 200 fully-stated bad guys. This is immediately after a fight against about 80 fully-stated bad guys, then immediately followed by a fight against 50 fully-stated bad guys. Even if by some miracle you happened to have each and every one of those fully-statted bad guys loaded into a computer where it handles literally all of the resources of each and health and bonuses and poo poo, it'd STILL be a massive suicidal slog. And it'd still involve moving 200 dudes. Like, what the hell are all these guys even supposed to do? Are they queuing up in neat lines? Are they lurking in the back like extras in a martial arts movie fight scene? Are they all shooting at PCs every turn? Like, what even the gently caress use would 50+ independent individuals have in combat beyond "Well, I guess each of you gets a few or half a dozen, then I guess the rest just sorta do whatever"? Like, all I can figure is that it's a weird intersection of "If it's in the game, it must follow the same rules the PCs do" and "I want large battles with huge numbers because that's cooler" and "Rules for mobs and abstraction would ruin the verisimilitude of the game and so I can't do that" with a final dose of "Everything fights to the death mindlessly because otherwise I am going easy on the players." wiegieman posted:Ironically, in games with less of a math fetish and no twitching compulsion to roll every action for every nameless mook, this sort of thing would be not only possible but fun. Yeah, like, I am planning a sort of larger-than-life thing with some Mutants & Masterminds for next year, and having 6 or 8 mobs of mooks and such roll in with 25 or 40 mooks per mob is kinda big but manageable. Neither I nor any of the people I have played with in the last decade would countenance a fight that lasts more than 3 or 4 hours (we're a bit more masochistic in what we'll deal with) unless its literally the final or penultimate fight of a campaign, or a huge end of an arc. Battles that go more than a whole session? You better be bringing something goddamn amazing like a pizza buffet or the like if you think it's going past the one-session mark.
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Dec 7, 2016 19:08
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Karatela posted:Are they lurking in the back like extras in a martial arts movie fight scene? Ideally!
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Dec 7, 2016 19:11
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Savage Worlds handles large miniature brawls relatively well for a game of its age (presuming you've internalized all the modifiers to attacks), but it also heavily relies on minis to help track it all.
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Dec 7, 2016 19:17
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Night10194 posted:Ideally! Ideally sure, but in a game that is tabling over 200 combatants, ideals aren't remotely where I am expecting it to get to.
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Dec 7, 2016 19:49
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