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Karatela posted:Ideally sure, but in a game that is tabling over 200 combatants, ideals aren't remotely where I am expecting it to get to. Also, it's Torg, so by the precedent of the system every single one of those 200 people has some kind of special rule and the encounter is designed to make the GM's head catch on fire, then explode.
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Dec 7, 2016 19:51
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God, I need to vent my bile over the creator of Middenarde somewhere. So I share my criticism of his adventure modules with him, point out completely unanticipated stuff like the players sailing from Southampton to London. And he says to me that he thought London was landlocked. "Oh, there's a river that runs through it. I bet you're going to tell me off for not doing enough research now."
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Dec 7, 2016 20:00
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PurpleXVI posted:God, I need to vent my bile over the creator of Middenarde somewhere. So I share my criticism of his adventure modules with him, point out completely unanticipated stuff like the players sailing from Southampton to London. And he says to me that he thought London was landlocked.  That is... just... you could replace everything else with just this. London... landlocked? How the gently caress do you set a game in what is supposed to be medieval England(ish) and not recall the fact that all the major cities on this little island are basically coastal? Are you sure this whole thing wasn't some sort of elaborate troll?
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Dec 7, 2016 20:06
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Karatela posted:
The dick shoe research clearly had priority here.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:12
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PurpleXVI posted:God, I need to vent my bile over the creator of Middenarde somewhere. So I share my criticism of his adventure modules with him, point out completely unanticipated stuff like the players sailing from Southampton to London. And he says to me that he thought London was landlocked.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:12
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Doresh posted:The dick shoe research clearly had priority here.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:14
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Karatela posted: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"? quote: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." Remember: Torg is the game that boasts that you can calculate exactly how much damage the Death Star does.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:15
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Night10194 posted:Also, it's Torg, so by the precedent of the system every single one of those 200 people has some kind of special rule and the encounter is designed to make the GM's head catch on fire, then explode. Oh, and they're also all P-rated, so they take less damage and can mitigate damage done to them.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:19
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PurpleXVI posted:God, I need to vent my bile over the creator of Middenarde somewhere. So I share my criticism of his adventure modules with him, point out completely unanticipated stuff like the players sailing from Southampton to London. And he says to me that he thought London was landlocked. You can literally Google "London" and the first nine images will show the Thames in some form or fashion. The fact that there is supposedly a game that takes place in medieval England with such quirky details like dickshoes that does not know about basically the most important river in the whole country makes me want to claw off my own face in frustration. How in the utter world did people give this guy money?
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Dec 7, 2016 20:25
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PurpleXVI posted:God, I need to vent my bile over the creator of Middenarde somewhere. So I share my criticism of his adventure modules with him, point out completely unanticipated stuff like the players sailing from Southampton to London. And he says to me that he thought London was landlocked. How on Earth did you get into this position with this blithering idiot, again?
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Dec 7, 2016 20:26
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PurpleXVI posted:God, I need to vent my bile over the creator of Middenarde somewhere. So I share my criticism of his adventure modules with him, point out completely unanticipated stuff like the players sailing from Southampton to London. And he says to me that he thought London was landlocked.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:29
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Bieeardo posted:How on Earth did you get into this position with this blithering idiot, again? He literally sought me out on IRC after reading my other reviews and felt I'd be the perfect person to give him feedback on his own game. literally what happened posted:[22:08] <Middenarde Writer> I contacted [IRC Owner] back in June looking for you because of your reviews Evil Mastermind posted:I knew this was a guy who confused "please review/give me feedback" with "tell me how awesome my game is". In complete fairness to him, he does seem to be making some changes based on the feedback, though getting him to do so usually involves an hour or two of him bitching about my critique, and then appearing to give in. How substantive the changes will actually be remains to be seen. In particular he seems very opposed to making any changes to his adventure modules. But yes, I don't think he expected the critique to be anywhere near as scathing as it was, since it largely amounts to "burn it all down and start over. F-" but with more verbose explanations of why each part needs to go in the furnace.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:35
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Man, nobody's ever asked me to review their RPG before.  It's probably for the best.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:38
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Just tell me when/if the blow-by-blow gets dull but he's now insisting that "physiological" refers explicitly to things pertaining to the human mind. That's what he's going to call the new broad category for intelligence-based skills. Physiological. I think that it's probably for the best you're spared, EM, I think you'd probably be too nice and factual for dealing with these sorts of dickheads.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:58
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition How to GM a grim world of perilous adventure I admit I usually ignore GM advice sections. I've been doing this for 16 years, many of them with the same players. I know what I'm doing and I don't usually like reading yet another 'this is what a roleplaying game is' section. Most of the basic advice in this section is stuff you've seen a hundred times before, but it's still competent enough: Talk to your players, if people are bored find out why, always let the players at least explain their plan before saying they can't do it, stay fair to everyone around the table, and always remember you're trying to have a good time together. It's very non-adversarial, in its favor. It also tries to establish tone; the PCs in WHFRP will usually at least start out a bit grubbier and more thrown-together than the shining paladins and expert wizards of more 'high' fantasy games. Your party of rat catchers, former leg-breakers, mercenaries, con-men, terrified apprentice wizards, and neophyte religious initiates might not look like shining heroes, but the game is also clear that they are, and will be, your main characters. They don't look like much and becoming an adventurer is considered borderline crazy in the Old World, but your pack of wandering murderhobos will be the kind of men and women who will one day hold the fate of the Empire (or wherever else) in their hands, and that's why they have Fate Points. There's the usual discussion of typical campaign ideas, but one sidebar I have a soft-spot for is 'So you all met in a tavern!' It explains that yeah, that's probably true. Taverns and coaching inns are where people looking for work tend to go, they're where the various social classes rub elbows and meet up, and they're often the social center of a small town or area, so your PCs probably DO meet in a tavern to start, cliche or no. One of my favorite campaigns started with us as a recently discharged Kislevite (Russia/eastern europe) musketeer, a Bretonnian knight errant (who was obviously secretly a woman, we'll get to this trope when we get to the Brets), a runaway student who'd failed his medical examinations, and a depressed woodsman happening to share the same table when the coaching inn was assaulted and we were the only people brave enough to fight. Sometimes a hook isn't cliche, it's classic. There's also an entire section on Fate Points, and it's quite well done. One of the things they want to make clear is that when a player spends a Fate Point to survive, they SURVIVE. You don't spend Fate to escape a mortal blow in combat and stay in the fight, only to take another hit and spend another Fate point; you get knocked out of the fight but (if they win) your friends find you and realize you're not dead and miraculously survived your wounds, or you end up captured or left for dead by your enemies. Either way, spending permanent Fate is a clear statement that 'I am going to make it.' The game is also clear that only the absolute most important villains should ever have Fate to compete with the PCs, and that this should be used so that you can have dramatic confrontations with them and potentially see them defeated, but have a mutually agreed on 'This time they get away/survives the fall off the cliff/a minion takes the fatal blow' mechanic that the PCs benefit from as well. They warn strongly about not overusing this with villains and enemies, because it frustrates the hell out of players to have to kill every named foe 4 times. It is straight up a good thing that they take the time to make clear the idea that both you and the players should understand that Fate allows for dramatic confrontations that don't necessarily end a character even if they go to lethal force. PCs get Fate back by completing major deeds and story arcs. Defeat a Chaos Lord, save the city of Nuln, finally become a Knight of the White Wolf, rescue an Imperial Elector Count, etc and you'll get a new Fate Point, especially if you ended up having to burn one during the storyline. Fate is a simple system, but both the more temporary pool of rerolls, extra actions, etc (which add some light resource management and a nice edge to combat and exploration) and the straight up pool of extra lives work really well. The clear intention that the PCs have these and they are the big thing that sets the heroes apart is a good bit of reinforcement that unlikely hero or no, you ARE the hero. Next we have a disappointing Insanity subsystem. If you fail a Terror test (a harsher kind of Fear test; Fear makes you freeze and lose a turn if you fail Willpower, Terror makes you bolt for the hills) you gain an Insanity Point. If you do something awful or experience something horrifying enough, you risk Insanity points. If you take a Critical Hit (hits that do damage beyond your Wounds, I know combat was awhile ago) you gain an Insanity point. If you gain 6 Insanity, you roll WP. If you succeed, you continue as you were. If you fail, you gain an actual Insanity. Even if you succeed, you keep testing with each new IP until you go mad. If you do gain an insanity, you immediately dump 6 IP. Insanities are generally random (though can be chosen to match what drove you mad at GM's choice) but are completely, totally crippling to a character. They usually involve willpower tests to avoid doing some compulsive behavior, and doing it at massive penalties, but can include drug use (which will slowly kill you), suicidal tendencies, etc. The Insanity section says these rules should be considered optional. I have never bothered with them much. The penalties are much too harsh to make playing a PC with insanities really worthwhile and most of them are very intrusive on a character's concept and actions, not to mention mechanically ruinous. Insanity really isn't worth using. Next up is a section on getting across how otherworldy and horrifying Warhams magic is for wizards, but it's mostly fluff and honestly, the magic chapter did it pretty well already. The next important part is the bit on advancement, detailing two methods for handing out EXP and some other ideas for rewards for players. The abstract method of EXP, which I absolutely favor, is 100 EXP as a baseline per session (maybe with extras if the PCs fought a particularly vicious boss or accomplished something incredible) so that every PC gets an Advance each session regardless of success or failure. I'm a fan of this method because it makes sure you get to pick out something new for your PC to learn or advance in every session, leading to a nice, steady rate of development, since every Advance costs 100 EXP. The Dramatic method involves judging how hard encounters, missions, and situations were and awarding 50-150 for each 'act' of an adventure or module. I'm generally not a fan of awards of less than increments of 100 because there's nothing to spend them on until they add up to getting over 100, and tracking the extra EXP rather than just 'You've earned an advance!' feels silly. Plus, highly subjective character advancement always has the potential to punish players for bad rolling (since they might 'fail' their mission through no fault of their own). They also recommend giving out money, contacts, etc, but also access to special training if players make friends and succeed adventures. This is more valuable than in most games because, while it should be sparing, training justifies 'Elite' advances, advances that aren't in your current Career. So, say, an apprentice to a Witch Hunter known for carrying a shitload of pistols on his person to fight with might learn the Firearms proficiency despite being a Student, or a Tomb Robber might pick up some actual ancient history as he tries to go legit while working for the temple of Verena. Elite Advances are a nice sort of reward for players (they still cost EXP, mind) and a good thing to work out in advance between player and GM, to let you customize a little beyond your career path. Next Time: The Empire, A Surprisingly Short Section On Our Not-HRE and Its Many Squabbles. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Dec 7, 2016 20:58
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PurpleXVI posted:In particular he seems very opposed to making any changes to his adventure modules. PurpleXVI posted:Just tell me when/if the blow-by-blow gets dull but he's now insisting that "physiological" refers explicitly to things pertaining to the human mind. That's what he's going to call the new broad category for intelligence-based skills. Physiological.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:06
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Warhammer Fantasy would benefit enormously from replacing the lovely IP system with something like Darkest Dungeon's stress meter, where you get more frustrated, scared, and disgusted until you snap for good or ill.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:07
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My conscience is telling me that calling people blithering idiots is unkind, even if they're developing a game set in a time period and geography that they clearly know very little about. 'Hopelessly naive' feels more accurate, especially when they hold it out for serious review. I get the pushback, that's just about reflex for somebody who's used to getting a shruggish pat on the head instead of vigorous criticism. Hopefully he takes something useful from this for later projects, because I doubt this Mola Ram of heartbreakers is going to see much editing.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:09
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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. It's actually not that hard. divide 12 by Speed. Separate actions equally... so 1 SPD on Phase 7 2 SPD on 6 and 12 3 on 4, 8, 12 4 on 3, 6, 9, 12 5 on 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 6 on 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 7 on 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 8 on 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12 9 on 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 10 on 2-6 and 8-12 11 on everyone but 1 and 12 is all 12 phases. Also with stats... There are two kinds of damage; Normal and Killing. PD and ED (Physical and Energy Defense) subtract from Body and Stun damage of Normal attacks, but only Stun from Killing attacks and you always take at least one point of stun from every Body that gets through defense. You can buy resistant defenses that apply to killing damage. OCV and DCV are DEX/3. You need to roll an 11 or less on 3D6 to hit. This is modified by all kinds of things. You add your OCV and subtract your target's DCV from the target number of 11 is the biggest one. ECV (Ego Combat Value), is Ego/3 and is used the same way. Damage numbers: 1d6 normal damage costs 5 points to buy and uses 1 point of Endurance. That gives you from 0-2 Body Normal Damage and 1-6 Stun. 1d6 Killing cost 15 points and uses 3 points of Endurance. That gives you 1-6 Body Killing damage and 1-30 Stun (1d6-1 x Body rolled minimum of 1) (This is 4th Edition). A cheat sheet posted:Hero System Cheat Sheet
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Dec 7, 2016 21:09
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Evil Mastermind posted:Remember: Torg is the game that boasts that you can calculate exactly how much damage the Death Star does. But is the Death Star is underpowered in Torg? ReiDuran posted:You can literally Google "London" and the first nine images will show the Thames in some form or fashion. The fact that there is supposedly a game that takes place in medieval England with such quirky details like dickshoes that does not know about basically the most important river in the whole country makes me want to claw off my own face in frustration. How in the utter world did people give this guy money? Next thing you're telling me that any major city worth its salt has access to at least a river. Or that the British Empire was some kind of naval powerhouse or something. Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy would benefit enormously from replacing the lovely IP system with something like Darkest Dungeon's stress meter, where you get more frustrated, scared, and disgusted until you snap for good or ill. I love when a character in that game decides to have an Anime-ish second wind instead of going crazy. Humbug Scoolbus posted:It's actually not that hard. Certainly doable, but I find it to be a not really necessary extra step. And I think it was 6th edition that changed Derived Stats to no longer be derived anymore. That's one less layer of calculations to be done. Doresh fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 21:14
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Zereth posted:Tell him his adventure modules are poo poo and not salvageable. My attempts to explain this were sabotaged when he pretended not to know what the term "player agency" meant. On the other hand, he may genuinely not have understood what it meant. But he told me that he owned all of the Pathfinder adventure paths, so he knew perfectly well how an adventure module was supposed to work, thank you very much. Zereth posted:Does he not have a dictionary? Is there somebody standing in his room who will shoot him if he goes to a dictionary website to look up a word? Can he not simply put this term into google and check that it means what he thinks it does? He informed me that he knows many more brain scientists than I do, and therefore he is more correct on the definition of any word related to the human mind than I am. really, he said this posted:Cognitive science is something my immediate family studies, so I feel fairly confident in my analysis, as opposed to history, which is a hobby I research on my own. Bieeardo posted:I get the pushback, that's just about reflex for somebody who's used to getting a shruggish pat on the head instead of vigorous criticism. Hopefully he takes something useful from this for later projects, because I doubt this Mola Ram of heartbreakers is going to see much editing. He says he'll probably have a new version briefly playtested and ready for re-review in a couple of months. He might just vanished off the radar to cry in his closet, or he may actually do it. I'm hoping for the latter. If he does produce it, I'll give it a look then and we'll see what he learned and what he didn't learn.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:17
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Bieeardo posted:My conscience is telling me that calling people blithering idiots is unkind, even if they're developing a game set in a time period and geography that they clearly know very little about. 'Hopelessly naive' feels more accurate, especially when they hold it out for serious review. In an age where the Internet is widely available for relatively cheap and anyone can just raise a ton of money for whatever reason, it's impossible to be completely naive about making a setting that's supposedly based on history. If you are making something about England in the 1400's then the absolute first thing that you should do is an internet search for "England 1400s" or something. Actively refusing knowledge is pure and utter stupidity, so basically if the dickshoe fits...
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Dec 7, 2016 21:17
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PurpleXVI posted:He says he'll probably have a new version briefly playtested and ready for re-review in a couple of months. He might just vanished off the radar to cry in his closet, or he may actually do it. I'm hoping for the latter. If he does produce it, I'll give it a look then and we'll see what he learned and what he didn't learn. If he removes birdlords I'm no longer interested.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:19
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Well, at least he's only burning five grand of other people's money. Compared to other RPG disasters that's barely anything.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:19
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PurpleXVI posted:My attempts to explain this were sabotaged when he pretended not to know what the term "player agency" meant. On the other hand, he may genuinely not have understood what it meant. But he told me that he owned all of the Pathfinder adventure paths, so he knew perfectly well how an adventure module was supposed to work, thank you very much. Reminder that at least one of those APs included a caravan system nobody bothered to playtest, as well as a Bioware-style relationship system I find utterly bizarre and baffling. They're not exactly a gold standard or anything.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:23
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Doresh posted:
I like the derived stats. It soothes my engineer's soul. Also unlike the horrific derived stats in something like Space Opera or Top Secret (1st ed), they actually all serve a useful purpose.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:25
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PurpleXVI posted:He informed me that he knows many more brain scientists than I do, and therefore he is more correct on the definition of any word related to the human mind than I am. give him that link he's just straight up using the wrong word also point him at "psychological" EDIT: here's how to remember: physiology refers to physical stuff Zereth fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 21:33
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I like the derived stats. It soothes my engineer's soul. Also unlike the horrific derived stats in something like Space Opera or Top Secret (1st ed), they actually all serve a useful purpose. Except probably OMCV for anyone who isn't into mental attacks.
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Dec 7, 2016 21:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:Well, really what they're supposed to do is keep the PCs occupied while Plot Important NPCs do their thing in the background so the PCs can't affect the metaplot. I'm not sure if this was ever brought up but Torg, at least in the Revised and Expanded edition has the Many On One and it's inverse, One On Many, where players or, more likely, NPCs, can conduct mass attacks against individuals (to where they get a bonus for attack and damage) or have attacks be against groups (where they get a bonus to toughness and/or a bonus to dodging if the weapon isn't area of effect). While the chart modifier chart for this maxes out at 15 participants, it's really a reference to the logarithmic chart that rules the game, so 200 Nile shocktroopers with TOU9 would get a bonus of +12 Toughness for being in a pack of 200 of them. If they have remotely the same stats, you just add a bonus to their skill, their damage, and their toughness, and BAM mook rules. Or at least the beginning of mook rules, since why they can do damage as a group but not how much damage the group can take. Also, players trying to attack multiple opponents without the benefit or area effect or automatic weapons would deal with them individually, adding their modifiers by what turn they came up (nothing for the first, +2 for the second, +3 for third and fourth), instead of using a single number to see how many the players hit. Also, Death Star's main weapon would be DV 162 at least going off energy measurements calculated in this blog post of Futurism.Just to let you know, TORG's logarithmic value chart cuts off at 100 or 100 quintillion. Karatela posted: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. Long time ago, my old gaming group managed to play through the climatic battle of the Mekton campaign of Operation Rimfire. When we began, we had just finished watching Brisco County Jr and the X-Files (just to tell you how long ago this was), and when it ended, it was 8 am on a Saturday morning. PurpleXVI posted:God, I need to vent my bile over the creator of Middenarde somewhere. So I share my criticism of his adventure modules with him, point out completely unanticipated stuff like the players sailing from Southampton to London. And he says to me that he thought London was landlocked. The Romans actually conquered the country by going up river and founding Londinium, at least that Joseph Conrad told me. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 22:46
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Evil Mastermind posted:Well, really what they're supposed to do is keep the PCs occupied while Plot Important NPCs do their thing in the background so the PCs can't affect the metaplot. The best part is Feng Shui's mook rules AREN'T EVEN GOOD. Like, at all. It gets a lot of praise just for having them (and deserves it, because FS was 1996! A lot gets forgiven for being in the 90s) but it still has you roll individually for every mook's attacks, even though on average they're at -7 AV versus the players and so need to beat a 7 or higher IF the player isn't doing anything to dodge on a d6-d6 with both the positive and negative exploding. Rolling for individualized mook attacks in that game was a fancy way of saying 'I waste everyone's time for about 5 minutes'. Oh, and because taking them out was based on getting a 5+ versus their AV, if you gave them 10-12 AVs players would have a hard time actually killing them even if they could hit them fine. E: The basic idea of a character type that exists for the heroes to style off of is a big innovation, but from what I recall of FS2 it still doesn't have them actually group up or simplify resolution of their attacks. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 22:49
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Night10194 posted:The best part is Feng Shui's mook rules AREN'T EVEN GOOD. Like, at all. It gets a lot of praise just for having them (and deserves it, because FS was 1996! A lot gets forgiven for being in the 90s) but it still has you roll individually for every mook's attacks, even though on average they're at -7 AV versus the players and so need to beat a 7 or higher IF the player isn't doing anything to dodge on a d6-d6 with both the positive and negative exploding. You'd think this would really lend itself to a "Mook groups attack everyone in range once, up to the actual number of mooks" type of deal.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:08
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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. I do check it, being the thread creator, but Monday and Tuesday are bad posting days for me to sit down with. But I'll post it here since it's about the reviews. The frustrating thing about Erin Tarn is that conceptually she's a really cool idea. Rifts is an adolescent masculine dream of superweapons and superpowers, so having an old scholar - and a woman at that - being the viewpoint character is actually pretty cool. And boy, did I want to stand behind that! But... The thing is, Siembieda writes from a "tell, don't show" perspective. We're told Tarn is wise, but see her doing things like blundering into Mexico with pretty close to zero actual information, hopping through an unknown rift, or demanding to have an up-close look at some demons. And, of course, she manages to get some nameless companions killed though her general lack of self-preservation. I think he wants to write her as virtuous and daring, but she often comes across as foolhardy and naive. Add in most of her sections are going to have some handwringing and moaning about how awful things are but very little sign that she ever does anything. Well, outside of Africa, where's she's kind of enough to show up and give the heroes with big guns (muscles or barrels) some moral support... and get a dozen or so people killed getting there, but hey! She's needed. I guess. Of course, she's also held up as the #1 person wanted on the Coalition wanted list, which is supposed to show just how afraid the Coalition is of free speech that they put her above the megalomanical magic terrorist who literally killed Emperor Prosek's dad, but once again, it's show, don't tell. Having one of her books is punishable by summary execution in the Coalition states. But there's no sign that Tarn having a book published in her name has really done all that much to thwart the Coalition other than point out that hey, fascism is pretty evil. It would be pretty cool if like, there was some sign there was some underground movement in the Coalition inspired by her, but there's nothing like that. Most of the people that really seem to love her work (like the people of Lazlo) would have totally been on her side even without the book. And Siembieda loves to go at some length about how beloved she is and how magic trees give her stuff because her soul is so pure and people are more than willing to throw themselves on a fusion block for her. But as a reminder, she's not even responsible for publishing her own books. Her writing was stolen and published by somebody else, you'd think the Coalition would be after that publisher, but nuh. One of the conundrums with her is that Siembieda wants her to be this big awesome hero without justifying it much, I mean she goes places and writes about them, and that's useful, but that's... it. She sees people being oppressed and talks about how horrible it is, shrugs, and moves on. As a reminder, once again, she's not even that interested in sharing her writing! She only seems to do that begrudgingly, if at all. Ironically, there is one book that has her getting off her duff and helping organize a new faction to try and liberate North America... in Savage Rifts, written by an entirely different crew. But mostly it's that Siembieda is just enormously good at patting her at the back while being really bad at actually demonstrating why she deserves it. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 23:17
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Young Freud posted:I'm not sure if this was ever brought up but Torg, at least in the Revised and Expanded edition has the Many On One and it's inverse, One On Many, where players or, more likely, NPCs, can conduct mass attacks against individuals (to where they get a bonus for attack and damage) or have attacks be against groups (where they get a bonus to toughness and/or a bonus to dodging if the weapon isn't area of effect). While the chart modifier chart for this maxes out at 15 participants, it's really a reference to the logarithmic chart that rules the game, so 200 Nile shocktroopers with TOU9 would get a bonus of +12 Toughness for being in a pack of 200 of them. If they have remotely the same stats, you just add a bonus to their skill, their damage, and their toughness, and BAM mook rules. Or at least the beginning of mook rules, since why they can do damage as a group but not how much damage the group can take. Also, players trying to attack multiple opponents without the benefit or area effect or automatic weapons would deal with them individually, adding their modifiers by what turn they came up (nothing for the first, +2 for the second, +3 for third and fourth), instead of using a single number to see how many the players hit.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:18
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Evil Mastermind posted:One-On-Many and Many-On-One do exist in the core set (and I did mention them way back when), but it has the problems of a) there being way too many NPCs to keep track of, and b) it's really just something to keep the PCs busy while the established NPCs are fulfilling their metaplot-mandated battle off to the side. Technically the PCs can get involved, but they have to get through 200 P-rated fanatical NPCs first. Yeah, it's kind of why I stepped back a bit when I claimed they were mook rules. It's like the beginning of them but there's no clean way to assign damage to the mob, like if my Not-Guts Giant Warrior swung a two-handed broadsword and did 9 result points worth of damage or better yet, Ace Pilot did fly-by in an A-10 with a DV30 GAU-8, to a 200-person crowd, would all 200 take a wound; would the "wound" be some of the 200-person mob being killed instantly, reducing their effectiveness to be a coherent mob; or would some get killed, some of them be wounded, some KOed, and others not unaffected? I also forgot they were P-rated as well, that does change things. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 01:16
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It is amazing how you can tell if a fantasy RPG will be good partly by whether playing as Guts is a mechanically good idea in it. E: Also, obviously a game is better if being Guts is a good idea. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 01:18
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Erin Tarn I kind of feel like Siembieda doesn't really think things out too much after he bangs out some text, pats himself on the back, and then has his Ninja Turtles figures fight it out with his Robotech veritech. He seems like the standard type of person you find on sites like DeviantArt who consider themselves an artist but don't really move beyond the early stages because they're too egotistical or emotionally fragile to allow criticism. It comes out all the time when he rewrites people's books and talks himself up. If he allowed someone else to add something meaningful without being obsessed with his "vision" or allowed someone else to point out what was wrong with his game, Rifts would be a solid game that didn't need to be house ruled all the time or have such weird things in it. Alternatively he's like Rob Liefeld, someone who hit it big early on and has been able to remain in business, even be successful, on luck and good conditions so they've never seen any reason to change anything that they're doing. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 01:20
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Erin Tarn Thanks ARB! I've been reading through the archive-currently on Pantheons. Has RIFTS made a Worldbook for the Middle East? Going off the Africa and NGR books I'm picturing Camel-headed D-Bees with the power to spontaneously explode and Israel is basically "CS with a tan" and ride around in gold-plated hoverbulldozers.
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Dec 8, 2016 16:10
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SirPhoebos posted:Thanks ARB! Siembedia has mentioned his thoughts on a Middle Eastern worldbook, but has stayed his hand, largely because he lives near Dearborn, MI, the city with largest proportion of Middle-Easterners in the U.S., and feels that whatever he would come up wouldn't do them justice and would be probably end up being offensive. There's been some hints in some of the other worldbooks, like Israel being long gone and absorbed by the Phoenix Empire following the Cataclysm, explaining how they got their SAMAS copy. But, for the most part, Siembedia is content just leaving it as a "Here There Be Dragons" place on the Rifts maps. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 16:30
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:He seems like the standard type of person you find on sites like DeviantArt who consider themselves an artist but don't really move beyond the early stages because they're too egotistical or emotionally fragile to allow criticism. It comes out all the time when he rewrites people's books and talks himself up. If he allowed someone else to add something meaningful without being obsessed with his "vision" or allowed someone else to point out what was wrong with his game, Rifts would be a solid game that didn't need to be house ruled all the time or have such weird things in it. Liefeld isn't a bad analogy, but he's improved over time, while Kevin was not a better designer in 2008 than he was in 1990. A better analogy might be one of those DeviantArt people who get a following, and then pander to that following forever. Why branch out when you can sell commissions to draw the SWATKats spitroasting Cheetara forever? White Wolf might even hire you to illustrate something Brucato wrote.
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Dec 8, 2016 17:06
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 03:17 |
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Expect Slayers prestige classes in the next couple days.
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Dec 8, 2016 17:32
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