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Night10194 posted:Oh, I get that. I'm saying that I'm sick of every goddamn dimension hopping RPG not letting me ride a magical lion while I try to get the flux capacitor into position to shut down a rampaging chrono-bot that is trying to eat the middle ages. Doesn't Feng Shui let you do this?
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Dec 11, 2016 17:09
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PurpleXVI posted:Doesn't Feng Shui let you do this? Why do you think I liked Feng Shui enough to run 3 campaigns to completion in it despite what a pile of poo poo the actual mechanical backing was? Actually letting me have a Vietnam War vet having gunfights with pirates or a cyborg turbo-sphinx trying to defend global conformity from shoalin monks was enough to overcome a LOT of mechanical issues.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:21
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It seems like Godbound would be the better system for playing in the setting of The Strange.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:23
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The Strange: the Roleplaying Game of Making Sure That Your Peas Don't Ever Touch the Potatoes or the Carrots on the Plate Your rear end in a top hat Brother Keeps Jostling.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:31
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LongDarkNight posted:It seems like Godbound would be the better system for playing in the setting of The Strange. Godbound even shortly mentions that you can totally use the Night Roads to crash other campaign settings.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:40
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those intrusions seems like the quickest way to lose players.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:41
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Bieeardo posted:The Strange: the Roleplaying Game of Making Sure That Your Peas Don't Ever Touch the Potatoes or the Carrots on the Plate Your rear end in a top hat Brother Keeps Jostling. After dinner that brother went off to drive his motorcycle, smoke weed and bang his girlfriend and MY GOD BARRY ILL SHOW YOU ONE DAY. ONE DAY YOULL FALL ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE RULES AND THEN YOULL SEE. YOULL SEE ME LAUGH.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:16
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FMguru posted:The new Timewatch game (by Pelgrane, using the Gumshoe system) seems to be all about using hi-tech weapons while criss-crossing the timestream battling psychic velociraptors and swarm-minds of radioactive cockroaches. I've just picked up the rulebook and have barely begun skimming it, but I did see a picture of Henry VIII knighting a caveman.
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Dec 11, 2016 20:40
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Like, I'm not usually a huge fan of Pirate Zombie Robot Ninja mashups, but when you're making a time travel/dimension hopping game you are basically saying 'My genre is that mashup' at which point it becomes fun and cool.
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Dec 11, 2016 20:48
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Night10194 posted:Like, I'm not usually a huge fan of Pirate Zombie Robot Ninja mashups, but when you're making a time travel/dimension hopping game you are basically saying 'My genre is that mashup' at which point it becomes fun and cool. But more often than not, we get something like this: "Dimension hopping! But don't worry, all your stuff automatically adapts to the new dimension. Except when there's no real equivalent, then you're screwed." "Time travel! Except you can't really change anything because the Time Police has everything under control forever and can just roflstomp you." I'd much prefer your typica DC multiverse shenanigans, even if their cosmology apparently changes at least twice between each setting-shattering multi-crossover. Doresh fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 21:06
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Not getting to take your cool character things exactly as they are sucks, but that seems pretty par so far, the game is desperate for the DM to steal whatever thing you think makes your character awesome. Like the intrusion on two weapon fighting being having the sword break or the character losing their grip like a loving Wii mote.
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Dec 11, 2016 22:52
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In this case at least I'm fairly sure that Monte Cook is just physically incapable of comprehending that people want to play outside of the rules of anything. If you let people just do what they wanted on dimension hops without respecting each world's laws of physics it'd be anarchy
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Dec 12, 2016 00:10
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ZeroCount posted:In this case at least I'm fairly sure that Monte Cook is just physically incapable of comprehending that people want to play outside of the rules of anything. If you let people just do what they wanted on dimension hops without respecting each world's laws of physics it'd be anarchy So he's basically just really uncreative and needs a sense of structure?
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Dec 12, 2016 00:29
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Night10194 posted:So he's basically just really uncreative and needs a sense of structure? Creativity and a need for structure are not mutually exclusive. Editors are a thing for a reason, and there is no shame in needing one or a friend/collegaue to be a sounding board. The shame is not admitting it like Monte and a poo poo ton of other, bigger creative types
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Dec 12, 2016 07:38
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Yeah, I don't think "uncreative" is something you can level at Monte Cook at all. I think mostly he's just an older guy who grew up on older RPG technology and doesn't feel comfortable abandoning old habits. Also, isn't The Strange more Cordell's baby anyway?
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Dec 12, 2016 12:46
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I don't think "uncreative" is something you can level at Monte Cook at all. I think mostly he's just an older guy who grew up on older RPG technology and doesn't feel comfortable abandoning old habits. Also, isn't The Strange more Cordell's baby anyway? The introductory letters for The Strange explain that originally Bruce pitched it as a parallel reality game between Earth and Ardeyn with the Strange in between. This was based on a scifi novel he was writing. While shooting ideas back-and-forth, they expanded the base concept to even more alternate worlds, and Monte had the idea to add Ruk to the mix as the second main recursion. So it's a combination of the two. Maybe I should've included the letters from Monte and Bruce in the read-through, but the two of them together comprise three full pages, which felt like too much to block quote at the time. I suppose I can share them now, though. Outside of the tidbits on the development of the game, maybe people will find them interesting if they're not familiar with the standard MCG-style of indulgent hype where everyone involved at the company is a creative genius revolutionizing the industry: Monte's:  Bruce's: 
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Dec 12, 2016 13:24
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NutritiousSnack posted:Creativity and a need for structure are not mutually exclusive. Editors are a thing for a reason, and there is no shame in needing one or a friend/collegaue to be a sounding board. The shame is not admitting it like Monte and a poo poo ton of other, bigger creative types That's true and I'm being unfairly harsh. The Strange just makes me feel especially uncharitable, I suppose.
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Dec 12, 2016 14:24
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It's always frustrating for a game to say "Infinite possibilities!", because that's just not possible. It should say, "relatively broad possibilities!", but that doesn't make for an exciting back-cover blurb, I suppose.
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Dec 12, 2016 16:11
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I have a lot of things to say about multiversal-style games (SHOCKING I KNOW), but I'm having a hard time sorting them out right now. I think the reason that these multiversal games fail is because the systems keep trying to handle everything through the mechanics, but don't want to make their system generic enough that you can just "do" stuff and instead falls back onto race-class-level-based thinking. Like, Torg you can kinda excuse because it came out ages before the idea of reskinning was a thing, but The Strange really doesn't have that excuse. So you get these weird things where you're only good at one thing, but that one thing can range from "casts spells" to "can regenerate" to "has a gun", so you wind up with people who're so generalized they can do anything next to people who are so specialized they're not going to be able to use their focus half the time. Honestly, and I know I say this a lot, but something like Fate would be the best way to go for a multiverse game. The balance in that game isn't so much mechanical as narrative, and when you have such a broad range of options that's kinda what you want. Another good option might be something like Savage Worlds, where the whole power system is based around reskinning. There's a generic "Blast" power, but they understand that mechanically speaking, there's really not much of a difference between a magic spell Blast and a Blast effect build into a weird science gizmo. And that's the kind of design mindset you need at the base of a game like this.
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Dec 12, 2016 16:11
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I mean, I look at Feng Shui as my mashup game setting (not system) of choice, but even there you have the advantage of having a very broad but unifying idea: You're all Action Heroes and so you have a couple various Action Hero power sets and archetypes and concepts, which already provides a bit of a limiter on the mashup and lets you make it more coherent.
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Dec 12, 2016 16:18
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Well, Feng Shui also had the right idea about how to handle timey-wimey stuff: it doesn't matter for the most part. You can do donuts on the timestream all you want and it won't affect anything, so you can let everyone go nuts with cyber-apes driving an F1 Abrams through Imperial China and nobody'll care in the long run, but then they have the caveat that in order to actually make changes to the timeline you have to control these locations here, so now you have a driving force behind adventures. They don't worry about the ins and outs of time travel because it's just an excuse for action-movie setpieces. You know, that's the problem with Torg and The Strange right there: they're not approaching this whole concept from a narrative viewpoint, they approach it from a mechanical one. And the idea of a cross-time or cross-reality needs to be approached narrative.
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Dec 12, 2016 16:39
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Evil Mastermind posted:Well, Feng Shui also had the right idea about how to handle timey-wimey stuff: it doesn't matter for the most part. What's weird is I grasped Feng Shui's timey-wimey stuff because I was like 'Oh, wait, this is exactly like Chrono Trigger. Anything we do doesn't matter until we accomplish something narratively significant, like saving Abraham Lincoln from Mecha Boothe in the Ford's Theater that the Jammers were going to blow up because it turns out it's a Feng Shui Site and now time went differently because we had a boss fight and did some stuff we care about, and more importantly because the point of the adventure was to save Lincoln.' Like, that's the general rule of thumb there. Was the point of the adventure to change time? If so, winning after a crazy car chase or gunfight or pirate ghost insult duel should cause some changes, maybe minor, maybe not. Until then, get back to giving an Imperial Investigator a walkman for being a cool dude and running AKs to chinese rebels in 1850.
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Dec 12, 2016 16:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I don't think "uncreative" is something you can level at Monte Cook at all. I think mostly he's just an older guy who grew up on older RPG technology and doesn't feel comfortable abandoning old habits. Also, isn't The Strange more Cordell's baby anyway? I don't think he's uncreative, I just think he approaches his stuff with a preconceived idea of what The Rules are going to be and doesn't really bother to try and set anything up for people who want to play in other ways. Also the Intrusion system is presenting a view into what he apparently considers to be fun GMing and it's not super charitable.
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Dec 12, 2016 16:44
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition In which Vlad goes down, and Magnus the Pious ends the Time of Three Emperors So, Vlad von Carstein and his army of the damned are marching to Altdorf, capitol of the Empire, to declare himself Emperor and put an end to the Time of Three Emperors. He's got a huge army, the living Sylvanians are happy to march alongside it and help out, his wife turned out to love being a vampire and he and she are still having their epic romance, and it's looking like everything is coming up Vladimir. Then, after a routine battle in Stirland (one of the eastern provinces he's marching through), while he's doing his usual routine of offering his prisoners a chance to live and join him or die and join him, the Imperial general breaks free of his captors, grabs a sword from a skeleton, and lops Vlad's head clean off in a sudden fit of enormous heroism before being torn apart by ghouls. However, Vlad reappears the next evening before his grieving army, unhurt and alive, and a few escaping Imperial survivors get word back to Altdorf that Vlad seems to have a magical ring that will keep bringing him back to unlife so long as he possesses it. That's right, Warhammer gave Dracula the One Ring. Vlad's army continues its invincible march to Altdorf, seemingly unstoppable and immortal, and besieges the city. While his army rests during the day, the Imperials pardon a master thief from their dungeons and charge him with an incredible task: Sneak through an army of the undead and steal the Carstein Ring. Somehow, the man succeeds, but even without his ring Vlad still has an immense army, dozens of vampires, and an unending wellspring of confidence; when the chief priest of Sigmar, the Grand Theogonist, challenges him to a duel on the walls of Altdorf, Vlad accepts without hesitation despite no longer having his invulnerability ring. During the fight, the Theogonist realizes he cannot overcome Vlad's superhuman strength, and does the one thing a selfish man like Vlad would never expect: He flying tackles him off the battlements and sends both of them to their deaths on the pits of spikes lining the siegeworks below. I admit telling this whole story is not that essential to an overview of the Old World or the Empire, but I've always found the defeat of Vlad von Carstein to be an example of Warhammer at its best. A compelling villain whose one weakness was the pope football tackling him off a wall. Vlad's death didn't end the Wars of the Vampire Counts, though; to this day, the Empire has never really been able to stamp out the vampiric influence in Sylvania, and every century or so a new Lord of the Von Carsteins will make an attempt (more on that when we get to Night's Dark Masters). Amazingly, even having to narrowly fend off Dracula didn't reunite the Empire. The provinces remained divided for another 300 years, until disaster struck in the northern lands of Kislev. Kislev (Eastern Europe/Russia) has always faced the forces of Chaos, people mutated and twisted by the Dark Gods of the north. They're raided every year, and every year the Winged Lancers and horse archers and ice witches and bear-riding Tsars drive off the Chaos Warriors and Norse marauders. This year was different. Rather than isolated tribes and warbands raiding for loot, slaves, and sacrifices, a massive army marched into Kislev, led by Asuvar Kul, Everchosen of the Gods, a warlord who had won the favor of Nurgle (God of Disease and Decay), Slaanesh (Pleasure, Creativity, and Excess), Khorne (Boring as hell Blood God, of the titular BLOOD FOR THE), and Tzeentch (Annoying God of Fate, Magic, and Change) all in accord. He did not mean to raid, but rather to burn the entire country to the ground as an offering to his Gods, then move on to the rest of the Old World. Meanwhile, as Kislev begged their Imperial allies for help, the Empire was too busy fighting over which of the three Emperors should rule the whole thing to actually muster a proper army and help their neighbor. That is, until a noble of Nuln (a city in the south known for its art, culture, universities, and enormous cannon foundry) named Magnus began to make the rounds of the Imperial courts, arguing for unity because the Empire would clearly be next if they failed to stop Kul. He encountered his greatest resistance when he came to the court of the Ar Ulric of Middenheim, who denounced Magnus as a heretic against Ulric who intended to replace the cult and force conversion to Sigmarite worship. Magnus tried reason with the man, and when he could not, he called upon Ulric to test him; Magnus walked into the eternal flame of the high temple of Ulric, and was untouched by the fire. Whoever said you can read Ulric as bored by the politicking of his followers and impressed by someone who shows courage and takes action instead, the overt divine sign of favor Magnus received is pretty good argument for that. In mirror to Sigmar, Magnus managed to unite the courts of the Imperial candidates under his banner and was declared Emperor, given an army, given Sigmar's hammer, and sent to deal with Kul. Also in mirror to Sigmar, Magnus reached out to allies of other races, calling upon the old alliance with the Dwarves but also making a new one with the Elves of Ulthuan, a magical floating island off to the west of the Old World. Their great archmage Teclis had foreseen that Chaos was a real problem this time, a threat that would require breaking their isolation, and Magnus convinced him to help train the first human Battle Wizards, trained to use a single Wind of Magic in order to limit their exposure to Chaos. The Elves also sent soldiers and their own great wizards, and together these armies marched to relieve the beleaguered defenders of Kislev. During the ensuing battles, Magnus killed Kul in personal combat, cementing his popularity as hero and Emperor for all time. He would go on to reign for fifty years, a solid rock of stability that solidified the newly reunified Empire. He would also establish the Colleges of Magic, who have fast become an institution in the Empire. Since Magnus, the Imperial electoral system has not gummed up like it did to create the Time of Three Emperors, and the Empire has slowly healed from its centuries of division. The current Emperor is the Elector Count of Reikland and Prince of Altdorf, Karl Franz, a man known as much for his skills as a politician and diplomat as for his ability to swing a warhammer. I've always liked that the canon Emperor is actually much more a general and politician than a great smasher of faces; Karl is a man who knows when to compromise and when to hold firm, and who realizes his position as Emperor involves herding cats against horrible tentacle gribblies from the North. Next Time: The Storm of Chaos, Before They Retconned It Night10194 fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Dec 12, 2016 17:28
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Khorne until he was retconned was actually kind of interesting. Yes he was all about blood and skulls, but for them to have any meaning they had to come from strong foes. So in a weird way despite being part of Chaos, his warriors would actually kind of follow the rules of war regarding none combatants.
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Dec 12, 2016 17:44
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Hunt11 posted:Khorne until he was retconned was actually kind of interesting. Yes he was all about blood and skulls, but for them to have any meaning they had to come from strong foes. So in a weird way despite being part of Chaos, his warriors would actually kind of follow the rules of war regarding none combatants. Honestly that wouldn't be enough to save him. He's so generic and overexposed that he'll never really work. But his wife has an awesome backstory. She was an early Norse chieftan who was assailed by a Keeper of Secrets, a Greater Demon of Slaanesh, and who managed to kill it with nothing but a club and the blessing of Khorne. Valkia the Bloody Handed then declared she would only marry someone who could equal such a victory, and that she only knew of one such man, so she marched up to the swirling hell-portal at the north pole, walked through, and fought her way to the foot of his throne, her mortal body finally breaking in the process. Khorne was, for almost the first time in eternity, legitimately impressed and raised her up again as a great Demon Princess and his consort. Now Valkia runs around butchering strong warriors and finding challenges eternally, as well as harvesting the souls of great and valiant fighters to bring to her husband's side.
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Dec 12, 2016 17:49
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"No, no, no. This is why we let the callow youths live. Kindled by the horrors of childhood, they grow strong with thoughts of anger and vengeance. When they're strong, and only then, do you harvest them."
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Dec 12, 2016 17:54
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Night10194 posted:But his wife has an awesome backstory. She was an early Norse chieftan who was assailed by a Keeper of Secrets, a Greater Demon of Slaanesh, and who managed to kill it with nothing but a club and the blessing of Khorne. Valkia the Bloody Handed then declared she would only marry someone who could equal such a victory, and that she only knew of one such man, so she marched up to the swirling hell-portal at the north pole, walked through, and fought her way to the foot of his throne, her mortal body finally breaking in the process. Khorne was, for almost the first time in eternity, legitimately impressed and raised her up again as a great Demon Princess and his consort. Now Valkia runs around butchering strong warriors and finding challenges eternally, as well as harvesting the souls of great and valiant fighters to bring to her husband's side. "Happy birthday, honey! I got you a gift!" "Aw, it's my favourite, skulls! I'll put them over here, next to the skulls, above the other skulls, and behind the blood fountain." Truly the most loving and sappy relationship in the Warhammer universe.
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Dec 12, 2016 19:04
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Really, and this is something I'll get into much bigger in Tome of Corruption (there are a hell of a lot of splatbooks in WHFRP2e and most of them are good, and a lot of them provide ways to play as people who are normally enemies for a standard campaign like Chaos or Skaven), the primary problem Chaos always seems to have is that the Gods are micromanaging jerks. Chaos characters often don't get much room to breathe or develop personalities because their Gods influence them so incredibly strongly. Khorne is always popping up to go 'Hey you know whatever you were doing was fine but you're not killing enough people now get on it' or Tzeentch has some new, pointless, overcomplicated plot and some dumb reason to backstab you or whatever. Khorne and Tzeentch tend to be the worst offenders, which is why I dislike them so: Tzeentch enables a lot of really bad writing, since it's canon that his plans are usually 'so complex they seem pointless' or enable the good old 'look how smart I am because I have the author's script' sort of villainy. Khornate characters tend to be really, uh, they don't tend to have much of a personality beyond killing. Chaos is generally the least interesting villain faction and has the least personality, which makes it all the more galling how much GW had a huge hard-on for them, to the point of eventually rewriting the setting to make them win everything, destroy it, and replace the interesting 16th century HRE fantasy setting with, er, more space marines in pauldrons.
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Dec 12, 2016 19:16
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I'd watch that as a sitcom.Night10194 posted:Vlad's army continues its invincible march to Altdorf, seemingly unstoppable and immortal, and besieges the city. While his army rests during the day, the Imperials pardon a master thief from their dungeons and charge him with an incredible task: Sneak through an army of the undead and steal the Carstein Ring. Somehow, the man succeeds, but even without his ring Vlad still has an immense army, dozens of vampires, and an unending wellspring of confidence; when the chief priest of Sigmar, the Grand Theogonist, challenges him to a duel on the walls of Altdorf, Vlad accepts without hesitation despite no longer having his invulnerability ring. During the fight, the Theogonist realizes he cannot overcome Vlad's superhuman strength, and does the one thing a selfish man like Vlad would never expect: He flying tackles him off the battlements and sends both of them to their deaths on the pits of spikes lining the siegeworks below. I admit telling this whole story is not that essential to an overview of the Old World or the Empire, but I've always found the defeat of Vlad von Carstein to be an example of Warhammer at its best. A compelling villain whose one weakness was the pope football tackling him off a wall. Vlad's death didn't end the Wars of the Vampire Counts, though; to this day, the Empire has never really been able to stamp out the vampiric influence in Sylvania, and every century or so a new Lord of the Von Carsteins will make an attempt (more on that when we get to Night's Dark Masters). I think the old army book I have told it as both of them landing on the same spike. The Theogonist wasn't actually impaled initially, but be drove both of them further into the spike to make sure that Vlad was out for good. Now that's how you get poo poo done in the Old World.
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Dec 12, 2016 19:17
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Later, one of Vlad's successors, Manfred von Carstein, would come before the gates of Altdorf. When he did, the Theoganist at the time walked up onto the walls and said 'A man like you and a man like me met here a hundred years ago. I'm game to do it again. Are you?' Manfred then fled with his entire army at full speed.
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Dec 12, 2016 19:34
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Night10194 posted:Later, one of Vlad's successors, Manfred von Carstein, would come before the gates of Altdorf. When he did, the Theoganist at the time walked up onto the walls and said 'A man like you and a man like me met here a hundred years ago. I'm game to do it again. Are you?' And that's why Mannfred is the worst
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Dec 12, 2016 20:03
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Kaza42 posted:And that's why Mannfred is the worst agreed
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Dec 12, 2016 20:05
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Kaza42 posted:And that's why Mannfred is the worst Manfred is great because he's that little prick that read the evil overlord list and is sure his genre savvy and figuring out optimal paths will save him, but he just can't make himself roll the dice unless he's got 100% odds and so he ends up getting to the moment of decision and then running away. Then he accomplishes nothing and dies. Manfred's job is to be dunked on.
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Dec 12, 2016 20:05
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Kaza42 posted:And that's why Mannfred is the worst No wonder he became the wizard of the family. Dude's a spineless nerrrrrd.
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Dec 12, 2016 20:14
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Kaza42 posted:And that's why Mannfred is the worst From what I gathered during the End Times drama, Manfred is basically the Shinji Ikari of Warhammer.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:00
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SirPhoebos posted:From what I gathered during the End Times drama, Manfred is basically the Shinji Ikari of Warhammer. In the End Times, 100%. Thankfully, for purposes of WHFRP2e, we kept the version where Archaon the Everfailure was about as successful at destroying the world as he was at having a personality.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:03
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Night10194 posted:In the End Times, 100%. That isn't even the worse part of the End Times.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:18
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Hunt11 posted:That isn't even the worse part of the End Times. There were no good parts there.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:21
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So while organizing all the PDFs in my downloads folder, I stumbled upon Wobble Girls again. Should I subject the thread to this... thing?
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Dec 12, 2016 23:26
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