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Barudak posted:I read all the posts, even the ones where I cant fathom who would play or write this game. Oh? You got a copy? I admit I've never seen it, myself. I'm not sure I've ever even seen an N-Gage, come to think. Maybe at GenCon when it was getting its release, but not since then.
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Mar 19, 2017 07:09
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Barudak posted:I read all the posts, even the ones where I cant fathom who would play or write this game. Seems like tha'd be perfect for a Let's Play thread.
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Mar 19, 2017 08:20
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Polychrome - A World of Steel and Stain The Slenderman mythos took on some weird forms in the far future. A Killing Color in the Sky (aka The Fluff) Now let's take a look at one of the supplements for Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number, his OD&D / Traveller mashup set in a galactic sandbox that is just recovering from a 500 year dark age caused by the Scream, a mysterious event that caused every Psychic in the known universe to go out either like in Scanners or Event Horizon. Like a lot of SWN supplements, Polychrome offers crunch - in this case rules and gear for cyberpunk adventures - and fluff. In this supplement's case, it's about the eponymous planet Polychrome - which like many planets that get an in-depth treatment is located in the Hydra Sector, the example sector from the corebook. So, let's find out how many shadows run around this place. Like with most places detailed in SWN, Polychrome has three major time periods to cover: How it was in the golden age, how it almost got FUBARed during the Scream, and how things have developed since then. Sunshine, Lollipos,... Polychrome is the only habitable planet in a system that otherwise just has two gas giants - Titania and Oberon -, a few planetoids, and an asteroid belt used for mining. It is slightly bigger than Earth with roughly the same gravity. Days are almost 3 hours longer, and the temperatures are a bit milder - though that's the least of your worries since the atmosphere has a few tricks up its sleeve, but we'll get to that in a second. Polychrome was a lush garden world that became a lucrative trading hub thanks to its proximity to the homeworld of the Zadak, a caste-based race of mantis-like aliens. The Zadak were pretty big into biotechnology and had a religious taboo against producing inorganic technology, though all but the most zealous of them were perfectly fine trading in inorganic tech from other races. In order to avoid problems with the Zadak who were zealous, the people of Polychrome avoided a large industrial footprint by relying on nanofabbers (basically giant replicators). As those were quite expensive, the Exchange of Light (humanity's most important intergalactic bank) had quite the presence on Polychrome. Aaaaaaaaaahh The Polychrome citizens would've survived the Scream just fine. They didn't have a whole of Psychics around, and the planet offered them enough resources to survive on their own just fine. Unfortunately their neighbors weren't so lucky: The Zadak had an entire caste of mediators who were all Psychics. Their homeworld was engulfed in chaos and anarchy, and one of the mediators than went crazy happened to be on a ship headed towards Polychrome. Blaming mankind for the Scream, he used the onboard facilities and psychic powers to create the Stain, a highly aggressive bioweapon that destroyed organic matter on the genetic level. Think of an evil super virus that gives you turbo cancer. The Zadak ship got shot down by the orbital defense system of Polychrome when the humans noticed that something was up, but by that time the Strain was already wrecking havoc on the biosphere. Any lifeform in the area first touched by the Stain was utterly annihilated, and the rest of the world was doomed. Figuring out that they had at most three months before the Stain engulfed the whole world, the humans hastily built an underground bunker, allowing at least some of them to survive. This bunker would get expanded into the Warrens, an underground megacity. Over the years, a suspicious increase in cancer and similar illnesses uncovered a fiendish trait of the Stain: It could split and reform itself at the molecular level, making it capable of seeping through rock and even solid steel in due time. Thankfully, the Stain concentration that get through the Warrens was not high enough to be instantly fatal, and the Stain that get through seemed to only target specific genetic makeups. This gave rise to Proteus implants, which constantly shift the user's DNA just enough to throw off the Stain. This makes DNA identification useless, but it's better than nothing. Though you still don't want to walk around on the surface without a vacc suit. Since these implants were quite expensive, they effectively split the population into the clean and the stained. Megacorps kinda suck  Kano has seen better days. The Warrens are run by a council of nine. One of them is a successor of the original Exchange of Light stationed on Polychrome, while the other seats are filled by the megacorps. The Exchange councilor is actually the Chief Councilor, but the megacorps have the final say on any matter and effectively absolute power, what with them having exclusive access to the nanofabbers that keep the whole place going. In true cyberpunk fashion, the megacorps are huge d-bags, gleefully exploiting the population that utterly depends on them for survival. At least the megacorps are constantly busy with scheming and subtle backstabbing, so treating the poor to much like exposable trash will just cause another megacorp to swoop in as the noble hero. There's quite a bit of rebel activity in the Warrens, but they are ultimately powerless against the megacorps, and often just end up as useful idiots for their power struggles. The megacorps are as follows:
The Feel of the City The Warrens themselves are a giant underground dome, around 10 km in diameter and 1 km in height. You generally want to live far away from the bedrock, since that's where the Stain has the easiest time entering. The coreways are a system of tunnels and vents under the dome that are part of the geothermal power network. This place has the highest concentration of Stain, and maintenance patrols shoot intruders on sight, so you probably don't want to live here unless you have nowhere else to go. The underhabs right at the bottom are your typical cyberpunk slums. Live is pretty crappy around here thanks to the Stain and the authorities not caring a lot about the place (and even those that do are blissfully ignorant of the real problems). The only work to be found here comes from cheap labor, gang violence, and dodgy backyard cybernetics. The rim districts is the city's middle-class, built on the dome's inside in ring-shaped layers. People here typically work directly for the megacorps, and may safe up enough cash for a Proteus implant. There's a lot of tension with the underhabs, who see the rim districts as the safest and most readily-available place to vent off anger against the megacorps. The uptown districts are the place for megacorp managers and other rich folks. It hangs suspended in the dome's center via struts. Security is very tight here, and the only stained allowed are loyal servants. Still, there's always a way inside for the bold and desparate. Aside from the Warrens, there are a few smaller underground sites, mostly used as resorts, testing facilities, or weird renegade communities. The original surface cities are still in mostly pristine condition, making them a primary target for salvage groups. The Stain makes it mandatory to go out in vacc suits and sealed vehicles, but even under best circumstance you generally only want to be outside for a few hours, since the Stain will eventually find a way through the seals. Polychrome today Polychrome is the premier cybernetics manufacturer in the Hydra Sector. Their reliance on pretech infrastructure doesn't allow the megacorps to export their facilities, so instead they ferry wealthy customers for a visit to the uptown districts for some fancy cybebrware. The return of interstellar trade is also a nice insurance for the megacorps, since their nanofabbers can't actually replicate anything that could be used as replacement parts for themselves, and they have been slowly but steadily dropped in performance. The Chief Councilor and various rebel groups also see offworlders as a means to beak free from the iron grip of the megacorps, though it's anyone's guess whether they would replace the current regime with a more benevolent. The Zadak today The Zadak that survived the chaos of their homeworld just want to forget the little "accident" that befell Polychrome, pretending it was just the work of some crazy human Psychic and burying all evidence to the contrary. The crews of the escort ships who witnessed the Stain's release had other opinions. Even if the humans caused the Scream, destroying an entire planet's ecosystem was way out of line. Their insistence to get the truth out resulted in them getting exiled on Polychrome, which wasn't a death sentence since the Stain doesn't react to Zadakian genetic makeup at all. The exile's descendants number a bit more than ten thousand, and they try to make up for the sins of their ancestors by cultivating small patches of Zadakian fauna in hopes to restore the planet's ecosystem. Since the Stain clouds makes orbital observation difficult and the exiles life on the opposite end of the planet from the Warrens, humans have yet to actually find out about their presence. Since the Zadak rulers have little interest in having the truth be uncovered, they frequently stage raids to nurture hatred against Zadak. NPCs and Locations  "Did somebody say 'Heresy'?!" These are around three pages worth of notable NPCs and places. The most loveable NPCs are Dr. Anthony "Scissors" Bright, your typical backyard cybernetics surgeon living in the underhabs, and Bastable Quint, a strict but fair salvager who once got enough loot in one expiditon to buy himself a Proteus implant, even if the trip himself caused half his face to be paralyzed by a tumor. Major NPCs include Sofica Bondieu, the current Chief Councilor who is trying to break the megacorps' power. If the PCs gently caress up on Polychrome, she is likely to recruit them for some busywork as penance. Tatyana Lin is heir to the Lin Foundation. She and her six siblings are actually identical clones of Amalia Lin, who had a major influence in the megacorps' rise to power after the Scream. She and her sister spend a lot of time with assassination plans against each other. The most notable place for offworlders is definitely the Amalia Lin Spaceport, Polychrome's spaceport that is a surface dome. Stain exposure is pretty bad here, but offworlders don't stay long enough to be affected all that much. Working here without a Proteus implant sucks big time. Daybreak is a typical adventure hook: The city was hit directly by the Stain and has become a popular treasure trove for salvagers. There's a persistent rumor about a map leading to an intact nanofabber somewhere in the city. Lucid Gardens 5-17 is a sleezy underhab hive block, dominated by the 5-17 Authentics, whose leader - Joshua "Core" Rackman - is a brilliant and calculating individual whose uncanny abilitiy to uncover traitors could mean that he is a feral (aka untrained) Psychic, which could result in him going batshit crazy at some point (if that didn't already happen). Next Time: The Crunch. Time for hacking and Wolverine claws.
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Mar 19, 2017 14:54
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Oh? You got a copy? I admit I've never seen it, myself. I'm not sure I've ever even seen an N-Gage, come to think. Maybe at GenCon when it was getting its release, but not since then. Outside of chronic "worst decisions possible in any context" Siembieda-isms is there any reason why someone would drop a game on the N-Gage?
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Mar 19, 2017 17:04
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Nuns with Guns posted:Outside of chronic "worst decisions possible in any context" Siembieda-isms is there any reason why someone would drop a game on the N-Gage? No, no thats it. Unsurprisingly there is also a 40k strategy game available on the ngage.
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Mar 19, 2017 17:14
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Ultiville posted:This. You basically covered it in the review. I hope no one is going to defend it, and that's kind of what it would take to get people to talk about it much I think. Demons with a society based entirely around hierarchy isn't new to Torg. A cosm partly based on Hellraiser is probably going to have kinda weird sex stuff, and it's okay for games to have weird sex stuff, but "establishing domination through rape" definitely not. Young Freud posted:I do think that someone's homebrew version of the Tharkoldu being ordinary people transformed into demons via excessive cybernetics had some interest, especially if Tharkold replaced the Hellraiser stuff (which, like it or not, is the genesis of some of the more unpleasant elements in Tharkold) with "Japanese Cyberpunk" like Tetsuo The Iron Man, Nuns with Guns posted:Outside of chronic "worst decisions possible in any context" Siembieda-isms is there any reason why someone would drop a game on the N-Gage?
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Mar 19, 2017 17:35
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Halloween Jack posted:You don't think there's weird sex stuff going on in Tetsuo the Iron Man? Nothing weird about a drill for a penis.
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Mar 19, 2017 17:41
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Halloween Jack posted:Tharkold is pretty neat cosm written without respect to being part of a game. It looks to me like there's not much for you to be except Kyle Reese. Now if there was room to be cyber-priests, demon cultists, renegade demons, or different types of commandos that correspond to character roles in other cosms... What doesn't help is that, like the other two SPOILER realms yet to come, Tharkoold has drat near no impact on the overall plot of the game. Yes, they take over LA and Berlin, but that's kinda it. It really feels like Tharkold was added for the sake of adding another realm. (Okay, one of the remaining two realms has a pretty significant impact, but it's kind of indirect in terms of being "from" that realm.) What's more, for all the times Kandandra comes up in the Tharkold book and the comic, we never get any kind of detail about what it's like there.
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Mar 19, 2017 18:55
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Halloween Jack posted:Tharkold is pretty neat cosm written without respect to being part of a game. It looks to me like there's not much for you to be except Kyle Reese. Now if there was room to be cyber-priests, demon cultists, renegade demons, or different types of commandos that correspond to character roles in other cosms... They're is, but Evil Mastermind is kind of holding back on the templates. There is a renegade demon template and, as for Kyle Reese, lets say that you have the opportunity to play as either Reese or that other role. And it's pretty blatant about it, too. The big problem with Tharkold RAW is there's not enough space to really explore it. As fearsome as the Industrial Synthcycler is, it's unlikely a PC will run across them undetected given the size of the Los Angeles realm. The Creatures Of Tharkold book has some interesting monsters and adversaries but for the most part, there's not room for them to operate or have access to from Tharkold to the Earthside realm. It's kind of why I'm interested in the TORG Eternity version where Tharkold throws up all over Russia in the reality backwash. Evil Mastermind posted:What doesn't help is that, like the other two SPOILER realms yet to come, Tharkoold has drat near no impact on the overall plot of the game. Yes, they take over LA and Berlin, but that's kinda it. It really feels like Tharkold was added for the sake of adding another realm. There's a significant part of the first TORG novel that takes place on Kandandra, which, outside of recovering from the Sim War with the Tharkoldu, sounds like a transhumanist technoutopia, which is discordant because the two characters that come from it are these cyberpunk rebels. At least the one featured in the comic and the Tharkold sourcebook was an aberrant incorrigible in Kandandran society who was given the choice of a suicide mission to Earth or a lengthy prison sentence. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Mar 19, 2017 |
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Mar 19, 2017 19:16
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RandallODim posted:Nothing weird about a drill for a penis. Every game worth its salt should have this as a power, charm, feat, or even a stat.
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Mar 19, 2017 19:23
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Nuns with Guns posted:Outside of chronic "worst decisions possible in any context" Siembieda-isms is there any reason why someone would drop a game on the N-Gage? One of the reasons is because Nokia produced a good number of games for the N-Gage through various developers. Rifts: Promise of Power was published by Nokia itself, so if you're wondering why Palladium put out a game for the N-Gage, the answer is likely because Nokia / Backbone were the ones offering to license the IP and bankroll the whole thing. Chances are if it wasn't on the N-Gage, it's not like they would have shopped Promise of Power around to another console - it quite simply would never have existed at all. It's not like THQ putting out Warhammer 40,000: Glory in Death on the N-Gage, which is as far as I can tell is something THQ deliberately decided to throw money at (though THQ at the time certainly had money to spare on doing a risky low-budget game like that). Naturally, Promise of Power didn't really make enough money for Palladium to get much or any royalties out of the deal. Of course, Siembieda agreed to it, but it was one of those situations where they didn't lose much other than being attached to the general mockery associated with the N-Gage.
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Mar 19, 2017 19:35
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Young Freud posted:The big problem with Tharkold RAW is there's not enough space to really explore it. As fearsome as the Industrial Synthcycler is, it's unlikely a PC will run across them undetected given the size of the Los Angeles realm. The Creatures Of Tharkold book has some interesting monsters and adversaries but for the most part, there's not room for them to operate or have access to from Tharkold to the Earthside realm. It's kind of why I'm interested in the TORG Eternity version where Tharkold throws up all over Russia in the reality backwash. So they keep creating all this new content that would really only apply to the cosms, not the realms, thanks to that ol' 90's mindset of not really thinking about what the GM and players are supposed to do with all this content.
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Mar 19, 2017 20:47
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Evil Mastermind posted:It really does feel like the writers just flat-out forgot that they established early on that you can't just saunter up and down the bridges. I mean, they're all situated at the heart of each of the High Lords' power bases, behind God knows how many troops. Even with Aysle, I imagine that Ardinay isn't letting just anyone travel between the realities whenever they feel like it. There are dimthreads for transporting individuals undetected, which allowed guys like 3327 and Pope Malraux to send advance teams to setup their invasions, but those are only abilities the High Lords can possess. Hachi Mara-Two does invent a dimensional gate similar to a dimthread, which explains why she can appear with cyber before the Cyberpapacy even exists and how Kreeya Keena-Three appears in Los Angeles just before the Tharkold gate into LA drops. However, the Kadandra gate tech was very experimental and used a shitload of power that it needed Mara-Two's guidance and ingenuity to work properly. The "suicide" part of Keena-Three's suicide mission wasn't so much accomplishing the mission once she arrived on Earth, it was they didn't even think she'd get there in the first place. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Mar 19, 2017 |
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Mar 19, 2017 21:22
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Doresh posted:Every game worth its salt should have this as a power, charm, feat, or even a stat. Freak Legions was truly ahead of its time.
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Mar 19, 2017 21:26
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd just like to point out that either nobody noticed my Tharkold post, or the tread in general seems to have become so jaded nobody felt the need to comment on the fact that the Tharkoldu believe their race was raped into existence. I have to admit I tune out a lot of the TORG stuff since, well, there's just so much. It's a bit the same reaction I have to a lot of the RIFTS content, because there's so much dull FILLER in either game, and transcribing it mostly verbatim just makes it dull filler being transcribed. Honestly I'd suggest summarizing more, and focusing on the particularly funny/weird/cool parts, while not quite "skipping" over the other stuff, definitely giving it less screentime.
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Mar 19, 2017 23:05
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd just like to point out that either nobody noticed my Tharkold post, or the tread in general seems to have become so jaded nobody felt the need to comment on the fact that the Tharkoldu believe their race was raped into existence. I've been reading all your Torg posts but couldn't come up with a reply to UNIVERSAL RAPE that I wanted to post.
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Mar 19, 2017 23:17
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I completely agree with PurpleXVI's statement.
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Mar 19, 2017 23:17
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Back again for another entry on… Part 11: Rules of Little tidbits have been dropped here and there about how reality-traversing works in this game, but now we finally get that detailed breakdown everyone’s been jonesing for. As a refresher: this process is called “translation.” And that’s pretty literal in this context; when you move to a new recursion, your very being is revised into a context that makes sense in this world. This can alter your clothing, gear, appearance, gender, species, skills, abilities, and basically anything else that would be out-of-place in this new world. This isn’t a physical transformation of your body, either. A whole new body is generated for you! Innate bits of your character aren’t altered (the character’s personality/memory, descriptor, type, and most of the stats), but the focus probably changes to one suited to the new recursion. Certain physical features may be changed. A character can regain a severed limb, or lose their vision in the new body. The translation will not cure serious diseases, aging, or heal you in other ways. Mind control or curses will still operate unless the laws of physics on the new world disallow it. In that case, the effect will fade until the character goes to a recursion that operates under the appropriate natural laws.  Back on Earth he's an accountant! Translation Time The most common type of translation involves everyone sitting down in and meditating until they pop into the new recursion. By default, this involves a four-hour trance, then an instant translation shift. This is assuming the character initiating the translation succeeded on the roll. The time can also be reduced by characters hastening the translation. Translation Acclimation Translating is, understandably, stressful on the mind and body. A successful translation comes with a one-hour acclimation period, during which, the recursor can’t access any old or new foci. The acclimation time can be reduced, too. Initiating A Translation Any quickened character can initiate a translation. All the player classes in The Strange are considered quickened, so no need to worry on that end. For a first-time translation to a recursion, a quickened character needs one of the following: an object from the other recursion, an image or likeness of something in the other recursion, knowledge of three specific and related details about the recursion, or a recursion key. After you’ve been to the recursion once, none of this is necessary again. Translation Trance The trance can’t be interrupted for more than a couple minutes. If that happens, then you’ll have to start over. The translation mediation gets trippy for everyone involved. the book posted:As the trance progresses, all characters participating in the translation see a vision of the Strange: a region of void filled with repeating fractal patterns spiraling off into infinity. As the trance continues, the destination recursion slowly begins to resolve, becoming more and more defined as the end of the trance approaches. Whether it becomes completely clear or the vision shatters to nothing depends on the translation roll the initiator makes.  Translation Roll At the end of the trance, the initiator makes an Intellect roll with a difficulty equal to the target recursion’s level. If successful, the initiator and all indicated allies in immediate range translate. If this is your first trip, you arrive at the new recursion’s default destination. For Ardeyn the starting location is in front of the gates of Citadel Hazurrium in the Queendom. For Ruk the starting spot is the widest public lobby of Harmonious, the Glistening City. If this is your first trip to Earth, congratulations, you’re standing in front of the Seattle Space Needle. (Seattle, Washington is where Monte Cook Games is headquartered, in case you were wondering.) The GM can also determine the starting location for a recursion, where appropriate. Failure on this roll means you likely still translated but at a cost. “What cost?” you ask? Let’s ask my good friend, the d100 table of random fuckups:  As I mentioned all the way back in the character type write-up, paradoxes (the not-wizard class, not a living manifestation of contradictions) are particularly good at initiating translations. (  ) They can reroll a failed translation roll once without having to pull out the critical failure table. Effort can be applied to the translation roll, and a paradox can apply Effort to a reroll as well. You’ll probably need to dump at least a bit of Effort into this. The book helpfully points out that Earth is a level 5 world, so translating to it would require rolling a 15 or better on a d20, assuming you didn’t modify that. Ardeyn is level 3 and Ruk is level 4.It’s mentioned later that you can also make translating a skill. I think every paradox will do this because why the hell wouldn’t you?  The translation difficulty can be further modified in the following circumstances:  Hastening A Translation While one PC is initiating a translation, a second one can help out by hastening the translation trance time. If the person hastening the translation is a spinner, then the trance time is reduced to 10 minutes. If the hastener is any other character type, the trance time is reduced to 2 hours. You can’t stack multiple hasteners to reduce the time more. Hopefully one of your friends is playing a spinner. Easing a Translation When one PC is initiating a translation, another one can also ease the acclimation time after the shift. Vectors can ease the acclimation time down to one round. Anyone else trying it can reduce the acclimation time to 10 minutes. As with hastening, you can’t stack easers. You can make someone play a vector if you need that one-round acclimation, but not being able to use foci abilities for 10 minutes isn’t that much of a drawback. “I can’t slay dragons super well for 10 minutes. Oh noooo!” Helping with a Translation If three PCs are already covering the initiating, easing, and hastening roles, any additional PCs can improve the chances of a successful translation using the helping rules described previously. Translation Into and Out of Warded Locations The GM can arbitrarily that it’s difficult to translate into a location thanks to magic/technology/artifacts/random bullshit and dial up the translation difficulty of a specific area because of it. Conversely, certain areas can be hard to translate out of. There’s no guidelines for this. Use whatever your tummy tells you is a good number to inhibit players with. Translation Abeyance Did you think you were getting off lightly with next to no simple concepts using words Monte/Bruce pulled out a thesaurus? I bet you were wondering what happens to your old body when you translate. It goes into abeyance. You can think of it as an extra-dimensional flash drive. For all intents and purposes your old body is gone until you return to that world. The old body will be recreated with all your prior gear when you return. Either you’ll be in the same spot you were when you left, or in the location the initiator of the translation would go to, if there’s a difference. Noticing A Translation Arrival Recursion natives without the spark typically only notices new arrivals if they’re tasked to. Creatures with the spark, or who are quickened, could notice. PCs can spot other recursors translating to their location with a difficulty 2 Intellect task. Recursors who need more than 10 minutes of time to acclimate might stand out enough to be easily spotted by anyone with the spark. It’s also possible to translate between recursions through a gate. It’s easier but a lot more obvious to sentient beings when you do it. Cyphers and Translation Cyphers are tied to the Strange and are not bound to a single world. This means they can usually translate between worlds, unlike most other gear. It will retain the powers it had before, but it might have a new form that’s more appropriate to the recursion. the book posted:So what appears as a magical music box in Ardeyn might appear as a colorful vuvuzela on Earth. Translation Directly Into the Strange Itself PCs can’t translate directly into the Strange under most circumstances. Instead, they must translate to a recursion. From there, the PCs have to find an access point to the Shoals of the Earth. The Shoals are the comparatively stable portions of the Strange under the influence of Earth. Ardeyn is especially easy to use, as its edges move directly into the Strange. Recursion Keys These are items that provide “mental directions” of a sort to characters capable of translating. They allow anyone participating in a translation to arrive at a specific location within a recursion, rather than the starting zone, or the last place the PC was located. They’re not gateways, but they aid a PC attempting the translation through trance. Most recursion keys are one-use cyphers and disappear after used. Some are special items that persist through translations. A key like this can be put into abeyance with a PC’s gear if it’s held during the translation. Otherwise, it’s left behind and can be used by other quickened creatures to arrive at the same location. Recursion keys can look like anything. A quickened character can attempt an Intellect roll (usually versus the level of the key’s recursion) to identify that it’s a key. A character can’t tell what recursion the key is for, or where it will deposit the character until the key is used. Recursion keys can also be crafted! In addition to the crafting rules previously outlined, a quickened character must visit and study a location for at least one day. Crafting a key takes one week. After a week, the PC must spend 1 XP and make an Intellect roll against a difficulty equal to the level of the recursion +2. Succeed and you have a key; fail and you can try again but normal rules for a retry apply (you have to use Effort.) Translating Too Often Make sure everyone rests up between translations. The difficulty of a translation goes up by one step for each translation that each participant has completed in the past 24 hours. I.e.: if one person has translated once, the difficulty goes up by one. If two people have translated once, the difficulty goes up by two. If two people have translated twice in the past 24 hours, the difficulty goes up by four. Translation Special Effects Minor Effect : Acclimation time is zero if you roll a 19 on a translation roll. The difficulty of all tasks related to the new foci of all characters are decreased by one step for an hour. Major Effect: Acclimation time is zero if you roll a 20 on a translation roll. Additionally, the difficulty of all tasks related to the new foci of all character is decreased by one step for a day.  "Hey, don't sweat that orphanage. There's only a 35% chance those kids were sentient." Recursion Gates Any connection between two recursions, Earth and a recursion, or Earth and the Strange is referred to as a "recursion gate." They come in a number of varieties: translation gates, inapposite gates, portal spheres, and fractal vortexes. Translation Gates A rare, permanent connection between two realities. Things that pass through these gates translate to the new world. They are governed by the following rules: Objects: Unaccompanied objects tossed at a translation gate will bounce off or pass through and disappear. Cyphers can pass through because they can translate. An excessive amount of non-translatable material is forced into a translation gate can damage or permanently destroy it. Creatures and PCs: Quickened creatures and creatures with the spark who are not quickened can pass through a translation gate. Conscious creatures without the spark (also called shadows) can’t pass through a translation gate. Time: Translation through this gate is instant. Acclimation: Acclimation is usually one round. Creation: Paradoxes can create these with revisions. Other circumstances can lead to their creation as well. Inapposite Gate Also known as matter gates. They're rarer than translation gates, and normally don't last long. Things that pass through an inapposite gate don't translate at all. Objects: Objects can move through an inapposite gate, and if they're made of simple materials they may persist indefinitely. Objects that rely on magic, mad science, or other unusual laws of a recursion will deteriorate and either lose all special functions or fall apart entirely. Degradation usually occurs over days equal to 1d6 x the object's level. Creatures and PCs: Creatures that operate under different physics will lose their abilities over days equal to 1d6 x the creature's level. If a creature's ongoing existence is dependent on a physical law that doesn't exist in the new recursion, the creature may die at the end of this time. At the very least, the creature will be debilitated and in pain. All uses of the abilities unsupported by the current natural laws are also modified by one step to the detriment of the user until the ability is lost, the creature dies, or it returns to its native recursion. Time: Movement through inapposite gates is instantaneous. Acclimation: No acclimation is required through an inapposite gate. Abilities may be lost, as indicated above. Full use of abilities is retained for five minutes before negative penalties apply. Creation: Powerful NPCs, influential organizations create these gates. Rare cyphers and artifacts can create temporary ones. Portal Sphere An object able to create a temporary gate linked to a predetermined destination. They appear as crystal globes or nodules in most recursions, with an interior that reveals the target recursion. If smashed against a level surface, a gate large enough for two people to pass through side-by-side appears. The gate lasts for one minute, or until something passes through it on the entrance-side. It closes immediately after that, so it’s hard to get more than two people through it. The temporary gate is undetectable from the exit side. Portal Spheres come in both translation and inapposite varieties. Creation: Portal spheres are considered cyphers, and can be created by powerful creatures or PCs with the right foci. Fractal Vortex  A natural phenomenon that can link together recursions, Earth, and even the Strange. Fractal vortexes are free-floating rifts that appear violent and dangerous. They are suspended in an air or vacuum and discharge lightning and other energy. Vortexes are like black holes in the Strange’s dark energy network; they draw nearby things into them through force of gravity, sucking air, or intense pressure. The exit-side of a fractal vortex is consistent, but can’t be used as a means of travel. They can function as translation gates or inapposite gates. Creation: Large masses of energy tuned to the strange can easily rip through reality and create a fractal vortex. The large it is, the longer it lasts; a fractal vortex the size of an office room might only exist for a few days, one the size of a solar system could rip and tear reality for centuries. Well, that's it for translating!  Thoughts on this Section I realized I should add in additional notes mentioned in the discussion of this entry for completeness's sake. It's funny how it looks like someone in the design team realized that translating would almost solely be the domain of the paradox. It's an Intelligence-based task, and they're sure to have the largest pool of points to spend lowering the difficulty of translating. So some extra bonuses were divvied out to each class to give them a job during translating and everyone could feel like they're contributing!  Except the paradox's roll is still the most vital one, being the one that actually gets to decide if a translation works or not. Everyone else is functionally there to be the airline attendants to the paradox's pilot. And for some extra jock-dunking, the vector's ability reduce acclimation time to 1 round (vs. 10 minutes for anyone else easing a translation) is far-and-away the least vital. Unless your GM likes to have monsters jump you the second you translate every time. Even then, most of the abilities granted by your new foci aren't so vital you need them to survive a single combat. And hey, maybe your paradox will get lucky and roll a 19 or 20! Now the only nice thing the vector can do is a moot point! And in case anyone thought I missed something in initiating a translation: I didn't. While anyone can hasten or ease a translation for a kind some reduction in time, even if they're not the best class for it, only the paradox has any kind of advantage when initiating the translation. tl;dr: Next... now how do those recursions work? Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Mar 19, 2017 23:19
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:I completely agree with PurpleXVI's statement. 
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Mar 19, 2017 23:43
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PurpleXVI posted:I have to admit I tune out a lot of the TORG stuff since, well, there's just so much. It's a bit the same reaction I have to a lot of the RIFTS content, because there's so much dull FILLER in either game, and transcribing it mostly verbatim just makes it dull filler being transcribed. Honestly I'd suggest summarizing more, and focusing on the particularly funny/weird/cool parts, while not quite "skipping" over the other stuff, definitely giving it less screentime. I hate to break it to you, but I have been summarizing. That's how dense these books are.
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Mar 19, 2017 23:51
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Also we're kind of numb to this poo poo by now. Hell, as mythology goes, that's possibly less rape than any given story featuring Zeus.
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Mar 20, 2017 00:25
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Nuns with Guns posted:Failure on this roll means you likely still translated but at a cost. “What cost?” you ask? Let’s ask my good friend, the d100 table of random fuckups: It just feels so weird when everything is in chunks of 5% except for the last 10% chunk to allow a 2% chance of double the bad. It feels like you could just replace it with a d20 table with chunks of 1 and 2, and forget the double-bad option. This is the perfect location for a critical-failure option, where regular failure is "roll once" and critical failure is "roll twice". LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 01:02
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LatwPIAT posted:It just feels so weird when everything is in chunks of 5% except for the last 10% chunk to allow a 2% chance of double the bad. It feels like you could just replace it with a d20 table with chunks of 1 and 2, and forget the double-bad option. This is the perfect location for a critical-failure option, where regular failure is "roll once" and critical failure is "roll twice". I think you will find that random charts in 3e D&D used d100s and therefore so must the Cypher System. 
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Mar 20, 2017 02:40
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It's been a week and you know what that means: IT'S TIME FOR MORE  Step 3/Chapter II: Picking your Specialty Covering Specialties is important in the process of character creation, but it also has another fringe benefit - we get to cover most of Chapter II at the same time! Specialties are basically the main role that your Space Marine fulfills in the group. They’re more or less directly drawn from the tabletop with no unusual things thrown in (you have to wait for the supplements, in particular Rites of Battle, for some of the advanced specialties that are unique roles in chapters). Overall, specialties affect a lot more things than just ‘defining’ your role within the Kill-Team (Deathwatch’s term for PC groups). They affect how much experience you have to spend to improve characteristics, what skills you have access to, what talents you have access to - all of which help to continue to define what you do. In addition, they all come with a special ability that can’t be replicated by traits/talents. To help differentiate characters that take the same specialty within a group, there are anywhere from 2 to 3 different special abilities - you can only pick one. In addition, each specialty has a set of starting gear that stays with your Space Marine no matter what - the implications of gear and keeping it is something we’ll get into when we arrive at Chapter V. The specialties in the Core Rulebook are, as follows:  Apothecary: Apothecaries fulfill the role of a frontline combat medic within the group. Cleric would be a bit of a misnomer, as Apothecaries don’t have access to supernatural abilities that they use to heal their brethren - they rely on their skill, as well as a key piece of equipment (the narthecium/reductor) to perform emergency medicine in combat. Apothecaries are balanced more towards the close-combat, knowledge, and technical skills end of the equation (they get WS, Int, and Per cheaply) but don’t have any glaring weaknesses. Ranged combat isn’t a real strong suit (they have to rely on Chapter/General Space Marine advances to get most of those talents), but their BS doesn’t suffer too much. Apothecaries are cool fluff-wise and because of their vital role in ensuring that the Kill-Team’s geneseed is retrieved in case they die, every Kill-Team typically needs one Apothecary. Balance-wise, they’re not as good as Assault Marines in melee and their special abilities don’t make up for this difference - unlike Librarians, who can typically negate almost all of their disadvantages. Still, no one else can patch the Kill-Team back together better than them. Apothecaries get access to three special abilities (choosing only one). They are: Guardian of Purity: If there’s an effect that would cause the Kill-Team to gain corruption points, the Apothecary’s constant monitoring of the team’s genetic purity reduces the amount of Corruption gained by 2 (to a minimum of 1). We’ll touch on corruption later, but it’s generally tied to interacting with Chaos/really nasty xenos artifacts. Create Toxins: With time and a tissue sample from the enemy, the Apothecary can derive a toxin that has devastating effects on that particular enemy. Once you apply the toxin, the Kill-Team weapons gain the Toxic modifier for a number of rounds, but it only works when you’re in Squad Mode. Doesn’t work on Daemons. Enhance Healing: When you succeed at a Medicae (First Aid/Surgery) test to restore wounds, you can restore an additional 1d5 wounds. Much more useful than you realize once we get into how healing works in Deathwatch.  Assault Marine: If your thing is landing on people’s FACES and getting all up in their grill with melee combat, these guys are your ticket. They start out leagues ahead of everyone in the melee combat game, able to make TWO melee attacks in a round right from the get-go - other specialties that have a melee combat bent typically have to wait until they get much more experience just to get those two attacks, and by then Assault Marines are rolling with three. Did I mention they also start with a jump pack? Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are absolute balls at ranged combat, cannot be relied on for most skills (especially knowledge-based), and have surprisingly fragile WP growth for a class that’s expected to jump out of moving vehicles and land on top of a horde of enemies. Assault Marines get two special abilities (choosing one). They are: Wings of Angels: Allows you to add 20 meters to your movement with a skill check, and if you make a Charge while using this ability you add more damage to the attack. This ability can only be used in Solo Mode. Wrathful Descent: Did you play Dawn of War 2 and think it was absolutely awesome when Assault Marines jumped through the air and hit the ground with enough impact to damage and scatter your enemies? That’s essentially what this is - if you make a Charge against a Horde, you inflict more damage to the Horde. You gotta be in Squad Mode to use this ability though  Devastator Marine: Whereas Assault Marines are for bashing people in the head, Devastator Marines are for filling them full of bolter rounds. They start with what’s widely considered to be one of the best ranged weapons in the game (Heavy Bolter) which allows them to absolutely pulp horde-based enemies with extreme prejudice. For this reason, they are often referred to as ‘Cheesetators’ for their ability to render combats with mass hordes (or even singular foes) somewhat trivial. Even post-nerf, the Heavy Bolter is That Good. They are verifiably terrible at melee combat, but they get pretty much every single talent that improves ranged weapons in the game. Like Assault Marines, they’re pretty bad at most skills (especially knowledge-based) and aren’t very quick on their feet at all (which impacts their Dodge skill). Hilariously they can improve their Strength easily, I guess so they can better carry the big guns? The Cheesetator gets two special abilities to choose from (they can only pick one). A common theme among most special abilities is that one is typically only usable in Solo Mode, and the other one in Squad Mode. The abilities are: Immovable Warrior: When in Solo Mode, wielding a Heavy weapon, and behind cover, Devastators gain the Sturdy trait and a +10 bonus to all Ballistic Skill tests. To use another DoW2 analogy, it’s basically like deploying your Devastator in a fortified position, bracing your weapon on cover for more support/accuracy. Unrelenting Devastation: Maybe the number one reason to go into Squad Mode. When firing a Heavy weapon, the Devastator inflicts one extra point of magnitude damage on a Horde for every hit. If you’re using a Heavy Bolter, this means you start mulching Hordes right fast. If you’re using something with the Blast quality (flamers and rocket launchers), you deal an extra 1d5 magnitude damage instead. Need to be in Squad Mode, though.  Librarian: Space Wizards! Librarians are hard to compare to other specialties because nobody else gets access to psyker powers. They are generally good at melee combat thanks to their Force Weapon, which also makes them the best boss-killers in the game - if they channel their psychic power through their Force Weapon when they hit, they can deal tremendous single-target damage that completely bypasses all damage reduction (Toughness and Armor alike). They are terrible at conventional ranged combat, but they can easily compensate for that with PSYCHIC POWERS. As powerful as their psyker techniques are though, they are notorious for killing the entire party thanks to an extremely fun table known as “Perils of the Warp”, which we’ll get to later. Librarians have very good Willpower and knowledge-based skills, but aren’t so great at commanding other Marines, and are somewhat slow to boot. These disadvantages tend to pale in comparison to their ability to open up a hole in the Warp and suck all of your foes into its gaping maw in about a round. Librarians get no access to special abilities, because they can already explode things with the power of their mind. Each Chapter does have their own way of using psyker powers however, so they all have powers that are unique to their Chapter.  Tactical Marine: Tac Marines aren’t really good at anything, but they’re not really bad at anything either. Just like in the fluff, Tac Marines can substitute as either Assault Marines or Devastator Marines as the situation calls, although they get decidedly more ranged combat talents than melee ones. In Deathwatch, Tactical Marines do get a bit of a special role just to make sure they’re unique - they’re incredible squad leaders, with quick access to the Command skill and a lot of talents that take advantage of their extremely good Fellowship. In conventional RPG terms, they’re the face class, but they can fill a variety of roles well. With the right special abilities, they’re downright deadly with a Bolter. More than any other specialty, the Tactical Marines’ choice of special ability really defines their role on the team - are they going to be good jack-of-all-trades fire support, or the quintessential squad leader? Special abilities (which, as always, they can only choose one of) are: Bolter Mastery: In Solo Mode, the Tactical Marine gains a +10 bonus to Ballistic Skill and +2 to damage rolls when using a Bolt Weapon. Tactical Expertise: This is the Squad Mode ability. A lot of how Tactical Mastery works will be covered when I go into detail on how Squad Mode works, but here’s the basic deal - when in Squad Mode, a Marine with Tactical Expertise can allow other members of the Kill-team to use their Chapter-specific Squad Mode abilities. If you don’t have this ability, only members of the Kill-team who are from the same Chapter can use your Chapter-specific abilities.  Techmarine:If you read 1d4chan, you might’ve heard about these guys. They are goddamn overpowered. Techmarines are equally competent at ranged and melee combat, and their built-in Servo Arm is one of the more powerful melee weapons in the game. If that wasn’t enough they are DED ‘ARD in every sense of the word - Toughness is one of the cheapest attributes for them to improve, and they get a fun little talent called The Flesh is Weak which gives them bonus armor points. To top it all off, they also get cheap access to Artificer Armor at higher levels, which is nearly as good as Terminator Armor with all of the flexibility of regular Power Armor. In terms of skills/talents, they get a lot of technical skills, some lore skills, and a set of unique talents that take advantage of their Mechanicus Implants that make them technomages to a certain extent. This is because unlike other Space Marines, Techmarines are seconded to the Adeptus Mechanicus, the superstitious custodians of technology in the 41st millennium. Naturally, no other class can replicate these abilities. Techmarines get access to the following special ability. It doesn’t care what mode you’re in. Improve Cover: You add armor points to a specific piece of cover equal to your Intelligence bonus (unmodified). This isn’t going to make a huge difference if tank rounds are flying your way, but a Techmarine in his own improved cover is going to be the proverbial hard nut to crack on the Kill-team. And that rounds it up for our specialties! Because I wanted to show you all the psychic rules, our Storm Warden Space Marine is going to be a Librarian.
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Mar 20, 2017 02:50
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FFG has a giant raging roboboner for Techpriests and they get more special abilities and gear every book. If you're not gonna be a psyker and want to be OP as hell, be a techpriest of whatever flavor this game allows.
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Mar 20, 2017 02:58
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LuiCypher posted:
I only know about warhammer poo poo from reading the bad mini painting thread, but this dude who paints tiger stripes on everything and glues voltron lion heads on his robots makes my day.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:07
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That's possibly the most, uh, "inspired" conversion that I've seen in a while.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:24
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I won't lie. I'm having a blast unearthing old art and miniatures to post instead of the new, high-quality stuff. Fun fact about 40K 1e that I just noticed: That's a half-eldar Ultramarines Librarian.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:39
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Nuns with Guns posted:Back again for another entry on…
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Mar 20, 2017 03:46
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LuiCypher posted:I won't lie. I'm having a blast unearthing old art and miniatures to post instead of the new, high-quality stuff. Fun fact about 40K 1e that I just noticed: That's why he has a single pointy ear.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:54
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Evil Mastermind posted:I know it's been said before, but why do these multiversal games always have rules for your characters having to change all their poo poo when they change realities or whatever? What's wrong with just letting people stay the same and thus keep access to all their abilities? Ive always assumed its because the author got worried about how characters would stick out and all the issues this would cause along with concerns of bringing super powered or underpowered weapons to different dimensions and instead of building the system to handle that or allowing their immersion to be ruined by a gunslinger in ancient times they create a series of fiddly rules. They apparently do not understand that the goal is to play a superscientist caveman who uses the limitless potential of a future civilizations technology to build increasingly dangerous fire creation and delivery mechanisms to combat cowboy fishmen.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:11
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Barudak posted:Ive always assumed its because the author got worried about how characters would stick out and all the issues this would cause along with concerns of bringing super powered or underpowered weapons to different dimensions and instead of building the system to handle that or allowing their immersion to be ruined by a gunslinger in ancient times they create a series of fiddly rules. I mean, Feng Shui figured that poo poo out ages ago: how do you prevent people from driving a F1 Abrams thought the Imperial Palace in 690 AD China? Answer is "you don't, let them do it because that's awesome, and it won't affect history."
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Mar 20, 2017 04:23
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Evil Mastermind posted:I mean, Feng Shui figured that poo poo out ages ago: how do you prevent people from driving a F1 Abrams thought the Imperial Palace in 690 AD China? Answer is "you don't, let them do it because that's awesome, and it won't affect history." Also it deliberately encourages people from the 1850s to grab modern guns as soon as possible because why wouldn't they?
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Mar 20, 2017 04:26
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In EM's Dream Multiversal RPG, the basic idea would indeed be "people from reality A can go to realities B through Z without having to worry about anything", and if I wanted to have a threat of being changed, then I'd probably work it as either/or:
In all honesty I wish I was good enough to create a game that was basically Grant Morrison's Multiversity. A team of heroes assembled from alternate realities whose job it is to patrol trans-dimensional (or extra-dimensional) threats or try to "fix" realities where evil has taken over and attempts to spread to other realities like a cancer.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:37
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I just caught up on the Tharkold stuff, and it's just... what? TORG just really has too much poo poo going on, too many fiddly bits, too many competing rules. And absolutely none of it interacts in anything resembling a fun way.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:43
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Someone earlier in the thread mentioned a better way to do the Multiverse stuff, for example, to have a caveman from the Living Land's spear punch through tank armor easily because that's just what it does.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:54
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PurpleXVI posted:I have to admit I tune out a lot of the TORG stuff since, well, there's just so much. It's a bit the same reaction I have to a lot of the RIFTS content, because there's so much dull FILLER in either game, and transcribing it mostly verbatim just makes it dull filler being transcribed. Yeah, if I was starting over, I'd probably come up with a different method than I do now, it's a decent amount of work I have for the writeups and I did something different for Dead Reign where I skipped over large irrelevant chunks. At the same time some of the appeal of Rifts supplements is their catalog-like nature and I'm not sure what I could skip as easily. It's why I include so many attempts at humor (it also helps me keep my mind while I'm at it). The gun sections could go, certainly, and I'm not sure anybody would miss them...
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Mar 20, 2017 05:08
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Evil Mastermind posted:I know it's been said before, but why do these multiversal games always have rules for your characters having to change all their poo poo when they change realities or whatever? What's wrong with just letting people stay the same and thus keep access to all their abilities? And in this case, why so many rules for something that could be stated "take four hours, roll a d20. If it's below a 15, you get another GM Intrusion."
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Mar 20, 2017 05:17
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pee pee doo doo he is a bad game designer
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Mar 20, 2017 05:19
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Thesaurasaurus posted:Also we're kind of numb to this poo poo by now. Hell, as mythology goes, that's possibly less rape than any given story featuring Zeus.
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Mar 20, 2017 07:03
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