Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!


Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising, Part 11: "'They was no ladies, that's for sure.'"

Juicer Organizations

Like it says above.




The Valkyri

As if to counter the parade of art that's mostly roided-up techno-Conans, the Valkyri are an all-female, nomadic group of Juicer mercs and outlaws. We get a fiction chunk of them humbling some Coalition soldiers, and it turns out they work as mercenaries for small kingdoms. When they don't get contracts, they raid Coalition State targets. Though the Coalition hasn't taken coordinated action against them, a number of officers bear a grudge against them. Apparently the group formed when a female Juicer, Vanessa, was rescued by two Hyperion Juicers known as the "Redstone Twins" and started to liberate women from oppressive communities, and a good number of them voluntarily have become Juicers as well to help.

Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising posted:

Although they lack the heavy equipment to fight a pitched battle against a large army, they are very proficient at luring enemies into ambushes, hit and run attacks, and infiltrating cities and camps (some women agents are very adept at looking harmless and helpless, or seductive, lulling guards' suspicions).

:sigh:

I wonder if a male group would ever be described in that way- of course they wouldn't. In any case, they've off to investigate the Prometheus Treatment and get caught in metaplot, but they won't be of much consequence.

Their leader is Vanessa Death-Giver, who was a an orphan moppet in the Chi-Town burbs who was adopted by a Cyber-Doc who took care of her afterwards. She aspired to become a Juicer, which horrified the adoptive doctor, who tried to lecture her away from it. However, a corrupt Coalition psi-stalker would kill the doctor in a moment of anger, and Vanessa stole her way into paying for a Juicer conversion and dealt revenge to the psi-stalker and his officer. She fled Coalition territory, and-

Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising posted:

She had a number of relationships with other adventurers, but most of them ended badly (Game Masters and players: What if a player was one of Vanessa's flings?). Her experiences with men eventually made her lose respect for their entire gender, and she stopped working with male partners, preferring to go at it by herself.

Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising posted:

Although she no longer hates men as a gender, she still has very little use for "typical males," especially those who act condescendingly towards women, or who only see them as sex objects.

:regd09:

"She doesn't like dudes because dudes are big jerks." isn't exactly the in-depth characterization I was hoping for. She's a 7th level Juicer suffering with Metabolic Induced Voracity with minor psionic powers (telepathy, chiefly). Like most NPCs, she has ridiculous rolled stats, but does have one attribute that's merely average - beauty.

Angel and Cherub Redstone are a pair of twins who were "willful and arrogant", running away from home to go on their own only to be kidnapped by Moe "Headbreaker" Harris.

Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising posted:

Moe and his men kidnapped the young girls and kept them as their personal slaves for almost a year. During that period the girls suffered all manner of abuse and indignities.

:stare:

They managed to kill Moe in his sleep, eventually, and then the murdered the rest of the gang by surprise. They stole loot from them and turned it in to become Hyperion Juicers, planning to make it big and detox and retire. However, a con man cheated them out of their savings two years in, and they gave up hope and are inclined to just gently caress around and gently caress with people they think deserve it. This is why they rescued Vanessa.

Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising posted:

Of the two sisters, Angel has the stronger will. Despite the months of abuse, the Juicer was able to bounce back and is not afraid of men. She also has the nastier streak of the two (anarchist with evil leanings), and will sometimes go out of her way to destroy an enemy. She sees men as foolish playthings she can easily outsmart and defeat.

Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising posted:

In many ways, Cherub has never fully recovered from the abuse suffered at the hands of Moe and his men. She is afraid of men, although she will never show it; instead, her fear is expressed in anger and aggressiveness.

Pictured but not detailed are Janet "Howitzer" Rodriguez (Titan Juicer), Debra Lee (Dragon Juicer), and Donna Doom (Mega-Juicer). Their company is usually about 350-400 women strong, about 2/3rd of which are Juicers of various types. There are about several hundred to nearly a thousand camp followers, where most of guys are found (though there are a handful in the company itself).

I was trying to figure out what bugged me as I wrote through this and- it's a group of women almost entirely defined by their relationships to guys. I guess it's trying to be progressive, but it's just kind of weird and vaguely uncomfortable, like Earth-715.

The Society of Sages
a.k.a. The Dragon Hunters


So, this is a group in Kingsdale that might seem like a scholarly group, but is actually dedicated to the eradication of dragons, which they see as a threat to humankind. However, they have connections even as far off as Bahia (of South America 1). They stole the secrets of making Dragon Juicers, and have quietly backed some in hunting and kiling dragons for their blood. Though they publicly condemn these crimes, some remain suspicious of them.

Their face is Cagliostro Smith, a wizard who's believed to be a former ruler of a small kingdom in the Federation of Magic (there's that word again) who was ousted by a D-Bee or dragon, but Smith refuses to comment on the stories. Either way, he's a human supremacist and racist, with his usage of magic being the only thing that really differentiates him from Coalition fascism. He's not the leader per se, but he's the sort PCs might come into contact with as he arranges schemes or deals with outsiders. The book even calls him "middle management".

His attributes lean towards the average except for intelligence, but his affinity is surprisingly low for somebody who's a voice for the organization. He's a 10th level ley line walker and, when expecting a fight, wears a dead boy armor in red and yellow stripes, so he's a lot less good at fashion than he is at magic.

For a figure PCs are more likely to fight, we have "The Slayer", who is a grim no-name badass who we're told that he's "one of the deadliest hand to hand fighters in the world". It turns out he's a former rookie cyber-knight named Artorios who was traumatized when he and companions fought an evil elder dragon. He froze and then fled, and then went on to become a dragon juicer in the service of the Society of Sage.

As with all these stories, he went back and killed that dragon. Ho-hum. He's also killed members of the Cult of Dragonwright, and the Sages have overlooked this because he was generally provoked each time, but are worried he might get them in trouble.

Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising posted:

A driven, obsessed man, he is humorless and quiet, and often appears to lack most emotions. In reality, he represses all such feelings, because he considers them to be distracting weaknesses. He respects courage and strength, and will come to the aid of a worthy warrior who is facing hopeless odds. The one thing he will not tolerate, from himself as well as anybody else, is cowardice. The Slayer will die rather than behave in a cowardly manner.

:geno:

He's a former 3rd level Cyber-Knight and currently a 9th level Dragon Juicer. He doesn't have the Cyber-Knight psychic powers anymore, but still has his cyber-armor, presumably (it doesn't state clearly). He's got physical ridiculous attributes even for a Dragon Juicer and exceptional mental endurance. Unfortunately, being mainly a hand-to-hand combatant limits his deadliness, but he has a lesser rune sword and uses Naruni weapons, so he's definitely a threat to your average group, if not a group that has a glitter boy, a dragon, and a cosmo-knight.

For the record, these guys had no art.

The Juicer Army of Liberation

So, this used to be an all-talk and no-action kind of group that mainly gave lip to locales that restricted Juicers or Juicer augmentation, but a number of years ago, they were taken over by "Julian the First", who is a Mega-Juicer who saw his mercenary unit wiped out by the Coalition. (There are so many "one last survivor of X" in these books.) As such, he's been beating the drum to get like-minded individuals together under the JAL flag and hit Coalition targets. The Coalition, in turn, has labeled the terrorists and has an unofficial "shoot on sight" policy.

We'll get more with them when it's metaplot time. It's not that time. Not just yet.


It's like... a deathcatcher... I guess?

The Grim Reapers

This is the Death cult (once again, as in the Horseman, not the abstract notion) that's behind the Murder-Wraiths. A Juicer mercenary (for once I want to hear a reference to a "Juicer baker", "Juicer accountant", or a "Juicer masseuse") managed to escape them and spill the beans on them to the Northern Gun before conveniently dying, but NG authorities haven't been able to track down the Grim Reapers. There are rumors of them around all sorts of places, however.


"Time for our deadly basement ritual... pick up that d20 carved from bone."

Their leader is Aramis Knight, who has a cover as a herbalist in Laramy (a town near Kingsdale). People think he's creepy, but hey, how can an herbalist be creepy? I dunno, take some rhubarb leaves and whatever you do don't eat them, it's just an example, don't do it. What I'm saying is that everyday plants can still be scary. Anyway, at night he literally puts on his wizard robes and skull mask and goes downstairs to high-five his cult bros and magically teleconference out to their various Death-related projects.

We get his long backstory, which goes over a full page. Originally named Arthur, he was part of a mystic village that was attacked by the Coalition when they were fighting the Federation of Magic. (Bear in mind this makes him 90 years old.) The Coalition forced the locals to dig their own graves and then gunned them down, Arthur included, but he survived because a "bullet only grazed his head, knocking him unconscious". I didn't think the Coalition used bullets, but maybe they did in the past. While buried with other bodies, he had a vision of Death, and fled to Africa to try and help out with the "end of the world" thing. There, he apparently helped Death with its campaign of terror (as in Rifts World Book 4: Africa), and the book presumes the Gathering of Heroes was successful at stopping Death. However, he's somehow kept in contact with the Horseman, and moved back to America to go scheme in a basement. However, his dual life is bringing doubt into his murder-filled heart.

He's a 15th level necromancer with exceptional intelligence, affinity, and physical endurance, and doesn't have any low attributes to speak of, of course. He has a variety of high-powered allies and magical geegaws, including a ridiculous "ring of the elements" that can cast any warlock spell four times a day with no cost, and a "death vessel" that stores 1,000 P.P.E. and gives him immunity to mind control, possession, and +10 vs. psionic attacks. Man. Don't forget to loot this fucker.


"My lips and eyelids? Oh, that's not a part of being a zombie, I just ran way, way too fast."

Aramis' primary thug is named Knight-Hunter, a Hyperion Juicer / Murder-Wraith. KH was originally a dim kid named Ralph who was constantly outshone by his brother Armand. When Armand became a Cyber-Knight, Ralph ran away to become a Juicer mercenary out of jealousy. However, his family and friends were more terrified by his conversion when he came home, and he threw a tantrum until Armand returned just in time, stopping him. Ralph was thrown out of his village, and in his funk, was lured in by the Grim Reapers to become both the quick and the dead.

In case you have to even ask, he became a Murder-Wraith and killed his brother and slaughtered a good third of his village. Ralph is just happy to have a place where he belongs, albeit as just the fastest zombie in a zombie club. He particularly hates Cyber-Knights and will attack them on sight, except they don't have any obvious badge or anything, so maybe he makes assumptions. He's a 5th level Murder-Wraith with abysmal attributes overall save for strength, prowess, and physical endurance. For all that's written on his backstory, it doesn't matter too much - he's mostly just a source of cult-driven murder.


"Sorry, we didn't have room for you in the text."
"But I have a sickle and everything!"
"Sorry, the Valkyri took all the slots we had for female NPCs, maybe in Juicer Uprising II: The Pulpocalypse."


Next: Haven't been back here for awhile.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Apr 25, 2017

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Mors Rattus posted:

Does suffocation count as megadamage?

Well, there would have to be suffocation rules for me to tell you that. You may ask, "But wait, what about Rifts Underseas, doesn't that have-" No. No, it has no rules for suffocation. "But what about Coalition Navy or Lemuria?" Oh, you sweet strawman summer child... Rifts Ultimate Edition at least finally gets around to telling us a character that fails three Swimming rolls in a roll will begin drowning. Presumably that goes for mega-damage creatures as well. How long does it take to drown? How often do you need to make swimming rolls? What if you're just immersed and can't reach the surface? Well, think of questions like that as a creative opportunity for GMs, not an oversight that's been missing for books upon books!

Cease to Hope posted:

this is the car from blaster master, including its original english-language name, IIRC

Oh yeah, I suppose it is very similar. Not the same precisely, but the basic frame is very close even if the actual styling is different. (Also, it can't jump, disappointingly.)

MightyMatilda posted:

ARB latest RIFTS review is as good as ever, but still a bit disappointing. He promised it would be the most 90s book RIFTS has, yet we're ten parts in and I haven't seen a single backwards baseball cap!

Thanks! There is at least one. I'll try and point it out because it's easy to miss.

megane
Jun 20, 2008



Alien Rope Burn posted:

I was trying to figure out what bugged me as I wrote through this and- it's a group of women almost entirely defined by their relationships to guys. I guess it's trying to be progressive, but it's just kind of weird and vaguely uncomfortable, like Earth-715.

I wonder if Rifts -- it of the ten thousand source books -- even passes the Bechdel Test. For a setting crammed with every crazy thing imaginable from across a hundred universes there sure aren't a whole lot of women.

v That's a good question. Maybe "there are two female characters (example PCs, NPCs, etc.) with stated backstories/motivations etc. that are about each other, rather than about men." There are these twin juicers above, who would've worked fine... but no, they needed a history where they were kidnapped by a man, because ????

Of course the Bechdel Test itself isn't really about specific movies, it's just kind of a statistical thought experiment about movies in general: "Consider how many movies fail this. Why is that?" Tons of cool, inclusive RPGs would fail the thing I described above, and that doesn't imply there's anything wrong with them. The thing is, I dunno if I can name a single one that passes it. Breakfast Cult maybe? Night Witches?

megane fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Apr 25, 2017

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

megane posted:

I wonder if Rifts -- it of the ten thousand source books -- even passes the Bechdel Test. For a setting crammed with every crazy thing imaginable from across a hundred universes there sure aren't a whole lot of women.

What would be the model for Bechdel in an RPG? It'd have to be a printed example of dialogue between two women that isn't about a man? Rifts has like zero printed dialogue, just the occasional cringe-inducing "cool" quip.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 14 hours!
Every sci-fi game needs a picture of a woman, floating in a tank, naked, reading Rubyfruit Jungle or Ulysses.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, there would have to be suffocation rules for me to tell you that. You may ask, "But wait, what about Rifts Underseas, doesn't that have-" No. No, it has no rules for suffocation. "But what about Coalition Navy or Lemuria?" Oh, you sweet strawman summer child... Rifts Ultimate Edition at least finally gets around to telling us a character that fails three Swimming rolls in a roll will begin drowning. Presumably that goes for mega-damage creatures as well. How long does it take to drown? How often do you need to make swimming rolls? What if you're just immersed and can't reach the surface? Well, think of questions like that as a creative opportunity for GMs, not an oversight that's been missing for books upon books!
gently caress, Rifts is just Spawn of Fashan but serious.

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Apr 25, 2017

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

megane posted:

I wonder if Rifts -- it of the ten thousand source books -- even passes the Bechdel Test. For a setting crammed with every crazy thing imaginable from across a hundred universes there sure aren't a whole lot of women.

Maybe Erin Tarn and Katrina Sun had a conversation while we weren't looking in Africa? But hey, there's always the The Rifter swimsuit issues. That is not a thing I am making up, they exist, and in case you were wondering if they were equal-opportunity, what do you think?

theironjef posted:

What would be the model for Bechdel in an RPG? It'd have to be a printed example of dialogue between two women that isn't about a man? Rifts has like zero printed dialogue, just the occasional cringe-inducing "cool" quip.

It does have short fiction chunks as time goes on, particularly in the Carella-penned books, though it takes awhile to pick up on this '90s trend. Juicer Uprising actually has a number of fiction chunks, most of which I've skipped because "eh". Of course, there's always the fan- er, unofficial fiction in The Rifter, but there's no way I'm digging though the 50+ chapters of the Rifts unofficial fiction Hammer of the Forge to puzzle out the answer to the above. The Rifts comic is pretty alright, but there's only two female characters and they never interact.There are also the Rifts novels which are low-priority for me for reasons that should be obvious. I understand some Coalition dudes are the main characters and that the editing is awful even by Palladium standards...

I haven't read the Rifts screenplay either, it exists, FML.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Please tell me the RIFTS screenplay is as disorganized mess as the average book to the point where in the middle of a backstory scene we cut to the conclusion of a scene from 15 minutes ago.

Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN

quote:

For a figure PCs are more likely to fight, we have "The Slayer", who is a grim no-name badass who we're told that he's "one of the deadliest hand to hand fighters in the world". It turns out he's a former rookie cyber-knight named Artorias who was traumatized when he and companions fought an evil elder dragon. He froze and then fled, and then went on to become a dragon juicer in the service of the Society of Sage.

Ok so I looked up 'Artorias' and there's a zillion pages of Dark Souls and one sparse Wiki entry. Was RIFTS ever translated into Japanese? This could blow the Souls lore community wide open!
(Also those jetpack/mech suits from a few pages up remind me of Nier, but they probably came from Macross originally?)

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



theironjef posted:

What would be the model for Bechdel in an RPG? It'd have to be a printed example of dialogue between two women that isn't about a man? Rifts has like zero printed dialogue, just the occasional cringe-inducing "cool" quip.
I think a better one would be two female characters who have a major interrelationship that is not "about" a male character. For bonus points it also does not primarily involve sexuality. Games that do not involve significant setting fiction, like most PBTA games, get a pass here.

Exalted passes this, at least with the Dragon-Blooded, given Mnemon's Heathers-esque feuding with her junior sisters and mom.

Ultiville
Jan 14, 2005

The law protects no one unless it binds everyone, binds no one unless it protects everyone.

Turns out being a tournament organizer and running a store can lead your life to some strange places. For example, due to a chance prerelease-running opportunity a few years ago, I ended up pretty deeply involved with the My Little Pony CCG; I was Head Judge at the North American Continental Championship last year, and have been a competitive player and playtester. Since then I've opened my own store, and I've been getting requests for RPGs suitable for kids. I wasn't impressed with No Thank You, Evil!, so when I was visiting my old place and went by the store I used to work at and saw Tails of Equestria, the new MLP licensed RPG, I figured I had to pick it up. Doubly so when I saw top design billing went to notable Games Workshop alum Alessio Cavatore. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found, so I figured I'd do a quick one-post review!

Production, Overview, etc

Tails comes in a single full-color letter-size hardcover at a $34.99 MSRP, 152 pages. It's a reasonably nice looking book, though the art is all from the show or in similar style, so good or bad depending on your feelings about that. But it's mostly well deployed; my only substantive complaint is that some of the two-page chapter opener spreads are pretty clearly blown up. The overall layout is straightforward one-column and easy to read. It's many years since I was a beginning reader but the language is notably simpler than usual for RPGs. They immediately get points with me for not ignoring the show's younger fans in favor of grown-up nerds. (This is a major complaint I have about the CCG, which is more complicated than Magic, let alone Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokemon.)

The layout is pretty standard character generation followed by mechanics, but it works better here than it does in many games because character generation is transparent, and they explain the basic ramifications of all the choices when they come up. I found the order in the book to be pretty logical, especially for a new or younger player. It'd be both reasonable and possible to stop right after the character generation chapter if you aren't running things, except for equipment, which they honestly probably should have just not bothered with (as with many games).

Character Creation

The sheet's nice and simple. Your stats are all expressed solely in die size (d4, d6, d8, etc), the larger the better. Everyone starts out on the tiny side even relative to being tiny horses - "level 1" means you just discovered your special talent and are now considered an adult in the eyes of horse law, since spontaneous magical tattoos are a great way of determining legal majority.

The first thing you do is pick what kind of pony you'd like to be - earth pony (strong horse), unicorn (wizard horse), or pegasus (flying horse).

You have three core stats: Body, Mind, and Charm. All ponies are cute, so everyone gets a d6 in Charm. You then choose which of the other two gets a d4, and which gets a d6. If you're an earth pony, you upgrade your Body die to the next highest one. Your Stamina (HP equivalent) is 10, or 12 if you're an Earth Pony. This last stat is an example of the rulebook doing something I quite like - in the character creation chapter, it just tells you what your Stamina is, even though it's technically derived. Later on, it tells you it's the sum of the "die numbers" for your Mind and Body - that is to say, the number following the "d". This is a neat way of getting fixed numbers from growing dice that I've never seen before despite being simple, so kudos on that one, and again, I like that they aren't afraid to tell you to fill in a number here and then explain it fully later, when it won't be confusing.

Next you have Talents, which are a combination of skills and spells. There's a list of options in the back, but it explicitly tells you that you can pick others if everyone agrees. This is easy to do, since with a few exceptions they don't have much mechanical baggage and serve as things to add to checks when they make sense. Everyone gets one at d6 level based on their pony type. Earth ponies get Stout Heart, unicorns get Telekinesis, and pegasi get Fly. This is obviously a bit biased in favor of the unicorns and pegasi, but getting a free Body upgrade is pretty sweet so it's probably mostly fine. (For my money, Fly seems like the best of them, since d6 Telekinesis is functionally just "you have hands despite being a horse".) You also get to pick your special talent, revealed in a likely musical epiphany just before the game started. You also get that at d6 level, or you can choose your racial one and upgrade it to d8 level if you like.

The last major mechanical thing is that you pick a quirk, which is basically a disadvantage, like a negative aspect in FATE. Like in FATE, there are little tokens you get when your quirk disrupts your life, called Tokens of Friendship, and everyone starts with some. Like the Talents, there's a list of example Quirks, mostly inspired by the show, but it encourages you to make up your own.

You also pick an Element of Harmony, but it has little mechanical weight and is mostly a roleplaying guide like alignment. Options are the ones from the show: Kindness, Laughter, Loyalty, Generosity, Honesty, and Magic (ie Nerd). There's probably no avoiding picking that list if you're going to do that since it is a My Little Pony game, after all, but it'd be easily omitted if you had experienced players or were porting the game over to another setting. That said, it's a good way to indicate "I want my horse to be like Rarity" or whatever, which would help newer or younger players get a feel for playing characters instead of just themselves.

There's also a big portrait box you can draw your pony in, and a smaller one you can draw their cutie mark (magical tattoo) in, both of which are nice touches, plus some advice on naming your horse.

Finally, you get a starting budget and an equipment list to sort through, sigh. Unfortunately the game does fall down here, in my opinion. It's got the usual big long list of things you can buy, some of which have mechanical effects and some of which don't, and my eyes glazed over looking at it. I can't imagine a first-time player who just wants to be a colorful pony doing any better. Those with mechanical effects feel like they should be Talents or Talent effects, and the rest are just silly, including the 10' pole, which makes very little sense in a world where everyone who can hold it is telekinetic and basically seems like a gamer in-joke. I feel like this could have been easily left out, especially since there's like one adventurer pony in canon and you're far more likely to start with civilians having friendship adventures than the kind of battle-eager nomadic murderers and thieves that need an extensive equipment list. Why it is that so many otherwise forward-thinking games cling to this nonsense I'll never know, but I blame consumer capitalism's pernicious grip on our minds.

Checks and Scuffles

Checks are the basic resolution mechanic and are usually made by rolling the die for one of your core stats, aiming to beat a number set by the GM. If you roll max on the die, you get to roll the next biggest die up, and this can chain all the way to d20's, but you don't add them together, you take the best single roll. So if I roll a 4 on my d4, I get to roll a d6. If I roll a 6 on that, I get to add a d8. If I roll a 5 on that, I get a 6 on the check, since that's the single highest roll, off the d6. There aren't any of the plethora of +1 or -1 bonuses you can get in d20 and so forth on the player side, the GM is just expected to set DCs with the overall circumstances in mind.

If one of your Talents is relevant to a check, you roll that die too. (In a few cases you'll do a check against just a talent, like pegasi flying about.) As with the exploding dice, if you get multiple dice here, you take the best number rather than totaling things up. Teamwork lets everyone roll and use the best of all the options, and might reduce the difficulty of the check too, if it's something where you can all contribute at once rather than taking turns. The guideline for this is -1 per helper.

I like the check system overall. I like that it's very easy to resolve, since no one has to crunch numbers or anything, just pick the highest one on some number of dice. I do wish it weren't binary success or failure, though. They've got some good storytelling influences elsewhere, and if I were running this, I'd absolutely go to "plot twist" over "you can't" for basically any failed roll, or just lift the GM moves from PBTA. Both are easy to do, of course, but I wish they suggested them.

Scuffles are the game's combat system. It's also quick and simple, which is nice. Everyone picks an opponent to pick on, and you all roll your Body plus relevant Talent(s). The combatant with the highest number gets to deal out damage to the other side equal to that number, distributed as they choose. Ties damage everyone. Starting characters have 10-12 Stamina, and tend to be in the d4/d6 range, so you can take a couple of solid hits, but combat won't ever drag on, since whiff rounds aren't possible. Not surprisingly, ponies don't die from running out of Stamina, and character death simply isn't a possibility in the rules. If you run out of Stamina you need to have a lie-down, and might get captured or face other unpleasant plot twists if your friends go down too. While this is clearly a genre concession to being a kids show, I am increasingly not happy with mechanical character deaths anyway, so I'm down.

I really like this combat system for the genre. It's great that every round progresses you towards resolving the fight, and it's obviously very far on the story game side, so I'm glad they didn't try to put tons of tactical stuff in. (I loved 4E D&D, but I'm also a firm believer in genre/mechanics agreement.) They also added a nice little note that if everyone's still up after a round, that's a good time to think about talking things out, another nice nod to the genre, where you'll end up making up halfway through a fair number of fights.

Friendship Tokens

These are the game's equivalent of Fate Points, and I like the way they treat them. You can burn them to reroll dice (1 token), reroll but on a d20 (2 tokens), or auto-pass (3+ tokens, depending). You can also use them for narrative interjections in the "luck" or "rewards of being a good friend" type domain, with more tokens generating a more powerful effect. For example, you could use them to decide retroactively that you brought some useful item with you, that a friendly NPC happens to be in the area, that you have a friendly connection to a neutral NPC, or the like. So they're pretty broadly powerful, and explicitly allow player control over the narrative. They do require GM approval, but given the tendency of kids to overreach with narrative stuff, that's probably a better plan than writing really formal mechanical scopes for them.

There are a couple of nice touches in the details, but my favorite reflects their flavor as being explicitly tied to friendship: you can spend them on behalf of your friends, and tokens spent for a friend are explicitly more powerful than those spent for yourself. There's no strict mechanical rule for this since many of their uses are just "I want to do this, how many do we think it should cost", but it's still a nice nod to the game's themes.

In terms of gaining them, you get some at chargen and level-up. You also get them when you are a good friend, or when your quirk works against you.

Leveling Up

When you level up, you increase Body, Mind, or Charm by one die size. If you pick Body or Mind, your Stamina goes up so that it stays the sum of the die numbers. You also get more Tokens of Friendship (one per player total including the GM), and you upgrade all the talents you used, plus you can upgrade one unused one or add a new one.

I like that leveling up is simple, but I do have two concerns here. First, it sucks that Charm is a worse choice to level up than either of the other two, since it doesn't boost your Stamina. It'd mess with the math to make it the sum of all three, and it'd be more complicated to do lowest + highest, but I think I'd do the latter if I were playing with experienced or grown-up people, since it feels like an annoying oversight to have the game with a heavy focus on being friends disadvantage the social stat. Second, I'm leery of the "auto-level the Talents you used" thing, since it's just going to make the poor person who decided to be a hairdresser or whatever feel doubly discouraged if it doesn't happen to come up, vs one that they're just always going to use, like Fly or Telekinesis, both of which are daily activities for the appropriate pony types. Still, pretty good overall, and again, nice and simple.

Talents

Since this is a shorter review, I'm not going to go over the suggested Talents and Quirks. They're basically all inspired by stuff from the show, and seem broadly fine. The Talents do vary a fair bit in scope. Many of them are effectively Skills or Backgrounds, just serving to add dice to appropriate checks, while some, mostly the unicorn spells, are more mechanically complicated, often offering a once-per-session or die-number-times-per-session special effect. It doesn't look like a major balance issue to me as, in a pleasant reverse of the 3.5 D&D problem, the spells are all explicitly quite narrow, while you'll be able to justify your skill die pretty broadly for most of the skill-like ones. Telekinesis is the exception, but it's pretty directly inspired by the show and at the d4/d6 level is effectively hands and a flashlight. Since there's a (quite reasonable) sidebar elsewhere saying not to worry too much about the "no digits" issue, unicorns might be the least powerful of the pony types. Obviously this changes if you're playing with the kind of group that's interested in making the ponies more alien and so makes the hooves less versatile than cartoon logic does.

The Rest

The book is rounded out with GM advice, a sample adventure and some NPC reference stats.

The GM advice is brief, but it's good, including stuff about the primacy of fun, being a fan of the players and celebrating their successes, and how to deal with mistakes (including the solid advice of handing out a Token of Friendship if you made a mistake that hindered a player). I would say that it's short on advice for making your own stories, though, and basically assumes you'll be running a pre-written adventure. A few paragraphs about structuring stories like episodes of the show, or the like, wouldn't be amiss.

The sample adventure is about pet-sitting for the show's main characters while they go off on an adventure. It does have the problems that entails in terms of doing a favor for more powerful NPCs, so it's probably better for kids who will appreciate the cameos from their favorite characters, but I have trouble viewing this as a complaint since one of the things I like about the game is that it is actually aimed at kids. Also, grown-ups playing My Little Pony games really should know what they're getting in to in terms of scope, so this one feels fundamentally different to me than say Faerun's NPC infestation. It'd be problematic if you're doing a variant where the players take the Big drat Heroes role, but if you're doing that, presumably a book adventure about pet-sitting is not a good starting point no matter whose pets they are.

Anyway, the plot is basically that the pets get out of control and escape into the Everfree Forest, one of the show's go-to adventuring zones. There's a separate challenge to find each pet, and it feels like it could be a filler episode for the show, for better or worse. There's some good advice sprinkled in, and each pet you rescue is helpful or disruptive to your future efforts, so listening to their owners about which are friendly or difficult makes life easier. In keeping with the theme, combat is not the focus of the adventure, or even necessary. (In fact several of the NPCs that get in the way are combat monsters and will shred PCs that attack them, for better or worse.) I give the adventure a B; it looks like a fine intro, but doesn't seem inspired or anything.

The reference stats, sadly, are minimally useful. Other than a generic earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn, they're just the stats for all the NPCs involved in the sample adventure, many of which aren't adversaries or are super strong in one area (usually Body) but very weak in another, so more like puzzles than flexible rivals. They also have no levels or challenge ratings or the like, so if you were to use them for your own adventures, there's no guidance for how to do so. With such simple characters, of course, it's pretty easy to make your own, but for all the book is excellent at being newbie friendly on the player side, it feels like a new GM would have an awful lot of trouble finding her feet with just this book, especially when it came time to go off-script.

Overall, I give Tails of Equestria a B+. It's certainly the best all-ages RPG I've seen. While the system doesn't feel revolutionary in any particular aspect, it feels satisfyingly straightforward, and captures the feel of the show well. I especially like the way it pushes helping each other out mechanically as well as just flavorfully. There's enough of the shared narrative and write-your-own stuff to support creativity, and I like that resolving a thing is nice and quick. It's a game I'd gladly run or play, especially with younger or less experienced players, and I'm looking forward to stocking it. I hope the review was enjoyable and/or helpful.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Count Chocula posted:

Ok so I looked up 'Artorias' and there's a zillion pages of Dark Souls and one sparse Wiki entry. Was RIFTS ever translated into Japanese? This could blow the Souls lore community wide open!
(Also those jetpack/mech suits from a few pages up remind me of Nier, but they probably came from Macross originally?)

I made a typo, it should be Artorios, not that there's much in common with Dark Souls other than "was a knight". I don't think there has ever been an official translation of Rifts (or any other Palladium game) into another language.

Ixjuvin
Aug 8, 2009

if smug was a motorcycle, it just jumped over a fucking canyon
Nap Ghost

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I made a typo, it should be Artorios, not that there's much in common with Dark Souls other than "was a knight". I don't think there has ever been an official translation of Rifts (or any other Palladium game) into another language.

They Are King Arthur References; there is a (contested) theory that Arthur's name descends from the Roman family name Artorius.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!


I liked this review a lot.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!


Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising, Part 12: "The Keeper always meets visitors in a monotone, deep voice, with usually no more than a few words like, 'Greetings. Enter as you will'; 'The Masters are awaiting. Follow me'; or 'Your presence is not required now. You may not enter.'"

Places & Nations of Interest

This is a section on places relevant to Juicers, though it emphasizes that the information is not necessarily Juicer-focused in an of itself. It also notes that there might be some differences between the descriptions and Erin Tarn's writeup in the corebook either due to her ignorance or the passage of time.


Our heroes.

Kingsdale

Somehow not a little-known duchy in the Dalelands. I mean, that setting has Featherdale and Deepingdale and Daledale, I don't know how TSR missed out on this obvious one.

A cosmopolitan city with a heavy D-Bee population (mainly Palladium races like elves, dwarves, wolven, goblins, and orcs), refugees from a more peaceful version of the Palladium Fantasy setting. It was originally a small town of magic users before the refugees arrived, recent immigrants feeling Coalition genocide. At a result, Kingsdale has one of the highest numbers of magic users in North America. However, it doesn't pursue magic to the exclusion of technology, and they have an enhancement clinic run by the local government where one can become a Juicer in exchange for two years of military service. A lot of Juicers feel some degree of gratitude towards Kingsdale for this offer.

Kingsdale is run by a Dictator, but that's just a title - it's actually as position elected by a Senate. The Senate isn't democratic, however, being self-electing. The current Dictator is Geoff Mercator, a shifter / scholar (NPCs are allowed to multiclass, step off, PCs) who's a former dimensional traveler. We get a variety of other officials and positions as well. The city has mandatory military service for a single term after coming of age. Trials are done primarily by jury, with "loose" rules of evidence, and penalties tend to be harsh with the death penalty for murder, rape, or kidnapping.

In general, despite being an effective autocracy, Kingsdale is relatively benevolent and free. However, those on the bad end of the economic scale are still really bad off, and there can be a tendency by a vocal minority of humans to blame affluent D-Bees. Education levels are fairly high, and while education isn't free, there are some charitable programs for poorer students. Children in school are tested for psychic or magic powers, and those who do are put into special training programs.

Most of their power comes from cannibalized nuclear reactors for military vehicles, and they have modern utilities, though the slums and outlying communities are lacking. They can repair most high-tech machines and have a government-owned enhancement clinic, but their manufacturing is mostly for supplies and parts, since they can't build their own nuclear reactors. However, magic is important and commonly used for things like medicine or security. Techno-wizardry and alchemy is also common if not ubiquitous.

Their major neighbor is Whykin, which is a human-dominated community that hates them witches and warlocks, mainly because they blame Kingsdale for raids by wizards, while Whykin terrorists bombed Kingsdale a little while back. Also, the Coalition is trying to cozy up to Whykin and has already started a propaganda campaign against Kingsdale. It's your standard Rifts "poo poo is about to get real with the Coalition but not just yet" Sword of Damocles that tends to get hung all over the North American setting.


Boba Fett, the T-800, and some other reference go on patrol.

Kingsdale's Armed Forces

With about 12K troops at the ready and the ability to call on citizens, Kingdale has a decent defense for a community of its size. They mainly rely on Donner's Division, a force chiefly of enhanced humans (mainly Juicers) run by a General Desmond Donner (naturally). They're already planning out a guerrilla warfare campaign to make things hard on the Coalition, since they can't get into a stand-up fight with the skullguys. They'd also likely hire mercenaries and mobilize citizenry, and though it's clear they can't stop a major Coalition offensive they can try to make it more trouble than it's worth.

There's also the Forest Rangers, which is apparently descended from members for the U.S. North American Forest Service who survived and formed their own community that later joined with Kingsdale. Most are just skilled scouts, though they have some enhanced humans and D-Bees. Their main role is to just to fight bandits and monsters, and help people in need when they find them.

The Kingsdale City Guard is essentially the police department, and is usually people with light mega-damage arms and armor and a number of non-lethal weapons, though they have heavier stuff for SWAT-style operations or city defense. They mostly go around in jet packs and hover cars keeping the peace.

Lastly, we have the Magic Militia, which consists solely of combat-trained wizards of various stripes, many of them D-Bees. They often support the other forces, and are also trained in guns just in case fireballs don't cut it. (Because in this system, they really don't.)


"To Death! We'll all get to see her sometime soon!"

Places of Interest

I'll just try to cover the more interesting parts.
  • Apparently the town is visited by a traveling circus called the Best Freakin' Show.
  • The Laughing Skeleton Bar is a Juicer bar run by a Titan Juicer named "Kilroy Pig". Every Thursday he gives the house a free drink and them proposes a toast: "To Death! We'll all get to see her sometime soon!" Some people think it's secret Death worship (the horseman, not the abstract) but I'm not sure... why?
  • The Kingsdale Enhancement Clinic is where you can get Juiced up as long as you've paid for your enhancement license. It's run by a married couple, a male human doctor and female elf doctor who get along rather well "despite their inability to have children". Way to judge, breeders.
  • The Kingsdale Magickal Guild (a.k.a. the Monolith) was apparently once tacnuked by a terrorist but was apparently unharmed. (The people outside, not so much.) It has a spooky ever-changing interior and a spooky greeter call "The Keeper" who is your standard B-movie supernatural mortician stereotype. Once he murdered a dragon who took a swing at him in an "eyeblink" and may something more horrific oooo spooky don't gently caress with him PCs don't you loving try. Membership has a steep price but you get access to a lot of magical knowhow. A number of members are described including a Nightbane™, go buy that other Carella game!
  • Ye Alchemy Shoppe offers disposable magical goods and supplies, and is run by a Lizard Mage (the ridiculously powerful lizard-guy sorcerers from Rifts Conversion Book) named Slither who was put through the alignment-swapping dimension in Atlantis (from the same book) and became good and lost his magic powers, though not his extensive magical knowledge.
  • Dregtown is a shantytown nearby that's essentially lawless and only occasionally visited by police. It's "a den of drug trafficking, prostitution, and forbidden pleasures." Sometimes the wealthy or Juicers will literally slum here, but it does have criminal and supernatural threats, including a nest of vampires, a pack of werewolves, and a posse of stereotypes.


Here's the requested backwards baseball cap.
Not sure what the coalition soldiers are doing there, tho...
"Don't mind us, we're just a little early for the metaplot!"


Next: Right. This is where I picked up the drat ingrate.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 27, 2017

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
I'm not sure what the characters in a My Little Pony game would do in an average session- "adventuring" isn't really a thing. (Equipment lists also seem like an odd thing. How do they carry all this?)

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Saddlebags.

Ultiville
Jan 14, 2005

The law protects no one unless it binds everyone, binds no one unless it protects everyone.

SirPhoebos posted:

I liked this review a lot.

Thanks, glad to hear it!

Maxwell Lord posted:

I'm not sure what the characters in a My Little Pony game would do in an average session- "adventuring" isn't really a thing. (Equipment lists also seem like an odd thing. How do they carry all this?)

If you've got a plot, you've got an RPG plot, and things like the episodes of the show do have a problem and a resolution. There's definitely some adventuring in the canon as well, and Equestria is a dangerous place. If you wanted to do a big-fantasy-heroes-who-are-also-small-horses thing you could certainly justify it, though I'm not sure you'd be happiest using this system for it if you want to focus on dungeon crawls and things.

Maybe it wasn't clear from the review since I sort of glossed over the talents, but combat focus is really minimal. Scuffles get two pages total of text at most (there's some art involved) and even then you could do a "Mind scuffle" or "Charm scuffle" to do a prolonged argument or dance-off or something. Most of the talents also don't require scuffles to be going on to be useful. You'd definitely want to do stories that focus as much on interpersonal and environmental challenges as combat ones for most games, I'd think.

As for the equipment, you've got a few cases of well-equipped ponies in the canon I guess, but yeah, as I mentioned I wish they'd dropped the vestigial D&D-style equipment list and starting budget and just let your pony have an appropriate outfit with no special mechanical effects.

MightyMatilda
Sep 2, 2015
I remember seeing that picture of the boy and the big guy with a balloon from Rifts Ultimate Edition. It was in the section where they rant about discuss how random character creation is such a great concept that they won't even bother letting the player use a non-random method. I'm not really sure what that specific artwork was doing there. Though it did talk about how one player rolled a guy with low IQ and played him as mentally retarded. It was a weird section, is what I'm saying.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Maxwell Lord posted:

I'm not sure what the characters in a My Little Pony game would do in an average session- "adventuring" isn't really a thing. (Equipment lists also seem like an odd thing. How do they carry all this?)

The MLP crew go on adventures all the time though? Like, they climb up a dangerous mountain to stop some kind of megastorm at its peak and have to deal with avalanches, narrow walkways, gaps that have to be jumped (by the wingless ponies), and lightning strikes.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

We wanted to ride the zeitgeist of the Talislanta Kickstarter happening, so we covered Talislanta. Some other edition. It is impossible to read in a week, this is a lot like reading an RPG by James Joyce.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Yeah, their monster entry for the brown-arsed fuckbird is weird.


...why is fuckbird in the iPad dictionary.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

theironjef posted:

We wanted to ride the zeitgeist of the Talislanta Kickstarter happening, so we covered Talislanta. Some other edition. It is impossible to read in a week, this is a lot like reading an RPG by James Joyce.

You already reviewed previously reviewed James Joyce the RPG

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.


That's more like his private correspondence. This was like trying to read a book written in Thunderwords.

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

I find Talislanta pretty accessible compared to, say, Jorune or Tekumel. (It may help that I'm a big Jack Vance fan anyway.)

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Selachian posted:

I find Talislanta pretty accessible compared to, say, Jorune or Tekumel. (It may help that I'm a big Jack Vance fan anyway.)

I guess I'm trying to get across the experience of reading it in a week. The whole guide to the world starts to be impossible to keep track of fairly fast.

The Lemondrop Dandy
Jun 7, 2007

If my memory serves me correctly...


Wedge Regret
Hooray for reviews of kids games. I've been considering doing a RPG thing with my nephews and have been wondering what would work.

I have happy birthday robot on my shelf. I should actually read it.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

theironjef posted:

We wanted to ride the zeitgeist of the Talislanta Kickstarter happening, so we covered Talislanta. Some other edition. It is impossible to read in a week, this is a lot like reading an RPG by James Joyce.

Is there a podcast attached to this post? I'm not seeing one, but then I may be go to the page too early.

BTW, Eclipse Phase Second Edition is coming out, so now the first edition of EP is up for review.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Young Freud posted:

Is there a podcast attached to this post? I'm not seeing one, but then I may be go to the page too early.

BTW, Eclipse Phase Second Edition is coming out, so now the first edition of EP is up for review.

Hey weird that's gonna be a problem. Thanks for the update!

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

The Lemondrop Dandy posted:

Hooray for reviews of kids games. I've been considering doing a RPG thing with my nephews and have been wondering what would work.

I have happy birthday robot on my shelf. I should actually read it.

You might also look at Hero Kids. It's a super simplified kids' D&D.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 14 hours!
I read the free edition of Talislanta that was released (4th I think?) and it was pretty accessible. IIRC it does have a kinda Vance-like vibe where it just jumps into telling you things about the various character types, and you just surmise things about their culture based on what it's telling you. But that's very very much in the spirit of early RPGs, when there was no such thing as a setting chapter and the setting was just implied by everything else.

Foglet
Jun 17, 2014

Reality is an illusion.
The universe is a hologram.
Buy gold.

The Lemondrop Dandy posted:

I've been considering doing a RPG thing with my nephews and have been wondering what would work.

hyphz posted:

You might also look at Hero Kids. It's a super simplified kids' D&D.
Try Ryuutama, thank me later.
(But Hero Kids is good too, yes)

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

I got a question about Tails of Equestria: The "Laughter" Element of Harmony is supposed to map to Pinkie Pie, which sets off my fishmalk alarm. Obviously you can't just exclude that arch-type because she's a main character, but does the book at least have some advice on how to play that character without irritating everyone at the table?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I do love how, in universe, Pinkie-Pie's family are the horse equivalent of dour Amish farmers, so everything she does is her form of teenage rebellion.

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011
fishmalks are indistinguishable from your typical nine year old being themself

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

SirPhoebos posted:

I got a question about Tails of Equestria: The "Laughter" Element of Harmony is supposed to map to Pinkie Pie, which sets off my fishmalk alarm. Obviously you can't just exclude that arch-type because she's a main character, but does the book at least have some advice on how to play that character without irritating everyone at the table?

Talk all your problems out with your players while doing your best to understand their feelings and making it clear that you value their contributions to the game. Try to find a solution that's copacetic for everyone!

Then, hugs.

Ultiville
Jan 14, 2005

The law protects no one unless it binds everyone, binds no one unless it protects everyone.

SirPhoebos posted:

I got a question about Tails of Equestria: The "Laughter" Element of Harmony is supposed to map to Pinkie Pie, which sets off my fishmalk alarm. Obviously you can't just exclude that arch-type because she's a main character, but does the book at least have some advice on how to play that character without irritating everyone at the table?

Not really, that chapter is quite short. They do mention that not everyone who uses an element is going to behave the same way in the general section, and in each of the sections for the particular element they talk about what can potentially go wrong. In Laughter's they say that the issue can be making sure everyone is enjoying the jokes, which does give a clever GM an out to have a conversation about disrupting the table (or just insulting everyone in the name of Laughter or whatever). But it does play in to the bare-bones GM section, there's not a lot in there about settling party conflicts, which seems like another notable omission. I'm not sure if they're planning to do a separate GM book later or not.

That said, as another poster pointed out, if young kids are playing, everyone's going to be going off on tangents constantly, so Pinkie Pie behavior is not really problematic in the same way as it would be in a grown-up game. And if you're playing with grown-ups, presumably you can just...talk to your friends like adults. Laughter is nowhere near the top reason I'd never want to play an MLP RPG with a pick-up group of random adults I don't already know.

Wapole Languray
Jul 4, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

I read the free edition of Talislanta that was released (4th I think?) and it was pretty accessible. IIRC it does have a kinda Vance-like vibe where it just jumps into telling you things about the various character types, and you just surmise things about their culture based on what it's telling you. But that's very very much in the spirit of early RPGs, when there was no such thing as a setting chapter and the setting was just implied by everything else.

You didn't read 4th then, as that has a literally 300 page long gazetteer of every nation and culture on the continent. Also, every version of Talislanta is free online: http://talislanta.com/?page_id=5

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

theironjef posted:

We wanted to ride the zeitgeist of the Talislanta Kickstarter happening, so we covered Talislanta. Some other edition. It is impossible to read in a week, this is a lot like reading an RPG by James Joyce.

I'm kind of astonished that I've heard two iterations of the same Blue Eyes, White Dragon, Can't Lose joke within a month or two of each other (MBMBAM, then you two)

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

gradenko_2000 posted:

The MLP crew go on adventures all the time though? Like, they climb up a dangerous mountain to stop some kind of megastorm at its peak and have to deal with avalanches, narrow walkways, gaps that have to be jumped (by the wingless ponies), and lightning strikes.
It seems to be a Ryuutama kind of deal, except even more detached from murder-hoboing.

(Though I'm pretty sure the community will write some fansplats for grimdark, post-apocalyptic murder-hoboing.)

theironjef posted:

We wanted to ride the zeitgeist of the Talislanta Kickstarter happening, so we covered Talislanta. Some other edition. It is impossible to read in a week, this is a lot like reading an RPG by James Joyce.

Hey, something I actually read myself.

SirPhoebos posted:

I got a question about Tails of Equestria: The "Laughter" Element of Harmony is supposed to map to Pinkie Pie, which sets off my fishmalk alarm. Obviously you can't just exclude that arch-type because she's a main character, but does the book at least have some advice on how to play that character without irritating everyone at the table?

But which Element of Harmony is Batman's?!

Wapole Languray posted:

You didn't read 4th then, as that has a literally 300 page long gazetteer of every nation and culture on the continent. Also, every version of Talislanta is free online: http://talislanta.com/?page_id=5
I had to take a couple breaks while reading through that one because there's it's just so dense. Every page has so many cultures and places.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Doresh posted:

But which Element of Harmony is Batman's?!

Batman's Element of Harmony is Batman.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5