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Yeah, that feels more like you're populating for a horror movie. Or JRPG, where a "city" is only different from a "village" by maybe having six pointless houses instead of four. Meanwhile I forgot to actually mention this number, but Central's 2 million is packed into an area of 2 miles diameter, since the city's a circle. It reaches a mile high, but with the smaller sizes of the upper plates, that doesn't particularly reduce the crowding much.
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May 14, 2017 08:42
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Weirdly, I'm fine with the ridiculous overgunning of the cyborgs, and power armour suits etc. But the same thing with all those Coalition vehicles really annoys me. All these weapons just pasted on every available surface with no allowance given for all the internal space they would require and they're still supposed to have room for full squads of troops.
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May 14, 2017 10:53
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 Rifts World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign Part Eleven: "While 'grounded,' the Fire Storm serves as the center of a temporary field base (temporary being as little as a few days or as much as a few years; typically 2D4 months)"  Not pictured: rad-rear end swimming pool, cool arcade, and petting zoo. CTX-54 "Fire Storm" Mobile Fortress — Super Tank Inspired by art by Wayne Breaux Because they're Nazis, I guess the Coalition need their Maus or Ratte equivalent- wait, this thing flies? That's not a tank! That's not a tank at all! So, now that I'm done being lied to, this is more like an oversized, slower flying version of the Death's Head Transports from the core rules, and can fly around up to 300' high at 180 MPH. There's a dozen of these things, and they can each carry 4-5 companies of Coaltion troops- Rifts World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign posted:... and another company or two of power armor troops could ride on the outer hull. Oh, gently caress off and stop trying to gild the (skull) lily here, the last thing PCs need is to see a bunch of troops clinging on for their dear lives like baby spiders on a momma spider. "You know, this thing carries nearly 900 Coalition troops, but I bet we could break 1000 if we duct-tape them on-" Fuuuuuck thaaaaat. Still, the mecha-skull says I need to calm down, so let's just try and finish this thing. It can split into a command center and two medium-size skull transports if it needs to, has a farcical amount of M.D.C. (5000), a super rail cannon that does about 1d4 x 100 on single blast or 2d8 x 100 on a double blast, because Rifts is awful at editing, math, or both. It can only do the double blast against large targets, but it helpfully tells us firing at targets over a mile away only imposes a -1 attack penalty, which I guess means this 240' vehicle can totally do a 360 no-scope shot it's a sniper OMG. It also has rail guns, a laser turret, long and medium-range missiles on the command center, and dinky lasers on all of its - sigh - 24 bay doors. That means if the vehicle splits into three, the command center has all of the sizable armaments. Other than that, it's mostly a  and there's not much more to say on it. Now we're just making boxes with skulls glued on. Death Bringer APC The following is an overdramatization of the Palladium creative process: "So I've got this idea for a new vehicle." "Yeah?" "Get this: it's like a Death's Head Transport." "Okay." "But it's slightly smaller." "Wow!" "I know, right? This is super-essential. It really adds to the Coalition arsenal." "Gosh, game design like that must be really hard. You're a fuckin' genius, you know what?" "Of course I know that! I'm going to have a third lunch break, all this game design brilliance is working up an appetite." So, this has about 1/3rd less M.D.C. than the Death's Head Transport, goes 400 MPH. It has a lighter cannon turret, laser turret, extra sensors and that's that.  Sadly, not a skull space shuttle. CS APC Sky Lifter The following is an "Wait, I just had game design brilliance again." "Holyyy poo poo. Bring it on, man." "So I was thinking of a vehicle like the Death's Head Transport." "Oh poo poo. Oh poo poo. My mind is exploding." "But it's bigger." "Wait. Hold up." "What?" "Didn't we just do that with another vehicle? The Fire Storm? Wasn't that really just a bigger Death's Head Transport?" "Oh, no, that's the brilliance. It's bigger than a Death's Head Transport, but smaller than a Fire Storm." "I just want to let you know you're more geniuser than I thought possible." "Well. Duh. I think I've earned a fourth lunch break. This time it's all ice cream!" So, this is a larger Death's Head Transport designed to carry vehicles, and the fifth APC in this book alone. It's about 50% tougher, has cannons that fire plasma rocket shells and mini-missiles. Its main gun does more damage than the Death's Head Transport as power creep demands, but it's missing the powerful medium-range missiles. It goes up to 400 MPH and that fufills my summary duty here.  "Who are we saluting?" "How should I know, nobody took their helmets off!" CS Command Car This is a floating hover jeep (pretty much a technical) with a light rail gun. It has only light protection (and the top / windshields provide almost no protection at all), can fly up to 500' high at 200 MPH, carries four bodies, and that's all. It's noted that Northern Gun and the Black Market make knockoff versions of this (and all the other cars and bikes listed after this), but no word on whether or not they keep the skull stylings.  "Psst! You want some missiles? I got some missiles. Over here." CS "Scarab" Officer's Car This is intended for officers as a floating car with better protection (but still not much). So why was the last one called a "Command" vehicle when it wasn't? No idea! It has laser turrets where the wheels would be and mini-missiles, flies 220 MPH at up to 1500' high.  "But why should we bother pasting skulls on boxes when we can just paint them on?" CS Skull Patrol Car The following is an "Got another spark. Another shine." "Lay that down, brother. Blind me!" "So, I'm thinking of a floating car." "Wait. Hold up. You just did one of those." "I did?" "Yeah, the CS Command Car, and... the Scarab. Two. You did two of those." "Well, this one's different." "How?" "It's... a little lighter than the Scarab?" "That's all?" "What?" "That's all you've got?" "Well-" "Don't you think we owe it to our fans to devise compelling content with interesting mechanics? To not just have three straight pages of floating car filler? To not just cut and paste the same statblocks over and over?" "..." "Ha ha, just loving with you! It's brilliant! Fifth lunch?" "Fifth lunch!" Next: "For skull's sake - send planes!" Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 19:32 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 15:03
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What is it with the Coalition's unholy lust for APCs? Aren't nazis supposed to love tanks instead?
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May 14, 2017 15:20
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Ratoslov posted:What is it with the Coalition's unholy lust for APCs? Aren't nazis supposed to love tanks instead? This lets them carry the skull power armours around more efficiently.
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May 14, 2017 15:35
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That's not a bad thing. Tanks are tanks; APCs are a delivery service for mooks for your PCs to fight. Nazis also loved machineguns.
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May 14, 2017 15:36
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The Necropolis is kind of a obnoxious mini-domain, given how it's barrier works and the Darklord's power makes it nigh-impossible to really work with, since it's not just everyone in the city that the time dies and rezzes, anyone that crosses the barrier becomes undead. It's like how Forlorn doesn't give much for players to work with, but Necropolis actively punishes anyone seeking to explore it.
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May 14, 2017 16:18
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Robindaybird posted:The Necropolis is kind of a obnoxious mini-domain, given how it's barrier works and the Darklord's power makes it nigh-impossible to really work with, since it's not just everyone in the city that the time dies and rezzes, anyone that crosses the barrier becomes undead. Unless you have the ruleset from the old Necropolis Box, that is! Then you've got rules for turning your cleric into a mummy, and the cutest vampire halfling picture ever.
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May 14, 2017 17:15
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DragonMech: Steam Warriors: Except none of this poo poo has bonuses so it's actually unusable. We get a bunch of new weapons now! I'll cover some of the more interesting ones. The Blunderbuss is a cheap version of the steam gun that can fire anything you shove into it. It does the most damage when loaded with sling bullets, but can fire rocks, shrapnel or whatever...for lovely damage. Like 1d6 or 1d4 damage. If loaded with 10+ rocks or whatever, though, it fires a cone, so that's nice. Oh, and you can't attach anything to the barrel because it's too wide. Dotrak's Tooth, AKA a steamspear, is a spearpoint on the end of a hollow shaft, connected to a steam generator on your back. When you hit a button, steam fills the shift, causing the point to hit harder - giving the wielder an effective Str of 18 for that attack and dealing 1d4 to anyone standing direclty behind you, because steam. You can only use the steam stab every other round, though. Also, you can't throw the spear because it's attached to your back. The Frost Launcher was developed by a group of clerics as an anti-steam weapon. It uses alchemical compounds and a clockwork firing mechanism about the size of a handheld battering ram, and the ammo's 50 gp for five shots. It's basically used like a shoulder-fire weapon, and what it does is fire a cone of cold when triggered, hitting anything in a cone 30 feet long. A Ref save gives half damage...but any steam engine caught in the blast has to make a Fort save to resist being rendered entirely inoperative for 1d4 rounds, and unattended items always fail their save - so the save's only for folks holding items. Of course, Huge stuff or bigger can't be easily hit by this - so for a mech, you're going to have to get inside it, and mechs bigger than Gargantuan still can't be fully stopped, but will take -2 Str and Dex on a failed save rather than being immobilized.  This ridiculous thing is the piston staff - a hydraulic staff. The heads are tiny anvils, as you see, and the shaft can extend in either direction with pneumatic pressure. The center of the shaft houses a steam engine, and so the entire thing is heavy enough that you need Str 13+ to wield it. If you extend it, each side qualifies as reach while extended, and you can fire off the extension to deal 2d6 to someone not expecting it. Both ends can be extended at once, or one at a time, but you can only use it single-headed at each range if only one is extended. You can also use the thing to shove people back as if you had the Improved Bull Rush feat and a +4 Str bonus. Retracting the staff is harder - it takes DC 20 Str check to force it back down. The shredder is pretty great - basically, it's a clockwork machine gun. It uses steam pressure to build up enough force to fire, but has a toothed gear that pulls balls out of a large canister full of them and basically just hurls them into the firing chamber very quickly, causing the thing to fire a hell of a lot of shots at once, albeit not as strong as a normal steam gun. (Not, mind you, that it's especially strong.)  The toolblade is a variant sword found most often among Irontooths and rust riders. Basically, half of it is a sowrd, and half of it is covered in tools that you can unscrew from the weapon. Somehow. This means you can use Craft (mechcraft) checks without penalty. It also gets +2 to disarming foes. Downside? It's an exotic weapon and it's not actually any better than a normal sword. Just carry a drat toolbox. The buzz shield is what happens when soneone decides to stick an airplane propellor onto a shield. It's attached to a water reservoir on your back, which you can activate as a free action to make the propellor start spinning. When inactive, it's a normal shield, and when active, it's an exoticm elee weapon that deals 1d6 damage and x3 crit. However, it can only run for ten rounds before it needs more water, and if you don't have the proficiency for it you need to make a DC 15 check each round to not hit yourself with it, because this is an entirely stupid weapon. We get some variants on hydraulic armor and shields, but the funniest armor I can find is the orcish vendetta suit. It is a really, really lovely set of leather armor with overlapping plates of scrap metal on it and a lovely helmet. Its purpose is simple: suicide bombing. Step one, the orc eats a warflame mushroom, which makes them very suggestible for 5d4 minutes, then removes all sense of self-preservation for 20 minutes after that, and then causes nausea for 2d4 hours after that. At this point, the orc wearing the thing is sent to charge at a target. Once there, they detonate the 15 pound pressure bomb on the armor's back, causing 6d6 damage to anything within 10 feet. Including the wearer. Orcish fireballs!  Gnomish Utility Goggles are designed for many purposes. You can swap lenses to either eye easily! However, using two lenses of different types at once gives -2 to all skill checks that rely on sight, unless they're just color filters. Also you're going to need a Craft (alchemy) check to use the gaze resistance, revealing or illusion breaker lenses. The left eye has lenses for: Darkvision 30, low-light vision, illusion breaker (+2 to see through magical/psychic illusions per lens used), magnifying (+4 to Disable Device, Open Lock, Search and Spot on stuff within 2 feet), gaze resistant (+2 vs gaze effects per lens used), flare resistant (+2 vs blinding and light effects and -1 to Spot checks per lens used; also negates light blindness and light sensitivity and grants saves even against non-savable effects), microscopic (8x, 12x, 24x or 48x magnification) and a blue filter. The right eye has lenses for: Darkvision, low-light vision, revealing (gives the effects of the See Invisibility spell), illusion breaker, telescopic (identical to a spyglass), gaze resistant, flare resistant, and red and yellow filters. Oh, and then there's moonstone. It's a rock that burns at very high temperatures, so any steam-powered mech run on it gets +4 Str and Dex and increases speed by 10, but that takes a ton of moonstone per day and each ton is 10,000 gp. STeam weapons running on moonstone get +1 damage per die rolled, requiring usually 5 pounds of moonstone for a Medoum weapon (at 5 gp/pound). Steamborgs who run off it get Str and Dex +2, but it only lasts one hour per pound of moonstone. Oh, and there's side effects. The smoke is a noxious poison that forces anyone in the same square as the device or inside a mech powered by it to make a Fort save each round or take 1 Con damage (though a steamborg powered by it only makes the check once per hour). Any non-mobile plants in the gas die in minutes, and animals avoid the gas because it smells awful. Anyone who takes more than 1 Con damage from the gas without recovering also has to make a Fort save to not become addicted. Addicts must be exposed to the gas at least one round per day or they have to make a Fort save to not take 1d4 Con damage. Good news: while addicted, the gas itself causes no damage to you. You can cure addiction by going 5 days without moonstone gas. Use of moonstone is illegal in the Stenian Confederacy and the Legion. Oh, and one final note: water powder. It is literally powdered water, halving the space an amount of water takes up (but not changing its weight). It's made of little crystals that absorb water until exposed to heat, when they shatter and release it all. This lets steambreathers fire twice as much on a single tank if you use them, incidentally, and costs 1 gp per pound of water absorbed. The crystals, obviously, are single-use. Next time: New steam powers and magic.
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May 14, 2017 17:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:"Don't you think we owe it to our fans to devise compelling content with interesting mechanics? To not just have three straight pages of floating car filler? To not just cut and paste the same statblocks over and over?" isn't this book contemporaneous with battletech's technical readouts?
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May 14, 2017 18:00
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Cease to Hope posted:isn't this book contemporaneous with battletech's technical readouts? In the sense that the Technical Readouts started coming out about a decade beforehand and were continuously published until the mid-90s.
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May 14, 2017 19:30
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The thing that always bugged me about Ravenloft is that in many places they say that only the Vistani can safely travel between domains and that the mists/dread lords actively prevent travel, and in other places they act like there is regular mercantile trade, culture exchange and wars going on between the domains. I like the idea of a campaign where the pcs realize that they're just secondary/background characters in a horror story designed to punish someone else and they just want to find ways to short circuit the domain lord's punishment loop and/or escape. Exploring the question of whether the denizens of these domains are sentient, living people or just magical creations that exist only as props for the domain lord's punishment; did they start off sentient and self aware or if it is something that slowly crept into the "system" after centuries of use, whether subjecting these people to this fate is just as evil as whatever deeds the domain lords did to get themselves imprisoned in the domain of dread in the first place, what the point of any of this is in the long run. Of course D&D is not really the best engine to drive that kind of game.
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May 14, 2017 21:34
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theironjef posted:Unless you have the ruleset from the old Necropolis Box, that is! Then you've got rules for turning your cleric into a mummy, and the cutest vampire halfling picture ever. That was fun, but otherwise, Necropolis ended up being a No-Go zone. As for domains and travel, yeah they've always been inconsistent and more about what would work for the kind of motif a Domain has going for. Though this is miles better than the 2e version where they didn't even care about consistency, so Nova had five moons, and you had the Illithid-control domain with weird skies next to more mundane regions.
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May 15, 2017 00:51
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I think it's "the roads mostly always work unless the domain lord is having a hissy fit, and generally the domain lord also rules the domain and doesn't want to disrupt trade, so only weird tiny domains have regular closings." Anyway, the Vistani get to ignore those rules and go where they want.
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May 15, 2017 01:02
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Are you going to cover Von Richten's guide to the Vistani? That is pretty stupid even by the standards of racist role playing.
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May 15, 2017 01:06
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Are you going to cover Von Richten's guide to the Vistani? That is pretty stupid even by the standards of racist role playing. Sad thing is, the intent was kind of be... not racist, but it kind of backfired.
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May 15, 2017 03:04
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Ain't that always the case  Are there any RPGs that don't accidentally dehumanise the Roma?
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May 15, 2017 03:09
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Let me tell you about my Homestuck fan character.
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May 15, 2017 03:39
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No one beats White Wolf when it comes to minorities having magic powers, but Ravenloft gave them a run for their money.
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May 15, 2017 03:43
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Ain't that always the case Sadly, I think every RPG that acknowledges their existence tends to play them up as something mystical. Probably does not help that the country that produces the largest amount of RPGs, America, is not popularly aware of the ethnic group as an ethnic group and believes "gyspsy" is a synonym for fortune teller.
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May 15, 2017 03:50
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Covok posted:Sadly, I think every RPG that acknowledges their existence tends to play them up as something mystical. Probably does not help that the country that produces the largest amount of RPGs, America, is not popularly aware of the ethnic group as an ethnic group and believes "gyspsy" is a synonym for fortune teller. Most Americans don't even think the Roma are a thing. Like, don't know they're a real ethnic group facing terrible persecution and reflexive hatred in Europe.
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May 15, 2017 03:59
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Are you going to cover Von Richten's guide to the Vistani? That is pretty stupid even by the standards of racist role playing. I wasn't planning , as I was covering the Whie Wolf 3E update. We'll see if I can keep this pace or fizzle out soon.
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May 15, 2017 04:00
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Ain't that always the case The only one I can think of off the top of my head is The Dracula Dossier, which takes some pains to say that, while there is one Roma clan working for Dracula, it's one clan among a great many, and asking any random Roma on, say, the streets of Bucharest about them will get you angry looks in response. Also while they do have magic powers, it's because they work for Dracula--other groups on the table playing to his tune can access similar powers.
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May 15, 2017 04:12
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Night10194 posted:Most Americans don't even think the Roma are a thing. Like, don't know they're a real ethnic group facing terrible persecution and reflexive hatred in Europe. I'll be serious, as an American, I didn't know they existed either until a friend from Spain pointed it out over the use of my word "gip."
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May 15, 2017 04:37
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Yeah. There are actually a fair-sized Roma population in the US (around a million), but they've integrated very well, and a lot of Roma just don't bring it up. This is understandable, given the prejudice they face in the rest of the world, and the fact that Americans don't really get that Roma are a real ethnicity. They're also not tracked by the census bureau, since Roma is neither a nationality nor a religion..
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May 15, 2017 04:55
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Most awareness I've heard of the Roma in America comes from Gogol Bordello. Which the guy is an outspoken activist about such things so that's good.
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May 15, 2017 05:04
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JackMann posted:Yeah. There are actually a fair-sized Roma population in the US (around a million), but they've integrated very well, and a lot of Roma just don't bring it up. This is understandable, given the prejudice they face in the rest of the world, and the fact that Americans don't really get that Roma are a real ethnicity. They're also not tracked by the census bureau, since Roma is neither a nationality nor a religion.. I'm assuming that's preferable to the stories I hear of how they're treated in Europe. Like, having their houses burned down, being run out of town, among many other forms of discrimination.
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May 15, 2017 05:08
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Atlantis has a Roma counterpart culture, which is not surprising considering literally every culture in the game is a thinly-veiled fantasized version of another which is basically a selling point. They weirdly get some stuff right, some stuff wrong, and I think the issue was they tried to both keep some aspect of the Roma as the European nomadic magic wagon people in the game, while also trying to be respectful so there's a bit of iffyness? LIke, they want Roma equivalents, so they try really hard to both not adhere to stereotypes while still adhereing. So, have cake and eat it too syndrome. Good!
Strangely this seems to be the only culture with these problems, the rest being somewhat stereotypical but generally in a positive way, and any mapping of real-world ethnicity being rather broad.
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May 15, 2017 05:29
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The Strigany in Warhams Fantasy get a -10% fellowship when dealing with more settled not-Europeans. Yeah, they're really bad, even for magic fantasy Roma. Meant to be the survivors of the old vampire kingdom of Strigos, bound to serve the Strigoi. All fortune tellers and thieves and wanderers. It's absolutely awful and if I glossed over them some in my review of Night's Dark Masters so far it's because they're as unimportant to the setting/plot as they are incredibly offensive. I love Warhams Fantasy, but I am going to call it out every time it gets crazy racist because the crazy racist stuff slips in more often than I'd like.
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May 15, 2017 05:32
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Especially as Van Ritchen's guide is kind of meant to be the character having realization his hatred towards Vistani is terrible and that really, it's a horrid bigotry and going to great pains to fix the slander he has put against them in previous works, but the magical gypsy trope's still in full play.
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May 15, 2017 06:35
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I think Iron Kingdoms has a roma equivalent but at least in my copy of the IK core rules proper they are a throwaway mention of "people from south Immoren-ish who traditionally move in family caravans but many of them are settling down lately." The original d20 rules were substantially more detailed and vaguely racist about the various human ethnic groups, but I think in a way having ethnic/cultural groups makes the setting seem a lot more vivid and quasi-historical.
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May 15, 2017 07:00
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Does Wheel of Time count, since they technically had a (terrible) RPG? I've always thought that the Tinkers were one of the better "Fantasy Roma" groups. They're skilled craftsmen (hence Tinkers), and 100% no-exceptions pacifists. They don't have any mystical powers (or rather, they have magic at the same rate everyone else does, and they immediately ship off their magic users to the White Tower for training rather than having their own magic tradition), and while they have a reputation for being thieves and conmen and child-snatchers it's explicitly and repeatedly shown to be total bullshit that results in horrible violence and discrimination against them. One of the main characters has a long running plot thread with them, with the theme being basically "while I disagree with their ways, the world is better with them in it"
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May 15, 2017 16:35
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Tinkers is kind of a slur for a real thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Travellers
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May 15, 2017 16:47
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Tinkers are just the Sacrifice guys from Ultima.
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May 15, 2017 17:09
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This probably isn't the best thread to ask, but where did the Roma originate?
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May 15, 2017 17:46
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Probably originally India, about a thousand years ago or so. 'Gypsies' was because people thought they came from Egypt.
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May 15, 2017 17:52
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Yeah, Northern India. The Romani languages have very similar vocabulary to languages in the area and grammatical similarities (though it also has structures found primarily in the Balkan languages). Roma have genetic markers that strongly suggest ancestry in the region.
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May 15, 2017 18:30
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And yes, that makes Romani closer to "Aryan" than the grand majority of Nazis. Its a fun fact!
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May 15, 2017 18:45
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C'mon if you're going to shoot holes through everything the Nazis based their ideology on we will be here all night.
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May 15, 2017 19:15
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Is it possible to have this concept of a roaming clan or nation of fantasy thieves and fortunetellers without immediately connecting to real world Roma, or is that just a spoiled, ruined-by-racists idea at this point? Maybe swap a part out, so like they are mercenaries and oracles? Or they are predominately priests of the god of journeys? marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 19:49 on May 15, 2017 |
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May 15, 2017 19:47
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