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Kurieg posted:Well I did the math and it's saying Kevin needs to be shot. Awesome, now we just need a 40k commissar cosplayer to pull the trigger for maximum insult to injury.
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Jun 10, 2017 14:29
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That's another thing FFG deserves a lot of praise for in their 40k writing: They were the last people working on that product to get 'Oh right the fascist theocracy is full of terrible people and is destroying the galaxy while loudly proclaiming it's the only hope and the fact that it's filled with a few sympathetic people doesn't really change this' as well as any of the jokes.
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Jun 10, 2017 14:32
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Night10194 posted:Ironclaw, Myriad Song, and maybe even Albedo (depending on tone) are RIGHT THERE for this, after all. you forgot Hc Svnt Dracones
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Jun 10, 2017 14:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:you forgot Hc Svnt Dracones I wish I could hate HSD to death
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Jun 10, 2017 14:53
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gradenko_2000 posted:you forgot Hc Svnt Dracones And what a happy time it was.
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Jun 10, 2017 14:58
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Astute readers may remember there was a throwaway reference to the Achilles Republic having an underground railroad for mutant animals back in South America 2. We'll have slightly more on the notion of a "Animal Underground" later on, but the Coalition will be getting most of the page count.
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Jun 10, 2017 14:59
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Night10194 posted:I wish I could hate HSD to death This is the only game where the author heard of and listened to our show and then asked us to either not cover it or to be nice if we did. We weren't really considering it because it's in print and important to the guy. What's funny is I've read it and I wouldn't be nearly as mean to it as he probably thought. It's furry fetish material, but whatever, everyone's gotta jerk off to something. The combat system is actually sort of cool, and the major thing we'd have really ripped into is the dumb libertarian utopia stuff. Your character having five stats that control their finances, for example.
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Jun 10, 2017 16:00
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The funny thing is, I could see 'finances' as a stat actually working out as an alternative to having a money system in a game. "I have 5 points in being rich, so I just roll against that to bribe this guy." could work out. E: And yes, I hate HSD for the libertopia nonsense more than anything else.
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Jun 10, 2017 16:18
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Night10194 posted:The funny thing is, I could see 'finances' as a stat actually working out as an alternative to having a money system in a game. "I have 5 points in being rich, so I just roll against that to bribe this guy." could work out. That's how "Credit Rating" works in Call Of Cthulhu, considering that you're supposedly playing ordinary middle-class folks who have been holding a job down for a few years, if not a tenured profession or possess a small personal fortune. Unless you're buying cars all the the loving time like a Fast & Furious movie, getting most equipment in that sort of setting or a modern game is more about availability and legality than money. A similar note is that they do something similar in Eclipse Phase with the reputation system, where your rep with various factions may allow you to parlay favors and resources, with much of the cost of everything being listed as such. BTW, ironjef, when are you going to do Eclipse Phase? I know you and John reviewed the 1st edition Dark Heresy game when the 2nd edition was announced, so I figure when with the Kickstarter for EP 2nd Edition pretty much already funded and the game in open testing, it would definitely qualify for the System Mastery lookover. You could probably do a mini-review of HSD while doing that as well.
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Jun 10, 2017 16:45
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Night10194 posted:The funny thing is, I could see 'finances' as a stat actually working out as an alternative to having a money system in a game. "I have 5 points in being rich, so I just roll against that to bribe this guy." could work out.
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Jun 10, 2017 16:58
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The thing that pisses me off the most about HSD is how inconsistent it is with it's lego science. It's obvious that it's fetish material but it's also ludicrously insistent that certain things are not possible in HSD world, for bizarre reasons. Like robo-men being able to put their robot-DNA into sperm to get not-robot women pregnant. But not-robot men can't do the same thing to robot women. Also there's no Owls, except when there are, but those are special cases, because all owls are evil, except for the ones that aren't. And robots don't need fuel or to eat, but they do need oxygen.
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Jun 10, 2017 17:01
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I could even see two. (Money you can get your hands on quickly for standard purchases, and money you can't for slower large-scale purposes, but could burn the rating to get in a hurry - long-term investments and such.) I can't even guess what five finance stats would be.
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Jun 10, 2017 17:01
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Isn't HSD basically post-scarcity anyway? (I don't feel like looking back to check.)
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Jun 10, 2017 17:03
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Isn't HSD basically post-scarcity anyway? (I don't feel like looking back to check.) Yes, which makes it being hyper-capitalist even funnier.
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Jun 10, 2017 17:06
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Post-scarcity is a silly idea, anyway. I have no doubt that even if we do somehow get "enough" of the resources we need now, we'll find something else we don't have enough of.
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Jun 10, 2017 17:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Isn't HSD basically post-scarcity anyway? (I don't feel like looking back to check.) E: wiegieman posted:Post-scarcity is a silly idea, anyway. I have no doubt that even if we do somehow get "enough" of the resources we need now, we'll find something else we don't have enough of. darthbob88 fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 17:15
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Hey ettin you should repost your thread on the "Primer for Old School Gaming" here. I think you had a pretty honest take that could use more visibility.
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Jun 10, 2017 17:18
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wiegieman posted:Post-scarcity is a silly idea, anyway. I have no doubt that even if we do somehow get "enough" of the resources we need now, we'll find something else we don't have enough of. Well, my point isn't that economics wouldn't be relevant, but that it wouldn't be so relevant as to, say, need five stats... unless that's the singular focus of the game, like with Freemarket.
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Jun 10, 2017 17:40
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darthbob88 posted:That's kinda how things go in Eclipse Phase; even in the far future, when everybody can have all the steak and Armani they want for more-or-less free, there're still a few things that are in limited supply, like skilled human work, novelty, and living space. Also, time. There's a reason why most survivors of the Fall are either in virtual refugee camps or in inferior robot bodies, it's because it takes years to grow a biomorph and there's millions of people in front of them on the waiting lists.
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Jun 10, 2017 17:43
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Prism posted:I could even see two. (Money you can get your hands on quickly for standard purchases, and money you can't for slower large-scale purposes, but could burn the rating to get in a hurry - long-term investments and such.) 1. copper 2. silver 3. electrum 4. gold 5. platinum
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Jun 10, 2017 17:54
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The thing about HSD is that even if you regard it purely on its mechanical merits, it's terribly broken in so many ways. It's about an even mix of ways to completely break the game from chargen onwards and options that are completely terrible(see their not-psionic, not-magic powers for an example). So you've got bad art(except for the exonymphs in the expansion pack, those looked loving rad. Same the rules for them were just... so bad. So very bad.), bad rules and bad writing to top it off.
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Jun 10, 2017 18:06
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It's the fluff that really annoys me. It's just so... adolescent, from the strawman history lessons, to the absolute, dead-set insistence on using someone's goofy hobby horses like cuil 'theory', creepypasta wank and 'there's a spire of solid evil growing from the Earth toward the moon, also owls are uniformly possessed by furry Satan'.
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Jun 10, 2017 18:19
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Night10194 posted:Ironclaw, Myriad Song, and maybe even Albedo (depending on tone) are RIGHT THERE for this, after all. An Ironclaw game that followed a mercenary group right as all the impending wars that the settings sets up go off all at once would be pretty interesting.
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Jun 10, 2017 19:14
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Joe Slowboat posted:I'd just like to chime in that 'Dr. Moreau's Most Lovable PMC' would be a pretty great campaign concept in anything but Rifts. Pugmire meets Mad Max, what's not to love? Grant Morrison's We3? http://comicsalliance.com/we3-comic/
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Jun 11, 2017 03:15
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 Rifts World Book 13: Lone Star - Part Four: "They are especially fancied by adventurers, mercenaries, spies, thieves, assassins, vagabonds, and people living outside the borders of the Coalition States." basically everyone Time for piles of equipment!  Give the dog a Dog Boy Equipment It notes that dog boys are now getting better equipment due to being a proven commodity, and so, shamefully, the book reprints C-18 Laser Pistol, C-14 "Fire Breather", CP-40 Pulse Laser Rifle, C-27 "Light" Plasma Cannon, CS Hand Grenades, Vibro-Blades, Dog Pack Spikes and the Neural Mace. Most of that equipment is already in the corebook, and what wasn't in the corebook was in the previous World Book printed, Coalition War Campaign. We get a variety of Vibro-Blade Vambraces, all of which are illustrated but the only ones you want are the Hooked (bonus to disarm and parry checks) or the Sabre (highest damage and bonus to parry). In fact, I don't see any reason why you couldn't wear one of each and reap all the benefits as necessary.  CN-1 Net Gun. We do get some more notable new equipment, including:
 Soldiers, officer / special forces, and sea / recon helmets, respectively. Dog Pack Body Armor Dog Pack DPM Light Riot Armor has been upgraded from 30 to 50 M.D.C. Dog boys can now wear old-style "Dead Boy" armor, DPM D1 & D21 Dog Boy Armor, which is the corebook Coalition armor retrofitted for them (which seems a lot more work than is practical, but there you have it), complete with doggy-style helms they don't particularly like. Hovercycles What could be more appropriate to a section on mutant animals than suddenly hovercycles. Not even Coalition hovercycles. Just a section on hovercycles. It notes that dog boys like them, I guess? It's very random. It notes that though these are Northern Gun designs, the Coalition has been buying them up and adding an (unstatted) laser or (unstatted) mini-missiles and painting them blue-black with a skull on the front. It seems like a desperate attempt to justify this section, given that the Coalition already has hovercycles. Better ones, too! Coalition equipment: just add skulls. I'm not going to go into too much detail here because this section is unbelievably repetitive. Most of the bikes are the same save for mild differences in M.D.C. values or top speed, not that any of them are even as tough as a suit of personal Coalition armor, so all of them are soft targets. They also can be purchased with electric, combustion, or nuclear engines, because Rifts has a world where you can just plug in any power source into an engine and get the exact same performance. Lastly, they detail an extra price for each bike to have an "armored" option which generally just adds about 20-30 M.D.C. So we have:  Big ol' cyclebutt. NG-300 "Speedster" Hovercycle: The most popular model, goes 220 MPH up to 120' high, gets a bonus to piloting checks, and the description reads like an ad blurb: Rifts World Book 13: Lone Star posted:The Speedster, produced by Northern Gun, is one of the fastest, Rifts World Book 13: Lone Star posted:... handles like a dream. Rifts World Book 13: Lone Star posted:Northern Gun's masterful sales campaign, the vehicle's unique styling, excellent handling and frequent (typically 2-4 times a year) special promotions offering the vehicle at a 10-20% discount (for a limited time only!) and/or with an easy payment plan have made it common throughout the North American continent, outselling the nearest competitor 4 to 1. Fine, I'll buy one already, can I move the gently caress on now?  Hovercycle or hobby horse? MI-3000 "Firefly" Hovercycle This is the Manistique Imperium competitor to the NG-300, goes 190 MPH up to 60' high, gets a bonus to piloting, but can wallride and gets lasers and mini-missiles at an upcharge. The Coalition doesn't use these Manistique Imperium bikes, despite being an Imperium ally.  Perez makes me interested in hovercycles!... momentarily. Rad! MI-2010 Desert Fox These is their low-maintenance model designed for use in rough and desert landscapes. It gets a smaller bonus to pioting, and goes 170 MPH up to 80' high. One weapon can be added at an upcharge. Ho-hum.  Breaux is alright but this these look like just motorcycles - wheels = hovercycles. NG-220 Rocket This is a high-speed bike that goes up to 340 MPH up to 1000' but has a bunch of surprisingly massive piloting penalties, and is considered to be an outmoded model. In the Siembiedan fashion of making random bits and bobs into weapons, he explains some of the directional jet ports are actually disguised ion guns! Mmhm. Some are just directional jet ports, though. Extra weapons can be added at an upcharge. The Coalition doesn't like this bike. Do we care? I don't.  Well, some of them look like mini x-wings. Or is that Battlestar Galactica...? NG-230 Prowler Mainly notable for its "whisper quiet" feature, this doesn't make much noise at low speeds and can be used to sneak for those that might not notice a 7' flying bike. It goes up to 190 MPH up to 700' high, comes with a terrible laser, and can have weapons tacked on. The Coalition kinda likes this bike. If you care.  Others just look like mecha-Snoopy to me. NG-400 Stinger 250 MPH, 200' high, has a piloting penalty that increases the more weapons you add. It doesn't seem anything is too special other than you can add more weapons than usual? The Coalition likes this a lot, which I'm not sure why, it's a bit crap.  Insert clever blurb here I guess, ugh. NG-480 Turbo Goes at 220 MPH up to 400', can slap on weapons, this is one of the slowest Northern Gun bikes. You shame the name of Turbo, Northern Gun. It does give a piloting bonus, though, as Siembieda uses the term "handles like a dream" as if it had any meaning after its constant numbing repetition across constant vehicle descriptions. How do you know what my dreams are like, Siembieda? Maybe I'm really clumsy in them. You don't know me!  "How do I land with this weight on my back? I'm not a Juicer! Um... poo poo!" CS Death Wing Air Assault Armor Wait, this isn't a hovercycle. But not one to be bound by his chapter headings, basic organization, or not using up random art left over from the last book, we get a VTOL (because every aircraft in Rifts is a fuckin' VTOL) jet pack... armor... thing that's just a mess of intakes and thrusters pointed in completely perpendicular directions. In any case, the "Wing" was originally used as a recon craft that flew high and used sensors but has weapons added on, so now it's the "Death Wing"! So clever. Like its toyetic design suggests, the wing can detach and the pilot can cybernetically (it's presumed pilots will have the requisite cybernetics) control it. The armor is special power armor that locks, which is presumably how you can lug something that looks like the size of a small car on your back and don't flop around like Garry's Mod when flying around. It's retconned that the Vallax aliens stole this design to make the Icarus Flight System back in Juicer Uprising but- why, why would you need to retcon that So this is about as tough as a SAMAS (but you can directly target the pilot on a called shot) but much faster at 600 MPH, and the special power armor is needed to take the speed. It has a battery of wing lasers that actually do really solid damage, arm lasers you'll never use, a rail gun or mini-missiles on top (pick the missiles), and can carry hand weapons. The only really fancy part other than the speed is the sensor system which has pretty much every vision type Siembieda could think of except for x-ray. And the equipment section is mercifully over. Time to get back to... Next: The Mighty Mutanimals.
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Jun 11, 2017 06:50
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Obviously Dog Boys should be in cars so they can stick their heads out of the windows, not hovercycles. Jesus Christ, Kevin, get your head in the game. wiegieman posted:Post-scarcity is a silly idea, anyway. I have no doubt that even if we do somehow get "enough" of the resources we need now, we'll find something else we don't have enough of.
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Jun 11, 2017 07:20
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Nessus posted:Obviously Dog Boys should be in cars so they can stick their heads out of the windows, not hovercycles. Jesus Christ, Kevin, get your head in the game. But hovercycles means they get to wear doggles. Also how does the coalition maintain these dozens and dozens of redundant vehicle designs? What army needs FIVE different hover cycle types?
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Jun 11, 2017 07:27
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Cassa posted:But hovercycles means they get to wear doggles. Alternately if you wanted to no-prize it, there was widespread advanced industrial machinery allowing for rapid production of custom stuff and so having this model confusion is only a mild annoyance in terms of parts stockpiles, not a critical strategic weakness (at least, as long as they're not too far from the Coalition.)
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Jun 11, 2017 07:39
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Cassa posted:Also how does the coalition maintain these dozens and dozens of redundant vehicle designs? What army needs FIVE different hover cycle types? You'll note the dire lack of skulls on each of these bikes. They're going to keep putting our tenders for new designs until someone gets it right.
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Jun 11, 2017 07:50
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Cassa posted:But hovercycles means they get to wear doggles. You can always take the original Gundam approach and attribute the massive number of enemy vehicle designs to massive mismanagement and dumb internal competition in the design and procurement of the military as a WW II German parallel, but that's a bit too self aware about gear porn for Rifts.
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Jun 11, 2017 08:03
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Look, these are all strategically viable options that can fill specific roles. Sometimes you need to go 170 miles per hour at 60 feet above the ground, sometimes you need to go 190 at 50. And you can't just have a bike that goes up to 190 at up to 60, that's crazy talk.
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Jun 11, 2017 09:43
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 Aethera Campaign Setting Part Eleven - Amrita Belt & Seraos The Amrita asteroid belt is familiar to anyone who knows about asteroid belts: A loose conglomeration of small worldlets, the largest around 400 miles in diameter. It consists of two rough areas. The Range contains most of the settled asteroids, and their various orbits take them close enough to the Seraos Gate Hub that it only takes a two or three week trip to get there. The remainder make up the Fringe, generally tiny outposts that are out of range of anything except farcaster broadcasts for years. Pre-Collapse, Amrita was the Progenitor homeworld. It literally shook itself apart in a series of earthquakes, with much of the debris being swallowed by an eruption from the Plane of Air that appeared in the orbital path. This eventually settled into the gas giant Seraos, as the remainder of debris spread out into the asteroid belt. The unquiet souls of the billions of Progenitors that died in the cataclysm still linger, making the Amrita Belt a hotspot for incorporeal undead encounters. And also the taur. Most of the taur sightings today are in the Belt, as they attack outposts and steal the occasional asteroid. More than three-quarters of the Amrita asteroids remain unexplored, but it does seem odd that five thousand ships could just hide among them, doesn’t it? Most of the Belt is a lawless hive of scum and villainy, although remote scientific outposts conduct various black or grey research, and asteroid mining is a lucrative business in two ways: First is the raw materials, of course. Second is the use of the mining tunnels in the cleared rock as habitation space. The economy among the asteroids is primarily a barter system, with aetheric power being used for actual power more often than as currency, and survival resources like air being considered community property. Also related to the economy is the prevalence of space pirates. The sheer amount of shipping going back and forth to supply far-flung settlements attracts pirates, who will often take up the routes themselves, charging the settlements protection money for the delivery of vital supplies. This occasionally results in settlements attacking the pirates, taking back their own supplies, and charging protection money from the other outposts in the supply line. It’s a big cycle. Many of the smaller settlements in the Belt are short-lived, dependent on the vagaries of commercial shipping and smuggling, and if supplies dry up a settlement may just die off, leaving an abandoned station if you’re lucky, or a population of allips, shadows, and wraiths if not. Phalanx are very common in the Belt, as Akasaati mining concerns hired war veterans seeking a new life, who coincidentally didn’t need food, water, or air. This was naturally an unpopular decision with the human workers thus displaced, and human/ As a lawless frontier, the Amrita Belt is a marvelous place to adventure, with dangers both predictable and unexpected. They don’t fall into the common space opera trap of having the entire belt be crowded with rocks. From any given asteroid, it may be difficult to spot another asteroid with the naked eye. Still, dust and micrometeorites can pose a threat to aetherships traveling at speed, even in the charted spacelanes. Additionally, aetheric currents of telekinetic force from the star Aethera swirl and eddy through the Belt, snatching rocks into grinding swarms that simulate the pop culture idea of an asteroid belt and can devastate a ship, starting at 8d6 damage per minute with bonus dice based on the speed the ship’s traveling at. Pirates and undead are common threats, as well as elementals drifting into the Belt from the orbit of Seraos and space-faring creatures like mi-go and shantak. Extreme heat and cold feature on the surface of asteroids, and the threat of aetherite radiation looms over everyone who seeks the radioactive soulstuff. Additionally, the scouring of dust and micrometeorites causes sandstorm conditions to exposed creatures and wears away slowly at unprotected objects. There are a number of notable locations in the Belt. Ballast Center is a roped-together conglomeration of aetherships that functions as a wandering independent supply depot. Its leader has no tolerance for piracy, making the ramshackle “ship” a decently safe place. Bastion of Unity was a spiritual retreat for infused, started by a group of infused deserters in the wreckage of their last space battle on an asteroid. Everyone on the colony disappeared mysteriously, as well as everyone attempting to resettle on the asteroid and the occasional ship just passing by. The Ethereal Temple is a monastery established in a Progenitor ruin. The monastery’s leader (A phalanx named Allegro) and his followers believe the installation is a temple to the Progenitors, and activating it further may help reveal the secret behind the Collapse. Unfortunately, he is entirely wrong, and an ancient Progenitor security system is going to be activated shortly due to his poking around. The Heart of Many is a drifting biological horror. Encased in an asteroid is a heart-like mass surrounded by giant amoebas, tunnels of flesh and writhing cilia, seas of blood, and fleshy abominations. Those approaching the asteroid are often afflicted with horrible transformations and a compulsion to reach the Heart at all costs. The initial discovery of the Heart by the Hierarchy claimed 89 lives and prompted an expedition of six battlecruisers to bombard and destroy it. Unfortunately, it simply reformed in a month. Now they rely on farcaster beacons dropped in a 1,000-mile radius, about half of which have been dismantled by pirates and scavengers. Have I mentioned yet that Aethera is meant to be a horror setting? I think it does it well, and the horror elements are firmly enough on the periphery that you can just have awesome space opera adventures. The horror will simply be on the sidelines. Watching. Judging. Sol’s Landfill is a junkyard formed in an eddy of an aetheric current, the dumping ground for dozens of surrounding settlements and mining colonies. The detritus left behind has begun to animate as tsukumogami (Basically intelligent animated objects) which have formed factions and begun to war amongst each other. They tend to lie dormant when more traditional intelligences arrive to dump more trash, but some will stalk and ambush explorers, hoping to recruit their possessions into their armies. The Cosmic Inferno is an asteroid with its own atmosphere thanks to a Progenitor artifact. Covered in a beautiful opalescent desert, the Cosmic Inferno features secluded valleys blanketed with purple flowers known as glories, which can be processed into a drug that boosts physical strength at the cost of sanity. The inhabitants of this asteroid are rumored to use this drug heavily, resulting in roaming bands of war-hungry nomads that slaughter the hell out of each other and the occasional crime syndicate that tries to raid the flowers for their own drug trade. The souls of this slaughter are utilized for unknown purposes by a small population of catrina psychopomps on the asteroid. Galaxy IX was a Hierarchy battlecruiser disabled by an erahthi surprise attack in 3987. After it was stripped of useful parts, the hull was left to drift and was drawn into the Amrita Belt. It was eventually found by a deserter named Syjan Bellaria, who operated a large Rider cell disguised as a salvage crew. They’d provided early warning for settlements near conflict zones and provided news of the war’s progress from both sides of the line. Thus, the discovery of the Galaxy IX was a massive windfall. She sacrificed seven of her ships to restore the battlecruiser to working order, turning it into a massive broadcast station. Today it broadcasts political diatribes, current news, and music from new and experimental artists. It’s a pretty big thorn in the sides of both the Hierarchy and Complex Four.  Syjan Bellaria, like an angry Lucio. Speaking of which! Complex Four  I got no jokes, I actually really like the way this place looks. Most people in the Belt come through Complex Four, to stay or just as a jumping-off point to reach another asteroid. It’s a nexus for the dregs of society, home to roughly 621,000 souls (79% human, 16% phalanx, 4% infused, 1% other) and run by several crime syndicates. It’s also loving overrun with vigilantes. Complex Four began as a mining operation by the Blue Star Mining Corporation. In the aetherite shortage prior to the Century War, Blue Star staked claims on dozens of asteroids throughout the belt, sending out prospectors whose job was to find aetherite, then prep the site for settlers from Akasaat. The asteroid Dalia - named after Dalia Gardener, the first prospector to explore its surface - was the only one of 17 prospected in 3920 to hold sufficient aetherite reserves to justify an expensive offworld mining operation. 260 colonial miners arrived on the newly-christened Complex Four in 3923, and lost contact in 3925. A recon team dispatched by Blue Star discovered the miners’ aetherships destroyed from within, half the miners dead of a riot, and the other half missing. A suicide note from the foreman of Complex Four revealed the mine was a loss and none of the reported aetherite veins existed. Dalia herself had apparently disappeared into the ravine below Complex Four after sabotaging the food supplies and aetherships. She was never found. The recon team discovered that as the miners attempted to find the aetherite veins, they’d broken through into an ocean of strange radioactive slurry produced by giant amoeba locked in pockets in the asteroid. The experimental data on this fluid was reported to the Hierarchy and lead the leader of the recon team, one Bassal Harper, to become a key contributor to the Paragon Project. The Blue Star Mining Corporation made several more attempts to reclaim the site and eke some profit from it, but it was declared abandoned after a year and left that way until 3950, when the Hierarchy contracted them to reclaim the asteroid and mining facility, and reopen experimentation into the weird protoplasm. Two days after touching down, the team of scientists and mercenaries came under assault from a horde of undead accidentally released from one of the protoplasm-filled cysts. The Blue Star corporate officers fled when the undead breached the defensive perimeter, and the captain of the mercenary company fell in the assault, but a low-ranking officer named Rushel Undertaker took charge and put forth a plan to repurpose the old mining equipment to hold off the undead. Some of the mercenaries instead tried to reactivate one of the original miners’ aetherships and escape (unsuccessfully), but those who followed Rushel battled the undead for hours and emerged, surprisingly, victorious. 9 months later, the Blue Star Mining Corporation returned to assess the site, finding that in that time Rushel Undertaker had developed delusions of grandeur, whipped his ragtag group into an effective militia, and declared independence from the company that abandoned them. They used harpoon cannons (intended for tethering asteroids to be mined) to trap the Blue Star aetherships while squads climbed up the cables to secure the aetherships and slaughter the crews. Six more attempts by Blue Star to reclaim the asteroid were tried and failed, driving the corporation to financial ruin. Undertaker seized the title of the corporation like a war trophy, declaring himself undisputed head of the Blue Star Consortium. The Consortium quickly resorted to piracy to flesh out their otherwise scarce resources, and was rapidly rolling in dough. Discovery of massive deposits of the air-elemental metal aeronite (A vital component of life-support systems) nearby allowed the Consortium to establish legitimate business interests in Complex Four and allow actual settlers into the place. Certain rich and influential Akasaati families attempted to take over Complex Four after Rushel’s success began to spread, but Rushel’s knowledge of the Amrita region and the asteroid itself let him hand the families sound defeats and cement the Consortium’s grasp on Complex Four. Unaccustomed to governance and seeing an influx of war veterans, bohemians, and miners, the Consortium attempted to replicate the Hierarchy government, unsuccessfully. After a while, the loose-knit criminal organizations making up the Consortium began trying to edge Rushel out of the organization. In response, he lead his militia in a campaign of door-kicking and head-shooting that cemented his grasp, and his alone, over Complex Four. The smaller gangs kept their heads down and bent the knee to Rushel, and he allowed these gangs - Cleaver Seven, the Hierophants, Phantasm, and the Dead Collective - to take up some of the power vacuum and establish an uneasy equilibrium. But by 3974, Rushel was showing signs of age and the heads of the smaller crime families were moving resources into place for a bloody coup, manipulated by Hierarchy infiltrators trying to take the whole ball of wax. He couldn’t just do like he did previously, massacres would just strengthen the resolve of the young to topple him. So he struck on an ingenious plan: Superheroes. Taking up the vigilante mantle of Crimson Fortune, he hid his face behind a mask and posed as a well-meaning retired war veteran looking to clean up Complex Four. Within months, dozens of armed and masked vigilantes were swarming the streets, battling the evil of the crime syndicates. Forced to put aside their coup plans to deal with these caped crusaders, the crime families stopped being such a threat to Rushel’s rule. If a family got too powerful, Crimson Fortune would lead vigilantes in a crusade against them personally, and if a vigilante got too close to the truth, information about their secret identity would leak to the crime families, who would be more than happy to take them out. However, Rushel is still growing older, and Crimson Fortune’s appearances grow shorter and further apart, leaving room for a legitimate inheritor to take up the mantle of actual justice. As with any hive of scum and villainy, you need your cantina band, and Complex Four is home to the best music scene in the solar system. Clubs of all sorts spring up like mushrooms after a spring rain, only to close again months later as the economic wind blows another way. The music scene, known as the Complex Culture, is one of Complex Four’s most valuable exports, providing songs on the topics of loss, industrial struggle, and life on the edge of the Gulf. Rushel Undertaker’s Blue Star Consortium is not a government in the strictest sense. Most of the local power is provided by small gangs and crime families, governing their own small fiefdoms with whatever rules and traditions they see fit. As long as it doesn’t interfere with Rushel’s plans, they’re tolerated, and anyone with enough charisma or power could carve out their own little bit of Complex Four.  ”I want youse to put a hit out on the guy what designed this booth.” Let’s see, factions in Complex Four. There’s the Blue Star Consortium, of course. There’s the vigilantes, known collectively as the Champions of Amrita. Disorganized and without a single leader, the most recognizable among them are known as Meteor, Velocity Justice, and Star Ghost. All three are around 5th level. There’s also the four main crime syndicates. Cleaver Seven is mostly concerned with space piracy and patrols the space around Complex Four. Phantasm mostly concerns itself with smuggling and the black market, operating out of a classy nightclub. The Hierophants are religious extremists who believe the Score can be used to get rich. They mostly focus on the most desperate and hopeless of immigrants for new recruits. And the Dead Collective operates as a spy organization while the leader secretly attempts to contact a psychic presence within the asteroid. This is surely a plan without flaw or possibility of error. The text here contradicts the statblock on Complex Four, because here the crime bosses are listed as being around 5th level, but the statblock puts them in the 7 to 9 range, with Rushel being 10th level. Either way, I like it. I’m of the firm opinion that an NPC should be only as powerful as the plot demands, and most of the time, any mechanical gimmick you need them to have comes online around 5th level, 10 at the latest. The Harper Foundation is a civic organization dedicated to medical research. Established by Bassal Harper and currently run by his granddaughter Nataalys (although not with the standard hereditary chain of inheritance that statement implies), the Foundation performs typical medical research while also secretly looking into the Paragon Project and the infused as well as the protoplasm lurking in the asteroid. Foreign governments just get lumped under one header. The Hierarchy has no official presence and any agents are rapidly snuffed out, leaving the government to make unfavorable deals in secret with the Consortium. The Tritarch Dominion has no diplomatic presence, and the vast majority of erahthi in the Complex are casteless. The Paragon Dominion, however, provides some official support and unofficially hires the pirates when they need some wetwork. The Paragons supply aethertech and medical research to the Harper Foundation in the belief that the Foundation may be able to solve the problem of infused longevity and rediscover some of the lost secrets of the Paragon Project.  And we’re back to unhelpful maps. Being a hive of scum and villainy whose primary power groups are small gangs and larger crime families, the general environs of Complex Four are not well cared for, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anything that’s not leaking, rusty, or broken in some fashion. The Commerce District (1) is the physical and social heart of the metropolis, a massive vertical mall of neon-lit shops and open plazas surrounding an open central air shaft. It has its own water cycle, as steam constantly rises from the lower floors, drizzling down as rain every ten or twelve hours. The foggy and moldy lower levels cover the business dealings of the more notorious criminals, and assassinations, drugs, and slaves can all be arranged for here. The quality of life and theoretical legitimacy of goods and services increases somewhat as you get higher in the district, with street performers and aethership taxis plying their trades until you hit the highest floors, under a dome of alchemically-treated glass that used to allow a gorgeous view of the stars. Nightclubs and bars occupy these upper floors. The place is basically the best Space Noir Chinatown and I love it. There are three docking arms (2) serving as public airlocks and hosting numerous bars, inns, restaurants, homes, markets, and warehouses. The middle arm features a menagerie of imported animals, and the longest lower arm is the only place aetherite can be shipped and stored, and that only in the end of the arm so explosions don’t endanger the other arms. Below the Low Dock lies the industrial district (3), full of factories and refineries including the Bullet Emporium, the largest manufacturer of firearms and ammo in Complex Four, and staffed exclusively by phalanx. The residential district is separated into the Middle Wards (4) and Upper Wards (5). The Middle Wards are overcrowded slums that have regular outbreaks of airborne disease leading to quarantine lockdowns, while the Upper Wards hold the more well-to-do crime bosses and upscale clubs. And deep below the city lies the Deep Sector (6), the tunnels dug by the early aetherite miners that broke into the protoplasm cysts. The rock here also features strange, petrified undead fused with the walls. Seraos   I think this map is actually more useful than the one of Akasaat. The gas giant Seraos is inhospitable, with a toxic atmosphere that reaches crushing pressures once you’re out of the relatively-gentle surface layers. So of course people keep trying to plumb its depths. The atmosphere counts as an inhaled poison that does Constitution damage, the DC starts at 15 and gets higher the deeper you go. In the second layer, unprotected aetherships are crushed by the pressure. Once you’re into the third layer, the atmosphere becomes a fluid. Gravity is also funky. In the outer layer, Yehdre, gravity is low and subjective: With a Wisdom check you can alter which direction is “down” for you. In Landrist, gravity is closer to normal and towards the center of the planet, with the exception of rare, but consistent, pockets of breathable atmosphere, which may have zero gravity or may have fixed objective gravity pulling towards the contents of the pocket. In Vorsaag, gravity is a killer, dealing 20d6 damage every round (A DC 30 Fort save halves this). No one knows what conditions await at the core, but scholars theorize a gentle realm of still air and gorgeous clouds around the rift to the Plane of Air. I am skeptical. Adventuring in Seraos requires one to be mindful and prepared for all these conditions, and there’s a significant amount of competition for the calmest regions to scavenge. The most successful of these scavengers, though, are often the most helpful, because surviving these conditions tends to drive home that hey, anyone could get hauled down by a stray gravitic current or swarmed by air elementals or something, maybe help people so they help you. There is a relatively easier way, though. The Stormflow is a planet-spanning storm system of breathable air dredged up from the core that brings wreckage and debris up with it. Consisting of multiple “canyons” of air separated by walls of hurricane-force winds (20d6 per round, Fort DC 30 half), this is actually a decent adventuring locale, sufficient even for first-level characters. Otherwise, there are a few interesting places to visit in the neighborhood. Those coming through the Seraos Gate Hub will find themselves at the community of Fractured Gate, a mostly-phalanx community that sprang up on the icy asteroid the Gate Hub is embedded in. This community is in a tenuous equilibrium, allowed to maintain autonomy because the Century Accords declared no signatory could lay complete claim to any Gate Hub, and not ruled by the Blue Star Consortium (Notably not a signatory of the Century Accords) because they have treaties with them. The Lorynth Spire is a massive Progenitor structure six miles wide and thousands of miles tall that lurks in the reaches of Yehdre until the Stormflow reveals it every 9 months. Two Hierarchy expeditions to it have been attempted, one that simply observed it for 4 hours until the Seraos miasma swallowed it back up, and one that actually explored the interior for four days, charting 18 miles of maintenance-like tunnels and conduits until they encountered swarms of mechanical guardians that reduced nine members of the expedition to bloody slurry and seriously injured the remainder. Interestingly, there is an artificial satellite in orbit around Seraos, the Sphere, that is scheduled to pass directly over the Spire in 4009. Most of the scientists studying either structure believe this trajectory (A 330-year cycle) is not coincidental, but have no evidence either way. The satellite itself is one of those sideline horror things. Perfectly spherical, 10 miles in diameter, no way to get or see inside, even through magic, and attempting to read it through psychometry makes your head explode.  The Radiant Beacon, gone dark and mostly just beckoning people to their deaths. The Lost Fleet is the setting’s own Flying Dutchman. In the middle of the Century War, humanity developed aethership dreadnoughts, massive ships the size of a small city. One of these, the H.A.V. Radiant Beacon, was assigned to the space around Seraos and disappeared seven months after arrival, along with its contingent of eight frigates and four battlecruisers, leaving only a brief garbled transmission. Today, explorers occasionally register fleeting radar echoes matching old Hierarchy designs in the clouds. Those wishing to know more should consult the adventure Beacon in the Black. Which I will be covering later. Seraos has twelve legitimate moons: Axiom, Behemoth, Glint, Hope, Ion, Kassik, Latheer, Monument, Optima, Shard, Sharek, and Vandal, plus however many shepherd moons hang around its ring system. Mostly they are uninteresting balls of rock that barely have their own gravity. There’s a few things listed as being of interest on a few of the moons, but nothing really exciting. The Hierarchy does maintain a zero-g training facility on Axiom, though. On the more interesting front, an unassuming ball of rock and ice in one of the rings hides a Progenitor ruin that has been repurposed as the Sanctuary of the Everlasting Tempest, a monastery whose population consists entirely of humans and air-halfbreed sylphs. Quite a lot of sylphs, actually. The monastery’s master (A sylph mesmerist (cult leader archetype)) has developed some way of attaining a higher sylph birthrate than elsewhere in the neighborhood. He intends to use this growing army of sylphs to penetrate the core of Seraos and attain for himself the power of a Progenitor. Whether this is possible or not is unknown. And Atheer-Ohn rounds out the gazeteer here. It’s listed very thoroughly, with a map and everything, which I will not be recreating. Atheer-Ohn is an erahthi bioweapons research facility whose director (Thyr-Al, a lawful evil 13th-level fighter) has gone rogue. The purpose of the facility is to develop an erahthi equivalent to the Paragon Project. Set up secretly, most of the Dominion thinks the crew that went out there and the occasional scouting party for resupply just went missing with all hands. When peace broke out, Thyr-Al rejected the truce with humanity and the order to shut down his research, and in fact only a few in his inner circle even know the war is over, most of the researchers are still working happily to crush humanity. They’ve actually developed a few interesting things, like weaponized spores that cause infected targets to break out in tangling vines, and symbionts that clone the bearer. The experiments infusing erahthi with aetherite or trying to hybridize them with captured phalanx have so far been mostly unsuccessful, however. Next up, we have another bug hunt.
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Jun 11, 2017 10:45
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Hell yeah. That guy in the middle is LOVING IT.
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Jun 11, 2017 15:57
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Dragonmech: Steam Warriors: The Tick Tock Man Before we get to clockwork PCs, we should discuss the religion of the coglings. The Great Engine they worship requires them to be LN, N or CN, and gives them access to the domains of Engine and Spirit. They work like normal clerics, but also get access to a bunch of spirit-focused spells that clerics normally don't. Their favored weapon is a hammer of any kind, and they have no really consistent symbol. They construct the Talking Gods - essentially, a way to tap into the spirits of the gear forest. They use the spell Awaken Construct to build a god, though these gods aren't always very bright, and their persona is more tied to the cleric's personality than the spirit they are meant to embody...so it's an open question if the clerics make the god or just allow it to express itself. Still, the clerics believe in it, and consult with their gods on all kinds of issues. The gods are Tiny mechanical sculptures worth at least 100 gp - or more, if you want a bigger one. It takes several days to make, and must be shaped by use of Cogling Engine Talk as well. Once made, it must then be turned into a construct, then have Awaken construct cast on it. The spell is a level 7 one for cogling clerics, a level 6 one for constructors and a level 5 for Shintaiji spirit stealers, who aren't in this book. It gets Int 3d6+(1/5 caster levels), plus at least one language you know. The Talking God, once made, is part of the gear forest, and identifies as such. It can sense what the rest of the gear forest perceives, insofar as it can perceive anything. For example, if a crumble bug infestation happens, it can direct them to the source of pain for the engine. Not all of these communications are clear or easily interpreted, however, as the Talking Gods are stationary, blind and not humanoid. They spend a lot of time chatting with their clerics, so often know many of the tribe's secrets and, if they live long enough, become a communal library of sorts. No cogling will ever knowingly harm a Talking God, though it isn't exactly easy for an outsider to tell one even exists beyond being a pile of random parts. More recently, coglings have begun working on what they call 'elder engines' - the spirit of a deceased cogling cleric put into a Talking God by use of the Rebuild Soul spell, which lets you shove a soul into a construct. It's a practice that honors great clerics, and while it imprisons the soul in what is basically a useless body, the dead cleric is technically revived and can communicate. Elder Engines, as these are called, have two minds - that of the god and that of the cleric. They are rare, and only two are known to exist. The first is aboard Durgan-lok, and the other is hidden aboard an Irontooth kabuto mech named White Swan. It is believed that there may be a sentient tract of gear forest in the citymech Goria, but the coglings that live there believe this to be false. So far, no Talking God has ever had more than a single soul put in it, and it's unclear what would happen if a second casting of Rebuild Soul occurred. It might force the old soul out, trigger a battle, or it might put both of them in the same machine. Anyway, tik'toks, AKA Gearmen. No one is really sure where they came from, but they first showed up around 50 years ago, and even they claim not to know from where. There are a few theories. Some believe they're the result of magical experiments in granting life to constructs, perhaps as a side effect of the first attempts to make animated mechs. Some believe they are the harbingers of Dotrak, to ready the world for the merging of flesh and metal. Some say they're an unintended side effect of the creation of animated or undead mechs, caused by arcane 'bleed.' Some believe they are reincarnated souls, given a new form due to the very recent adoption of steam engines (on a historical timescale, anyway). Some say that they are the divinely gifted children of steamborgs, a new race able to procreate on their own now. Some believe they are the result of a cosmic need for order and balance, an adaptation to represent the social and technological shift of mechs and steamtech. And, of course, some believe that they are the trapped souls of the dead or perhaps living sacrifices, kept from their rightful home in the afterlife. Tik'toks lack gender entirely, with their shape, appearance and size based on the whims of their 'parents'. Some may appear or sound gendered, but they possess no physical sex whatsoever and usually do not identify as any particular gender. This is often confusing and unsettling for other races, but to the tik'toks it is normal. Their society is meritocratic, with the idea that each must earn their place in the community. They have no concept of family beyond that required to rear a child long enough for it to survive on its own, though some parents do take pride (or shame) in their child's actions. Once a tik'tok has found their place, however, they have as much weight in tik'tok society as any other, regardless of age. Tik'toks tend to be quiet, reclusive and even-tempered, but graceful and inquisitive. They view logic in the way many other races view faith, and approach everything with a goal of being logical in their methods. They are mainly inventors and explorers, especially towards technology. They are cold, calculating and controlled, rather than passionate and instinctive. Most have no desire for wealth or influence, and while they can feel emotions such as friendship or fear, these emotions are often suppressed and controlled. Most tik'toks are around 3 feet tall and between 50 and 70 pounds, made of gears, hydraulics and engines. Unlike most constructs, they are vulnerable to critical hits as most of their inner workings are exposed to air, and they are quite delicate for machines of their size. They are pacifistic by inclination and try to get along with others when possible, even if it means moving away from people that won't work with them. Peace and survival matter more to them than land. However, they do know that others will try to exploit them and their skills, so they try to maintain a certain distance from others. They also know that, like steamborgs, they are sometimes feared and seen as alien and monstrous. Their aversion to most religions doesn't help matters there. Orcs have taken, lately, to trying to capture and enslave tik'toks as weaponsmiths and engineers, which has a tendency to drive the quiet machines mad. Other tik'toks will generally kill these when they meet them, as a mercy towards the incurably mad. Tik'toks tend to be neutral and interested in studying the world. They mostly live in mountainous regions to get at the minerals there, especially as they have no need to grow food. They are not born, after all, but created. Reproduction, for the tik'tok, is seen as a matter of rational thought as much as instinct, and a parent will construct their child when they feel the need - a need that usually comes in later years, though they can survive for upwards of 600 to a thousand years before winding down. Most never build more than two offspring, though that's not a hard and fast rule. They will raise their children for a few years, then send them on their way. The design of a child is entirely in the hands of the parent, who usually spends months carefully selecting every piece of their prospective offspring with care. If they receive help from another in any wy, the attempt at creation fails automatically. Once the baby is assembled, the parent, quote, "mysteriously imparts a portion of its essence into the child, bringing it to life." Most of these attempts do not work, and a parent that fails at constructing a child may grieve for decades before trying again.  Tik'toks have trouble understanding religious belief and extreme difficulty in bridging the gap that is required to believe in something unseen and unproven. Even divine magic, to them, is merely an example of arcane magic with belief overlaid on it. This also prevents them from understanding the philosophies of druids...but they do believe in one thing: Dotrak. Tik'toks do not believe Dotrak is a god, however, but use the name to refer to the universal force that allows machinery and science to function in a regular fashion. Divinity, they claim, is fickle and irregular, but Dotrak is a constant. Among themselves, tik'toks speak Mekanik, a language of whistles, clicks and gear buzzing. It can be learned by other languages, but it is extremely difficult (and costs twice as many skill points as usual). Tik'toks often have trouble with normal language, and often mix up grammatical order and tense, which can make conversing with them a chore. Tik'toks get -2 Str, -2 Cha, +2 Int and +2 Wis. They are Small, have a base speed of 30 feet and use a d10 HD regardless of class. They lack a Constitution score entirely, and get no HP modifiers from it as a result beyond the initial +10 HP for being Small constructs. They do, however, get a +2 natural armor bonus to AC, +2 to Profession (engineer) checks, +2 to any skill checks related to clockwork, gears or steamtech, +2 to all saves against magic except those that are intended for use on machines, metal or inanimate objects, and +2 to all saves against emotional effects (which stacks with the magic bonus if it's a magical fear effect, say). They get -2 on Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise and Handle Animal, however. As living constructs, tik'toks are susceptible to mind-affecting and morale effects, but not paralysis, stunning, disease or necromancy. They are also immune to subdual damage, massive damage saves, ability drain and energy drain, but not crits. They die immediatel at 0 HP and cannot be raised short of a Wish or Miracle. They also cannot improve their stats with magical manuals, though temporary boosts work fine, as do Wish spells. Tik'toks begin play with a free steam poweri ntegrated with their body, worth no more GP than the sum total of all their attributes. They cannot use the Gearhead feat to get more steam powers in their bodies, but may spend a feat to integrate a new power into their body if they are able to meet all its requirements and costs. They can swap integrated powers out by paying for them, no more feats needed. Getting rid of a part doesn't give the feat slot back, though. Tik'toks do not heal over time or from normal healing magic - they require repairs instead or use of the spell Mending, which heals 1d6 damage. They can be harmed by rust effects, and can resist them with Will. They have an innate 15% arcane spell failure chance that cannot be reduced except by Wish. They may not become clerics, druids, paladins, sorcerers or steamborgs. They have a +2 LA, and their favored class is Coglayer. They do not age in the same way as most races, but they use the same rules as their systems are not free of entropy and do slowly wind down over time. Next time: Chatterboxes.
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Jun 11, 2017 16:35
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Cassa posted:But hovercycles means they get to wear doggles. Technically they're built by another two city-states - Ishpeming and the Manistique Imperium - but Rifts has the issue in general where it has massive manufacturing going on in multiple locales but no signs of the infrastructure needed to support that kind of thing. You can try and explain it away through various technology handwaves, but the game hasn't bothered, and it's ultimately at odds with the "Points of Light" sort of setting Rifts goes for.
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Jun 11, 2017 16:48
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Y'know theironjef, part of me wants you and Jon to have a good time interviewing KS, but another part of me wants to see you burn a bunch of bridges calling out KS for all the terrible poo poo he's written.
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Jun 11, 2017 16:56
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As much as I rag on the guy, I wouldn't suggest it myself. I'd certainly have some curious questions if I was able to regarding how he runs and writes games, what he actually thinks about the role of rules in RPGs is and what's important for good game mechanics, that sort of thing. Using it as a venue to just be critical or go full John Walker wouldn't make for an interesting interview. Picking on Palladium mechanics is easy, but I don't think there are interesting answers at the bottom of that hole to seek out. I have no doubt he's well aware of what people think of Palladium, and I don't think any of my criticism will necessarily change Palladium - maybe the Savage Worlds adaptation was done with the flak thrown at the Megaversal system in mind, but I have no way of knowing. It'd be interesting to find out what led into that.
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Jun 11, 2017 17:22
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SirPhoebos posted:Y'know theironjef, part of me wants you and Jon to have a good time interviewing KS, but another part of me wants to see you burn a bunch of bridges calling out KS for all the terrible poo poo he's written. Everyone was very nice, sorry to say. Honestly the interview we did do had him being his own harshest critic, he started talking about the Robotech KS without any prompting.
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Jun 11, 2017 17:34
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Yeah, as much as people like to cook up bizarre conspiracy theories, I don't think he ever wants to do wrong by this fans, as much as I've gotten excoriated by Robotech RPG Tactics backers for saying so. The idea that he's some scheming thief doesn't really fit with everything I learned about him. But he does have real bad habits which have been pointed out at length elsewhere, particularly in regards to running of the mouth - which, to be fair, he has gotten much better about not doing. Still, I'd love to hear a post-mortem on a lot of the vanished projects that were announced but never saw the light of day, like Void Runners, Warpath, or Mechanoids.
Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jun 11, 2017 |
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Jun 11, 2017 17:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, as much as people like to cook up bizarre conspiracy theories, I don't think he ever wants to do wrong by this fans, as much as I've gotten excoriated by Robotech RPG Tactics backers for saying so. The idea that he's some scheming thief doesn't really fit with everything I learned about him. But he does have real bad habits which have been pointed out at length elsewhere, particularly in regards to running of the mouth - which, to be fair, he has gotten much better about not doing. Still, I'd love to hear a post-mortem on a lot of the vanished projects that were announced but never saw the light of day, like Void Runners, Warpath, or Mechanoids. Pick any random local at your game store. The sort of guy that's somehow always there, you know, you often find them like looming behind you when you unbox something in the store, etc. Now imagine them with no training or reason running a major game company, because that's exactly what he is. He hires his friends, he still talks about the glory days at the store, he gets excited hearing about characters. He still fanboys about having met Jerry Bruckheimer. He's still running five different RPG sessions. He's not a mastermind, he's a statistical anomaly.
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Jun 11, 2017 21:40
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