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Even something as simple as changing it from "stress summons demons" to "stress risks putting prisoners into a fell mood in which they try to summon demons" would work. That alone would ratchet up the tension by introducing an element of paranoia: you never know who is about to, or has already, snapped, and needs your skull to summon a demon. AAH is rapidly becoming the thread's new Beast. Everyone has an idea that would make the premise better an more fun, but in the end, we're left with the author's original, half-baked intention.
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Jul 18, 2017 20:15
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Kurieg posted:Turns out bringing actual concious living beings to hell as opposed to souls is a bad prospect on the demon's part. Those that are innocent, or at least purgatory worthy, have about as much spiritual sustinence as celery water. And those who actually would belong in hell resonate enough with it's intrinsic nature to be as powerful, or more powerful, than the demons. That sounds awesome.
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Jul 18, 2017 20:23
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OutOfPrint posted:AAH is rapidly becoming the thread's new Beast. Everyone has an idea that would make the premise better an more fun, but in the end, we're left with the author's original, half-baked intention. I think it's because both have a premise that's just crying out for a better game. It's the sort of missed opportunity that just begs for a do-over.
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Jul 18, 2017 22:51
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I absolutely agree that the best way to play Abandon All Hope would be to use Dread.
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Jul 18, 2017 23:12
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Ninja Crusade 2e - The Firebrands: Bad Decisions We open with our new recruit captured by his next teacher. The man is blind - his eyes are sewn shut. He is Nakajima Kayanwe, the Blind Bandit, who is famous for raiding imperial caravans and is probably going to become the youngest Horishi the clan has ever had. He sees life as a chance to experience everything, and particularly enjoys experimetning with his own pain threshold. He is tanned heavily and has bleached hair, and he can see despite lacking eyes because he has mobile eye tattoos all over his skin. He has tied up our initiate so tightly that struggling is cutting off circulation to his hands, but he lets the kid loose. They are guarded by Kayanwe's bandit buddies. We learn that the stories of the Sumi are the tattoos on their flesh. Every tattoo is a symbol of your identity. Even now, the Gardeners don't really like textual tattoos - they find them boring. Pictures tell stories just as well and are more emotive. The pain of receiving the tattoo is also important in fixing the memory. Kayanwe also briefly explains the idea of a memory palace - basically, you use imagery to remember things in full detail - and that the tattoos do the same basic job. However, they are not to preserve observed things, but to commemorate your life. The Gardeners divide tattoos between irezumi, or regular tats, and horimono, or magic Body Gardener tats. The horimono are made by a chi-infused ritual to become a powerful symbol. The first tattoo is always given as part of initiation. Irezumi fade over time - but horimono are permanent. Really permanent. Irezumi can have meaning, but horimono catalog milestones, times that changed your life and status. With chi, irezumi can be erased easily. Horimono can only be hidden, at most. Even then, it's only temporary. While the Virtuous Body Gardeners are known as the Inks, tattoos are hardly the only way they express themselves. They augment and alter their own bodies. With tattoos, sure, but not just that. Piercings, too, are a way that the Gardeners augment themselves. Kayanwe uses piercings in precise pressure points to ease chi flow through his own body. This makes his thoughts faster. Scars, also, serve to modify his body. Scars reroute, dam and change the flow of chi, altering how well you can focus and use your abilities. Ritual scars especially can be used to clear chi pathways, like irrigation in a field. By ninja standards, the Gardeners are basically teenagers. Their clan is very, very new, and they're all rebels. They argue a lot over the importance of pain, passion or exploration of societal taboos. They don't even all agree that body mods are an end to themselves - some see them as just a tool to explore other means of transgression. Kayanwe puts a hood over the initiate, and tails another story. After the death of the first Horikaze, one member of the clan traveled far and wide, hunting monsters. For every monster this man, Fujiwara, killed, he gave himself a horimono, to memorize the creature and its abilities. He was feared across the land as an amazing general, as well. However, he was an utter novice at romance. When he fell in love with a woman named Otsuya, he thought hard about what to do and decided to hunt down a giant spider monster that preyed on her village, to dedicate its destruction to her. After days of hunting, however, all he found was a beautiful woman in a grove of trees. He told her that he was afraid she was in danger, for the spider was near. However, she told him the spider only hunted by night, and she was a sacrifice anyway. Fujiwara decided to keep her company until nightfall. They spoke as the woman prepared the feast, and Fujiwara looked for places to ambush the spider from as they talked. As they talked, Fujiwara realized he was falling in love with the woman. She asked him to leave as night fell, and Fujiwara was enraged by the idea of her having to sacrifice herself. However, he remained calm, moving to hide and wait to ambush the monster. However, what came is the maiden - she told him she was afraid, and that she wanted him to flee with her before the spider came. Entranced by her, he forgot himself...but he noticed that webbing was attached to her arms, that she was a puppet full of spiders. The spiders carried him to their mother - an immense, monstrous oni. The spider had been the woman he spoke to, and asked him if enjoyed the show. Fujiwara remained calm, however, and instead bowed to the spider and spoke to it, admitting that he had been fooled. He acts the part of a gracious guest, though he knows the spider plans to eat him. He was so focused on his hatred and anger, however, that he didn't notice the small spiders climbing over him. He got pulled into the trees, and the oni monologued at him for a while. He is left hanging, paralyzed by poison and silk threaded through his flesh. as the paralysis faded, the pain came. He grew feverish and began to hallucinate. The ghost of the woman visited him, but he could not hear her. However, the ghost was somehow able to free him, and Fujiwara used her gift to survive, realizing what he had to do. He used his own flesh and the silk within it to climb up into the trees, then concentrated his chi into a katana tattoo, allowing him to cut himself free. He disguised himself as the woman using her corpse, and used this to ambush the spider, killing it. Finally, Fujiwara goes home to Otsuya, marries her and has many children. However, he never forgot the ghost woman, whom he truly loved. Why did this story get told? Who knows? Now, Kayanwe gives the initiate his next initiation: hanging. Life must be experienced, both pleasure and pain. He is chained up, with hooks in his flesh all over. He must learn that showing pain and sadness is not weakness, but necessary to life. The rebirth through pain is important to becoming a Virtuous Body Gardener. Adn note when I say hanging, I mean it. The initiate is literally hanging from trees by fishhooks pierced through the flesh. Next time: Lands of the Gardeners
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Jul 19, 2017 02:53
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Hey thread, been a while, please do enjoy episode 99(!!) of System Mastery, The Sailor Moon RPG and Reference Book.
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Jul 19, 2017 04:02
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theironjef posted:Hey thread, been a while, please do enjoy episode 99(!!) of System Mastery, The Sailor Moon RPG and Reference Book. Oh good, something to do at work tomorrow! What's on deck for 100?
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Jul 19, 2017 04:09
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theironjef posted:Hey thread, been a while, please do enjoy episode 99(!!) of System Mastery, The Sailor Moon RPG and Reference Book.
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Jul 19, 2017 04:24
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slap me and kiss me posted:Oh good, something to do at work tomorrow! Every 25 episodes is D&D, so it's our 4th Anniversary, 100th episode, and mothafuckin' D&D 3e is on the menu. 3.5 added for seasoning.
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Jul 19, 2017 04:26
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theironjef posted:Every 25 episodes is D&D, so it's our 4th Anniversary, 100th episode, and mothafuckin' D&D 3e is on the menu. 3.5 added for seasoning. I've never been so excited.
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Jul 19, 2017 04:56
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NGDBSS posted:I remember playing this years ago, and boy howdy did we realize even then that what was essentially proto-BESM was still busted as hell. Though I knew barely anything about Sailor Moon itself, as the group was running it as a side campaign as a favor to a guest player.
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Jul 19, 2017 05:17
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Nessus posted:I have a friend who made a convention one-shot of "KILL SAILOR MOON," in which you had various Negaverse types attempting to - well - Kill Sailor Moon. The problem is that this is nigh impossible, rules as written, so nobody MANAGED it, but they had fun trying.
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Jul 19, 2017 05:36
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 CHAPTER ONE: WORK GANG Or Unskippable Tutorials Howdy again. Astute readers will notice that the cover looks like it’s just the picture of the Panic Feeder blown up and used as a cover. Yes. Yes it is.  “Seeds of Rage” is the introductory adventure to Abandon All Hope, serving as a bridge between Prison Life and scrambling to survive the Nether. This book is split into three chapters and this first part will cover the entirety of chapters one and two, both of which are almost all pre-Perdition. The gist of this introduction mission is that the Gehenna will pass into the Nether and the PCs (all of whom are members of Block D-5134) will escape Perdition to seek a supposed safe zone. Along the way they’ll get a taste of the overarching plot, learn about the leaders of some of the gangs and be railroaded rather heavily. This mission also serves as excellent insight into the quality of writing and mission design to come and I will probably be giving it all of the respect it deserves. Also this block takes place in an all-male block and there’s really no alternative setting offered. If you’d like to run this with genders switched I guess you could, you would just have to change the names of characters. For the sake of this current review, I’ll leave all of the setting details as-is. If you’d like to pretend that it’s the members of G-Unit (sans Pincushion) running into all of the trouble the D-5134 PCs are handling, be my guest. I will in fact be using G-Unit as the stand-in PCs for the future books and I’ll just say they didn’t have to deal with anything that happens in Seeds of Rage and came out of their own tribulations A-OK. There’s just going to be some systems later down the line that’ll be Fun to see the premades I created interact with. Play begins with the following paragraphs read aloud.  This is formatted weird because I copied it into paint and it’s formatted weird in the book due to a picture. And then another paragraph read aloud.  To learn about the other occupants of D-5134, players have to make Social checks to find deeper info than what they superficially know. INMATES OF D-5134 7462187, “SLAG”  Slag is nearly 7 feet tall and in impeccable physical shape. He could be a soldier but he’s hot-headed and hates authority. Passing the check reveals that Slag is a particularly dim boxer, body-builder and bare-knuckle brawler from illegal pit fights back on Terra. He was sentenced to the Gehenna when he murdered his rival in the ring so he could win a competition (and was surprised when he got in trouble and sentenced for it). There’s also rumors that Slag wants to join the Ultramax Psychos. Slag will get his own stats later. 9486548, “RADIO”  Radio is a slim man who likes to stay on the good sides of the other prisoners. He’s the local go-to guy for information and entertainment. Passing the check reveals that Radio was involved in the Michigan Uprisings of 2649, an event where anti-PTM separatists got their hands on a nuclear bomb. Radio insists he’s innocent and< accusations of domestic terrorism aside, is a pretty genial guy who’s taken to life on the Gehenna. Radio’s got Joe Average stats. 9644518, “SUGAR DADDY”  Sugar is the local dealer of goods and services, possessing a knack for finding things like weapons or drugs if needed. He’s known to be dangerously smug when things are going his way and when he has control, but his prowess at being a salesman has kept him alive. Passing the check reveals that Sugar was arrested as a Vice Offender for sexual crimes. Some claim he was a serial rapist while others claim he was using date-rape drugs on people. Either way, these aren’t things that criminals are known to tolerate and it’s mostly his ability to scavenge that keeps him from getting killed. Sugar uses Fixer stats. 8180030, “JIMMY”  Jimmy’s sole defining feature is the scar on his face. Quiet and forgettable, he often blends into the background of the Gehenna and prisoners don’t really spare him a second thought. Jimmy is absolutely fine with this, actively cultivating an unassuming air. Passing the check reveals that Jimmy was a famous burglar who crossed the Family after a job by attempting to cheat them out of their share of the money. They scarred him and set him up for an arrest and in a way he feels like they let him off easy (mostly because they didn’t kill him). Jimmy uses Joe Average stats. 4685855, “SARGE”  Sarge is a tight-lipped ex-military type and the only reason people know of his service is because they’ve seen his Special Forces tattoo in the shower. Sarge barely speaks to anyone and can mostly be found hanging out in his cell. The other members of D-5134 don’t really like Sarge because he’s just actively and willfully quiet all the time. There is no further into to find out about Sarge except that he uses the stats of a Religious Crazy. Take This Job And Shovel It  Each prisoner is lead out into miles-long stretch of fire damaged ship and given equipment. Everyone gets a breath mask, a pair of goggles, a wheeled collection bin and a salvage implement that is basically a space shovel if you’re going to use it as a weapon. Every third prisoner also gets a flashlight.  The game assumes that the motivation of smokes will be a sufficient reward to start doing some manual labor. Alternately there’s the Monitor and its weapons to provide a motivation. Rules for the Scrapmaster Competition The work day lasts for the next 8 hours and is broken down into 4 phases, each lasting 2 hours. Every phase, every player and the GM rolls a d12 and adds the character’s Prowess to the result to figure out how much scrap they’ve dug up.  Fun note: of G-Unit, Doc, Beth or Soapbox would be the likely winners of this competition, bringing in an average of 200 pounds depending on how their rolls go. Tama would bring up the rear but wouldn't be too much of a slouch, knowing how to scare up 150 pounds or so. Each character in D-5134 has a shot of winning this…except for Slag, due to plot reasons. After the fourth roll, you add up all of the total scrap to see who has won the competition. There are two complications, however.  The first is that Sugar will try to cheat at some point along the line. He’ll try to steal from the container of the weakest looking inmate and it’s a contested Wits check to notice the theft. Fail to notice and he’ll take 1d4x10 pounds of scrap from you. Confront him and he’ll deny it, leading to the other prisoners to stop working and assume a fight is about to happen. The PC can force him to back off with words alone and he’ll drop it. If a fight does occur, it lasts 1d4 rounds until the Monitor intervenes. Otherwise the Monitor will intervene regardless because it’ll notice that the prisoners have stopped working and Sugar will drop the topic and go back to work. The second problem is that near there’ll be an accident near the end of the competition.  The PC closest to Slag in the competition will be asked what their Reflexes were and then the final paragraph of that happens regardless of how fast they say they are. The other prisoners will move in to clean the rubble off of Slag and get him loose. This isn’t because they want to help him; they just don’t want to seem like he’ll have a reason to go after them for not helping him. The Monitor arrives after 1d4 turns and if Slag isn’t free by then the Custodian will dig him out. It’s a legitimate structural accident, but Slag will be convinced that the PC who was coming closest to beating him intentionally caused the fall. And Slag is in fact out of the competition because the rubble has broken his wrist. Radio and Jimmy will drag Slag off to the infirmary despite his protests and while he’s leaving he’ll shout threats at the “responsible” PC. And on that note, the competition ends and someone gets a nice little bundle of smokes. Back into the tram and back to D-5134. CHAPTER TWO: BLOCK D-5134  Block sweet block. The players are returned to the block to take a breather before dinner. This is really just an opportunity to let them buy stuff from Sugar or roleplay or do whatever. While the exit door out to the corridor is locked, the cell doors remain unlocked and open if they’re on good behavior. This allows general fraternization. Guide to D-5134  1 is Slag’s cell. He’s getting his wrist fixed so it’s empty for the moment. Slag lives a sloppy life; his cell is messy with trash and junk and empty smoke cartons. Because he’s a bully, he uses his smokes for their intended purposes, takes what he wants and then throws it in the corner of his cell. The only thing of note is a shiv hidden under his mattress. 2-4, 7 and 10 are empty cells or occupied by generic prisoners or the PCs. This doesn’t apply to 10, however, which needs to be empty due to plot reasons. 5 is the Radio Room, Radio’s cell. Every block has a steam pipe that runs through the wall. Years ago some of the prisoners figured out that if you were to pop the pipe open in a certain spot, you could hear what was happening on the floor above or below you. Since then the steam pipes have been used as a makeshift telephone and radio system where the occupant acts as a relater of information that comes in through the pipe or can be asked to send messages. Common topics are obituaries, illegal fights in the maintenance corridors one can bet on, gossip and gang news. If the PCs wish to talk to Radio, he can relay them some of the rumors written below.  6 is “The Candy Shop”, Sugar’s cell. Thanks to his connections, he’s managed to actually furnish his cell with a hand-made lamp, a lampshade knit by some female prisoners who owed him a favor and art to decorate his walls that were painted by some psych patients in therapeutic exercises. His cell is described as “a parlor” and this is where Sugar does his business. He currently has a riot baton, two syringes, three doses of Jump in a bottle, a fully charged hydrogen cell and a light rod for sale. Anything else can be ordered if necessary but will take some time to get to him. Wits checks can reveal where these items are hidden in his cell (fake floor panel, under his bed, in his shoes, etc) and a further Wits check reveals he’s got 250 smokes wrapped in a watertight plastic bag in his toilet tank. 8 is Jimmy’s cell. Jimmy doesn’t have much besides a collection of his favorite books, all of them about historical penal colonies. On his downtime, Jimmy likes to re-read these books for the millionth time and dream about the day that the Gehenna touches down on foreign soil, a day he can begin life anew as a simple colonist. 9 is Sarge’s cell. Sarge doesn’t have anything to his name really so he lives a sparse life. This is primarily because he doesn’t talk to anyone or make connections and has no means to get anything. Two things that can be found with Wits checks are a flashlight hidden in his bed frame and an incomplete zip gun that’s missing the Torsion component; Sarge has already invested the BP into making it. 11 is a small niche in the wall with a First Aid pack. 12 is the alarm station which needs Access 1 to activate. Activating the alarm will lock all of the cell doors, sound an audible alarm and trigger a Custodian response. 13 is the central annex. In retrospect there is no 13 on the map. Whoops! The central annex is just the hallway between the cells. In the day the prisoners can chill there and at night the Monitors stationed here will patrol and watch them. 14 is the showers. They’re in need of a good cleaning, having a light mildew and smell problem, but will fit everyone in the block. The shows only run at 0500 and 1800 for two reasons. First, water conservation. Second (and I poo poo you not) is so there's less background noise to possibly drown out the sound of prison rape. Like I get that this might be a legit tactic in real life but really? Anyway the only thing of note is that a bar of soap could count as a Rigid component to make a pair of brass knuckles. 15 is where the Monitors chill when they're not monitoring. 16 is the exit. If there's not enough room for certain PCS, you can cut some of the premade NPCs out but the PCs shouldn't live in cell 1, 8 or 10, all for plot reasons. Cafighteria After the chance to shower at 1800, the prisoners are marched down to the trams at 1830 for dinner. With a Wits check you can notice a Narc sneaking around the vents of D-5134 to tip the players off to the existence of the vents. They'll meet up with the occupants of D-5133 and D-5135 and get to dinner at 1840.  The players get a brief minute to chill out, wait in the food line and catch up on gossip or ask questions about the other groups. After a little while, this gets interrupted by a fight in the cafeteria.  Also these missions include three pictures of full-page art to illustrate key scenes. This is one of them! This is what this scene looks like in motion:  Delightful. A Social check will let the players know that the two brutes with Slag are Psychos acting as backup. Slag wants a one-on-one fight with the PC he's singled out, knowing that if he successfully kills them, that'll be his ticket to joining the Psychos proper. Regardless of whether or not the PC wants to fight, Slag will attack. Important fight notes: 
The fight ends in two ways. First, the PC might be able to put Slag down for the count. Second, the PC isn't doing too well. Either result ends with 1d2 Monitors coming into the scene now that Johnson and Blade's fight has been dealt with or a Trustee alerting the Monitors that the PC is in a fight. One way or another, Slag will be forced to concede defeat but will vow to finish what he started. Also as a side note, Blade and Johnson end up becoming important characters. We'll see more of them later. This whole segment, in addition to being a combat primer, is also to seed future NPC use. Once the fight is over and the prisoners are fed, everyone goes back to their block. Sugar will open up shop again, Radio will open his tube and take bets on a fight on G-level (not making this up I swear), Slag plots revenge and broods, Sarge discretely tinkers with his zip gun and Jimmy reads a book. At 2000 the cell block doors will open and four Monitors will escort a new prisoner into the block.  The convict is placed into cell 10 and says nothing to the others. If anyone is a Trustee, the Monitors will give the CIN of the new face and also explain that they should not be left unmonitored due to their crimes of multiple arson. A Social check will shed some light on the new face: 5516341, "FREAK"  Freak is 24 but looks way older than that. His hair is prematurely white, he's got an odd stare and his eyes are red-rimmed. Passing the check reveals that Freak was responsible for 20+ deaths from many arsons before he was arrested. His suspected pyromania lead to psychobaric treatment on the Gehenna and then isolation after he attempted to kill another inmate. Freak has been moved to D-5134 after his release from the psych units to keep him safe from his victim's friends. Bedtime At 2200 the lights go out and the cell doors lock.  Jimmy puts his books away, Sugar finishes counting his smokes and hides them, Radio seals up his tube and Slag broods in darkness. The only noise for a while is Sarge trying to be quiet as he tinkers with his zip gun. This can be detected with a Wits roll and if pressed Sarge will stop working and ignore questions. 20 minutes into bedtime, Freak has an episode and anyone adjacent to his cell can hear him start talking.  The Monitors will calm Freak down and silence will resume until 2315. 2315 is when the Gehenna starts to fly close to the anomaly. Everyone rolls a d6 to see if they wake up and one person should succeed (anyone with Sixth Sense automatically does); a 4+ means they wake up.  Despair check! The Monitors will be unresponsive to any questions about the turbulence or simply state that the prisoners should go back to sleep and remain calm. Any talk amongst prisoners will be met with the same response or with a tranquilizer. While this is going on, Freak will be rocking back and forth on his bed mumbling about how everyone is going to die. This lasts until he's sedated or calmed by a Monitor. At 2330 the ship flies closer to the anomaly and everything starts responding accordingly.  If anyone looks at Slag, they'll see him staring at the cell of his nemesis with a smug smile on his face. If there are any Trustees, they'll be approached by a Monitor for an optional scene.   The Warden has pulled the Trustees out of their beds and wants them on alert in case of a panic. The Warden doesn't know what's going on, but it knows that the turbulence might cause panic and could lead to a ship-wide riot. The Trustees will join Trustees from D-5133 and D-5135 and be lead by the Monitors to an armory for equipment.  The loaded Trustees will be lead to a meeting point and told to wait. While waiting, more rumors arise.  This is not an error on my part, it really does have 4 listed twice. After 10 minutes of waiting, the Trustees are disarmed and returned to their cells. The Warden has no idea how to handle the collision course with the anomaly and since there are no riots, there doesn't need to be Trustees on guard. ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE The alarm is deactivated but nobody can sleep, meaning that D-5134 is alive with chatter and questions about what's been going on. Slag and Sarge are the only ones not talking: Sarge is working on his gun and Slag is slowly going insane due to the events of the day and the oncoming Perdition. Radio is able to confirm that the other blocks are feeling it too and Freak's latent psychic ability is going haywire in his skull. This pressure is starting to make his Despair grow. In fact, anyone with Psychic Potential takes +1 Despair from being able to feel that something is wrong.  At midnight, the Gehenna passes into the anomaly proper and Perdition begins. Everyone makes a Reflex check at the turbulence and takes 1 damage if they fail. The Custodians and Warden have no idea what's going on and the Monitors go into standby and ignore the activities of the block at the moment. Then everything breaks.   RIP Jimmy, he's colonizing the afterlife somewhere now. His death is relatively fast, but it's a horrible and painful thing to witness and forces a Despair check. With the Monitors gone and the pipes and walls buckling, anyone else in the block is at risk to be burned alive just like Jimmy. Perdition kicks into proper gear and everything starts getting worse. And the following is shared to the relevant members of the party.  Chapter 2 ends with Perdition in full swing. NEXT TIME we shall see the events of Chapter 3. Will our valiant convicts burn to death in their cells like poor Jimmy? No. Chapter 3 is called Escape.
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Jul 19, 2017 09:16
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NGDBSS posted:I never had a chance to read the book in its entirety (mostly just the player-facing stuff like chargen and the like), so I've not seen the writeup for Sailor Moon herself. But I'm guessing this involves a whole bunch of stats between 10 and 12, plus a splash of action economy cheese? I do recall the attack sequence being an exceptionally bad affair in BESM 1E/2E, in which you could effortlessly dodge everything once you pumped things high enough, without much way to stop you because doing so was completely orthogonal to any attack roll.
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Jul 19, 2017 10:49
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As much as I like Sailor Moon, the RPG was a trainwreck back when it was first written and it's a trainwreck now. On the other hand, nobody's tried to update it (to my knowledge) to include Sailor Moon Crystal or for BESM 3e.
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Jul 19, 2017 14:33
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I can't remember if Sailor Moon came before or after the really old 1e of BDSM (the yellow book, not the green book). That "mild/moderate/powerful/primal" progression of powers, with no other description of what they do, is straight out of that - in fact pretty much every power in BESM 1e was in that category. I do remember that game had a bit in the example of play where the GM has to reassure a player that "no-one can hear us" because he's too embarrassed to shout out a Sailor Moon attack phrase. But that had plenty of bad example of play stuff ("be careful not to walk across the center of the hallway, Sailor Moon..")
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Jul 19, 2017 21:47
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The first edition of BESM came out in 1997, and Sailor Moon came out the following year. I was surprised to learn this; I thought that Guardians of Order only released BESM after they'd had some success with their early Fan Bible + RPG books. GoO did some books that may seem very odd in retrospect. They had books for Dominion Tank Police, Demon City Shinjuku, El-Hazard, Fushigi Yugi, and other anime that don't enjoy the enduring popularity of Trigun or Slayers. Don't get me wrong, I really like El Hazard, but I recognize that some of that is nostalgia talking--this was a time period when a series could be popular or even declared "classic" just because they got an American release when many more deserving series did not. They also produced a game based on Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. I have no idea why, and I'd love to hear the story behind that.
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Jul 19, 2017 22:05
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I'm pretty sure they drew that map in Prison Architect. I think I read part of Ghost Dog once. The only thing I remember was that it focused heavily on being an RPG for one player and one GM, and the one player was basically expected to play Ghost Dog, except they could play "their own interpretation" if they wanted to. It was regular Tri-Stat beyond that, though. The "fanbible+RPG" books were, I'm pretty sure, ways of working around BESM 1e's hideous lack of content. It was basically the classic starting point of the trend of bad Anime RPGs which were basically "here's a generic RPG, play it with anime fans" and is still going on.
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Jul 19, 2017 22:11
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I'm not gonna lie, the prospect of getting to play officially licensed Forest Whitaker tabletop products sounds hella tempting.
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Jul 19, 2017 22:20
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Battlefield Earth: The Ultimate Fan Guide and Storytelling Game, D20 Edition: City of Violence
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Jul 19, 2017 22:26
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hyphz posted:I can't remember if Sailor Moon came before or after the really old 1e of BDSM (the yellow book, not the green book). 50 Shades of Tri-Stat
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Jul 20, 2017 05:55
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Halloween Jack posted:The first edition of BESM came out in 1997, and Sailor Moon came out the following year. I was surprised to learn this; I thought that Guardians of Order only released BESM after they'd had some success with their early Fan Bible + RPG books. Nah, BESM was their first release - it came in a gray small book with red text. What licenses they got were likely a mixture of opportunity and Mark's personal preferences from what I could tell as a Ghost Dog is a weird game in that it's pretty much intended for stories somehow vaguely connected to Mafia setting and characters in the film, whether or not somebody's playing Ghost Dog himself (presumably before the events of the movie). It did emphasize one-on-one play but was also open to the players running a hit team or whatever. It's kind of weird and doesn't seem to have a really strong idea of what the hell it's setting out to do, but it is the rare example of an attempt at a no-frills crime game. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Jul 20, 2017 |
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Jul 20, 2017 06:05
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hyphz posted:I can't remember if Sailor Moon came before or after the really old 1e of BDSM (the yellow book, not the green book). That "mild/moderate/powerful/primal" progression of powers, with no other description of what they do, is straight out of that - in fact pretty much every power in BESM 1e was in that category. Dammit! My first note for the show was about that play example, and I didn't get to it. Those are so weirdly prevalent in anime games, the play example where the players are these weird combinations of superfan and shrinking violet, while the DM is sort of this Guy LaDouche flirtpusher that sort of gamely forces their players to do silly things. It's like the authors have a lot of experience writing an entirely different set of narratives.
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Jul 20, 2017 06:13
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Nah, BESM was their first release - it came in a gray small book with red text. What licenses they got were likely a mixture of opportunity and Mark's personal preferences from what I could tell as a playtester. For me, the weirdest GoO book on my shelf aside from Ghost Dog (I got a bunch of them as a gift, for the record) is probably Tenchi Universe - for those not satisfied with the Tenchi Muyo RPG based on the OVA, it was a sourcebook centered around the TV series. Well, it's one way to stretch a license... My brother and I were actually big Tenchi Muyo fans back in the day because it aired on Toonami. I say this to say that Tenchi universe and Tenchi Muyo OVA were very different. Tenchi universe is arguably better since it ends, doesn't do that weird everyone marries him ending (Ryoko/Tenchi was the best pairing to end on), and had a consistent plot if I remember correctly. Also, Kiyone Makibi. It was very different from the OVA and both were different from the abysmal Tenchi in Tokyo spinoff. And can I just say this was a confusing as gently caress TV show to follow as they would just change series if you missed like an episode. You missed the end of the second OVA series and then suddenly you're in an entirely new continuity. My point is that, despite this, it's not enough to warrant an entire new book. Most of the characters are copied over from the original as are the villains and most of the setting material is similar enough. Sure, the way the materials handle is different but it's still the same material. Who cares if Washu was found on a spaceship labyrinth or released from a shrine? If you start getting in to OVA 3, then, yeah, that might warrant a book because it just loving goes off the rails, but that wasn't out yet. Universe might warrant a web release clocking in at around 20 pages. Also you were playtester for this game when it first came out? How did that go? Heard the game's combat system just doesn't work. How did that not get caught?
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Jul 20, 2017 06:29
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Half the point of those releases was just as a fan-guide, with episode lists and synopses and concept art and stuff, too. It's a bad RPG product, but at the time english language guide works like that simply weren't available for most anything.
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Jul 20, 2017 06:33
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Er, I fumbled my words because it's late. I didn't playtest, but I did do demos of BESM and Sailor Moon back in the day. I got to meet MacKinnon at GenCon, but I ended up leaving with a really rough impression of the guy. When I ran Tri-Stat, generally my house fix for the combat was just to make defense have to equal or beat the margin the attacker made their roll by. I think I also generally eyed and capped what people could buy, as it was really easy for things like damage or skill levels to get out of hand. I'm well aware of the OVA / TV changes for Tenchi, it still feels like an odd niche book. Particularly because if you're the kind of fan that cared about the differences between the two series, you probably didn't need a 110 page book explaining it, and definitely didn't need a six-page discussion of possible alternate universes based the the specific desires of various characters because that came up in a single episode.  But then, you had weird stuff that went on with GoO licensing where they deliberately snubbed the Slayers fan community and sought out writers who actually hadn't seen Slayers before, because their license was restricted to very specific seasons of the show and they were apparently afraid stuff from the light novels or movies and the like would get referenced. Similarly, stuff like Dominion was only licensed for the 1st OVA, so they couldn't reference the manga or later OVA series. So it goes.
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Jul 20, 2017 06:48
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My favourite thing about Tenchi Muyo RPG was how the second sample adventure would probably get Mihoshi murdered by the PCs. And yes, first ed BESM was grey not yellow and I have no idea why I remembered it wrong..
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Jul 20, 2017 07:48
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Hostile V posted:COMBAT TRAITS In the late 90s, students of various "traditional" martial arts all had one thing in common: we were collectively losing our poo poo over the UFC. Mixed martial arts was proving that you couldn't learn to defend yourself without actually training for full contact. Black Belt magazine, a common sight in the parents' waiting rooms of strip-mall dojos, had long had an editorial stance of never being negative about anyone's martial arts style--except for MMA, which they decried as "human cockfighting" for thugs who weren't real martial artists. At the same time, Black Belt would've gone out of business without the revenue from advertisements for MMA books and tapes. It was like if you were reading a Opus Dei magazine and it was full of ads for liquor and porn. It reflected a deep anxiety in the martial arts community that still hasn’t subsided. But few people actually quit their karate or kung fu school in disgust to train in a full-contact martial art, and for understandable reasons--not just difficulty, but availability and cost. Enter the martial arts fad. Such fads aren’t new--in the 80s, ninjutsu gave us some great bad movies. But in the 90s, most fads were marketed as being a "magic bullet" to counter MMA without really changing your practice. The most popular were military-based, featuring some hilarious charlatans I won't go into here. But "Jailhouse Rock" was another. Jailhouse Rock, 52 Blocks, Comstock Style, and the Woodbourne Shuffle all refer to the same goddamn thing. It's definitely real, but it's essentially an informal tradition of street fighting tricks passed down within boxing, which doesn’t really exist independently of boxing. But that doesn’t make for a legendary martial arts tradition. That requires an ancient lineage, invincible masters, intense training given in secret to a privileged few, rival schools, and secret techniques with funny names. So all of that has been bolted onto 52 Blocks over time. It’s hard to tell what rumours come from the same neighbourhoods where people actually practiced 52, and what was made up entirely on the Internet. I mean, I’ve even read that the hand-trapping techniques are called “gangsta locks” and that there’s an Aryan Brotherhood rival style called “rocknroll.” Sure. So, uh, this rant was mostly self-indulgence on my part, but it goes to show how the writers of AAH didn’t do anything coherent with their premise because, well, they weren’t interested. It was more about just putting in a bunch of stuff they thought was cool, edgy, and a little mysterious, with a lot of surface-level inspirations. It doesn’t look like they did any serious research on prison culture, so it’s not really about prison. But it’s also not about using prison or monsters as a metaphor for something more fundamental as in, for example, Alien 3. It’s downright weird that the setting has an overwritten premise involving a planetary police state building a giant prison ship headed to nowhere--it reminds me of Unhallowed Metropolis and its timeline explaining that London was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt just to arrive at the same Victorian architectural style. And there are other weird contrivances designed to keep the game somewhat grounded in a prison milieu, but without really doing anything with it--like the idea that inmates would be allowed to farm tobacco and make cigarettes to use as currency, which deserves more ridicule than it’s received. The game could just have easily been about a space cruise liner that got sucked into Hell.
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Jul 20, 2017 14:57
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Also all that combat stuff looks pretty useless since the real threats in setting aren't something you're going to beat in combat. That's another thing I enjoy over here in Warhams: You start out pretty humble unless you're lucky enough to be in one of the better fighting careers (a Soldier can start with a halberd or gun, decent armor, an extra attack, and plenty of training, for instance. Or a Bretonnian Knight Errant starting with solid melee skills, a horse, and medium armor) and so early in a campaign avoiding combat unless you have a good reason to fight is usually a better idea. Even later in a campaign, if you can get through a situation without a fight without giving something up, it's usually better to avoid the danger. At the same time, investing in combat and having some combat characters on your team is really goddamn useful. A second or third tier fighter is going to be a solid warrior, able to stand up to some of the bigger beasties of the setting, regardless of their starting stats. So while you usually want to avoid a fight with demons or vampires early on, or find some other way to deal with them without a simple 'ram our combat stats together and pray' straight fight, you can eventually make that option workable. Games like AAH make me wonder why they bother having dozens of combat abilities when, for instance, Pistolero is totally useless because getting two guns at all is almost impossible and those two guns won't do poo poo to any of the serious, 100+ health demons you could run into. Meanwhile, the Bounty Hunter who went through Vampire Hunter into Witch Hunter can wield two pistols at once and it's actually useful, because two blessed, silver pistol bullets will give that Vampire Lord or Chaos Champion over there pause and by that point you can expect to get access to those resources. Having a Lightning Parry so that you can choose to give up an attack to block a blow after you get hit more than once in one turn gives you flexibility in using a two-handed weapon. The combat options in WHFRP2e are actually useful and will eventually let you take on the big guys even if you spent your first 1000-2000 EXP trying to avoid them. Games like AAH, I don't know why they even bother having an EXP system.
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Jul 20, 2017 15:15
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hyphz posted:My favourite thing about Tenchi Muyo RPG was how the second sample adventure would probably get Mihoshi murdered by the PCs. Mihoshi is a quantum character. She's terrible on her own, but great with Kiyone (Washu can substitute).
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Jul 20, 2017 15:51
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hey ARB will you be covering the Rifts graphic novel
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Jul 20, 2017 16:03
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Good discussion. Now I want a Tenchi Mayo rpg about strip mall karate gyms that are secretly ancient masters. So I guess what I'm saying is I want a Ranma 1/2 RPG. Preferably one not saddled with a garbage system like BESM.
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Jul 20, 2017 16:22
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Warhammer Fantasy: Knights of the Grail Errantry Wars and Historical Threats When we left off in the history of Bretonnia, the traditions of kingship and the basic premises of Chivalric law had been laid down by the succession of Louis the Rash. The progression of knighthood and the idea that a knight must prove him (them) self is core to Bretonnian chivalry. A young knight does not simply inherit his father's lands. They are expected to emulate the succession of Louis and prove themselves as a landless Knight Errant before they can be trusted with ruling and defending property. In plenty of cases this will be something of a fig-leaf ("My eldest went out and slew four beastmen, he is prepared to inherit this large parcel I already had drawn up and ready for him.") but it produces large numbers of landless, excitable, inexperienced knights with a license to roam the country and a need to find adventure. Bretonnia has a tradition of sometimes channeling this dangerous enthusiasm (and keeping the march of knights and retinues from foraging too extensively in-country) into official Errantry Wars, where any knight-errant my prove himself under the king's banner in foreign adventures. The first of these were the crusades against Araby, when the Bretonnians joined Estalians in throwing back Arabian invaders from their lands and counter-invading into Warhams North Africa. Discovering the land wasn't suited to traditional Bretonnian manorial farming, they didn't bother holding on to most of the possessions they won in those wars. Other knights, hearing the wars had already been won before they could arrive, turned into the harsh country of the Border Princes and carved out their own fiefs by driving off the orcs and goblins of the land. This made the surrounding dwarf-holds happy and started diplomatic relations between Bret and Dwarf, though it never became nearly as warm as the relations between the Dwarven High Kings and the Emperors of Sigmar's Heirs. In fact, many Errantry Wars ended up fighting the ever-surrounding tides of Greenskins; it had to be done anyway and stopping them before they got to and ravaged farmland in their forage was always preferable. One particularly stupid king decided he was going to declare the greatest of all Errantries, one that would not stop until all orcs and goblins had been exterminated world-wide. This technically went on for a full 70 years, killing entire generations of knights for little territorial gain, and greatly weakening the realm (ironically opening it up to orcish raids). Only a decisive defeat finally convinced the kings that the dwarves were probably right about it being impossible to wipe out all orcs. Landuin of Mousillon had once been the greatest of all of the Grail Companions, held up as one of the ideals that inspired the entire Chivalric code. Mousillon is a swampy, unpleasant country on the western coast of Bretonnia, always unsuited for farming and always struggling in poverty. Since Landuin's time, the land has had a reputation for producing and sustaining great menaces rather than shining champions. About seven hundred years back, all of Bretonnia was ravaged by a terrible pox that forced knights into their castles and slaughtered peasants in the streets. The pox was accompanied by strange, rat-like beastmen wielding weapons far more dangerous than the crude tools of common warherds. Hello, Skaven. Only one knight of Bretonnia stood in their way. The Duke of Mousillon, Merovich, rode out against the forces of the rats and both he and his closest knights seemed to be completely unaffected by their plagues. Together with a force of fae beings from the wood of Loren, they slaughtered the ratmen in their thousands and drove them back into their warrens. Some said Mousillon had returned to its old glory, until the assembled nobility of Bretonnia attended a great victory banquet at Merovich's castle. There, they were horrified to find spitted and impaled criminals and other evidence of excessive brutality. When the king spoke against Merovich, he complained his hospitality had been insulted; had he not just saved the country? With tempers high on both sides, the current King and the Duke squared off for single combat, a single combat that Merovich won easily. The fact that he then drank the king's blood was probably excessive. And also probably proof he'd been a Blood Dragon the entire time. With the blessing of the Fae Enchantress, the other nobles declared war, and Mousillon lost most of its territory outside of the swamps that no-one wanted. This wouldn't be the last time Mousillon caused strife for the people of Bretonnia. Two hundred years ago, a knight named Maldred was raised to Duke of Mousillon. He made the baffling claim that he had taken the Lady of the Lake herself as his wife, and appeared with a beautiful woman hanging off his arm and a shining cup; he claimed to have been given full control of the Grail as the best of all knights. Rallying other knights who felt they had unfairly been denied the Grail in their own questing, he threatened to plunge the land into civil war and crown himself king. I don't think he thought that scheme out very well, though, as he was met by the Green Knight and the actual Lady of the Lake. The Green Knight is a spirit of great importance in Bretonnian mythology. A warrior of ghostly power who rides forth from the lush places of the land, coming and going at hours of great need to defend the people and the country. He is also said to be the traditional test of Questing Knights on the verge of finding the Grail; fighting this invincible, unkillable warrior is a true test of knighthood. Myths differ on who he is; some say he is the manifest spirit of all that is good about Bretonnia, the earthly avatar of Chivalry and nobility. Some say he is Giles d'Breton, arisen again in a new form to watch over his beloved land and traditions. Others that he is some great gift of the Fae, a warrior in the shape of their honored neighbors set to defend them in their times of need. Whatever the case, they all agree he cannot be killed, only dissipated or wounded. As you might imagine, this spirit showing up openly and directly, along with the actual avatar of the Lady herself, was more than enough to put paid to whatever illusions and dark magic gave the False Grail its luster. Ever since Maldred's defeat, there has been no actual Duke in Mousillon's blighted lands. Another major historical threat is the Red Duke. I talked about him in Night's Dark Masters, but the Red Duke is a Blood Dragon of unparalleled skill and ferocity who seems to bear a singular grudge for the nobility of Bretonnia. In some legends, he is even held up as a dark counterpart of the Green Knight, another terrible test for great and true knights. He has attacked the knights of the grail for over a thousand years, and every time he is slain he seems to rise from his grave anew to bear his grudge against the sons (and secret daughters) of Bretonnia. Why he hates them so much is up to a group's GM, if they decide they want the Red Duke for a major foe; whatever it is, it is clear he is incredibly angry. He draws to his side those who feel similarly wronged by Bretonnia, as well as other Blood Dragons who seek to study and fight under such a renowned and determined warrior. Next: "We have political systems like yours in the Empire, yes. We call them 'protection rackets.'" Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Jul 20, 2017 16:29
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DalaranJ posted:Good discussion. Now I want a Tenchi Mayo rpg about strip mall karate gyms that are secretly ancient masters. It's tricky managing the themes. I'd love a Saint Tail RPG to play a magical phantom thief. But an allegorical story about a girl's "flightiness" being "tamed" by a man, not so much.
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Jul 20, 2017 16:33
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DalaranJ posted:Good discussion. Now I want a Tenchi Mayo rpg about strip mall karate gyms that are secretly ancient masters. http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/asimo/teenagers-from-outer-space/ There ya go. Ursei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, etc. Just refluff it. And it's rules lite. X-post from pick-up games thread: Teenagers From Outerspace tomorrow (7/20) at 8:30 PM EST? Silly 80s anime rom-com comedy in tabletop RPG form. Ursei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, whatever. 2-3hrs Thursday at 8:30 PM EST on SA TG Discord: https://discord.gg/XZATMEb
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Jul 20, 2017 16:35
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Huh. I thought the Red Duke was the Duke of Mousillon.
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Jul 20, 2017 16:36
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Cythereal posted:Huh. I thought the Red Duke was the Duke of Mousillon. He is in Total Warhams. And he could easily be in any campaign. I mean, he's called the Red Duke, and it's a blighted land with undead problems and no official Duke.
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Jul 20, 2017 16:37
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Night10194 posted:Another major historical threat is the Red Duke. I talked about him in Night's Dark Masters, but the Red Duke is a Blood Dragon of unparalleled skill and ferocity who seems to bear a singular grudge for the nobility of Bretonnia. In some legends, he is even held up as a dark counterpart of the Green Knight, another terrible test for great and true knights. Has anyone ever seen the Red Duke and Green Knight in a room together? They're either the same person or part of a sentai team that broke up.
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Jul 20, 2017 16:45
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Night10194 posted:Games like AAH, I don't know why they even bother having an EXP system. Also ha ha oh god of course they're all fighting styles that refer to the same style, wow. I'll admit I didn't really feel like researching it at the time, that's so stupid.
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Jul 20, 2017 16:46
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 06:21 |
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One thing about Seeds of Rage that stood out to me is that the way the Warden is portrayed is that it is clearly supposed to be indifferent towards the prisoners, which makes the Paranoia 'inspiration' even more superficial.
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Jul 20, 2017 16:46
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